The Ravenous Dark, page 20
"But this is no ordinary crystal ball," she confided with a smile that spoke to her years of experience in sorcery. "This was forged for my old clan as a gift by the Hermetica clan. They are the most skilled alchemists this court has ever seen," she said, smile dimming as a shadow of grief passed behind her eyes. "At its center is lapis and obsidian, and as you can see, the surrounding shell is natural clear quartz."
Valdora's eager explanation didn't resonate with Ronan, though he offered a nod of understanding.
"That's… good."
Valdora chuckled. "As I said before, a crystal ball acts as a lens. Think of this crystal as a telescope. Not only will we be able to venture into your memories to observe the realm you explored, but the veil will be thin enough to engage—"
Ronan's chair scraped back as he stood. A thunderous expression tilted every feature down. "I'm not letting you into my head so you can fuck around with what you find."
At first, Valdora's eyes were wide with shock. His outburst seemed to reverberate around the room, striking tension in the air that dared not be challenged. Valdora met his fiery glare and met it with one of censure.
"I have no intention of fucking around inside your mind. I hold such practice in abhorrence and would never delve into such dark magic; furthermore," she continued with a haughty sniff, "it would breach our contract. Now, sit, and I will finish my explanation."
Ronan did so with reluctance. Valdora rolled back her shoulders and calmed herself with an extra-long inhalation and exhalation.
"As I was saying, the veil will be thin enough for me to engage with the magic of the Otherworld. Enough to collect some samples of it. Regardless, it will be a difficult task, but quite useful."
Ronan's worrisome frown did not abate. "What do you hope to gather from the samples?"
"Clarity on what type of magic is used in the Otherworld. With that knowledge, I can better track who else is sourcing such magic in the court." Valdora's forehead scrunched together as she eyed Ronan. "Didn't Ana explain?"
"She did… but I've had a lot on my plate. My apologies for my outburst."
She smoothed her features and shook her head. "It's forgotten. Let's begin. Come closer," she instructed.
Ronan did, watching with unabashed curiosity as she retrieved more items from her bag of tricks on the floor.
A jar full of oval-shaped leaves soaking in some clear viscous matter.
A pair of tweezers.
A pack of long matches and an amethyst candle.
She set the items with care in front of herself before using the tweezers to claim one of the oval-shaped leaves. Valdora dragged the leaf along the jar's lip, scraping off the excess liquid.
"Lean forward." Ronan bent toward her. She transferred the leaf to Ronan's forehead. A bead of the viscous liquid it was submerged in slid sluggishly down the ridge of his nose.
"What's this for?" His hand rose to wipe about the bead, but Valdora shook her head quickly. From her cloak, she produced a handkerchief. Ronan dabbed carefully at the slimy path until it was cleaned.
"Belladonna soaked in fat to help open your third eye. We'll leave it on a minute more, and then remove it with the tweezers."
"Isn't belladonna poisonous?"
"Extremely, hence the fat and the short time frame."
Ronan was about to voice his dissent when he became light-headed. He sank back into his seat, breathing deeply as the room expanded impossibly around them. He grunted and blinked rapidly to try to dispel the feeling.
"How much longer?" His stomach roiled with discomfort as his equilibrium swayed and his vision went in and out of focus.
"Only a moment more," Valdora assured him, using the small interim to light the amethyst candle.
Ronan grunted again as the room slanted. He gripped his seat to steady himself. Valdora chanted something under her breath as she reached across the table and plucked the leaf from his forehead with the tweezers.
"Continue to breathe deeply, just like that. Good. Very good. You're doing excellently."
Ronan's unfocused gaze settled on Valdora. Methodically, she disposed of the used leaf, placing it into a sterile jar. Ronan couldn't tell if it was his imagination or not, but he was fairly certain the once clear glass of the jar turned a startling green once Valdora was finished capping it. A noise, something close to a whimper, crept up the back of his throat.
