Philippa Ballantine - Spectyr

It wasn’t enough—he was still just a Sensitive—and they would reach for runes or something even direr. So, in desperation, Deacon Chambers reached deep within himself and tried to find the hidden spark.

It was like grasping a fish in murky water. He thought of the moment it had welled up inside him. He thought of Nynnia and her own mysterious powers. And finally he thought of his mother dying down here in the dark when she had so much to live for after so long without.

And then he felt it, waves of power bubbling up from some unexplored place within himself. The Deacons before him were full of arrogance, confidence in their own power and the situation they had him in.

It was so easy to turn that confidence into crippling fear, like flipping a coin from heads to tails—even though what he was really doing was close to scrambling their brains. Merrick realized he should have been horrified both at what he was doing and its ease—but they had threatened his family—nothing was off limits>

Suddenly the centered Deacons were anything but. They were twisted, sobbing, terrified at the dark they had created. Merrick had no way of telling if they could fight back against his wild talent, but he was taking no chances. “Mother.” He ran forward and grabbed her hand. He had no idea how long what he had done would last.

The darkness was so complete that only the barest hint of the tunnel they were in revealed itself to Merrick’s Sight, and worse there was no end to it.

“We should be back to the main pipe by now,” he muttered under his breath. “I don’t understand it.”

“We’re not in Chioma.” Japhne wheezed at his side. How his mother would have such an idea Merrick could not afford to stop and ask. Yet he feared she was right. Weirstones and even runes could be used for such things.

Screams rang out from behind them, the sounds of the Deacons but higher-pitched—the sound of pain and death rather than just fear. Whatever shackles they had put on their Beast had obviously required concentration.

Merrick was not sorry for them. Any who chose the path of consorting with the Otherside deserved their fate. However, he knew the creature would pursue them now that it was done with its tormentors.

He slipped his arm around his mother. “Then we have to find the entrance—it must go both ways for them to come and go into the palace.”

She nodded against his shoulder, but her breath was coming in ragged gasps. Merrick had little experience, but he was fairly sure that heavily pregnant women should not be running for their lives in the dark.

And then the sound he had feared and half expected came; the high-pitched whine of a geist on the hunt. It was like claws on glass—but several types of geist had similar sorts of calls.

His mother stumbled and would have gone to her knees without Merrick catching her. The ground underfoot was now getting slippery, and she cursed. “If only I was younger; if only I could see!” It took a lot to get his mother upset, but she was obviously at the end of her tether.

“It’s not much farther,” Merrick lied. His Center was only giving him details of the cave walls a mere five feet in front of them.

Japhne tripped again, and the sound drew closer, along with a wave of cold so intense it might have come from the heart of winter. For the first time in his life Merrick regretted being a Sensitive. If Sorcha was here alone with the heavily pregnant woman, she would have at least been able to protect her.

“Leave me.” Japhne tugged on his cloak, and he didn’t need to see her face to know it would be racked with pain. As a mother she wanted to protect her unborn child, but she also wanted him to protect himself. It was a decision no mother should have to make. “Run.”

It was an idea that Merrick did not entertain for a moment. If one person was going to survive this, it was his mother. The geist was upon them. He shoved Japhne, something that as a good son he would have never have done until this desperate moment. She stumbled and fell against the wall, while Merrick stood alone between her and the creature.

“Go!” he bellowed, pulling his sword, though it was a totally pointless gesture. The geist loomed out of the darkness, or maybe more precisely gathered itself from within the darkness, because he finally recognized it: a ghast. The dense knot of shades was held together by cantrips and weirstonea snarling, snapping creature composed of twenty or so tormented human souls and their lost hopes.

Racked with so much pain, a ghast was a maw of destruction that would enter a human body and pull it apart from inside, creating another shade to add to its conglomeration. They had created more pain and destruction than any other kind of geist and had been the priority for the Order of the Eye and the Fist when they had made landfall on Arkaym with the Emperor years before.

Merrick remained calm, though he knew the odds; he was a Sensitive adrift without his Active and had nothing to offer up except his body.

Flicking around, he screamed at Japhne, who had not gone much farther than he had shoved her. “Mother! Save yourself, save the child!” The howl came out raw, and he knew it would be the last thing he said.

She clutched the rock wall with spread fingers, tears streaming down her face and unable to chose a path. They would all die here then in this lonely corridor, not even knowing where they were.

Merrick turned and became Active. No Deacon except the Arch Abbot ever held both the Gauntlets and the Strop, but every one of them had the seed of both specialities in them. Merrick did not have the Gauntlets that would provide protection from the backlash of the runes, and he didn’t have the training to control them, but at this moment he was out of all other options. The one thing he did have was knowledge.

In his mind’s eye he drew Pyet, the cleansing flame. The long, looping line of the rune, bisected by the horizontal straight line leapt into existence, carving itself into the flesh of his palm.

The fire cut to his core. Never having done it, Merrick nevertheless imagined it felt the same as shoving his hand into a burning hearth. But he couldn’t afford the time and energy to scream. If he lost control of the rune now, they would all be consumed by it. Trained to see through pain, he managed to hold out his hands.

Red fire coursed from the rune, flowing over his hands—thankfully not melting his flesh yet—and enveloped the ghast as it gathered itself to leap from the shadows.

The conflagration filled the tunnel, and Merrick wondered, even as the pain chewed at his concentration, how he had managed such a display. His Active side was latent only, and he had at best been hoping for a mere distraction so that his mother could escape.

The smell of charred brick and dirt filled his nostrils, even as the power filled him. It was heady and terrifying. The Active talent heightened every sense, until he was choking, sobbing, overwhelmed—yet still Merrick held on.

Pyet was more than a physical flame. It had to be to have any effect on a geist. As the intense flame poured from the mark on Merrick’s hand, the ghast writhed.

Its screams were filled with the pain of dozens of souls trapped and feeling death again. But it was a little pain compared to the agony of holding the rune. Merrick knew it was burning far too brightly and far too long. The ghast was gone, a candle held in a blast furnace, but the Deacon could not stop the destruction gushing out of him.

Now the smell was that of his own mortal form; the hairs on his arm burst alight, and he could feel real physical flames reaching out to consume skin and flesh.

He had saved his mother and unborn brother, but now it was he who would be the candle. Merrick prepared himself to be taken, until the moment Japhne laid cool hands on him. He jerkby way, trying to shake her loose, but she was surprisingly strong. Forcing her fingers around his wrists, she pulled him to her, and Pyet and the flames were suddenly gone.