Ep. 11: Warriors
Dark as Dawn, Bright as Night, a novel
DARK AS DAWN, BRIGHT AS NIGHT is a dark fantasy novel serialized in seventeen episodes. This is Episode Eleven.
New to the story? START HERE.
Previously: Mae follows Bram to the realm of the Sluagh, and Hesper decides it’s time to make Ten’s votary.
Up ahead: Ten learns the possibilities and pitfalls of his newfound power, while Mae fights to escape Hesper and discovers a vulnerability.
Excited for the adventure to continue? Let me know with a like, comment, or restack.
TEN
I was dead. I’m certain of it.
But now I’m…not?
I try to sit up, but my head spins, the stones in the wall turning and shifting in a sickening kaleidoscope of black and grey. I sink back, close my eyes, bring my hands up to my head, press them against my temples in an effort to stop the spinning.
Death comes with a nasty hangover.
Memories are flooding back to me. My name flying from my lips. Pleasure and pain and blood. So much blood. And Helena. No, not Helena.
Hesper.
Shit.
I need to remember what happened. There was shadelight and the stones. And Hesper. But when I close my eyes, there’s Blythe there, too, whispering in my ear. Whispering a word.
No. A name.
Retribution.
The sound of it echoes through my head, electrifies my sluggish synapses, then surges through my veins, animating what it finds there. Not blood, by the looks of it. There can’t be any left, judging by the sticky lake of dark red fanning out around me.
But something pounds through me, and I listen to it throbbing in my ears. Something light and lithe, but also heavy with the power of ancient things. I like the way it feels, I decide. Where there was poison, there’s now potential.
The pounding in my ears reminds me of the pounding in my chest. I bring my hands to rest above my heart. I’m surprised, first, by its steadiness—a kind of hopeful rhythm that reminds me of my youth. Then I realize it’s not just my heart that’s reminding me of the past, but the suppleness of my skin under my hands, the tone of the muscles—sensations I haven’t felt since I was a soldier nearly two decades ago.
I risk opening my eyes. I need to know I’m not crazy.
I crack open my lids, and the shadelight threatens to overwhelm me again, but I’m prepared for it this time. The strange glow of the cavern slides across the contour of biceps and abdominals, of flesh untouched by hard living. This is the body of my long-ago youth.
The idea is disorienting. I want to close my eyes again, escape into the oblivion of sleep. Maybe wake with a clearer head. But a movement catches the corner of my eye.
I reluctantly slide my gaze over to the nearby wall. I don’t understand what I’m seeing at first. A body vibrates there, caught in some kind of unseen battle, a blur of faces and limbs. I blink, focus harder, feel my breath catch in my throat.
Mae.
It can’t be, but it is. Her face is twisted in anger, and she’s struggling. I stand, ignoring the protests of my strangely aching limbs, fighting to clear my swimming vision. I will myself to move and almost collapse, righting myself through sheer force of will. I reach her within moments, but up close, I realize there’s another figure to contend with—the other side of Mae’s war.
Hesper.
I stare at the two of them. I should be panicked, worried. But all I feel is a calm resolve.
Save the girl. Hurt Hesper.
It’s a simple equation with a predictable outcome, and I wonder for a second why these kinds of situations always seemed so much more complicated before. I reach a hand up and then dart it forward with uncanny speed and accuracy. I’ve caught Hesper’s neck in my hand. Then I’m squeezing. Hard.
The snakelike precision of my movement has stopped the violent shifting, and Mae is flung to the side by the sudden break in their back and forth.
“Dad!” she shouts, her voice raw.
The word echoes through the underground chamber, resounds in my chest.
Dad.
I experience a weird moment of incongruity. Dad used to mean something to me, I think. But whatever it was, it doesn’t mean the same thing now. The strangeness of the moment unsettles me, and my fingers loosen their grip just slightly. But it’s enough of an opening for Hesper to twist away, putting the dais between us. She’s muttering words, moving her fingers in intricate patterns. I realize she’s casting spells, calling on her shades.
Pitchy ropes emerge from thin air and try to twine themselves around me, but they seem oddly weak, evaporating into whisps of smoke and ash when they touch me.
I take a step toward Hesper, her whispered words rising in volume and intensity. Cankers shiver up from the floor, lips curling over fangs. Shades in full human form waver into being, separating themselves from the atmosphere. They have weapons, blades and truncheons born of some nightmare imagination.
One of the phantom warriors roars forward, teeth bared in a twisted face. It leaps at me, raising a roughhewn handle capped by a massive studded metal ball. In another instant, unimaginable violence will be done to my body, unarmed and unshielded as I am.
