[Third Era – Year 759 of the Divinity War; Kapurn, woods south of the command palaces]

  As my sand crept over the girl, Sarisa, another memory began to reassemble itself within my grains.

  Coralie scanned the meadow as the professor, Quentorn, approached, surprised no one had come to kill them yet. “Did you get the stones?”

  Quentorn shook his head, looping thumbs under his pack straps. “Evaegis was gone. All I could find was one small shard. And they were lying in wait.”

  “Gone?” Coralie’s copper-blonde tresses veiled her sidelong view of Quentorn. She tucked them behind her ear, feeling the edge of her sunburst scars, as she turned to lead him home. “How is he gone?”

  “I’m afraid they’ve taken him. Their cost was great, Infinite be thanked. They thought to use his power for their own. I found the charred remains of a lash they tried to use.”

  “The scathe lash.” Absently, the words came to Coralie.

  Quentorn gave her a sharp look. “What?”

  “Nothing, I just thought I remembered something.”

  “Stars, whatever they tried, hundreds of them have been burned out by it.”

  “Severed priests burned out? It is the Infinite’s justice for their betrayal.” She glanced up at the stark sky, barren of cloud. Only a column of smoke arose, drifting above the trees. “If they can’t use Evaegis, what do they plan to do with him?”

  “Keep him from us, I suspect. That is enough.”

  Coralie’s knapsack of foodstuffs dug painfully into her shoulders, but it beat the drackmoor pain she’d been feeling for days on end. “Did they follow you?”

  Wind gave a mournful sigh through the trees as if in reply.

  “Not unless they possessed the wood creatures themselves to spy on me.” Quentorn laughed.

  She looked up at that smoke rising from the woods. Smoke? No, it wasn’t smoke. “I think they have.” The rising column began separating into specks. “Look. They’re coming.”

  “Are those fleshgrazers?”

  Only possessors could have gathered such a force to hunt them out. She knew the sky wouldn’t hold their only danger. “Under the trees. Hurry.” Likely they would come with thundering hooves to cut them down and end this desperate siege.

  There was no fear of losing their way in that snarl of branches. The pain pointed them directly back, right into the heart of it, back home, into the siege of pain where the others waited.

  “Has Evaegis told you anything?” Coralie ducked under a branch.

  “Since the betrayal they have been using our captured brothers and sisters, those they tortured into submission, to hunt us down.” Quentorn swatted a bug on his neck. “That is how they keep finding us.”

  “You mean . . . ?”

  “Yes, drackmoor pain. They’re hunting us with it.”

  Coralie shook her head in disgust. “So they have even managed to turn our own against us.”

  Above the leaves, shadows flitted. An endless procession of fleshgrazers squawked out their hunt.

  Quentorn swatted another bug. “What Severed serving fool made these blasted things?”

  Coralie chuffed a laugh.

  Quentorn paused by a rock and doffed his pack.

  “What are you doing?” Coralie whispered, but the cacophony of the fleshgrazers drowned her out. “Don’t stop here,” she said raising her voice.

  “They won’t see us down here.” He rifled through his pack until he found a stone.

  “You think fleshgrazers are the only beasts they can possess, these woods are teeming with far worse things.”

  “I need the shard of Evaegis, it is our only protection.” He handed her a paper. “And I wanted to show you this.”

  “What is it?”

  “A posting. We place them in cities about the cosmos and it will do our work for us.”

  Coralie’s eyes flitted across the professor's scribbled words.

  We are the dreamless, whose souls never sleep—called Drackmoor by some. Each night, as silence gathers below the stars, we find our beds, not to dream, but to awaken. For when we close our eyes we find another morning, upon another world, through our other eyes. We are the dual-lived. Many names have been crafted for us in history and legend—Sorcerer, Sage, Alchemist, Seer, perhaps even Infinite. We are the Drackmoor.

  Are you one of us?

  “You want to post these in cities across all of creation?” She eyed the professor.

  “Why not draw our fellow drackmoor to us?” the professor said. “It beats circling the world to find a scant few.”

  “Daftest idea I've ever heard. That aside it’s rubbish; ‘We are the dreamless?’ I've had heaps of dreams.”

  “Dreaming of me again are you?” the professor mocked. Quentorn was a shaggy maned professor of the deep laws of nature as he liked to call them. But mostly he’d aged, become mortal.

  “Sludge off,” Coralie cursed.

  Quentorn waved a few fingers as if brushing aside her words. “Remembering fragments of a dream after you wake is different from dreaming. It merely shows that your brain is functioning, even while you are living your other life. If anything it's proof that both bodies, both worlds are real.”

