Holly

  Holly and Fornaskr came in fast.

  The frozen wasteland rushed beneath them in a blur of white and steel-blue shadow, the wind screaming past Holly’s ears as she cut a clean line through the air. Ice flats stretched endlessly below: cracked, scoured, and broken only by jagged ribs of stone clawing up from beneath the snow.

  Ahead, Eir’s Crown rose from the horizon like a wound driven straight into the sky.

  Holly didn’t slow.

  Her grip on the living thread was steady, the line of light extending behind her to where it wrapped securely around Fornaskr’s waist. He flew lower than she did, close enough to the ground that the ice blurred inches beneath his boots, far enough back that the turbulence didn’t tear him loose. The thread hummed between them, taut and obedient, answering her intent without hesitation.

  She felt… clear.

  Not calm—never calm—but focused in a way she hadn’t been since before her world broke. The fear was there, coiled deep and sharp, but it didn’t have teeth right now. It sat behind her ribs, waiting. Everything else had burned away.

  Eir’s Crown loomed larger with every heartbeat.

  Fornaskr twisted slightly in the air, getting his bearings, eyes narrowed against the wind.

  “All right,” he called, his voice barely carrying over the howl. “Tell me the plan.”

  Holly didn’t look back.

  “Get to the tower,” she said. “Save my wife.”

  There was a beat of silence. Just wind and distance and the low, constant thrum of the thread.

  “And after that?” Fornaskr pressed. “Are we walking in through the front door?”

  Holly’s jaw tightened. The tower’s surface caught the light at a wrong angle, swallowing it instead of reflecting it. No windows yet. No seams. Just smooth, black stone rising into cloud.

  “If there is a door,” she said flatly, “we’ll use it.”

  “And if there isn’t?”

  She finally glanced back, eyes bright with something hard and unyielding. “Then I’ll knock the whole god damn tower down.”

  Fornaskr stared at her for half a second, then gave a short, breathless laugh—more disbelief than humor. He faced forward again, shoulders squaring, daggers already sliding free in his hands.

  “Understood,” he said.

  They flew on in silence, the tower growing larger, darker...

  ...Until the ice beneath them shuddered.

  Holly felt it through the air. A tremor. Low. Sinister.

  The ground rumbled.

  She didn’t slow.

  Ahead of them, the frozen surface split open like skin under a blade.

  Black surged upward.

  Something thick and oily erupted from the ruptured ice in dozens of twisting shapes. They tore free of the ground with the sound of suction and tearing flesh, clawing themselves upright on half-formed limbs that slid and reknit even as they moved.

  Holly’s eyes went wide.

  She kept pace.

  The things that rose had no single shape. Some were vaguely humanoid, torsos stretched too long, heads caved inward as if crushed from above. Others dragged themselves forward on too many arms, their bodies splitting and sealing as they moved. All of them bled the same viscous black sheen that steamed faintly against the frozen air.

  Fornaskr swore sharply behind her. “What in all the gods—”

  “I’m not stopping,” Holly said, already moving.

  She lifted her free arm and summoned another thread.

  It answered instantly—white-gold light snapping into existence and coiling around her forearm like a living cord. It vibrated with restrained force, eager, humming in harmony with the current already pulling her forward.

  The first of the creatures leapt.

  Holly snapped her arm sideways.

  The thread cracked through the air like a whip, carving a blinding arc of light. It struck the thing mid-lunge, splitting it cleanly in two. The halves hit the ice and dissolved into steaming black residue that sank back into the fissures it had come from.

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  More surged up to replace it.

  “Left!” Fornaskr shouted.

  Holly twisted her wrist and the thread obeyed, looping outward in a wide spiral that caught three of the shapes at once. She pulled hard and the light constricted, slicing through them as she surged past. Black sprayed across the ice in long, sizzling streaks.

  Fornaskr dropped lower, using the speed she dragged him at to slingshot himself sideways. He skimmed over the ground, boots barely touching, then vanished behind a jut of stone as a tendril slammed down where he had been a heartbeat earlier.

  Steel flashed.

  He came out the other side of the rock in a crouch, both daggers buried to the hilt in one of the creatures’ torsos. He wrenched them free in opposite directions, ripping the thing apart before it could reform, and was gone again, thread snapping him forward just as another shadow lashed for his throat.

  “Holly!” he barked. “I’m good—keep moving!”

  She did.

  A blow caught her side; a glancing hit that still knocked the breath from her lungs. The impact felt like plunging into tar, cold and burning at once. She gritted her teeth, forced the thread to flare brighter, and tore free as the black slick peeled away from her coat in smoking ribbons.

