Cyrene swallowed. “Hello? Is someone there?”
“Don’t try to fight me.”
A wave hit her mind, and she cringed away from the stab. “What are you doing?” she cried out.
“You will give in.”
“Not likely,” she spat.
Cyrene squeezed her eyes shut and tried to focus on getting rid of the pain. She couldn’t handle the jolt in her side and whatever this thing was that was going on inside her mind. Without even knowing what she was doing, she pushed back at the whisper in her brain. She prodded it as if it were a living organism invading her mind. She found an edge, imagined a brick wall forming in between it and her mind, then, she slammed the wall down as hard as she could. She pushed, poked, shoved until something clicked. One wall crashed all around her, like breaking ice, and she heard a soft sound, like a yelp, inside her head.
Did I do something? Did it work? She couldn’t even comprehend how this was possible, but she didn’t have enough energy to think about it. All she did was push her mind harder and fight with all her strength…for she instinctively knew the end result if she lost.
She heard laughter in her mind. The thing was still there.
“I am old and powerful, girl. You will lose this battle, and I will relish in your loss.”
She grunted at the interruption. It thought that it could intimidate her. She didn’t even know what it was, but she wasn’t about to allow it access to her. She fought back, clawing at the words forming in her head. She would not lose!
She shook her head, as she screamed, “No” in her mind. Whatever it was couldn’t have her mind.
“Weakling, you think to defeat me?”
Her mouth fell open at the fierceness of the voice that felt like the edge of a razor blade. Someone shouldn’t be able to talk in her mind. The shock gave it an opening, and it came back at her harder, lashing out like a whip and slicing through what meager fortification she had built.
“Your powers have grown stronger since I started tracking you. Thus, it must be extinguished like the flame of a candle.”
She didn’t understand. Powers? What powers?
The voice laughed in her mind again. “Your reluctance to believe matters is humorous. Yes, you have powers, and no one with powers survives in this world, not while I’m in it. Regardless of your belief, I still must kill you.”
“Kill me?” she cried.
“You act surprised, but it has been coming for a long time.”
“I don’t understand.”
The force of keeping the thing from pushing further into her head hurt like hell, and she wanted it gone. She didn’t want it setting up camp where it didn’t belong.
“I was summoned to track you ever since you used your powers to bring a downpour. That sparked the ultimate deaths of others with powers like you while I searched for you. Surely, you took notice.”
A chill ran up her spine at the softness mixed with the cutthroat sharpness of the voice.
I brought the rain? What did that even mean? Like at my Presenting after I made Affiliate? Had that been the reason for everything else that had spiraled out of control since then? All the…deaths.
Her mind ran through a series of images, starting on the day of her Presenting—Zorian and Leslin’s deaths, Pallia and Grabel’s murders, Captain Lador, and the poor Affiliate Karra who had been searching for her. They had all been linked to her in some way. This thing that had been hunting her had finally caught up with her.
“So, you remember,” the voice screeched in her head, grating on her eardrums.
“Murderer,” she growled low, anger welling inside of her.
“I’ve gone by that name before.”
It laughed in her mind, and she lashed out with her mind at its flippant air. It retaliated, slicing at the newest fortification in her mind. She yelped, grabbing her temples. It only made the pain in her side double, and she pushed her hand back at her bleeding side.
“That won’t heal.”
“Why not?” she spat, clutching her side harder at his words.
“The sword I used to cut you has a poisonous blade. I embedded the venom myself. It prevents blood clotting and is excruciatingly painful.”
“You did this?” She applied more pressure as the fear of his words broke through her mind.
“It is too simple to lead my prey to their downfall. I knew you would walk right to me. I simply had to wait for the right time. The others were casualties from your spark of power. Their blood still hummed with energy even though they could not hope to touch it as you do. Now, their blood hums no more. You will have that in common.”
“My blood hums with energy? What does that even mean?” she cried. “Why are you doing this?” New tears fell on her cheeks.
“Because I was summoned by the rightful Dremylon heir to fulfill my mission to never allow the Children of the Dawn to resurface after they were extinguished two thousand years ago.”
“The rightful Dremylon heir? Edric?” she gasped. “He would never…”
“The Doma and their magical abilities cursed this land. After the Fall of the Light, Darkness now rules, and we will take no chances of you regaining control. If you join the Darkness, you might be spared.”
The Children of the Dawn are people with…powers? And also Doma? And I have these powers like the Doma?
She swallowed hard, unable to believe what she was hearing. Nothing made sense. This couldn’t possibly be Edric’s doing. He was the true Dremylon heir after all, but he…cared for her. He would never have sent this creature to kill her.
It was speaking in riddles all over again, and she had damn well had enough riddles.
“I don’t understand anything you’re saying! I don’t have powers, and Edric couldn’t have sent you. Who are you? And why are you doing this?”
The atmosphere around her shifted again. She swallowed and braced herself for what was coming. Any change couldn’t be good.