I should run, twist to the side, scream in fear, at the very least. But I do none of that. Instead, my heart pounds, but not from fear. It’s an engine igniting the fire in my veins. I feel myself grow hot, and I kneel into a lunge, throw an arm above my head. The instant my attacker touches me, a vicious white light floods his body, and he’s gone, dissolving like mist in midday.
“Dad,” Mae says again, but this time she’s quieter, a question in her voice.
I glance toward her. There’s still anger in Mae’s gaze, but there’s fear there too, and she’s shading her eyes, stepping back. I’m glowing—a cruel, white-hot radiance that seems to come right from my core.
I feel incredible. Invincible.
I let my eye’s slide away from Mae. There’s no time for fear, no room for doubt. Mine is a singular focus: the Wright must be dealt with. Here and now. And the clarity is freeing, empowering.
Hesper’s cankers and shadow warriors come at me, but they all meet a similar fate: smoke and vapor before my blaze.
She keeps talking, the witch. My fingers itch to feel her throat again, to quiet her spellcasting, to still the incessant weaving of those spidery fingers. I stalk toward her and her eyes widen slightly. Unlike my daughter, they don’t betray fear or panic. There’s only a recognition of force meeting force.
The new parlor tricks she’s fashioning fade back into the fabric of her world before they can attack. Instead, she raises her hands, closes her eyes, and inhales.
From where I stand, I think I can see the pulse fluttering in her neck. I focus on that and rush forward, eager to attack while she’s vulnerable. But just before I slam into her, the Wright opens her eyes and lets loose a scream so primal and penetrating it’s nearly inaudible.
Each black stone in the walls of her cavern vibrates, and the shadelight intensifies, gathering around the Wright until she’s immersed in that strange, bright darkness.
I crash into her, obliterating light meeting blackhole magnetism.
My newfound power flickers. I’m strong, but she is stronger. Much stronger. My body feels too insubstantial, stretched too thin on a molecular level. I hang on, spurred forward by the name I was given.
Retribution.
But it’s not enough.
My mind drifts, even as I fight against the Wright’s pull.
Flashes of birds and blood.
Of Mae and Helena and light and darkness.
A life half-lived, and a half-life extinguished.
Hesper, the same but younger, a ribbon wrapped around her hand.
A boy, ginger-haired and smiling.
Then Blythe, pyrelight making her face a mask. She raises a hand, crooks a finger. Come to me, she says without words.
There’s a tug at the back of my mind. A force is drawing me back to myself. I can feel my cells rearranging themselves into something like a whole. But the Wright is magnetic, the absence of light at the heart of her a captivating void. I can’t look away as much as I want to escape.
The tug becomes a jerk, and I’m hauled away from Hesper slowly at first and then all at once. She’s standing in front of me suddenly, drenched in shadelight, glorious and terrifying, fury contorting her features.
She snatches at me as I pull away but the invisible rope at my back is not just a string but a conduit of energy, intensifying my glow.
Come to me.
I hear it again. Feel it like a splinter in my brain.
That’s when I see Mae. She’s huddled into a sliver of shadow created by a rib in the cavern wall. I’d forgotten all about her, but now, as I drift backward, I see her set her face into a determined grimace. She screws her hands into tight fists, her muscles tense.
Then she’s up, traveling through the light. My light. I can see it burns. I can tell how much it takes from her. But she’s brave. And in another blink, she’s gone, disappearing into the Wright for a second time.
Save her. Kill the Wright. That’s what you are made for.
Retribution.
The voice in my head is insistent.
But the one at my back is more so.
Not today, it says, as it pulls me away.
But soon.
***
“Hello, warrior.”
Warrior. It’s as true a name as any.
But I don’t like the way Blythe makes it sound. She takes all the glory out of it. All that’s left is subservience.
And like a good little drudge, I came when she called, running through the black night, not missing a step. A puppet on an invisible string, desperate to scratch the itch at the back of my mind. Desperate enough, beholden enough, to leave Mae behind.
“Mae needs help,” I say.
Blythe cocks her head to the side, smiles through tight lips. I’d forgotten how beautiful she is. She’d met me on the steps of her cabin on the ridge, but now we’re inside, and the fire in the hearth gilds her hair and sets her eyes aglow.
“She’s still tied up inside the Wright?” Blythe asks, her tone indifferent.
“I-I guess,” I reply, uncertain of what I witnessed in Hesper’s cave. “I saw Mae disappear inside her. It distracted Hesper, helped me escape.”
“I helped you escape.”
