Destroyed Read online

  I look back at the drawing—the empyrean twins—but all I feel is a strange sense of distance. I’m not drawn to it like I was with the depiction of the Untamed and spirits working together. It doesn’t feel real, yet it obviously speaks to Taras.

  “Then we have to stay here,” Corin says, “in this cave. Esther needs to rest.”

  “We cannot stay long,” Taras warns. “We cannot tread heavily on a Divine One’s hospitality.”

  But the Gods and Goddesses are not here. I stare at him, feel my face tighten and my fingers twitch as Taras continues talking. My knuckles crack. He’s not the special Seer. I am. Me. Power fizzes through me, and I pull my hands into fists. This new energy is growing inside me, getting bigger still, more and more layers wrapping around it.

  Corin steps farther into the cave, and Taras follows.

  I stay where I am and touch the stone wall again, feel the depictions of the spirits, feel the way the energy speaks to me, how it calms me.

  Esther gives me what I suppose is a sympathetic look, then perches on a low rock at the side of the cave’s entrance just as Jana and the dog appear, their forms silhouetted against the murky light. My terrier sniffs the air before he trots inside, gives me a wide berth. The usual, now.

  “We must do a Seer cleansing,” Taras says a few minutes later, returning with Corin. He looks at Jana and me. “The change in the physical world and the destruction of the Dream Land will have disrupted our Seer powers, changed their frequencies, their claws. There is bad energy wrapping around us, particularly you, child.” His eyes bore holes in me. “Without the Gods and Goddesses, our powers will be weaker. You will already be able to feel how much weaker they are. If we do nothing, they will weaken until they are nothing, placing us at risk of great danger, and there will only be darkness inside us—nothing we can use to protect ourselves. We need to find the new forms of our powers, ones this world can sustain. We must cleanse and embrace their energies, learn how Seer gifts operate in this world of destruction in order to maximize their use before they drain away completely, following their creators to death.”

  I stare at him, wonder if he needs to be so melodramatic. Following their creators to death. Anyway, I have no idea what he’s on about—my powers aren’t weak in the slightest. They’re stronger than ever. I can feel them pushing inside my soul. A hair’s breadth away from my mind, ready for the moment I call them.

  “What?” Jana takes a step backward, then pushes her hair behind her ears. In the dim light, her hair looks grayer, not reddish-blond. “They’re going to drain away completely? We’re going to lose our powers?”

  “Yes,” Taras says. “The Divine Ones—the Gods and Goddesses—give us gifts of their own powers, powers from the spectrum beyond. Our powers are connected to us, but also to them.” He wheezes a little. “Our powers are weakened now, and they will continue to weaken, seeping away to join their creators. This will leave us more and more vulnerable to the powers of the Dark Void, and the Dark Void is always hungry for Seers it can control, can trap, and feed upon.”

  “The Dark Void?” I ask.

  “It is a spiritual realm, a bad one. There were tunnels to it from the Dream Land.” He points at my pendant. “It is a common belief that a Seer pendant protects its wearer from being trapped in the Dream Land during a vision. Many believe the Seer pendant provides an anchor to the mortal world, even though such an anchor may interfere with smaller aspects of a vision. But Marta’s Lore taught me that a pendant, which can exist in both the mortal and spiritual planes, actually protects you from finding an entrance to the Dark Void from the Dream Land. It is not the Dream Land itself that you get trapped in. Your pendant protects you from being sucked into an entrance to the Dark Void —for when people land there, they never escape.”

  Jana’s eyes widen, and she shudders. “So the pendants are still important?”

  Taras shakes his head. “Seer pendants only prevent their Seers being sucked into the Dark Void, when in the Dream Land. They will not work without it. And now, it is gone, but the Dark Void is not. We are more vulnerable to it now, and thus it is imperative we cleanse and strengthen our powers, help them live longer without their makers, so they can hold the darkness at bay and prevent the Dark Void from claiming us.” Taras’s eyes darken for a moment. “But without the Divine Ones’ protection, Seer powers cannot live forever. They will dim. Powers will be temporary—some more so than others. But all will disappear in the end.”

