In the quiet of my anxious slumber, towers of igneous rock and bruised shadows materialized around me, forming tangible shapes and structures in the haze of my dreamscape. The lights remained oblique, stretched in lines of white and black as wayward fractals drifted in the air. I knew this place, had been here before.
My eyes widened because this was no dream.
I stood in a familiar study, not a hand's width from the wall of shelves chiseled from pure stone. The shelves were burdened with thin sheets of glossy black stone used in lieu of less durable, fragile parchment, and each sheet was riddled with unintelligible script. Overhead, diffuse red light filtered into the room from veins of fiery color stretched across the ribbed ceiling.
At a table burdened by more of the obsidian tablets, I found the creator of this dark reality watching me with eyes like imploding stars.
I reacted without thought; my back struck the wall of shelves and I snarled, fingers digging into the harsh rock as if I could pry it apart and disappear within its stony embrace. Last I'd seen the King Below, he'd been breaking the bindings holding me in place inside his inescapable prison. Suppressing the rill of terror snaking through my heart was impossible.
The Baal rose from his simple chair, setting aside his slate with little thought. Despite becoming Fallen, the self-proclaimed King held the same terrible beauty as his Absolian kin, the same refined bone structure, faultless skin, and untenable facial symmetry. He dressed as he had when he'd been a member of the Absolian Command, in a high-collared military jacket and polished boots. I'd seen him dressed in the less formal attire of the Pitlings before, and it did nothing to mitigate his incomparable aura of menace and intrigue.
"Darius," he greeted, his smile sharp-toothed and ill-mannered. "You've looked better."
"Release me from your nightmare," I demanded, locked in place by my own dread and fury. I did not truly stand in his study in his temple within the vast wasteland of the Pit, but nor was I simply asleep. The Baal had the ability to reach through the Song of Existence and to take an unaware mind beyond its bounds. This place existed and yet did not exist. It was born by the Baal's will and would fade just the same.
"I can give you a nightmare, if that is what you want."
The image distorted, and the shelves at my back gave way. I landed on hard-packed earth, skinning my palms as the unbearable heat of the Pit's flames arched over our heads. I saw the chains lying not a foot from me, just where they have been when they'd fallen from my wrists ten years ago.
"You're not creative," I spat as I rose to my feet. I kicked one of the fetters for good measure, sending a cloud of dirt over his legs. The Baal brought his hands together and bowed his head as shadows rippled behind him.
"Shall I...try another?"
The prison was whisked away and replaced with a colder, more modern scene. The night enveloped the misty landscape while the dawn ached in the east to shed its radiance over the world. The Baal was there, kneeling on a familiar wet road, his wings outspread to block the rain from falling upon what lay across his lap.
I could hear my pulse undulating in my ears as I paced around the image until I could see what the King Below held.
Sara's mouth was moving, speaking too softly to be heard, her head cradled by the Baal's arm as my soul slipped from her tremulous fingertips and gathered within his steadfast hand. Her side and the spoiled mud beneath were tarnished by rust-colored blood, blood that poured from her ripped open wound. So much blood.
She whispered something to him as her arm fell, her eyes dull and listless as they had never been in life. I hadn't realized I'd approached until I was at her side, knowing this was only a vision, knowing I could not change it, but wishing I could just try.
The Baal's face was inscrutable as he lowered his mouth to her ear and spoke one last time to Sara Gaspard. Whatever he said left a small smile on her face, fragile as spun glass. She was smaller than I remembered, burdened as she was by so many weeks of Balthazar's terror and days of my own brother's torture.
To think that she died here, in this bog, and in the King Below's arms. To think he'd make me watch.
I would have gladly submitted to another thirty years of his unrelenting torment if it meant I could tear him limb from limb.
The vision faded, replaced again by the black study in the depths of his dark temple, and I knelt upon the smooth, unforgiving floor and stared at the spot where she'd breathed her last.
The Baal's talons trailed through my hair, theirs sharp points like bared daggers biting into my flesh. "No remarks about this being a nightmare now, hmm? What say you, boy?"
My shoulders eased as I laid my hands upon my thighs and the Baal's laughter flitted through the room.
"Such a good dog you make, Dar—."
I exploded upward, not bothering to shout or to shriek or to bellow as I threw all of my weight into my fist and swung it into the Baal's face. Bones crunched as he grunted, taken unawares, and the flurry of colorless wings cut through my body with bitter cold.
Though I attacked again, I was only afforded the opportunity for a single blow. My fist landed once—then I was slammed into the shelves I'd stood by minutes before, the rigid stones knocking all the air from my lungs, leaving bruises on my back and shoulders. The Baal had flung himself across the study and was now perched upon the lip of his table, chipped slates scattered under him as he smirked.
Crimson dripped from his nose and painted a slick line upon his lip. It seemed even wannabe Kings could bleed.
I tried to rush him again, tried to run forward and rip his damn eyes from his head—but the shadows were peeling from the lightless corners, extending toward me, fitting their black tendrils about my wrists and ankles like living manacles. The bonds tightened and I hit the shelves again, growling.
The mouth of the unformed fractus pinning me crooned nonsense in the dark, joined by its unseen brethren lingering in the Baal's shadow.
"The Sin of Pride, how far he falls—!"
"A human so very small—!"
"Prisoner again to these halls—!"
"As if he never left at all!"
"Quiet," the Baal said, silencing their incessant mutterings. His tongue flicked over his lip, lapping up the blood. "Still fighting, I see. I should have known better. If you taunt a mad dog, you're going to get bit—but I digress. I'd hate for you to lose your spirit so soon, boy. Your quest has only just begun after all—and already you're running out time."