He was grateful that Valdora made no mention of it, putting back all the contents she'd taken out of her bag save the lit candle. She leaned forward and positioned the candle before the crystal ball. Ronan's gaze followed the movement and stuck on the crystal. He hadn't noticed the cracks beyond its glossy surface before. They reminded him of wisp-like clouds.
"Smoke of air, and fire and earth;
let the truth be told and lives unearthed."
Valdora blew out the flame with a sharp exhalation. Smoke rose from the wick, but rather than drifting skyward, it billowed toward the crystal ball.
"Keep staring into the crystal," Valdora said. Power laced around her words.
Ronan's mouth dried. He couldn't look away if he wanted to. He was hopelessly enraptured by the soft glow the crystal emitted as it absorbed the smoke.
"Allow yourself to be taken back to the Otherworld. Let your mind and spirit connect. All is safe here in the present as we delve into your past, surrounded by these blessed candles and tokens of safe passage."
Ronan was acutely aware of his heartbeat slowing and the docile flicker of the flames around them, but nothing compared to the wonder of the crystal ball. It tugged at his psyche, until all at once, he found himself in the Otherworld beyond the Mirror of Ways, with Valdora at his side.
A fresh wave of dizziness hit him, but as he shook it off, he felt more centered. He gazed about the desolate land somberly. "What now?"
"We wait."
"For what?"
Valdora glanced at him with lashes half-lowered. "For you."
Goosebumps cascaded over Ronan. The Otherworld was just as he remembered. Barren hilltops and valleys went as far as the eye could see. The world was a spectrum of blacks, grays, and whites, including themselves. Ronan exhaled softly, his flesh puckering all over again. Magic polluted the air.
"When will—"
An unnatural wind mussed the ground's dusty surface. For a moment, Ronan thought his mind was playing tricks on him, for the air soon shimmered before them. He clamped his eyes shut and breathed strongly through his nose as his equilibrium faltered again. Before he could stumble or waver, Valdora's hand was on his arm to steady him.
"Look."
Ronan opened his eyes and immediately paled. A dull sun shone down on the scene. Not far away, a past version of himself ran alongside Jax as three vicious dog-like creatures chased them. Their faces were pointed and keen like a fox but with obsidian eyes, unnaturally tall ears, and wiry tails. They were relentless in their pursuits. The past versions came skidding to a stop several feet away from where they stood.
"What are they?" Valdora's voice was distant and hollow, as if not fully present in the space they occupied.
"We called them harrows." Ronan's voice mimicked the same breathless quality as Valdora's.
The harrows fell upon Ronan and Jax. From that point, the memory played out in clunky pieces. The players jumped from one movement to the next, sometimes appearing in different places as the fight raged on.
"Why is it doing that?" Ronan asked. A dull throb hammered at the back of his head.
"Memories are fickle. They cater to falsehoods when reality leaves us wanting. In other instances, they simply cannot retain all the information that occurred. Hence, the jumps we're witnessing now." Valdora circled the warring party. "Your mind is playing out to the best of its ability the facts of what happened to you and Jax at this moment in time. Or rather, a collection of moments."
Garbled noises issued from the brutal scene, but nothing understandable. "Is that why it sounds the way it does?"
Valdora nodded absentmindedly. "You likely can't remember the specifics of whatever words you exchanged. Only this: snarling chaos, too rushed to comprehend. When was this?"
Ronan ran a critical eye over his past self and Jax. They looked younger by several years, and the gear they carried was nothing in comparison to how they armed themselves in later years.
"I'd guess our third or fourth time here."
Valdora stopped as Jax felled a harrow with his cane. Eerie tendrils of hazy smoke drifted from his person as he spun and charged the beast on top of Ronan.
He grimaced as he recalled how the act earned him a vicious bite from the harrow, tearing through his forearm guard and into his flesh. A shudder ran over Ronan. His stomach dropped, and his eyes rammed shut.
"You sustained injuries during your time here?"
Ronan nodded, his facial features tightening as his arms curled over his chest in discomfort. He needn't open his eyes to witness what was surely being projected to Valdora.
