Escape to the Sea (Tangled Hearts #1)

Chapter 13 From the Shadows

Tomlyn

Everything in Karst tries to kill you. The flowers that glow in the dark, the beasts that crawl along the walls, the giant magical spiders that are as smart as an elf. All of it. Karstians had to tame the whole underground to eke out a living.

The surface is different. There are creatures there that are as meek as a mole and want to be left alone. The environment doesn’t try to eat you alive.

And the gods on the surface seem to be much more relaxed.

My father always drilled into me that if you saw Otho’s Endless Embrace, the darkness that absorbs all light, engulfs and captures, suffocates and crushes, to run in the other direction and thank her for giving you the chance to escape. It’s the choking darkness of the void, a place of eyes and hands that will tear you from limb to limb if they catch you.

I never thought that I would end up succumbing to it in the Wyrd Sea of all places.

“Tomlyn!”

The weightlessness of the void is maddening. I don’t know how long I’ve been floating here, but Sylf’s close, I can hear her.

I struggle to remember the concept of language. “I’m here!” I finally call out in my mother tongue, before repeating it in Elvish.

I try and call fire and darklights to my hands. Neither comes. Oh, I’ve really stepped in it this time.

“Tommy?” Ephraim cries from the other direction. I can sense the panic in his voice. I wish I could do something, anything, to put him at ease. But I’m terrified.

At first, I thought anything would be better than getting murdered by the beast in the Sea. But if the only thing we have to look forward to is madness and endless void forever, I think where we are is so much worse.

Who knows how long we’ll be stuck here.

“Can you see, Ephraim?” I ask.

“What? No! Just shadows and black!”

“Can you come to me?” I ask, hoping that they’re close by.

Sylf screams in frustration. She’s panicking, I can hear it. There’s no planning her way out of this, after all. “Nothing is working!”

Tomlyn.

I still, every hair on my neck standing on end. I feel the chill, the first sensation I’ve felt in who knows how long. The void, the absence of anything starts to recede. The black turns to gray, the gray to silver, to white, until a curtain is drawn, and suddenly the world shifts back into focus, and there’s solid ground beneath my feet again.

Sylf and Ephraim are next to me, and we stand in the middle of a massive, darkened room. To each side, pillars that may be five feet across stretch from the ground up into the endless void above us, and out in a row far out of my line of sight. Past the columns is more void, as if this room had been constructed in the middle of nothing.

My child. You’ve come so far to visit me.

No one has ever called me their child with such love or tenderness before. I place myself within arms’ reach of Sylf and Ephraim, scanning the area, every danger sense in my body on fire.

From the void, I hear footsteps. And then, once the footsteps should be accompanied by a body, one emerges. The void gives a figure shape. This figure is easily twice as tall as I am. Then, it shifts again. It’s vaguely person-shaped, but the shoulders are too broad, the waist too narrow. It’s almost feminine, but it seems as if it was drawn by someone who had only heard of a woman before.

It… she steps towards us. Black strands of hair flow behind her, tossed back by a nonexistent wind, shifting and blurring as she moves.

Tomlyn of Clan Glanathe, she replies in Kastii. How queer to find you here in my halls, so far from home.

I frown. How is this figure speaking Kastii in the Sea? The Karstians have been cut off from the Sea for as long as we lived underground, long before we developed our own dialect. “How do you know who I am?”

She laughs, slightly out of sync with the way her shoulders shake from the movement. Because you are my child. Or at least you were.

“I’m yours?”

She stretches her arms out, the lights brightening around us in response. Past the row of columns, there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of large stone platforms, stretched as far as my eyes could see. And each one is filled with gigantic piles of…

Garbage.

Pots, watering cans, rakes, frying pans. Tins of paint and bolts of fabric.

“What is all this?” Ephraim asks behind me, his tone full of awe.

The figure bends over to inspect me, and from out of the approximation of a head, a bright crescent shape appears, like pure starlight. It takes me too long to realize that she’s trying to make a mouth.

“Oh, Tomlyn. Do you not recognize your tools?” she says, now speaking out loud to each of us, her tone disappointed. Her arm begins to stretch, and stretch, and stretch, until she reels it back in, and carefully drops a cool metal object in my palm. Her hands are so cold, as cold as death.

