Chapter 43: We Control the Shadow

Quint stretched out his tired legs along the cold floor. From what he could tell by the shadows outside the chamber, he was about half a day into his watch, but it felt like it had been a week. The frozen hadn’t stirred, and Viktor and Rhrya had only shared a few barely audible words to each other. They had ignored Quint for now, and he was fine with that. He would rather focus on what was unsaid: the slightest of shifts, stiffness of the frame, moving of the hands or feet—anything that might indicate danger.

“How are they?” he finally asked. There was only so much he could tell with his own senses.

“Quiet,” Viktor said, his rough voice cutting through the stillness in the room.

Quint let out a relieved sigh. “Good.”

Grabbing the vital reader sitting next to him on the floor, he pushed himself up and approached Nienna. He held it up over her body and pressed the button at the top like before. He felt a sense of relief and frustration as the reading appeared the same. She wasn’t getting worse, but she wasn’t getting better, and he didn’t know how to help her. Quint went back to his spot against the back wall and lowered himself back down with a groan. He could count on one hand the spots on his body that did not hurt. The fight with his now deceased colleagues at Arlo’s home had done a number on him. He wished it didn’t have to go down the way it did, but if he hadn’t stopped Larkin there, he would have come for him at some other point. At least the healing salve he found on the Raven was helping his physical wounds heal, but it did nothing for the heaviness of his heart.

“How is she?” Viktor asked.

Quint let out a heavy sigh and crossed his arms across his chest. “The blips all look the same as before, so that’s good, but it’s also not.”

“I still can’t feel her. She’s so far away,” Rhrya said. She bowed her head and wrung her hands in her lap, her frozen joints grinding.

“What does she mean?” Quint asked.

A wistful smile grew on Viktor’s lips as he looked over where his child lay. “We all share the gift of Grenth, but Nienna and her mother bonded like only a mother and child could.”

Quint glanced over at the crystalline cocoon, wondering if the connection went both ways. “I see,” he replied.

The sound of something cracking filled the chamber. Quint’s eyes darted around the room before resting on his staff where it leaned against the door frame. Considering he had tranquilized their daughter, he had initially tried to avoid any sort of confrontation upon entering. It was also why he kept a low profile on the ship, but now he wished he had kept his staff next to him. He looked over at the frozen, who had started shifting where they sat. One of them, a charr, opened his eyes and started erratically looking around the chamber. Quint shot a worried glance over at Viktor and Rhrya.

“What’s happening?” He asked, nodding in the frozen’s direction.

“He’s getting louder. I can feel him trying to poke around my thoughts.” Rhrya warned. “He’ll be in their thoughts too.”

“Why are they active now?” Quint asked. “Like I told you earlier, I saw them stir once or twice on the ship but nothing like this.”

“The further away from him they are, the quieter their minds. That’s why we took them far away. The closer Aedan and that weapon are, the louder he will be,” Rhrya warned.

“What do we do?” Quint asked.

Viktor slowly rose to his feet while his eyes stayed locked on their frozen companions. “We be ready. If they’re coming, they’re going to wake up, and we won’t know what their state will be until it’s too late.”

***

Dee’s swift stride carried her along the icy paths through Deep and Troubled Waters. A commotion had broken out on the other side of the sanctuary and had finally spread to the far side where she and the others were resting. Considering their close proximity to danger these days, she wanted to find out what was going on in case they needed to be ready. Ever since they were faced with severe apprehension at their arrival, she had been on high alert. Dark kodan eyes watched their every move and paws gripped weapons as they passed. It made her nervous, probably just as much as the kodan were having them in their home. She did her best to ignore their stares as she made her way over to the east side of the sanctuary, but their fear was palpable. As she made it up the last frozen incline, Dee spied a group of kodan speaking fervently with each other. Deep Song was among them, gesturing sharply to the ice floe beyond the bay.

“What’s going on?”

Deep Song turned to Dee with her sharp, white teeth bared in a snarl. “You have brought back the invaders.” She snatched a spyglass from one of the other kodan and thrust it at the norn. “See what your presence has drawn.”

Dee took the spyglass from her. “What do you mean? What do you see?” She hoped the kodan were mistaken, but as she looked through the magnified glass at the shoreline, she spied darkly-clad figures emerge out onto the ice floe. “Bear’s back!” Dee gave the spyglass back to Deep Song and rushed back across the sanctuary to where her people were resting. The airship captain’s attempt at leading the enemy away had failed. They had been found.

***

“Nienna…”

Nienna groaned as she struggled to open her eyes. Two blurry faces entered her field of view and said her name again, trying to coax her out of her slumber. Nienna blinked, and her mother and father’s pale faces slowly came into view. They smiled, and although their extended absence from her life had turned them into near strangers, their presence gave her peace in that moment. She smiled and reached out for her mother’s frozen arm and immediately felt Rhrya’s hand cover hers.

“How are you feeling?” her father asked as he gently stroked the top of her head.

“I’m…alive, I suppose,” Nienna replied faintly. Her head pounded as if it were stuck in a vice and someone was slowly tightening it. She tried swallowing, but it proved difficult from the cotton-mouth that formed as a side effect of the sedative. “Did we make it north?”

Her mother nodded and smiled, but there was something strange in her expression. It was almost like her joy was cracking, revealing a glimpse at something manic beneath. “We’re about to land. We can get you off the ship and somewhere safe away from everyone until you’re better.”