  She examined the entanglement he’d placed on the sheet so respondents could contact them. “Couldn’t the Severed just trace us through this entanglement?”

  “That’s why I’ve devised entanglement repeaters. We place them across many worlds, even in the revenescent so they aren’t easy or even possible to track down. The sound repeats through one entanglement to another, we place as many as needed between us and the target.”

  Coralie slapped the paper onto Quentorn’s chest. “We’d better hurry.”

  He tucked the paper away, donned his pack, and glanced up at the shadows flitting above the trees before resuming their journey.

  Into the pain they ran, weaving through the trees toward their shelter, and their tomb.

  “If they can possess beasts and our fellow drackmoor,” Quentorn asked, “what will prevent them from taking us?”

  “I thought we were protected.”

  “Evaegis was our protection. But this shard, it may be too small. He is faded somehow, diminished.”

  “So you haven’t discovered how to defeat possession?” Coralie began listing their problems. “Worse still, we’ve lost our protection from it? They’re using our own against us. And now that they know where we are, we’re next.”

  “Evaegis cannot protect all of us. But he can teach us to protect ourselves.”

  She looked back and found several beasts prowling behind them silently. Close enough to pounce. “Then he’d best hurry. They are coming.”

  Quentorn tossed some kind of powder, and the beasts stalking them backed off.

  The pain increased as they approached the house. They were close, now, but the only way to reach it was through an open field with the fleshgrazers above.

  She had no plan. On such short notice, she could do nothing but pray to the Infinite for protection. She leaped forward, sprinting across the yard. The screeching of the fleshgrazers intensified. She redoubled her prayer and ran, passing under the one tree in the yard for whatever protection it might offer.

  Something bit into her shoulder, she screamed and flailed, flinging the fleshgrazer from her, but no, it was only a caught branch. When she reached the door and flung it open she turned to find Quentorn. He was following swiftly behind, pack bouncing wildly back and forth.

  Thousands of fleshgrazers now filled the lone tree in the yard until the branches bent low from their weight. The flock of them lifted from the tree, spraying toward Quentorn like a breath of smoke.

  Coralie swept a handful of knickknacks from a side table and tossed the entire handful above Quentorn, who ducked. The flock scattered around it, giving him just enough time to rush in before she slammed the door on the flock.

  She breathed hard. The pain was back in full force here, the torment that had been simmering along her nerve endings for weeks now, irritability rising all the while. Why wouldn’t Vyeran simply join them, join the fight? Obstinate old man. His life was at stake as much as theirs.

  Coralie could hear fleshgrazers scratching at the window above. She and Quentorn rushed up the stairs.

  Fleshgrazers skimmed along the windows of that upper floor, wings beating the panes. Though with nowhere for such large creatures to perch, they hadn’t started pecking the windows. She doubted they would punch through the windows. The panes were thick, and such a host was too valuable to throw away over such a poor chance.

  Despite the pain, she attempted to relax and turn away from the beating at the windows. Thankfully, neither Quentorn, nor Mythilli, nor Alstein caused her any pain, thanks to their discovery that mingling their blood grounded them, acting as a lightning rod for the pain. It was a ritual they had to perform regularly to maintain.

  Pack doffed beside his chair, Quentorn’s feet were kicked up, munching on slices of age-old sketter that now filled the room with its fragrance.

  Wearily, she crumpled into her chair, drackmoor pain still spilling through her limbs, much as it had these past weeks. She slapped her knapsack onto a misshapen desk. Time-etched wood grain heaped and distorted across the surface—from one of Quentorn’s recent experiments, no doubt, and on the living room desk, of all places.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Quentorn clutched his trembling hands into fists, a telltale tremor from the endless drackmoor pain.

  This siege of pain had lasted too long by half. The worst part was not the torment, but the loneliness, of all things. In some ways Quentorn reminded her of vague memories of childhood years, wandering the world alone with her father and sometimes a passenger or two. But they were always her elders, never peers, just as now. Not even her friend, Mythilli.

  The pain had lived inside her so long it had formed roots through her muscles and bones; trails of fire and acid, that drew taut when she moved. She was so weary from fighting the agony. All that made her world worth living were the scant memories that told her that this pain was nothing, not even a beginning to true suffering.

  Black dots flitted on the treetops, lifting and settling. Their shrill calls made the walls seem as thin as sheets hung out to dry. Fleshgrazers sank into the trees around them, branches now crawling with their gray forms as thick as leaves. It was as if nature itself knew what was about to transpire.