I am careful to thank her before opening my palm, and carefully picking up the ancient brass pocket watch.

Incredible. It’s the same one I always use, without a doubt. The etchings are old and worn. When I click it open, the date is eroded, the seventh turn symbol faded from constant use. As a charger, I used this to time how long it took a spider to cross a stretch of a cavern, or for chargers to finalize a pattern.

“All of our tools, all of our pulls into the aether. This all comes from you?” I ask.

Her mouth moves up on one side, mimicking my own lopsided grin. “Yes. You have received many of my gifts, Tomlyn of Clan Glanathe. Did you think that buckets, mops, and teacups came from Otho of the Earth? Who crushes those she sees fit to entomb forever? No, my child. You are mine .”

There are archivists who would kill to be standing here. For so long, our historians have searched for the secret of how Otho bestowed men’s magic on us: the shadows of the void, the strength to strike hard and fast, and how to use what you had to lay cunning traps. There are so many theories and hypotheses. And they had all been wrong. If I wasn’t so scared, I’d laugh out loud.

She drifts down, shrinking in height and reshaping until she’s at eye level with me.

“I apologize if this seems rude, but may I ask your name?”

She gives a slight shake of her head, like I told her I ate the last cookie in the larder. “Oh, you have forgotten me. That fails to surprise me. My diamonds, all so far down in the earth. It’s hard for me to reach you directly. I can come to visit you sometimes. But I don’t believe those visits are always desired. I am the Mother of Shadows, and you are in my domain.”

Then, one of her eyes drifts to the right of her head, staring at Sylf. The other moves to look at Ephraim. “And you bring guests to my Hall of Lost Things.”

Sylf steps forward. “Are we still within the Sea of Possibility?”

The Mother’s head splits down the middle. One half shifts towards Ephraim and Sylf. Ephraim goes pale but doesn’t say a word, taking a generous step backwards as the neck stretches to meet him where he is.

“Why, of course,” The Mother’s heads speak in unison, one in Kastii, the other in Surface Elvish. “The Sea is where I reside. Where else could I take you?”

Sylf carefully settles her posture, putting on an air of being unfazed. “If we asked you, could you take us somewhere else?”

Some of the color returns to Ephraim’s face as he swallows down his fear. “We are in need of some assistance to leave,” he asks.

The Mother’s heads swell to twice their size as her grins grow larger. “Are you requesting my Aid, Bright One?” She raises a hand, and one needle-thin finger presses against the gold leaves wrapped around his neck. “If you present me with a gift, perhaps I can transport all of you to Karst, where my child should rest his head.”

Sylf gives me a look. Fuck. If there were anywhere else in the plane we could go except Karst, it would have been incredible. But Karst is somehow even more of a death wish than where we left.

“Is there… perhaps another destination you could take us to?” She asks carefully.

The Mother’s mouths turn upside down. “Unfortunately, Child of the Sea, that is where my connection is in your plane. Nowhere else provides the strength of shadows I require. But there are others who could perhaps assist you more.”

“How is this possible?” I ask, shaking my head and setting the pocket watch down on a nearby table. “I thought we—Karstians—were disconnected from the Wyrd Sea when we went underground. I didn’t think we got to be ‘from here’ anymore?”

Her mouths return to their upright position, if not slightly higher up on her faces. “And who told you that? Your legends of Otho? No, the Karstians are like any other elves. You all decided to move to a new plane millennia ago, as did the rest of the elves. But your clans went underground, far from the eyes of the Anchors who dance in the daylight. And I delight in the dark.”

Then, she turns towards Sylf. “You have no Anchor, but there are still strings of fate connecting you here.” She tilts her head gently and stares at Sylf, who bristles at the look.

I know this is how Sylf is when she’s nervous. She turns into a sharp point, taking up more space where others may fold inwards. The Mother seems unperturbed by her pointed edges. “Perhaps your Guide may find you, but perhaps not. They have an odd way of traveling through the Sea. I’m sure you will find out in time as you all make your way.”

She brushes past Ephraim, and he shudders as she moves through him, his clothing desaturating as if the color is temporarily leeched away by the darkness. As she passes back to face me, the braziers dim and then flicker back to life. The shadows they create dance in odd patterns; I wonder whether there are more weird creatures or whether my eyes are playing tricks on me. I swear the longer I look, the more I can make out mouths, hands, eyes.