Blythe’s voice is suddenly sharp. “I’m the one that saved you. I felt the Wright’s grip on you when I called, could tell it was overwhelming you. It seemed like maybe you were too far gone, but I couldn’t let you go after we’d only just begun. So I sent some of my own power down the line. And my gamble paid off.”
I remain silent. I can tell there’s no point in belaboring the point. No matter how I got away, it doesn’t change the fact that Mae isn’t safe.
“Don’t worry about Mae,” she says, seeming to sense my continued concern. “The Wright can’t hurt her, not really. And it wouldn’t be the worst thing for them to wear each other out a little more before I call Mae to us.”
I have the lingering echo of a feeling. Panic maybe. Alarm. My daughter is in danger. I should feel more than this insistent sense of an incomplete task. I’m her father, but the name is just that—a name, not an identity I can assume.
Not anymore, anyway.
That same sense of wrongness I felt in Hesper’s cavern returns. I’m no longer who I was; I know that much. But the old me is like an almost forgotten memory. It remains broken and incomplete, but not gone.
A ghost in the machine.
“Who am I?” I ask.
It’s an odd question. I know it as soon as I’ve said it. But something happened to me in that cavern—something cataclysmic, something terrible. It’s all a blur. I need clarity before the feeling of having lost everything tears me apart.
Blythe’s smile deepens into an indulgent grin that turns my stomach.
“You,” she begins, stepping toward me and running a finger along my jawbone, “are my creation, my monster, an instrument of the Dawn. You are my Retribution.”
She’s full of confidence, authority. And I’m surprised by the effect her words have on me. Something inside me resonates at the sound of her voice.
“You like it, don’t you?” Blythe says with a laugh that’s both girlish and sinister. She’s watching me carefully with those lantern eyes.
She stands on tiptoe and draws my head down toward her mouth. Her voice is soft now; it’s lost some of its arrogance. “Do you remember how I whispered your name as you lay dying in that wretched cave?”
Blythe’s fingers trace my lips, her voice hushed. “Do you remember tasting the wildwater? Can you feel it in your veins?”
Her other hand takes hold of my wrist, her thumb and forefinger massaging the pulse point there. “I gifted you an opal. An opal touched by the Dawn. It has fortified you, nourished your body, imbued you with its properties: loyalty to your maker, strength and speed in battle, serenity in your mind.”
I shiver as she runs her hand back up my arm, grazing my collar bone with her fingers, before turning away and sitting down in a chair near the fire. Fire. Always fire with her. And next to it now, I can see she’s made from it. A bright, beautiful, dangerous creature.
“You are Retribution. My warrior, my monster,” Blythe says. “But we can just call you Rhett for short, hmm?”
The name rings in my ears, stirs a deep pool inside me.
Rhett. It feels right.
Almost.
And yet, somewhere, a small voice calls from the bottom of that inner abyss. I can’t quite hear it, but the sound of it is like an anchor to my old life. If I just listen hard enough maybe I can…
“Rhett,” Blythe says. The hush and honey are gone from her voice. She’s looking at me with raptorlike intensity. The voice I heard goes quiet, drowned by the sound of the name she’s given me. Blythe waits a beat and then another, the flames dancing across her face.
“We’re going to do great things together,” she says, finally. “You and I and that brave little daughter of yours.”
I balk at the mention of Mae.
“What are you talking about?” I ask.
Blythe’s smile returns along with that cloying voice. “As it turns out, that girl happens to be a queen of sorts, if you can believe it.”
I think of Mae’s courage, her resilience, her poise. “I believe it.”
“Of course you do,” she says, pulling her face into a sympathetic pout. “Fathers are inclined to think the best of their daughters, are they not? At least, that’s what I’ve been given to understand, not having had a father so much as a pedigree. Parenting isn’t something our kind excels at.”
“Our kind?”
“You’re one of us now, Rhett. One of the Dawn. You’ve just had yourself an apotheosis.” She claps her hands together in a kind of mad imitation of a girl who’s just been given a puppy. “You’re welcome.”
“Apotheosis,” I say, trying out the word.
“You know,” she says, rolling her eyes, “apotheosis, deification, the making of a god.”
I shake my head, trying to clear away my confusion.
Blythe sighs, the puff of air shifting the thick fringe that frames her face. “I can see you need a little primer on the new you before we’ll be able to move on. Fair enough, I suppose.”
She pulls her legs up beneath her and settles into the armchair, then beckons for me to have a seat across from her. I perch on its edge. The arrangement—two chairs by the fire—reminds me of our first meeting in her studio. The thought is oddly unsettling, like recalling a funhouse mirror version of myself, a doppelganger from some parallel life.