  But the armies were still nowhere to be seen. Somehow, that was more unnerving than the alternative.

  Perhaps her fears were getting carried away, but her heart gave a primal warning of something sensed just below conscious thought. No purpose wasting her last minutes in worry. Coralie and her friends had prepared all they could, setting snares and digging trenches now hidden by leaves.

  Fate was a cruel thing, causing her to torture her own kind. Crueler now that she must do it to save them and keep the Severed from breaking the world any further. Her life seemed only to broadcast pain into the world, to those who should be closest to her, fellow Drackmoor.

  She turned away, to keep Quentorn from seeing, and slipped her leather gifting notebook out from her belt pouch. It was as good a thing to do as any in these final moments. These days, simple pleasures were her only bulwark against the pain, though they did little to allay her worries.

  She had made this gift book because she wanted to be more than just a source of pain to others. In it she kept all the secret desires of her friends, those she had gleaned through cunning questions and observation. If somehow she could secretly aid them to achieve their desires, the small things and the great, perhaps she would not feel …

  She flipped it open to the page titled Vyeran. It was blank despite her best efforts. But it helped to remember that he was not the enemy, this was all for him.

  All she knew was that Vyeran was from the Kojor ruling clans of the Suldjin Empire, the trade empire that now filled Arisha and parts of the Mid-Kar Range. The last great empire to span worlds. When they found him he had been a servant of the Severed, placed in a high position among the Suldjin.

  Every week of this siege she had hoped Vyeran would see reason before it was too late. Before the Suldjin could track them down and mount an assault on their little house. Mercifully they’d had more time than she expected. That mercy had ended. She felt something sinister brewing overhead. Everything said it should have boiled over by now. The rend-song of fleshgrazers pitched into a fury. The wait seemed worse than facing death.

  She glanced at the window. All at once the fleshgrazers fell silent. Then they flew off by the thousands, a great black cloud lifting from the trees, so thick they almost blotted out the sky. Her heart hammered, but in an instant, they were all winging away, out over the woods and into the distance. She stared after them, aghast. Why were they fleeing? What greater doom had come for them?

  She gave up staring out the window. Better to prepare than to spend her strength waiting for the death that raced toward them.

  “They will be back soon. And in force.” She turned back to Quentorn. “You said Evaegis could teach us how to prevent possession?”

  “Here, take him.” Quentorn handed her the shard of Evaegis. It was a code name since tales of Elithir were still well known. “I think he prefers you anyway.”

  “We should get Mythilli, she needs to know this as well.”

  “What about Vyeran?” Quentorn asked, shrugging.

  Coralie frowned. “You think they’ll possess him while he’s captive, under guard?”

  “No, I meant who would watch him?”

  “Why don’t we learn first, then we can pass Evaegis to Mythilli, and I can take over her watch.”

  “But it’s my turn to watch him next.”

  “After that journey?” Coralie patted him on the shoulder. “No, you relax. It will be my watch.”

  She looked out the window, but no doom was coming yet. What were they planning?

  “Very well. Evaegis, we are ready.”

  Evaegis's words were little more than wisps of thought in her mind, but she spoke them. Gave them substance. And learned his wisdom as she spoke it.

  “‘When people think of possession, they imagine a spirit taking complete control, leaving bouts of memory loss, storybook fashion. While it does happen, it is the rarest form of possession, inflicted through an unbearably horrific process.’”

  Quentorn rubbed his chin. “So it’s not complete control or there is no memory loss?”

  “‘In common possession, there is no need for memory loss. The possessed believe they are in control because the possessor’s control is as subtle as turning your own thoughts and desires to their ends.’”

  Quentorn scribbled down a quick note. “Then is there no way to know if you’ve been possessed?”

  “‘When two spirits fight for control over a body, they both fight for what they care about. No one cares about everything, so most ground is yielded without effort. But there will be skirmishes. Internal conflicts are proof of possession. You can’t fight with yourself. People do not divide that way. You must have someone else to fight, and that is your possessor.’”

  She stared at Quentorn in horror. “What if I’ve already been possessed? What if we all have?”

  “‘It is quite likely.’” Her voice nearly broke as she repeated Evaegis's words.

  It took deliberate effort for her to keep from staring out the window. “Then what can we do?”

  “‘I have cast them from you, but there are traces left behind. A skilled possessor will lie to convince you to care about what they want. They learn your desires and lie that you can’t accomplish them, you’re not strong enough. Only their way will give you what you seek. Your thoughts are filled with their lies, and by simple repetition, you accept them and become their puppet.’”