“I wish that I had more time to share with you, my children, but my realm is not one for respite. It requires an incredible amount of energy to keep you all out of the void. I do not wish for you to get lost, and you are so small in the abyss. It was hard to find you,” she says, and turns to me again, her starlight smiles dimming. “You were mine, but are not any longer. You used to use my gifts so frequently. What happened?”

I look around at the piles of stuff, what used to be my lifeblood. Pots and pans. Extra jagerstocks. Little bells for distractions. All this junk, stockpiled for us. The weight of my home, my past as Principal Charger, fills me and I can’t look the Mother in the eye. “I ran. I had to. You protect us from the terrors of the dark, but there’s no one who can protect us from ourselves.”

Her brilliant smiles wink out entirely, before reforming as one slim line. Her shape shifts again, her features softer, rounder. She’s grown slightly taller now, but now her stance appears protective, instead of alien. She moves forward to embrace me in a hug.

It’s like sinking into an ice bath. It’s too cold, but it still feels like a safe haven.

“I am sorry that it was hard for you, young Glanathe.”

“It’s Baker, now,” I stammer.

The Mother of Shadows begins to laugh as she pulls away. “Mmm. Periti’s chosen, now. Not on this plane, but I’m sure you will find your way to her too. I miss you, though, Tomlyn Baker.”

Did I miss her too? Sometimes, when I’m in some back-alley pub where the light never touches the shadows in the furthest corners. I think about my days at home. If I hadn’t run, what would have happened to me? Would I still be charging? In the military, climbing the ranks?

Parts of me miss the simplicity of it. You knew what you were doing every day until your last day. You did what someone expected you to do.

“I miss you too, in ways that I can’t put my finger on,” I say after a moment.

Her form shifts back to the titanic, overarching shape with the twin sets of too-wide smiles. “I must return you back now. Do you wish for me to put you somewhere safer? There are other realms among the Sea.”

“Will there be any safe place until we defeat that thing?” Ephraim asks, looking back to the darkness. “I don’t want to accidentally lead that thing wherever we wind up in the Sea. We have the element of surprise now, perhaps with enough time to come up with a better plan?”

“I agree. We make the stand where we are.” Sylf asks. “Good sightlines, good cover. Is that possible?”

I assess, coming up with the vague outline of a plan. “Could you bring us back where you found us, but maybe a quarter mile or so away, if that means anything here?” I say.

The Mother of Shadows nods. “Of course. For my child? Anything.” She turns to me, grasping both my hands in hers. “I will help you and your companions, but you have to promise to come visit me again soon.”

I squeeze her hands back. It feels like squeezing ice. “I will. I’ll find a way back.”

She nods. “Then you can have all of my gifts, until you leave this plane,” she says, leaning forward to kiss my forehead.

The ancient cold seeps into my bones, my muscles. Then the power courses through me, alien and alive. I flex my hands and the shadows creep over them, layering into place like an afterimage.

The Mother of Shadows is who granted us chargers our magic. The gifts of striking, and trapping, and shadow. And, for now, all of those gifts belong to me.

“Thank you, Mother,” I whisper, a peace settling in a place within me that’s been disturbed since I left Karst.

“Of course, my child. Even if you’re not mine anymore, you were mine first,” she says. “And I take care of what I find.”

With that, she reaches her hands up and rips a hole through the void.

But this time, I am not afraid.

~*~

I get my bearings as the shadows clear.

The trees are sparser here, giving us more room to move and to spread out from each other. These old-growth trees are shorter, so that the first tier of branches is out of reach. In between the trees are these huge boulders that break up the landscape. We’re still close enough to the creature to hear it knocking over trees like they were nothing. We have maybe minutes before the beast comes barreling out of the woods towards us. But that’s all I need.

Now that I have some room to breathe, to plan, this is like another day in the caves. But instead of having to hunt alone, I have a cluster of three. Lure them in, set them up, knock them down. Easy as pie.

“Need to wrap it up, make it slow down,” I call to Sylf, and pull a full ladder out of the aether this time. It’s so easy now, and it seems like the Mother isn’t too far away from us. I line it up against a nearby tree after I’m sure it won’t try and toss Sylf out of it.