“You know that phrase, ‘days of yore?’” she asks, her eyes sparkling. I give a slight nod and she continues. “Well, that’s where I’m from—the days of yore, when the world was young and life was a simple game of staying alive. Humans worshipped me, got down on their knees and sang my praises. They dedicated the souls and shades of their dead to us, and once a year, they gave us their best and brightest to devour whole.”
The raking light of the fire casts strange shadows on her face, hollowing out her cheeks and elongating the crease between her lips so that she seems to have more a maw than a mouth. The hairs on my arm stand on end. My heartbeat quickens. She takes note of my reaction, and her too-wide mouth curls into an awful smile.
“Oh, don’t worry, Rhett,” she clucks. “I won’t be using you to satisfy my hunger. We of the Dawn are many things, but cannibals? There are only a few of the most ancient that could attempt that and survive. No, I’m afraid you’re stuck with me,” she purrs. I try to hide a shudder.
“Besides,” Blythe continues, “the Wright already did quite enough butchering of your eternal parts, wouldn’t you say? At least the Dawn gives as much as it takes.”
Blythe pauses like she’s waiting for me to nod along in agreement, but truth be told, I’m barely following what she has to say. She waits a beat longer, studying me with sharp eyes, and then goes on, turning her face toward the fire. The direct light melts away those distorting shadows, and I breathe a little easier to find her beautiful again.
“The Dawn gives,” she says, quieter now. “Every once in a great while, Janu, the eldest and strongest of us, would decide that one of the human sacrifices was worthy enough of elevation. He could smell potential. He could taste strength of will. He could recognize greatness. The rare worthy human was welcomed into the Dawn as one of our own. I watched how he did it. I memorized the ritual. I’m very observant, you understand.
“Observant and ambitious. Why should Janu be the only one to decide who joins our ranks? We were all his creations and therefore beholden to him. But what if I took matters into my own hands? What if I made my own family? Led my own tribe? I thought I understood what it would take, thought I knew the perfect human to begin with. A prince among his people. Smart, brave, fierce, beautiful. With him by my side, I could do anything.”
For a moment, I think I see genuine sadness soften the predatory sharpness of her face. A rare glimpse of vulnerability. She loved him, I realize, this long-ago prince. The thought heartens me. Where there’s love, there’s weakness.
“But I overestimated my abilities,” she continues. “He was not who I thought he was. I’d let emotion and the drive for power blind me. And I paid the ultimate price for it.”
Blythe turns her face back to me, the shadows molding it into a terrible mask once more. I steel my nerves, the shift unsettling in its sudden reminder of her otherness.
“I learned my lesson,” she says. “But I never forgot what it takes to make a god. Now here you are, the blood and passion of the Dawn, a new name to give you direction. A shade still safely housed within your body but biddable thanks to the votary I have in my possession. And a delicious soul, of course.”
Blythe smiles again. She enjoys exercising her power. Loves poking that unbearable itch at the back of my brain that only obedience can scratch.
It should make no sense, this death and rebirth, this forging of a new godlike me.
But I can feel what she says is true. Her words are like keys unlocking inner doors, allowing passage across unfamiliar psychic terrain, granting access to unknown physical abilities.
And closing away other things—the thoughts and feelings of the person I once was.
“Why me?” I manage, pushing against the closing door of mortal worries.
Blythe’s mouth twists into a grimace. “Such a human concern, isn’t it? This obsession with why. Isn’t it enough that you are? Why must there also be a reason?”
I don’t respond. Just hold my breath and hold her gaze.
“Lucky for you,” she says on a sigh, “the reason is right in your name. I want retribution. I want vengeance. I want to destroy the Wright, and then I want to destroy the Dawn. You will help me. You and your daughter. We will reign while they weep and bleed.”
Blythe’s answer satisfies me. I’m surprised at how right it feels, although I can no longer remember why that should be unexpected. Her words are keys, after all. They open doors to places of unimagined power. And they close doors on places that no longer serve a purpose: fear, weakness, uncertainty.
Humanity.
MAE
I wonder what it’s like to die twice.
I imagine it won’t be like the first time. It will feel less like a homecoming, I think, and more like a fading away.
Whatever it’s like, I may find out soon enough. I’m tired. The Wright is too strong. My grip on her is slipping. And just now, giving way to this exhaustion, to the pull of eternal sleep, seems like the only real option.
I have one last chance. One last push before there’s nothing left to give. I can’t destroy her; I know that much. But if I can wound her badly enough, I may still be able to escape.
Think.
I’ve tried demanding, pulling her shade and soul up by their roots. What if I try coaxing? After all, a queen can be as much diplomat as tyrant.