The fog in her mind cleared slightly as faint footsteps sounded down the tunnel hall. She swallowed and went to work in her mind. She had felt him pull down a wall. She didn’t even know how she had built it, but while that thing was briefly preoccupied, she was going to figure it out again.
She thought back to what it had felt like for it to form a wall in her mind against him. Recreating that feeling, she pushed all around her and found the feeblest of walls starting to grow and fortify. She didn’t know what she was doing. She only knew that it was necessary to keep herself alive.
As the thing drew nearer, she built walls on top of walls as fast as she could. By the time the footsteps approached, she was getting the hang of closing off her mind. Building, weaving, working, constructing—it had to be done.
The presence slammed against her mind again, and she jumped.
The whisper was all but gone, partially garbled behind layer upon layer of brick and mortar in her mind. She concentrated on blocking out even the tiniest of hisses by building one more wall. It had felt easy once she started, but she was now panting.
“Ha!” she gasped out. She was proud of what she had formed in the short minutes while the thing was absent.
The footfalls stopped, and two black boots peeked into the halo of light cast by the torch. She stilled her shaking hand compressing her side. The sound of her steady breaths was the only thing she could hear in the tunnel system.
“You learn quickly but no matter. You are no match for me,” the thing said, speaking out loud for the first time.
Somehow, the voice was just as piercing and painful, and she cringed away from the noise.
“What are you? Step into the light!”
The thing laughed a hideous laugh and took one step toward her. She gasped, seeing the face of Affiliate Karra in a mask of horror, as if she had been screaming. But her body had been retrieved from the docks with Captain Lador. Maelia had told Cyrene of the horrific account Eren had given her after the investigation. Affiliate Karra was dead!
So who…or what is wearing her face?
Cyrene wanted to scream, yell, cry out, vomit, claw at the thing before her with the mask of the beautiful face of the woman she had known. But all she did was stare in shock as the thing took another step forward while the curve of his blade reflected back the light of the torch. It had a wicked black handle with a silver inscription and a line of red along the blade itself. It was the most disturbing, grotesque, wrong piece of weaponry she had ever seen. Even from the distance, she could sense the evil about it and its master.
“What…what are you?” she whispered, her voice hoarse.
“I believe your people have termed us Braj.”
Her body reeled. Braj were a myth, a scary story parents told to keep their children in check. The evil creatures that went bump in the night didn’t actually exist.
“Oh, yes,” it hissed, “we exist. We’ve been well hidden, but we’re in your folklore for a reason. We find our marks. We destroy our marks. And we never stop. We will always keep coming.”
A Braj. A real Braj.
It was not Jardana, the witch, playing in a mask…but a real live Braj, a trained, practiced murderer.
If this is reality, what else is real?
She swallowed hard and leaned against the wall. Her side was killing her, and this new information weakened her physical fortification. Her mind was still miraculously alert, but her body was losing the poisonous battle.
“Why me?” she demanded.
“The Light no longer shines, and we wish to keep it that way.”
“Stop with the riddles! What do I have to do with any of this nonsense?”
“The Circadian Prophecy foretold that the Children of the Dawn, led by one with great power, would rise to destroy the Darkness and all those who rule under him. I was sent to ensure that does not happen,” the Braj said, its voice grating. “By eliminating you.”
Prophecy! Her mouth hung open.
She had used that word with Rhea earlier today. It felt like a lifetime ago.
The Braj believed she had these powers as part of the Children of the Dawn.
Then, the Braj removed the face of Affiliate Karra.
Cyrene gasped. In folklore, to see the true face of a Braj meant that it would be the last thing one would ever see.
The Braj was human, or had once been, but was no longer. Its shape was distorted, mushed, and all wrong somehow. Where normal eyes should have been, only blood-red orbs pierced her with a fiery death stare. The nose was raw to the bone. Elongated teeth jutted from its mouth, hanging down deep into razor-sharp fangs. The skin itself looked like it had been torn off and sewn back on so many times that its elasticity had been destroyed. It sagged and drooped, covering part of one eye and falling a few inches on the left side over the nondescript chin. Its pointed black ears had been stretched, one nearly hidden behind the matted black hair growing unevenly on the top of its head.
Cyrene had never seen anything so hideous or terrifying.
“Good-bye, Light,” it blasted into her conscious as he charged forward at her, wielding the curved blade.
Her mental barriers held him back, but the physical one, she could never hope to contain. That blade rushed toward her body, and she didn’t know how to stop it, to keep the Braj from slicing through her.
She readied herself for the blow. And all at once, her body seemed to expand and open up even though she wasn’t moving. Light filtered into her mind, like a rushing river crashing through her, going down through every inch of her body and then out, like an explosion of energy passing through her very fingertips.
No sound was made. No movement occurred. Nothing happened.
She saw the Braj standing there with its sword in hand. A look of shock passed over its gruesome face.
Then, her vision grew faint and blurry, and she lost her battle to the darkness, crumpling in a heap on the cold stone floor.