  “And then the Dark Void will take us anyway?” Jana’s blue eyes seem to get brighter.

  My mother. My eyes widen.

  “The Dark Void will likely try, and it will get more Seers than it has had in hundreds of years, for it has clear access to the mortal world with no Dream Land in between. But strong Seers will still make it to the New World, and those who die before their powers have gone, will likely have enough power to fight the Dark Void—if they’ve cleansed their powers now.”

  I breathe a little deeper. My mother died and she was still a Seer, still had powers, though she couldn’t fight death. We sent her off. She’ll reach the New World, won’t she, just like the other Sarrs in the legacy who are both there and in me?

  Taras locks eyes with me. “This is why the Last Night has started. Your powers end the war, child, but they will not last forever. It must happen soon. It has to, else it will never end at all.”

  “So it’s definitely going to be soon?” Esther asks. “The end of the war?”

  “It has to be,” I say, resist the urge to roll my eyes. Wasn’t she listening?

  Then I feel strange—because I don’t agree with Taras. It doesn’t feel like my powers can get weaker. It feels like they can only get stronger.

  Taras looks to Corin and Esther. “Only Seers may be present during a cleansing.”

  Corin’s gaze flits to me.

  I shrug. He takes it as affirmation of Taras’s words, and, a moment later, he and Esther leave.

  Taras indicates for Jana and I to follow him to the back of the cave. There, in the semi-darkness, a stone bowl is sitting on a plinth, a pale, milky liquid in it.

  “Where the hell did that come from?” Jana steps backward.

  The terrier’s lurking behind her, and he only just moves in time to prevent a squashed paw. Something dark fills me, seeing that, how easily he could’ve been hurt, and the dark thing inside me wants to scream at Jana.

  I frown. That’s not right, it’s not me. Maybe Taras is right about the darkness, about some of it.

  “It is Jympalah’s Silk,” Taras says. “An old, old drink. Marta’s stories state it will await Seers when changing times arise.”

  “That sounds like a load of crap,” Jana mutters, flexing her fingers. She glances at me, and her blue eyes seem to glow in the dim light.

  I don’t say anything to her because if I start to, the dark thing might take over, and now I’m aware of it, its claws seem even bigger, sharper.

  Taras scoops the bowl up with one hand and gives it to me. “You must drink first. We drink in order of power.”

  I take it, stare at the milkiness, how the whiter swirls in it are growing, taking over more and more of the watery part. A heavy pressure closes around me, and Taras tells me again that I must drink it first.

  The air is hot, made up of a thousand needles that pierce my skin, as I raise the bowl to my lips.

  Yes, drink it.

  The voice—me? I don’t know—commands me, and I take a gulp. Then another, and another, feel the liquid pulsing down my veins.

  It is sweet, and I swallow more hastily, feel some trickle down the wrong way, and choke a little, eyes spluttering. My dog’s eyes are on me, and I wonder what kind of monster he sees in me.

  Taras takes the bowl and drinks for a long moment. When he passes the bowl to Jana, he has a white mustache.

  “Do all Seers need this?” Jana’s eyes narrow. She clicks her tongue. “What about the others, out there? If there are any left.”

 
; She looks at me again. I wish she wouldn’t. We all know it’s my fault. I didn’t throw my Seers out before the Dream Land exploded, not like Raleigh did.

  My chest tightens.

  “Yes, they do, and all Seers will find Jympalah’s silk.”

  It takes several minutes for Jana to lift the bowl to her lips, as if she is considering it, before she takes her sip and hands the bowl back to Taras; she’s barely touched it. Sensible. I don’t know why I drank so much. The even sweeter aftertaste is still in my mouth, wrapping around my tongue. I don’t like it.

  Outside, I can hear the waves crashing. Louder now. The wind too, howling, shrieking.

  Taras places the bowl at the side of the cave and makes a one-handed thank you gesture above it, his face tilted up to the cave’s rough, jagged stone roof.

  “Don’t think he’s all there,” Jana mutters to me. But she smiles innocently at Taras as he rejoins us.