I stop fighting the Wright, release my hold on her. I can feel her surprise and then her excitement. She thinks I’ve given up. I steady myself, ready for the inevitable crush of her spirit enveloping mine.
When it comes, I slip under without hesitation, feel the fight go out of me like air from my lungs. Everything is dark, hard, relentless. But I don’t panic. Everyone has tender spots, places where the hurt shows through. Traumas and disappointments, psychic bruises.
Everyone. Even the Wright.
Especially the Wright.
I just need to find one. Jab it hard enough, and I may be able to make my way out of this strange tomb.
I let the Wright’s wave take me. I ride the riptide to impossible depths. Anyone else would be lost, crushed, dissolved in that bleak abyss. But I hold on, hold myself together. I don’t fear death or the dark.
I’ve made friends with both.
But the Wright answers my resolve with her own. She pulls me down farther into nothing but the smothering weight of her ancient spirit. I’m not sure you can kill a ghost, but you can make it disappear. And the Wright knows how it’s done, one fathom of oblivion at a time.
I feel it begin somewhere in the core of me: a slow but steady dissolution. That’s when the images come.
Birds and blood.
A snow-covered moor.
Walls of shining onyx.
A needle in the night, sewing shades. Weaving a world.
A squalid farm. Pigs and straw and a fine cape.
A boy, and ribbon-wrapped hands. A secret smile. A purple stain on paperwhite skin.
A smile.
A stain.
A bruise.
There’s not much time. I extend out my hand in that endless night, that deepest dark. Let it cup the cheek of a long-ago girl in some faraway place and time, let my thumb slide down her forehead, let it trace the violet streak across her brow and around her inky eye. An impossibly tender bruise.
But the girl smiles.
She smiles and laughs and around her fingers is a ribbon. I know then what I need to do. And with my own vanishing fingers, I loosen the knot and pull.
The image shatters, the darkness lightens.
I’m thrust up on a flood of grief and regret. And love. So much love. God, it hurts. It must be purged, all that useless, aching emotion. Expelled like poison, like a disease, like a demon.
Like a ghost.
And she lets me go, like the great heaving breath the near-drowned take when they return from the brink.
It’s only been a few moments since I was trapped within her, but already I’m aware of how light the air around me is. It’s almost too easy to move, and for the first time since dying, I realize how insubstantial I really am.
We stare at each other.
She looks bad, pale and sweaty, with deep, black half-moons under her eyes. As I watch, her knees buckle and she has to reach out a shaky hand to the onyx-studded wall to catch herself from falling. I keep my eyes locked on her as she struggles to right herself. She’s exhausted, nearly broken. But still, she’s ready to fight.
I feel as bad as she looks—worse, maybe—emptied out and weak. But I won’t back down, not now. This may be the only chance I have to fight the Wright and win. I gather my remaining strength. There’s no surprising her this time. I’ll have to battle my way in and then hope I can continue to wear her down from the inside.
We haven’t taken our eyes off each other. Nor have we spoken. We’ve said all we need to with our actions. We are power matching power.
I lower my head and prepare to dive back into Hesper’s terrible depths. She understands what’s coming and plants her feet more firmly against the floor. There is no hate in her gaze, no anger. Just determination. And, I think, respect. I’m surprised to find the feeling is mutual.
“Stop, Mae.”
The voice startles me, and I whip my head around in the direction it came from. Bram is there, his great wings filling the cavern, the shimmer of the Sluagh realm behind him. He seems breathless, although he no longer requires air, and disheveled, like he’s flown far and fast.
“You will not win,” he says. “Not now. Not like this. The Wright will swallow you whole. Leave now. Live to fight another day.”
Hesper’s shoulders stoop, and her fingers grip the wall with an urgency that belies her fatigue. But her gaze, which continues to hold my own, is steady, and there is something in the set of her jaw, the tilt of her chin, that tells me what Bram says is true. He reaches out a hand to me. I hesitate, not ready to give up.
The Wright’s eyes are dark wells. I don’t think she’s blinked once since I left her body. And the thought comes to me from some secret part of my brain that sinking into that void inside of her was a welcome respite from this chaotic afterlife. But disappearing into her means giving in, and I’m not ready for that. Not yet.
I fold my fingers around Bram’s hand, and, like a spell has been broken, I feel the last of my strength flow away.
Bram pulls me to him, and I don’t fight it when he gathers me into his chest. His great, black wings beat at the air and we retreat through the portal behind him.
The Wright does not follow, could not, even if she wanted to, given her weakened state. But she stares after us, never blinking.
Her eyes, fathomless and fierce, are the last thing I see before her cave disappears, lost to the fog of the Sluagh world.
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I think I may be able to catch a breath now. Wonderful stuff.