“And what about him?” Sylf says as she gets onto the first rung.

I turn to Ephraim, assessing. Now that I’ve seen him fight a couple times, I want to be able to use him to the best of his ability. I gesture to the ground, towards the other side of the clearing. “Tell him to stay. Hold here.”

Sylf motions him over, speaking in rapid Elvish. Thankfully, he doesn’t protest, grabbing his staff back out of his sling and moving back down behind a large boulder.

Sylf climbs up to get the best viewpoint and I start in my work, setting the traps up higher, affixing mirrors to the ones I want the beast to see, and subtler ones down below, hidden in the brush.

“Tomlyn!” Sylf calls, gesturing to the ground.

And, of course, Ephraim is not where I put him, standing at the base of the tree where Sylf is posted up.

She stares at me, eyes narrowed. “If I’m in the trees and Ephraim’s here, who’s luring her in?”

“Trust me, Karadin . Trust me, cutie.” I say, holding up a hand, and willing the shadows to come to me. Even though I was never able to control them before, they dance around my forearm, snaking down my palm and then fading again. The shadows are so unlike my own powers, like a rush of cold water spinning around me. But I trained dozens, maybe hundreds of Shadows. They have their own cockiness, their own arrogance.

I take all that in as I drop backwards into the void.

In the past, I watched Delvin and other shadow chargers fall into the shadows, laughing at the shock on my face as he would reappear right behind me. I would always curse him, asking why he couldn’t walk from place to place like a normal person. A few times in tough situations, he would pull me into the void, and I’d fight to hold my breath as he moved us out of danger.

Now I get it.

The world above me emerges out of numerous pools of light I could ‘swim’ to and pop out of. It feels like I’m in a cool lake, but I can breathe. I can see so much farther into the abyss. With the powers the Mother gave me, I can make out the vague shapes of the shadowed landscape above, mimicking the trees on the other side. From the pool I left, Sylf is kneeling, reaching a hand towards me in slow motion. Time moves so much slower here. I push towards another pool, one that is seemingly closer to the front of the clearing. It does take some effort, but almost no time has passed by the time I move to the next one. I swim up to another pool of light and punch through right behind Ephraim, falling out of the void. The world catches up as I stand and both of them whirl as I appear somewhere else.

“Oh my word,” Ephraim starts, nearly jumping out of his skin.

Sylf leans in close, her eyes flicking back and forth from me to the shadows. “I will have so many questions for you once we kill this thing.”

“Later, we’ll speak,” I laugh, and then clap Ephraim on the shoulder. “Hit hard, cutie.”

He tries to fight back a smile, but fails, turning away. “I plan on it.”

With that, I turn and sprint deeper into the woods, careful not to trigger my own traps.

The forest is so quiet. The only animals dumb enough to stick around when this nasty mama is stomping around are us. But even the plants seem alive in a way they don’t on the surface. And the plants have pulled in on themselves, on edge. Ready for the storm.

I close my eyes, murmuring a soft prayer. “Otho…”

No, I suppose that’s not right, is it?

“Mother of Shadows, you impart your gifts to me. Allow me to honor you with them. Mind me and my cluster as we hunt our quarry.”

Then it’s time to hunt. I force myself to pick up the pace, faster, faster , to push myself like the strikers do. I meet it in the next clearing, and it sights me immediately. I pull a hunting knife out of the void, keeping track of my pulls, and hurl it with all the newfound strength that I have.

It screams through the air, slamming into one of its antlers that is twice my height, cracking it. It explodes into a million razor-sharp pieces, cutting leaves clean through on the way down.

Well, it’s certainly pissed off at me now.

I start to run backwards, realizing how much ground it’s clearing between us, even with my advanced speed. But I focus on the antlers. I need to find a way to get up there, to lead it. I have to make a safe spot to land so I don’t get impaled. But as it gets closer, I can watch her horn growing back in real time, bending in right angles and curling in on itself. I forget to run for a few paces as I watch it grow back sharper, coming to a finer point on the top. Yeah, that’s not good at all.