"Release me," I demanded, fighting the hold of the fractus. "I won't play your games. I won't stand being tormented by you again."
"Then quiet yourself and listen." With one powerful beat of his unfurled wings the King came before me, settling on his booted feet, towering overhead. "Because I will not speak my warning twice. I have brought you here to do my bidding, Darius, and you must listen as I speak.... I will not tolerate the dominion of Iadlim's sycophant over the Terrestrian realm. The unrest he sows does not serve my purpose. You will quiet him—and the mages, and the witches, and restore Terrestria's natural order."
I scoffed, incredulous. "You would send a mortal to quell a rebellion and banish an Absolian? With all due respect, my King—." My tongue lingered upon the word, belying its sincerity. "You are deranged."
"If that is what you wish to think." He tucked one blade-like talon under my chin and tilted my head up until our eyes met. "If you do not do as you are bid, I will be forced to intervene."
My brows came together as I reflected upon the Baal's meaning, and recollections of a world now destroyed ascended from the barred halls of my memory, stirring visions of screaming Children and skies being sundered by hideous, malformed creatures.
If the King Below intervened in the Terrestrian struggle for dominance, he would show no discretion, no finesse. He would unleash a tide of fractus upon the realm and it would go the way of the Dreaming Isle—except, there'd be no stopping it this time. No Sins to dwindle the number of demons, and no Wild King to cease its total collapse. Terrestria had no King. It would burn to nothing.
I didn't want to do as he said, couldn't do as he said, and yet...if I did nothing, what kind of world would I be trying to return Sara to? One overrun with demons? Encumbered by a mage dictatorship? One crushed under the foot of an Absolian? Or one on the brink of annihilation?
"This cannot fall to me," I told him, something like dread slinking through the hollow of my chest. "Surely someone—."
"It falls to you, because I say so."
"This is ridicu—."
My breath fell short, my protests halting before they could form as my eyelids drooped and my body sagged against the fractus's hold. It released, and as I hit the floor, I was forcibly thrown from the vision, rising to consciousness with incredible speed, enclosed by stinging light until—
I jerked awake in my seat, and my eyes flew open to a different sight.
The whir of the engine rumbled through the Jeep's frame as the vehicle ambled along the dirt trail. The desert beyond the dusty windows was brought into relief by the pastel hues of morning, the sky softening in swift degrees. I sat with my arms crossed and my head balanced on the seat's top, but I groaned and shifted with discomfort upon waking, the bruises manifesting on my shoulders and upon my swollen knuckles.
The women were speaking, their voices clashing in disagreement. Saule, seated once more on the middle console, was taking great pains to not touch me, crowding the huntress behind the wheel. Bram was sprawled in the back, his ears perked toward the witch, keen upon his mistress's voice. The witch had a patchwork amulet roped about her neck to discourage the eyes of mortal authorities from seeing her so precariously balanced without seat or seatbelt.
She had the strange book open on her knee and had already read several sections.
"We should go to the Chedipe coven in Kansas," Saule said with the air of someone reiterating their argument for the fifth time. She had a hand braced on the roof to keep her head from bouncing against it. "They're out of the way, but they live off the grid. If anyone's escaped the mages' notice, it'd be them. They could help—."
Connie shook her head, strands of red hair escaping her unkempt ponytail. "We ain't going all the way up to Kansas. The highway takes us right through Tulsa, and there's a hunter enclave outside Owasso that we haven't heard from lately that I want to check up on. If anyone could help us with the mage boys, it'd be them."
Saule tugged on her borrowed shirt, her face scrunched in thought. "I mean, I guess we could do both? It wouldn't take that much time, would it?"
"We will be doing neither," I seethed, startling them both as they hadn't realized I was awake. "We are going to Itheria."
"Well, yeah," the huntress replied with an offhanded flippancy I did not appreciate. Saule paled at the unpleasant look I shot in the woman's direction. "But the enclave is only like an hour out of the way."
"Your enclave is most likely dead, given the idiocy of their profession." I studied my injured hand, rubbing a careless thumb over the raw, split skin. I savored the ache, as this was not an injury I'd regret.
"They ain't dead. They're too clever for that."
My sound of disbelief went unheard over the ambient engine noise.
"It won't take us any time at all to just check on them."
"We're going to Itheria—."
"I heard you. Geez. My car, my decision." Connie took her eyes off the road just long enough to look me over, frowning. "Man, you don't look good. You get carsick or something?"
I wasn't sick of the car. I was sick of her.
It took considerable effort on my part not to retort, but I managed to curb my tongue and stare resolutely out the windshield. The huntress thought me an ordinary human, not the brother of the man who'd created the vampires—not the brother of the Absolian currently inciting this world's chaos. I took pleasure in the idea of her being terrified should she discover the truth—for she would be terrified. They were always terrified of me.
I wiped the blood from my fingers onto my jeans, my jaw clenched tight. Arguing with her was beneath me, as my attention was better served concentrating on the Baal's warning and the potential consequence of my failure.
He's insane, I snarled in my thoughts. He expects me to settle matters here—and yet he clearly knows I am a human. He clearly understands my limitations. What is the Baal thinking? What is he scheming?
The road continued. The witch read. The dog slept. The huntress drove—and I sat in withdrawn contemplation, imagining the world surrounding us torn apart by my dark father's maladapted creations, thinking of the precarious heights I was aspiring to. Solve a worldwide Terrestrian conflict. Stop an Absolian. Resurrect a dead woman. All were eventualities I could not attain—and yet, all were ends I could not fail to create.
Failing now meant dooming the entire world.