Chapter Seven

I'm surrounded by blackness. Blackness all around. It coils around me, trying to pry me open, but I resist. I don't let it inside. I might not know what it is or where it came from, but I know if I open the door and welcome it inside, I'll lose everything I am.

So I deny it. I fight it.

And that's when a deep, dark, melodious voice speaks to me.

"Interloper. False prophet. You think you have what it takes to resist me? You will fail as the others failed. No living being of this world can resist the inevitable." The voice is so low it hurts my ears—although I'm not sure I'm really hearing it or if it's just being spoken in my mind. It's almost like a dozen voices all talking at once, merging to form a single deafening tone. It crawls against my skin, peeling away at me in the same way the shadows do.

"Who are you?" I don't know if I say the words or merely think them. Everything confuses me, but I know one thing in my heart of hearts: whoever, whatever this thing is, I must resist. If I don't, everything will be lost.

"Your bravado is pointless. Your strength will fail," the shadow tells me. "I am madness. I am that which comes for every living creature. I am the undefeated. I am death, and I will come for you as I came for them. They could not stand against me. They believed their power was enough to defeat me, but they discovered, as you will, that you cannot defeat death itself. My name is irrelevant. You will fall to me as infinite have fallen before."

"No, I don't think I will."

The voice breathes out, like it is simply scolding a petulant child instead of having a conversation with an equal. "Your denial does not make you unique. They all denied me at first, and yet one by one they fell. You will fall with them and in doing so I will have accomplished my purpose."

I want to say more, but right then I wake up.

I come to with a start, and I sit up and hold a hand over my heart, feeling some kind of way. My heart beats fast, and a cold sweat lines my brow. I try to remember my dream, whether it was a nightmare or something, but it's all a little fuzzy.

"Is something wrong?" Rune asks, lighting up on my wrist. "You seem… out of sorts."

Swallowing hard, I say, "I don't know. I feel weird, like something just happened, but I can't remember what it was." No matter how hard I try to think back, it's all black.

"Hmm. That is odd. Perhaps a bad dream?"

"Maybe." I swing my legs off the side of the bed and slip my shoes on. I get up, stretch, and push out of the bedroom to find Frederick leaning over the table, packing a bag.

The moment he sees me, he straightens out—and knocks an apple to the floor in the process. "Oh, sorry," he apologizes as I bend over to pick up the apple. I rub it on the cloak that still clings to my shoulders and take a bite. "Did you sleep? It sounded—"

I raise an eyebrow at him, my mouth full.

"It sounded fitful. I almost woke you up. Debated on it quite a lot." He gives me a sheepish look before resuming packing the bag. "Anyway, I'm packing you as much food as this can carry. Mostly smoked meat and cheese. The map is in the front pocket. It should be easy enough to follow. I also gave you a piece of flint." He taps a side pocket on the bag.

"Flint?" I ask. "For, like, fires and stuff?"

The look he gives me after that tells me that was a stupid question on my part. Whatever. I didn't grow up in a time period where knowing how to start a fire was important. I grew up online, learning things way before I should—none of it essential for surviving alone in the wilderness.

Frederick rubs his cheek. His eyes, I notice now that there's ample daylight, are a warm, amber brown color. "Do you not know how to start a fire with flint?"

I have a know-it-all tattoo on my wrist that can probably guide me well enough, so I shrug. "I'll be fine. Thanks." I take another bite of the apple.

"If you say so. Just to remind you, then: a fire at night will attract things you don't want to attract, so if you're going to make a fire, I suggest doing it during the day. Make sure whatever materials you burn are dry—"

"Yeah, yeah, I said I got it."

Frederick takes a step toward me, lowering his voice to a bare whisper as he says, "Look, if I could go with you, I would, but since you're the only one who can walk through a shadowstorm, it has to be you. I do not feel good putting you in harm's way with the small chance that you'll be able to find where my father…" He sighs. "…where the woes got him."

He pulls out the map from the bag and lays it flat upon the table. I move beside him to look at it, but I must stand too close to him, because he immediately takes a step to the right.

The map is generic, for sure. I recognize Laconia city smack in the center. My highlighted route takes me south, to Acadia. My first stop is a settlement called Vermyr.

Frederick's finger traces the route. "Prim will take you to a small hole in the wall near the pond. You're small enough you can squeeze through. You'll want to follow the small creek away from Laconia until you hit the southern river. Stay close to it as you go. Vermyr should be a four-day walk from here. It's a relatively large settlement, one of the last to fall."

Hearing about all of these settlements that fell makes me wonder just how many people lost their lives to these woes.

"After that, you'll want to keep following the river until you come across Catarin Tower. It's an old watch-tower. They're all over Laconia. They were originally constructed during the First Contact War, but since then they've all been decommissioned. Some were used by researchers, like my father," Frederick goes on.