  “Now, draw on your powers, display them,” he instructs. “But with care. Feel them, find the differences, the new forms, how they’ve changed. Jympalah’s Silk will allow quicker access to your powers and will cleanse them as it fights the growing weakness, allowing you to draw them out in a time when they’d ordinarily be feeble or even locked away.”

  I resist the urge to snort or laugh. Mine are neither feeble nor locked away. Mine are fire inside me, just waiting to be freed.

  I draw flames to me, watch them bud from my fingertips. Nothing different about my murderous power.

  Jana struggles with whatever power she’s trying to access—I don’t know how I know of her struggle, I just do—and Taras sits still, his face smooth with no expression, unreadable, as he presumably accesses his.

  I pool white light into my hand. Nothing different there either. When my mother died, when my powers awoke and the gateway activated, I felt the full strength of the Sarr bank inside me. Immense power only I can guide.

  I still feel it. It’s still there. All the Sarrs are there—not just the one who guided us here.

  Maybe my Seer powers work differently, because of the legacy inside me. Drinking that milky drink was pointless. My powers haven’t changed, because mine are held within me. I have the Sarr strength to hold onto them. They’re not like Taras’s and Jana’s powers—can’t be. Theirs are directly from the outside, the Gods and Goddesses. They have nothing extra to hold onto them. But I’ve got help, protection.

  I reach out for my body-sharing power, remember how it feels to slip into someone else’s body, the little nuances that filled me and—

  Nothing.

  An empty space. A desert, sand blowing across.

  I inhale sharply, make a choking sound. Taras and Jana look at me.

  “It’s gone.” My voice is a whisper that’s breaking. “The body-sharing.”

  Taras nods. “Of course. That’s not the power that will save us all now. You’d need an anchor to body-share with all the Untamed.”

  An anchor. That’s what Raleigh said.

  My mother.

  But I’m the last live Sarr.

  The gale outside deepens.

  “So what power will save us?” I ask, force myself to say the words, to be strong, to not get sucked into the sinkhole beneath me.

  “Child, I do not know. The knowledge is inside you. Only—”

  A loud screech.

  I jolt, turn and—

  Corin rushes into the cave, face red, chest heaving. He looks around, panic in his eyes, counts us. “Drones!”

  “The Enhanced!” Esther appears behind him, her arms over her stomach, cradling the life within. “They’re going to detect us, going to—”

  “Quiet!” Taras yells.

  “But there are no spirits here!” Esther cries. “Nothing to mask us!”

  “Unless they’re invisible,” Jana suggests.

  “But they’re weaker when invisible,” Taras replies. “And we’d need strong ones. No. We need to think.”

  I move to the cave’s entrance. My heart pounds, energy inside me, my powers stirring. I stumble, reach out, catch myself on a sharp part of the Living Rock. Blood seeps across my knuckles. Nearly a ripple in time, but not quite.

  “Where are you going?” Jana asks, but I don’t listen to her, don’t answer. I step outside.

  Cold air buffets against me, and the wind picks up, howling. The air’s thick, gritty—grittier than before. I peer into the darkness as I walk behind the cave, the rock formation, look into the sky. A frown tugs across my face as I see the flashing red light. It’s some distance away, high up.

  “Sev, come back!” Corin’s voice.

  A high-pitched squeal fills the air.

  A siren? On a drone?

  A—

  Something drops from the sky.

  A second later, the horizon explodes.

  The bang echoes over and over in my head, tearing through my mind. My hands are flat against the earth, smooth stone under my knees.

  I’ve fallen. Fallen because of the—

  A bomb?

  They’re bombing us. The Enhanced? Has to be.

  They’re killing us? They think we were there? On the horizon? Me or other Untamed?

  Or is that what the drones are now programmed to do? My head spins. Maybe they always had that setting and the storm’s activated it? Because the Enhanced can’t be killing us. Not intentionally. They want to convert, to save us.

  They need me alive if they’re going to use me.

  “Sev!”

  Corin—to my right.