  Her arm burned. Her ribs ached.

  She didn’t slow.

  The air ahead grew colder, sharper, as the land began to rise toward the tower’s base.

  The creatures kept coming: climbing, leaping, dragging themselves from every fracture in the ice, but Holly carved a straight, brutal path through them, light lashing and piercing and snapping back to her side again and again.

  Fornaskr reappeared beneath her in a blur of motion, ducking under a swinging limb and using its momentum to vault upward. He drove a dagger through the thing’s head as he passed, then kicked off its collapsing body to land running.

  “Next time,” he shouted, breathless but laughing with the thrill of survival, “we plan the entrance.”

  Holly almost smiled.

  Then the ground dropped away.

  They crossed the island’s inner edge, the ice falling sharply beneath them as the tower’s sheer black face rose up ahead—smooth, seamless, utterly indifferent.

  No door.

  No markings.

  Only height.

  Holly tilted her head back, eyes locking onto a line of narrow, jagged windows far above.

  “There,” she said.

  The wind howled louder as she pulled straight up, the thread hauling Fornaskr after her as the last of the black shapes shrieked soundlessly below.

  The wind turned vicious as they climbed.

  It slammed into them in hard, freezing sheets, tearing at Holly’s garments and wrenching breath from her lungs. The higher they rose, the more the air fought back: howling, buffeting, trying to peel them away from the tower’s skin. The thread groaned under the strain but held, bright and unbroken, anchored to her will.

  Below them, the frozen wasteland vanished into cloud and distance.

  Above, the windows waited.

  They weren’t glass. They looked like fractures in the tower’s surface, long vertical slits where the black stone had thinned and warped, edges curling inward as if the structure itself had grown around them reluctantly.

  Holly aimed for the nearest one.

  She didn’t slow.

  The pressure built until her vision blurred at the edges. Frost crusted instantly along her lashes. Her fingers ached, numb and burning at once, but she clenched harder, hauling Fornaskr up behind her.

  “Hold on!” she shouted.

  “I am holding on!” Fornaskr yelled back, the wind ripping the words apart.

  The window rushed toward them.

  Holly flung her arm forward and snapped the thread outward.

  It speared through the opening and anchored deep inside with a sound like stone tearing. She yanked, swinging their momentum sideways and then inward in a brutal arc. The edge of the window scraped past her shoulder, sparks of white light flaring as thread and stone collided.

  They burst through.

  The wind died instantly.

  Silence swallowed them whole.

  Holly released the pull and let the thread slacken as they tumbled into the tower’s interior. Fornaskr hit the floor hard, rolling once before coming up on one knee, daggers already raised.

  Holly landed more awkwardly, boots skidding across smooth, dark stone that drank the light instead of reflecting it. She caught herself, heart pounding, breath coming fast...

  ...And then she froze.

  The chamber was vast.

  Circular. Hollowed high above and far below, the walls carved with runes that pulsed faintly in sickly green and starless black. A ritual circle dominated the floor at its center, lines etched deep and filled with something that glistened wetly as it crawled along the grooves.

  Inside the circle...

  Ariel knelt.

  Holly’s breath left her in a soundless rush.

  Ariel’s head hung low, chin nearly touching her chest. Her arms rested limply at her sides, hands slack, fingers stained black. The corruption coated her completely, thick, glossy ichor clinging to her skin, her hair, her wings. What had once been flamed brilliance now hung heavy and matted, wings bowed under the weight of it.

  No gold.

  No fire.

  Just black.

  The runes around the circle throbbed in time with a low, distant rhythm. Drums, slow and inexorable, echoing through the tower’s bones. Each beat sent a faint ripple through the ichor coating Ariel’s body, like something breathing through her.

  In front of her, hovering just beyond the circle’s edge, burned a formless mass of light.

  It hurt to look at.

  Pure radiance, compressed into a shape that refused to stay still. It pulsed like a star caught mid-collapse, edges flaring and folding in on themselves, casting harsh illumination across the chamber. The runes drank it greedily, their glow intensifying with every flicker.

  Fornaskr’s daggers lowered without him seeming to notice.

  “…Ariel,” he whispered.

  Holly couldn’t move.

  Her chest felt crushed, lungs refusing to draw air. This wasn’t the flickering corruption she’d seen in the village. This wasn’t something clinging to Ariel’s skin.

  This was possession.

  Bondage.

  Ariel’s shoulders trembled once.

  Holly took a step forward.

  The light flared brighter.

  And somewhere deep within the tower, the drums began to quicken.

  I do hope you give this one a listen. It's one of my favorites :D