"After that, it's a long stretch until you reach the castle. You'll have to go around the basin the river empties into. You won't miss the castle. It's the only structure around, in the middle of the flattest plains of Acadia. If my father made it there…" He trails off and looks at me.

"What?" I ask.

"If he made it there, it's possible the empress was already mad. She might've…" Frederick has the roughest time saying this next part, but he manages: "She might've killed him. Or locked him up. Confiscated his research. Either way, you may have to search the castle."

Okay, I can see why he didn't want to tell me that.

"Is there any way the empress might still be alive?" The last thing I want to do is come across a raging, vengeful, totally out of her mind empress.

"It could be that Empress Morimento is still alive, along with the personnel at the castle. If anyone could be self-sustaining, it's her. But… we can't know for sure. The older folk in Laconia still worship the empresses, but to the kids like Prim, they're nothing more than superstition. It could very well be they all died years ago."

For some reason, I think that's too much to hope for. If I have any luck whatsoever, I'll find his dad's stuff in the first stop or somewhere along the way. With no luck at all, I'll have to drag my ass across all of Acadia and search the freaking castle from top to bottom while praying the empress isn't around to kick my ass.

After that dragon, I prefer no more ass-kickings, thanks.

Frederick folds up the map and sticks it into the bag, into the front pocket. "Remember, if you come across anything the woes have touched, there's no harm in running like your life depends on it. Be careful where you set up camp for the night."

"I've never been camping before. This should be fun." I might apply the sarcasm a bit too much, because Frederick gives me a quizzical glance. I grab the bag and sling it over my shoulder. I'm keeping the damn cape.

I take another bite from my apple when Frederick nods and says, "Right." He leads me outside, where Prim is waiting, playing with a gray-striped tabby cat in the dirt.

"Oh, a cat!" I hurry and swallow my mouthful of apple. "I love cats." I kneel beside her and give the kitty some nice head scratches—after I let him sniff me, of course. You can't go balls to the wall with a cat before letting it sniff you, first.

Prim giggles as she watches us together. "He likes you," she says. "Usually he doesn't like grown-ups. You and Frederick are the only ones." She wears the same clothes she did last night, a patched-up dress that's not quite her size. Her dark hair is pulled back in a braid today, and the sun shining over our heads makes her skin look more tan than dirty.

I scratch the cat under the chin and talk nonsensical baby-talk to him. He reminds me of the one in the alley by Frank's bar. I wish I could take him with me, pack him up in my bag for cuddles at nighttime.

He's lucky he's here, in the city, instead of out there, where he would've turned into something terrible and vicious.

I pull away from the cat as I take another bite of my apple. I meet Frederick's stare; he watched that entire thing with a soft smile on his face. Okay, in the daylight, he is cute, but I was right last night in describing his looks as a bookish sort of cute.

AKA he's not really my type.

What is my type? I'll get back to you on that.

"All right," Prim says as she places her small hands on her hips and puffs out her chest. "Are you ready?"

I nod, and Frederick tells me, "Good luck, Rey. Do everything you can to return safely." Safely and with his dad's stuff in tow. My bag is full of food now, but once it's empty and I'm forced to—gag me—scrounge the rivers for food, I'll have room to stuff plenty of research into it.

"Come on!" Prim bounces as she leads me away, away from Frederick and his shack of a home, away from the streets of Laconia. She brings me to the pond that gets all the runoff from the upper districts. It sits a good ways away from Frederick's shack, and it's early enough that no one's out.

I bet there's no fish in this pond. I bet this is where they wash their clothes and stuff.

She guides me around the pond, to the other side. We have to step on half-submerged rocks to get to the other side. Prim hums as she leads me, holding her hands behind her back, pep in her step. She's probably excited for Frederick to buy her whatever she wants from the markets today.

The pond hits the outer wall that surrounds all of Laconia city. A metal grate is fixed in the stone to let the excess water out. Right now it only trickles out. After a hard storm, I bet it gushes. On the left side, where the metal meets the stone, it looks as though the water wore it away a bit. Enough that I can push my bag through and then shimmy through myself.

I step around Prim and bend to look out the grate, at the greenery beyond. From this angle, it looks like if I follow the creek, it's not as cliffy as the way I took into the city.

I slide the bag off my shoulder and push it through. It lands on dry pebbles on the other side. Before I squeeze my whole self through, I glance at Prim and say, "Hey, kid. Thanks again for getting me out of jail."

"I already told you," she says. "It was Frederick."

"It was his idea, sure, but you're the one that got me out. You're just as important as he is." And she is. She is important. She probably doesn't hear it enough.

Prim beams, the smile she gives toothy. "I hope you find whatever he wants you to find."