  I turn, and he crawls toward me. His hands shake as he grabs my arm, says words I can’t hear. All I can hear is the bang with every beat of my heart, over and over.

  Then we’re moving, back to the cave. Inside.

  My ears ring and ring and ring, and the sound turns to screams. Children are crying. The children inside the Living Stone, the two babies that fascinated Taras.

  Except there’s only one now, and it’s screaming in terror because the darkness wears a cloak as it carries its sister away.

  I freeze, blink rapidly, everything inside me turns to shards of ice that rip and stab.

  “Are you okay?”

  Taras and Jana and Esther fill my vision. Corin’s looking at my arms, pushing my sleeves back. His fingers are cold, trembling, as he checks me for injuries.

  “She seems to be,” he says.

  I step past him, look at the wall. At the two babies. Two. I blink, but there are two. Oh Gods. I’m seeing things. I thought one disappeared and—

  I touch my head, find dirt on my face.

  “What the hell was that?” Jana’s eyes are wide.

  The terrier whines. I turn and find him cowering against the opposite wall.

  As Corin and the others talk, I step over to him, crouch down. My heart pounds against my ribs. I hold my hand out to the dog. His eyes are pools that swallow me so I feel his fear.

  But he doesn’t come to me, and I don’t go to him.

  The humming outside gets louder. Another siren?

  Another bomb?

  “If the Enhanced are trying to kill us, we can’t stay here,” Esther says. “The cave could collapse.”

  “If the Enhanced are trying to kill us, here is exactly where we need to stay,” Taras counters. He still has the white milky mustache. It makes him look different, like he’s someone else, an imposter. “This cave is infused with power, it will protect us.”

  “You said the rules of the world have changed,” Corin says. “You said all the old stuff may no longer apply.”

  Did he? I frown, can’t remember, even though my head feels lighter now than it did. More like me. Maybe Taras did say that. Earlier, when we were walking. But the time between sending my mother’s body off and finding this cave is a blur, everything merging together into a dank grayness that grows, spreading, taking, consuming.

  “We do not know what the rules of this new world are. When the Dream Land was destroyed, it upset the boundaries of all planes, includi
ng those of this world. But a Divine Cave such as this is powerful. The magic would linger. This would be the safest place.”

  “Can the drones still detect our heat signatures?” Jana asks.

  But we don’t know.

  We listen to the humming. There’s another loud bang, but I don’t think it’s as loud as before—or maybe it’s because I’m inside now.

  “We need to try and summon spirits,” I whisper to Jana and Taras.

  They both nod. I swallow down the lump in my throat and concentrate on Three. On how he looked the last time I saw him, when he was transporting Esther. I think of every little detail about my brother, and my mind expands and lifts, searches for him.

  I call for him, and I sense the Seer powers of Jana and Taras, also reaching out, calling for Lost Souls.

  Nothing happens.

  We try again.

  I want to think that he is here, my brother, that he’s near to me, looking at me. That he just isn’t visible. Because I need him to be here, in case there’s a chance of me seeing him, when he’s strong enough. But my heart knows there are no spirits here, and my summoning power isn’t working.

  My shoulders feel heavy. Three died because of me. Raleigh may have murdered him, but Death told me the only way I could be returned to the mortal world was if it was an exchange. I got my life back, and Three ended up there—Death’s plane—before Waskabe died and my brother escaped, joined the spirits, the Lost Ones, in this world. I gained life at my brother’s expense. Despite the pain he caused me at New Kitembu, I hope he didn’t suffer pain in Death’s realm, however briefly he was there.

  “Maybe they’re not here anymore,” Jana says, her eyes wide.

  Or maybe that’s a power we’ve lost control over. A power that no longer works in this world.

  A heavy silence follows because none of us speaks, and the silence stretches on and on.

  A silence that doesn’t let any of us sleep, and we spend the night hunched together, eyes wide, listening, waiting.

  Hours pass, until morning light seeps into the cave, and the explosions get quieter. I’m huddled against the wall, Corin next to me, his arm around me, strong. Esther’s breaths are hard, rapid, quick, and Jana’s eyes are wide as she glances over to her.