More fight scenes.
More injuries.
More victories.
Ronan cracked an eye open. Valdora was examining a stain of inky black blood left by one of the harrows of his memory.
She knelt by it, procuring a crystal-tipped wand from her cloak. She pointed the crystal at the blood, her lips moving fast as her eyebrows knocked down fiercely. Ronan did his best to remember the incident more clearly.
This is what she must have meant by engaging with the magic.
It… tickled. A strange tingling erupted across his scalp. Ronan couldn't help but shudder, his shoulders hitching themselves high as if to ward off the feeling.
"How often did you encounter these harrow hounds?" Valdora asked as she stood. She wiped away a drop of blood that crept out her nostril and pocketed her wand. The opalescent tip was no longer the same color but something far, far darker.
Ronan frowned and forcibly relaxed his shoulders as Valdora rejoined him. His headache was growing.
"Every time," Ronan said. "We always had to fight our way to the temple. Did you get what you needed?"
She hummed noncommittally, eyes narrowing on him. "What temple?"
Ronan's eyes shuttered closed as he conjured the memory of the glinting white temple on a faraway hilltop. Pain lanced through his head at the act. A moment later, an icy hand cupped the back of his neck.
"Keep breathing, Ronan. You're doing wonderful."
Valdora's fingers drew soothing circles at the base of his skull. A litany of words fell from her lips too fast for Ronan to comprehend. The pain withdrew. In its place, cool relief blanketed him. Ronan sighed, his shoulders slumping as the tension spiraling up the back of his neck vanished.
"Tell me more about your journey here," Valdora requested.
"Where is here?"
Valdora's hand fell away. "Open your eyes, Ronan."
His eyes squinted open, allowing his vision to adjust to the stark white pillars and massive belly of the temple in slow degrees. Disquiet filled him, and he cleared his throat. " There isn't much to tell. Once we defeated the harrow hounds, the temple would always appear on a nearby hilltop. When we reached it, any wounds we suffered would be healed."
"Interesting." Valdora ran her hand along one of the temple's pillars. They shimmered at the pressure. A knot took root between her brows. "And you sustained injuries in every battle?"
"No. The more often we returned, the better we fought. There was a time when it was all rather… routine, I suppose. We fought. We won. Then Jax studied." Ronan ran a hand over his close-cut hair. "A few years back, that changed. The hounds got stronger. They came out in more force. Sometimes the battles seemed endless."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw pity streak across Valdora's expression. His throat tightened, and he shoved both hands into his pockets. He couldn't meet her eye.
"You said the temple healed you? How?"
For a moment, his mind blanked. "I don't know," he replied honestly and began wandering farther into the temple. His feet took him down familiar corridors. "We searched for the answers for a while, but somewhere around our seventh or eighth visit, we just chalked it up as a gift from the temple. Or some bullshit like that." Ronan glanced back at Valdora. She trailed a few feet behind him, expression neutral. "Understanding the healing magic wasn't our main purpose."
The farther they roamed, the heavier the scent of eucalyptus and incense grew. Ronan inhaled deeply, his skin warming.
"Were you able to decipher these runes?"
Ronan looked to where Valdora pointed at the temple's grandiose walls. They were etched in runes from top to bottom. She took out her wand and absently unfastened the darkened crystal end and replaced it with a fresh one. Her lips moved in the same rapid fashion as before while running her wand parallel to the runes.
Like clockwork, an ache developed at the back of his skull. Ronan breathed through it until Valdora was finished with her magical inspection. The crystal tip of her wand wasn't nearly as discolored as it was for the harrow's blood.
For some reason, that didn't surprise him.
"Some, but the sections we were able to decode didn't make much sense to either of us. There're ramblings of the universe and cosmos written on these walls, energies, and sound waves on another. When we came across the section dedicated to numerology, we stopped."
Valdora hummed. Her face was dressed in unadulterated curiosity. "The magic here is very unusual. How did you go about studying it?"