"Thanks." And then I shimmy my body out. I don't land as gracefully as I hope—and I narrowly avoid landing on my bag and squishing all the contents inside—but I manage to avoid it. Once I right myself, I give Prim a wave through the grate and head off.

I'm not worried about anyone from the city seeing me and trying to follow. If they saw me wandering away, they'd assume I'm as good as dead. What does it matter, anyway? I was locked up, in limbo as I waited for their council or conclave or whatever to figure out what to do with me.

Going on a journey to look for some research is better than being locked up forever because they think I'm some kind of demon.

"Well," Rune mutters, "I suppose we're off, then."

"We're off," I repeat.

And we are.

I follow the creek down the hillside until it eventually joins with a larger river. I'm hopeful, which is more than I can say for myself before. I have a goal, a purpose, and I have a way to get there. One thing at a time, and soon enough I'll be home. I'll get home, fix all of my problems, and life will get better.

Because it has to.

I'm following the southern river as it runs through the plains and gentle hills surrounding the southern edge of the city when Rune asks, "Do you think you can trust him?" It comes so out of the blue that I don't realize he's talking about Frederick right away.

"Who?" I pause as I think back. "You mean Frederick? I didn't get a bad vibe off him."

He scoffs. "A vibe? Do I even want to know what that is?"

I roll my eyes. "It's just a feeling. A vibe. You know. I don't think Frederick is a bad guy. He seemed a little awkward, yeah, but I think we can trust him."

"Forgive me for trying to stay alert. No one in Laconia seemed to care, and suddenly Frederick appears out of nowhere to save the day. If this research is that important to him, why doesn't he brave the wilds himself?"

"Because if he gets caught in a storm, he'll die," I say. The shadowstorms-slash-scourge are the crux of the issue here. It's why everyone is stuck inside the main city."And he said he tried before, multiple times, and the guards always found him and dragged him back."

"Don't you wonder just why it is no shadowstorm has appeared over the city?" Rune sounds thoughtful, but also full of distrust. "Surely the city must have some protection that the rest of the kingdom doesn't. If Frederick is so smart, why hasn't he figured that out?"

Whatever sort of grudge Rune feels over Frederick, I don't, so I just shrug. "His dad was the research guru, and he took it that with him when he left. Honestly, it sounds like you don't like him and you're trying to find excuses why." I cock my head as I walk along—not that Rune can see me doing it, but whatever. "Is there any specific reason you don't like Frederick?"

Rune is silent, but I bet he's fuming.

"Is it because, I don't know, he's a man with his own body? A kind of cute one, too."

That's too much for him to bear, apparently. "Cute?" he echoes, aghast.

"Yeah, you know, handsome, in a different kind of way. It must really grind your gears that you're stuck as a tattoo on my wrist while someone like Frederick gets to be his own man—" Am I taunting him? Maybe a little.

Is it too much? Nah.

"I vehemently refuse your notion that I am envious of Frederick because he is his own man. And I most certainly do not care that you find him handsome in a different sort of way. I am simply trying to bring to your attention that, perhaps, we shouldn't be so quick to trust him." If a tattoo can sound flustered, that's Rune right now. It's kind of funny, really.

"Jealous."

"I specifically told you moments ago I am not—"

"Jealous? Yeah, keep denying it, buddy. You're making a good case for yourself."

Rune must realize he won't get anywhere with me right now, or maybe he knows he's too flustered to have a logical conversation. Apparently the all-powerful ex-wizard still has feelings even though he's been trapped inside a soul gem for who knows how long.

He does, however, break his silence to mutter, "I hate you."

"Do you? Or do you only hate me because I just dropped a truth bomb on you?" I grin even though he can't see it. I hike around a large boulder instead of crawling on top of it. The sun shines on my head, so hot I wonder if I should put my hood up.

Rune doesn't answer me. He's quiet, and that makes me say, "Rune? Are you still there? Oh, of course you are, you're attached to me." Maybe mocking the ex-wizard isn't a good idea, but I don't care. "Wait a second. Does this mean you're pouting? Is the all-powerful Rune pouting?"

I hear Rune sigh as the tattoo on my wrist lights up. "I am not pouting. I am simply ending this conversation."

"Right. Because you're pouting."

This time he growls the words out, "Again, I hate you."

"Hate, love, what's the difference? Doesn't matter. Either way, you're stuck with me and I'm stuck with you, so we might as well make the best of things. I can be your therapist! Let's dive into what really made you jealous over Frederick—"

It goes on like that for a while. Hours, probably. It isn't like I have anything better to do, and talking to Rune is better than drowning in silence, helps remind me I'm not completely alone here, even though it might feel like it.

The hard truth is Rune is all I have. He's probably the only reason I'm still alive. If I didn't have him… let's just say there isn't a doubt in my mind I'd be dead by now. Rune saved me.

And if we come across any freaky-looking creatures on our journey? He'd save me again.