C. E. Murphy - Wayfinder

The stingray looked like the largest part of the whole, its broad wings and long tail and even its small protruding eyes dominant in a way that its scuttling legs and pincer mouth weren’t. Lara pressed her hand deeper into the greasy wing, holding the idea of the conch shell’s music in her mind and searching for anything within the chimera that resonated.

A hint of unadulterated music teased at the edge of her consciousness. Lara whispered encouragement, sending out a thread of her own song to guide it. Just a thread: her power could still be her undoing in the heart of the drowned realms.

The chimera’s tail lashed, suddenly full of life again, and scored a blow against her cheek. Icy pain cut to the bone, shattering her focus.

The staff, though, was prepared: heat and light roared from it eagerly, smashing into the chimera. The staff itself moved, dragging Lara with it so the weight of her body was behind the blow. It—she—skewered the chimera, strength enhanced by the staff’s will, and a shot of glee ricocheted from it. Blood erupted from the chimera, discolored red-purple hanging in the air as the beast screamed and thrashed, long tail whipping about in spasms of desperation and pain.

Black light exploded in the tower, fighting against the staff’s corrupt white. Shards of ebony, already fragile, shook and collapsed with magic’s impact, as if the strike that had brought the chimera down also recoiled through the city walls. As if the staff were trying to finish what it had begun so long ago, and latent magic in the Unseelie citadel was fighting back.

Lara yanked the staff free of the chimera, horror blinding her as much as the clashing light did. She’d meant to control the thing, not be controlled by it. Someone, in making the stave, had invested it with far too much will of its own. Rhiannon had been a goddess indeed, if she could dominate its power. For a hopeless moment Lara wondered how Oisín had managed for the long years he’d carried the thing.

Eagerness leapt in it again, sucking at Lara’s flash of despair, rushing back up that emotion, trying to find lodging in Lara’s mind. She yelled, raw sound that hurt her throat, and very nearly threw the ivory weapon against the wall trying to rid herself of it.

Triumph scattered through her at the idea. Her fingertips spasmed, gripping the carvings at the last instant. The staff’s anger replaced its triumph: out of her hands, thrown against city walls filled with magic, it would be able to exact its will. Maybe not forever, but long enough to wreak untold destruction, until either its or the city’s remaining magics were burned out. Confidence sang in Lara’s mind, all the purity of tone she’d been unable to find within the chimera. The staff was too dangerous to let out of her hands, and even as her only weapon, too dangerous to use , either.

She clawed it back into her palms, strangling it again. Its light flickered, sullen response to her silent demand that it return to sleep. That was twice within the Drowned Lands she’d awakened it, and twice it had wrought ruin. It boded ill for the healing she hoped to accomplish, but she had learned something: without certainty, she couldn’t control the weapon. The stingray had looked like the greatest part of the chimera, but perhaps she’d been wrong. At least now she knew not to use the staff until she had learned all the pieces of Annwn’s history. She was a truthseeker: armed with the full truth, she would have the skill to wield it properly. Until then, it had the advantage.

It twisted in her hands like a living thing, patterns writhing and scratching. She whispered “No,” and though the sound was soft, it was filled with determination. She could quell the staff, if not use it; that would be enough, for now. Finally it went quiet, no longer struggling against her. Lara lowered her head, shoulders slumped under the weight of its magic and the more prosaic weight of her backpack.

There were still trials to pass, trials she had no proper concept of, and the two people she’d relied on were gone. Ioan was, she hoped, safe, but Aerin was either lost in the dark side of the drowned city or dead. And Dafydd lay somewhere in the Hundreds, hopefully healing from the magic-draining experiences on Earth, but just as possibly all but dead himself.

Tendrils of miserable certainty accompanied the last thought until Lara hunched over the staff, despair greater than the weight of magic or supplies. Her hopes of having passed through the citadel’s most dangerous gauntlet had been shattered with the chimera’s attack. It was a matter of time before she faced something she simply couldn’t escape.

Warmth crept from the staff, as subtle and encroaching as her misery. Lara laughed, sharp and bitter. The staff could see her through, and the cost would be less than her life. She had no chance of helping Annwn if she didn’t survive the Drowned Lands, and so, perhaps, had no choice.

Discord chimed through the last thoughts, a familiar warning. Lara opened her eyes, staring beyond the staff at the sand-littered tower floor. “Merrick tried that on me.” Her voice was hoarse and she coughed, then swallowed. “It almost worked, then. Trying to convince me that something I wanted to be true, was. Fool me once, shame on me.”

The temptation to use the staff as a walking stick touched her, encouragement to plant it against the floor and push herself to her feet. Lara made another bitter sound and climbed up on her own, shoving the weapon into its straps across her back. Impotent anger rushed from it, then settled, as if it trusted there would be a better time to test her again.

Alone and weary, but blessedly free from the staff’s influence, Lara tried to form a plan. She didn’t know enough of elfin architecture, whether there might be a hospital or holy place that would serve as a healing center somewhere within the city boundaries. At home, important buildings were traditionally located on hills, the better to dominate and inspire, but the towers themselves were the city’s highest structures.

Which meant they were the best chance she had for looking down and potentially locating any remnant sites where Dafydd and Hafgan might be resting. Not that she expected anything to be recognizable, not after so much decay, but it was a course of action, better than nothing. She left the chimera’s messy remains behind, pressing her fingertips against the wall as she made her way around the tower’s half-lit walls. The black light continued to glow—hard on the eyes, but it offered hints of how the tower and its passages had once looked. She ignored a hallway for a ruined door, the frame filled entirely by light. Sweeping carvings, perhaps echoes of the door that had stood there millennia before, had weight and presence. Lara put her weight against the light, moving it inward a few inches. Her imagination added the creak of ancient wood, but the sediment and fallen stone that stopped the door’s movement were real enough. She could get a thigh through, but not her torso. Not with the backpack on, at any rate. She peered through the crack at ruined stairs, supported by pillars and struts of light rather than stone, then twisted to gaze upward, trying to see how far they went. Wavering black-light shadows offered visibility to a few dozen feet. Lara muttered, then tried squeezing through again, half convinced that if she removed the pack, something would appear on one side of the door or the other to snatch it away and deprive her of all supplies while she slipped through.

Given the chimera’s interest in her flesh, why a hypothetical thief would steal the pack was a question worth considering. The idea that the pack would go unscathed while she was attacked was hardly reassuring, but the black humor was welcome. Lara slipped the pack off, keeping it tight in one fist as she wedged herself through the crack. The stone that had supported the stairs was hip-high on the door’s far side, making room to force the door open only because of a still-sturdy ledge well above her head. Nerves jumped in her stomach and Lara turned back to tug at her pack, which compressed less easily than she had. She sat down in piles of stone, trying to shove the door a few inches further open with her legs. It grated, sounding very real for all its translucency, then gave suddenly.