Page 200 of The Cradle of Ice
Remember …
Most of the raash’ke were too young to have been alive back then—but these seven giants were not. They knew a time when the Crèche had lived in harmony. Somewhere in the shadows of the horde-mind that memory, that brightness, still existed.
As if sensing the danger of reviving a past long forgotten, the storm swirled. Seven shadows beat the air, holding the sky. Smaller raash’ke swirled farther out.
You must remember …
It wasn’t a demand, only a hope.
The stalemate held for several more breaths. Exhausted and drained, she felt her legs faltering. She hung from Bashaliia’s neck. Then a warm hand touched her shoulder, fire burning through to her skin.
Daal …
Next, fingers of cold bronze gripped her other shoulder.
Shiya …
Daal poured his last flames into her, allowing her song to shine brighter. With that energy came a flood of additional memories from the Oshkapeers, thousands that had faded from Nyx but that Daal had still retained. She fed those into the glow, too, making the past an inescapable trap.
You will remember.
This time, it came with a lilt of command.
On Nyx’s other side, Shiya added her voice, easily finding Nyx’s harmony. Like before, they stoked it into a storm and held it trapped, letting it build into a massive tide, damming it behind walls. Only this time, the dam didn’t have to be so tall. Their target was right here, all around them. So far, both storm and giant wings skirted the threat of those shining memories, as if wary of them.
Still, Nyx felt that impasse would not last.
A nidus of hard darkness lurked within the shadows.
The spider …
From its hiding place, it lashed out with whips of emerald fire and lances of jagged spears, demanding for the storm to crush them.
In that moment, she recognized that malevolence, that corrupting force.
Nyx flashed to six months ago, when she had knelt atop the Shrouds. Shrive Vythaas had wielded a small metal box that sparked and keened with this same malignant fire, coursing to copper needles driven into the skulls of Nyx’s two beloved brothers, Ablen and Bastan.
This was much the same, a corruption of control, only she sensed this spider was much farther away.
She had no more time to ponder it further. The massive golden tide could no longer be held back. Nyx opened her throat and broke the dam inside her with a single word.
Remember.
It was no request this time, but a demand.
The golden corona surrounding her burst into a sun, blasting upward in every direction. It struck the storm and the seven winged giants. The ancient darkness shattered wide for a few moments—but it quickly smothered down, trying to quash that fire, to erase a past.
Still, a few rays of that new sun broke through the shadows, reached the tiniest bits of brightness buried in the storm. With a touch, those beams ignited what had been protected and preserved long ago but nearly forgotten—the memory of harmony, when two lived as one, when hearts beat together.
That bit of brightness exploded, eclipsing even her sun.
Nyx gasped.
The storm broke around her.
As it did, she caught a glimpse of the spider.
A bronze figure stood within a crystalline vault, crouched in a web of copper tubing, glass pipes, and bubbling tanks of a golden elixir. A malignant green fire sizzled and sparked across this glistening web, reflecting off the spider’s bronze with a pestilent sheen.