"There's a library…."
Valdora tore her gaze from the wall at the distracted quality of Ronan's voice. A breeze swept across their feet, and the phantom-like doppelgängers of Ronan and Jax magically appeared. Their specter forms faded in and out of existence as they covered ground and stopped to study the walls, each time in new sets of clothes.
"Slow down, Ronan." Valdora issued the command harshly.
He ground his molars together and focused on one memory: Jax and Ronan strolling down the corridor confidently. They were smiling, but their happy demeanor only brought a wave of sadness and despair to Ronan.
"Are you going to the library?"
Ronan nodded, unable to work past the thick lump forming in his throat.
"Let's follow them." Valdora was already moving, her steps quick to catch up with the memory. Ronan's pursuit wasn't as eager. When he caught up with the three, they were in a circular vestibule host to a set of doors twice the size of the men.
Ronan watched from the vestibule's entryway as the pair hugged. When they pulled apart, Jax pulled out a wicked-looking blade.
"He's not going to—"
Valdora's concern made Ronan's fists tighten unconsciously in his pockets as he interjected. "A blood offering was the only way to open the door."
The memory of Jax sheathed the blade and walked to the double-doors. His bloody palm rested over their connecting seam. A moment later, a blast of warmth flooded the room. The doors groaned open, and Jax slipped through, leaving Ronan behind.
"Why didn't you go in?"
"I couldn't."
Ronan's memory sped up again, but instead of rehashing a dozen different arrivals to the library, it was only Ronan.
Pacing the room.
Resting on the floor.
Weeping into his hands.
Always alone. Always waiting.
"Ronan…" Valdora's voice trailed off as a long, low moan echoed in the room. She straightened at the noise. "What was that?"
"Shades. Restless spirits that haunted the temple."
Memory Ronan startled at the noise too. He peered about the room for the source but found none. The moment memory Ronan relaxed; they came. Shrouded creatures glided into the room. Any discernible features were blurred or concealed by their gossamer body veils. Each one drifted ominously toward Ronan.
"They were hungry," Ronan said hoarsely, watching the memory flicker through its sequence of events. "I wasn't good at fighting them at first, but I grew stronger. My abilities did too."
"How long were you left alone?"
Ronan waited until the last memory finished. The shade disintegrated as soon as Ronan ripped out its heart. "There was never a hard and fast rule to it, but by the end? Months, sometimes years."
His memories sifted through faster, jumping from enthusiastic reunions to frosty greetings and departures. Ronan turned away when his memory took to punching the walls and abandoning his post.
"Where would you go?"
"To hunt the shades."
Valdora's lips pursed. Once again, she took out her wand and replaced its used crystal head. Her next inspection was the double-doors. Ronan steadied his breathing as his headache ballooned and his stomach twisted.
"How did you survive here without food or water?" she asked when she finished.
"We could survive without them somehow, so it was never an issue. We could spend as long as we wanted to here," Ronan said bitterly. Valdora walked back over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder.
"I'd like to do one more crystal reading if you can stand it." Ronan grimaced but nodded.
"Where?"
"Just outside the temple. I'd like to sample the air. The magic is different here than it is out there."
Ronan escorted her outside, where the magic pulsed with a life of its own. He swallowed roughly, as she sampled the air with a fresh crystal adorning her wand. Ronan crossed his arms. His entire body tensed as Valdora's magical inspection acted like a grater on his brain. He felt ill. Nausea swept through him as he squeezed his eyes shut.
"Let us return."
Valdora's hand landed heavily on his shoulder and then squeezed. Ronan gasped and hinged at the waist.
"What the—"
His vision blurred by a wash of tears gathering in his lash line, but he could see well enough to realize they were out of his head at last.
"I'm sorry for the discomfort; there's no way around it," Valdora said, pulling a fresh handkerchief from her bag of tricks. She pressed it to her nose, absorbing the blood trying to creep out. "However, I would call our excursion a complete success. I was able to gather four samples of magic."