I burst out of the trees and feint to the left at the last moment, towards Sylf, calling a lick of flame and letting it flash up against the mirrors. The beast snarls and focuses away from it, running straight into one of the other traps.

I shield my eyes as I the heat washes over me from the blinding trap. This part of the plan, at least, works as intended. It’s like a majorina back home; hide in her blind spots and try not to die. I turn back to Sylf, waving my arms. “The legs!”

She draws and looses her arrow in one quick motion that must have taken decades to learn. Her aim is true; the arrow slams into its front flank, the fur immediately stained with blood as the beast stumbles into her injured leg and falls.

“E! Jump on!” I say on the run, pointing towards the injured flank as the beast struggles to find her footing again. “The back! I take front!”

“What?” Ephraim cries out, his voice high enough to crack.

“You stun! Keep it down!” I reply, sprinting faster and then jumping into the shadows at the last moment as it rears its head around, the antlers breaking and exploding out into a million pieces. A shard enters my shoulder as I drop into the shadows at the last moment, hoping that Ephraim was far enough away to avoid getting hit.

I slip out of the void and now I’m in front of her, seeing multiple horns reforming as Ephraim jumps atop of her with incredible balance. But it’s impossible not to notice the bright red blood blooming against one of his arms. It doesn’t look deep, not really, but all the same I force myself to move faster. I can’t rescue him, bring him all the way out of harm’s way, and wind up getting him killed in the Sea.

I stab my jagerstocks into this moose-cat’s thigh, having to use all my strength to even attempt to break the skin. She whips her head around and crashes into me. It’s like being kicked by a horse, the impact to my chest knocking all the wind out of me. I grab onto one of her unbroken horns and hold on for dear life, and she flings her head up, sending me flying up into the air.

I top out around eighty feet in the air, towards the top of the trees. The good news is that it’s beautiful here—off to the side, there’s a meadow, and maybe something else further out. The bad news is that I start to plummet back to the ground, fast, and right towards her razor-sharp horns.

But the Mother gave me her gifts. All of them. I’ve seen shadow chargers land safely, as long as they nail the timing right. Once, I watched Delvin sail a spider right down to the bottom of a bottomless cavern, hopping away in the nick of time. If I’m smart, and fast, I may get to keep all my bones intact.

I flip in midair so that my feet are under me, picking out my spot near Ephraim, and start counting down in my head.

Three…

Two…

One!

I call the shadows to me, and they wrap around my body and buffer me before pulling me into the void.

Goddess, I don’t think I’ve had this much fun in years . I reemerge behind Ephraim, as he slams into the moose-cat’s gigantic hind legs. It kicks back, about to send him flying too, and I pull my arm around his waist and pull Ephraim back into the void with me.

I swim backwards with him, but it’s an awkward thing. I’m not a shadow, not really, and I’m not used to the strain of carrying someone else. He’s clutching me tightly, his forearms wrapped like a vise around my arm. He panics at the last moment, as I’m pulling us out, and he fights, choking for air. We surface and I toss him down into the grass. He heaves and coughs, barely holding onto his staff as he tries to get to his feet.

Shit, I really could have killed him. I can’t do that again.

“You stay, I go.”

He looks back at me, narrowing his eyes. “You what? No!”

“You did good.” I point to the weakened back leg, preventing the moose-cat from getting back to her feet. “Stay, breathe.”

Then I sprint forwards again, and with all the speed I can muster, I leap back into the air, breaking my jagerstocks into second form as I go, and slamming into the top of its skull.

It bucks and writhes, trying to shake me off, but I hold on, slamming my jagerstocks down into the soft part.

The ride is wilder now, but luckily I have my own controls. It lumbers to its feet, desperate to get a last hit at Ephraim and Sylf. At the last minute, I pull it into the path of my last trap, which explodes around its forelimb.

It rears back and I’m able to push deeper, hitting the brain, and it finally goes still. It crashes into the ground, driving earth and stone and debris up in a wedge as it slides to a stop directly in front of Sylf’s tree.

I straighten, spinning the blood off my jagerstocks and rest it over my shoulder as I hop off and strut over to them. I may be covered in gore, but at least I look cool.

Too tired to bother translating to Elvish, I turn to Sylf, giving a lazy smile. “Can we get the fuck out of this forest, or what?”