Nienna’s face scrunched in confusion as she looked back and forth between her parents. “What do you mean? I need to find the Byrnes and stop them. I need to find Seren.”

Her father leaned forward, bringing his face mere inches from hers. The deep crevices formed by the ice crystals on his face leant a monstrous appearance to his visage. “No, you need to come be with us.”

Nienna felt their icy hands grab and pull her toward them. She fought against their hold, but they were strong and relentless, and she kept slipping closer and closer to the edge of the table. Everything about this didn’t feel right; their behavior was completely out of character. But then again, what she knew of them consisted of a fraction of her youth. Could she confidently say she knew them now?

“No, I can’t go! I can’t leave them!” Nienna tried to push herself away, and as she did so, the shadow in her veins rose through her skin and enveloped her in its darkness. She felt a rush of renewed energy, giving her the strength to push herself away and out of their grasp.

She had underestimated her sudden rush of strength, and gravity quickly took over as she rolled off of the other edge of the table. She expected to hit the floor, but it gave way to a great, never-ending abyss. It swallowed her up, and she sunk deep into its murky shadow until she landed suddenly on a hard surface. The collision knocked the air out of Nienna’s lungs. She gasped for air, and as she struggled to fill them, the shadow faded away, leaving behind a hazy, pale-green sky.

With a groan, Nienna rolled onto her side and pushed herself up into a sitting position. Everything lurched from one side to the other, fueling a wave of nausea that came crashing against her senses. When her equilibrium finally settled, she took a look around. Her parents were nowhere in sight. No, they couldn’t have been my parents, she thought. This must be a dream. She closed her eyes and rubbed at them while willing herself to wake, but when she opened them again, she frowned.

“Here again?” She got to her feet and looked around at the crumbling ruins of Shaemoor.

She had been here many times before, but only once when the realm of the dead bled into her memory of the realm of the living. Grenth had walked at her side then, but now the land was empty, and the god of death was not at her side. She started to wander, trying to figure out why she had appeared here once again. Dead crops crunched under Nienna’s boots as she made her way toward a derelict farmhouse. There was something about it that drew her attention—something familiar.

“Hello again.” Her ancestor, Nina, smiled as she emerged from the crumbling doorway. She brushed her long bangs from her face, squinted, then relaxed her eyes again. “Hrm, well look at you. I can see you more clearly this time. Why is that?”

“I have no idea. I seem to return here more than I’d like.” She paused and gestured around them. “It looked different before. It was lively. But now, it’s like the Underworld is bleeding through. It didn’t start until…” her voice trailed off as she looked down at her hands. They were black as shadow. It didn’t scare her this time, but it was a stark reminder of what was happening to her and the finality that hung over her head.

Nina strode over to her side and reached for her hand. She took it in hers and turned it over and back to examine. The dark shadow rippled under Nienna’s skin, like a serpent swimming just under the surface. She snatched her hand back and rubbed at it. “It’s going to kill me.” With each swipe, she pressed harder and harder, until her nails starting breaking the skin.

“Stop!” Nina cried out as she grabbed Nienna’s other hand. “Why do you hurt yourself? What are you afraid of?”

She looked her ancestor in her eyes. They were as green as hers and as green as her father’s. “It’ll make me a monster,” she managed to get out. She wrapped her arms around her chest. “I’m too dangerous with it.”

“It has deceived you. The shadow is not good or bad: it’s only a shadow. It can scare us if we let it, and we can walk out of it if we wish. How can something so strong disappear at the first sight of light? We control the shadow. It does not control us.”

“How can you be so sure?”

Nina flashed her a knowing look. “Let’s just say I learned a lot after I died.”

Nienna opened her mouth to inquire further, but the sound of rushing water grew all around them, and Nienna looked off in the direction the stream lay. She was always pulled there. The longer she listened to it, the more she felt drawn to its hypnotic call. There was a voice, too: one she recognized. It called her name over and over again, their tone scared and desperate. Her feet had made up their mind to follow the voice before her mind had. Curious, Nina quietly followed.

“Hello?” Nienna called out as they approached the water’s edge.

“Nienna, help!”

Nienna’s eyes went wide as she desperately searched the stream. “Seren? Where are you?” Without thinking, she stepped into the rushing water, trudging through the dark, swirling waters until it came up to her knees. She turned upstream and down, but there was no sign of her.

Nina arched an eyebrow as she watched Nienna splash around in the stream. “Who is Seren?”

“My sister.” The words seemed less foreign every time she said them. “They took her.”

“Then why don’t you go get her back?”

“How can I when I’m like this?” Nienna raised her hands and pushed up her soaked sleeves to reveal the dark lines covering her arms. “You’ve already seen these. The blade poisoned me; it’s killing me. My price to pay for using it when I should have been guarding it.” She shook her head, her cheeks flushed. Her fingers curled into fists, and feeling her anger rise in a sudden burst, she struck the water over and over until she had no more energy to spare. She straightened herself and looked over at the shore where Nina stood quietly observing. “I should have never picked it up. I could be helping them right now instead of becoming a burden.”

“What if it’s not?”

“Not what?” Nienna pulled her tunic’s sleeves back down to cover her arms.

“Killing you.”

“How can you look at me and say that?”

Nina pointed at the water around Nienna’s legs. “Because it’s leaving you.”