  Coralie clenched her fist, shaken by those words. “Are you saying everything I believe is a lie?”

  “‘Not all, only a few targeted things.’”

  Coralie tossed the shard. “You dare mock my beliefs!”

  “Come now, Coralie.” Quentorn retrieved the shard of Evaegis, cradling it. “You don’t know what I went through for this.” He settled back in his chair. “What? Oh, very well. I will speak his words.”

  “‘It is not your fault, you did not know better. Possessors are subtle and crafty. Once they trick the possessed they use them to spread their lies, a trusted friend, even family. Once tricked into lies, one is led straight into possession. For they will believe only the possessor can give them what they seek.

  “‘They lied when they said they could make you brave.’”

  Coralie gasped, how could he know that? Oh, she’d been without Evaegis for so long she’d forgotten his ability to read thoughts.

  “‘It is not bravery, because a possessor cares nothing for your life or the consequences you may face. Bravery is facing fear, not refusing to care. That is the lie that breeds in your heart. It is the reason you are trapped here, trying to, shall we say, coax this old man into submission.’”

  This is all my fault? They had discussed taking Vyeran and leaving, but that would do little to delay their hunters, and it would mean abandoning the scant defenses they’d prepared.

  “‘But he is not the only one. Sometimes people lose control, they know they shouldn’t, but they can’t stop. Be it addiction or whatever. Those are clear instances of a possessor dominating his host. They feel like their life is spiraling out of control.’”

  “Wait,” Quentorn stopped the words. “Are you saying I’m addicted? In what way am I addicted?”

  “‘You became addicted to pain together. But this pain will not bring her back. It is no substitute for her loss.’” Quentorn grew silent. Perhaps he refused to speak Evaegis's words. He only silently wept.

  The source of the drackmoor pain moved. Coralie’s heart pounded in fear. This is it. The pain pointed down through the main floor, into the cellar, directly at Vyeran—like a compass.

  A mile away the pain was barely a whisper; within shouting distance, it was a mere annoyance, like an endless headache; the same room felt like slow poison burning the bones; a touch, like dousing her nerves in boiling water; and a kiss … a kiss could kill—a weapon she had been forced to use only once when it was kill or be killed, and it nearly took her along for the ride.

  Suddenly Quentorn spoke for Evaegis again. “‘There is one here who has swallowed the worst lie of all, that possessors exist to help us. But even he can see that in every relationship possessors always seek a dominant position, they will never accept you dominating them. Possessors want you to destroy everyone including yourself. They don’t need to make you hate anyone to do it, making you selfish will work just as well, for there are many self-destructive paths that seem inviting. Entire cultures have followed possessors into ruin, teaching generation after generation. Why do you think the Suldjin have such power?

  “‘Theirs is a culture that invites possession as a social ceremony. Possessors have great power over such cultures, inviting many horrors, and inevitably leading the whole civilization into murder, death, and ruin. The bones of such civilizations litter many lands. And you invited one of them into your home.’”

  Alarmed, she needed time to consider this warning regarding their prisoner. She picked up her half-finished red dress, careful of the pins securing the seam, and commenced stitching.

  The source of the pain moved. It pointed down through the main floor, into the cellar, directly at the man like a compass. Through their shared pain she could feel that the man was running and jumping about, surprisingly nimble for a man his age.

  Quentorn leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet onto the desk, clutching his forehead. “What on earth is he doing?”

  “Who knows. Some Severed-touched rain dance.” She bit her tongue struggling to hold back her irritability.

  “He’s not tribal,” Quentorn scoffed.

  Coralie smoothed the fitted white blouse across her slender waist, down her hips, and over clinging knee-length breeches; not an easy task while seated, but the caress always helped to calm her pain.

  The needle trembled in her hands, besieged by a relentless suffering.

  The pain had lived inside her so long it had formed roots and branches, nests and burrows, through her muscles and bones; trails of fire and acid, that drew taut when she moved. Her muscles were clenched as if her youth had been spent and her joints had drawn stiff. And she was so weary from fighting the pain, and all that made her world worth living were the memories that reminded her that this pain was nothing, not even a beginning to true suffering.

  “Here.” Quentorn handed her Evaegis “He says you must hold him.”

  She took the stone.

  With his other hand, Quentorn offered her the plate of ancient sketter. “This will ease your tension. It's like a bit of your homeland, specially aged sketter.”

  “Uh … didn't you say it's from 757?”

  “747,” he corrected.

  Coralie crinkled her nose.

  “Some things are best when properly aged.” He waggled his eyebrows suggestively and flexed his muscles.

  “Oh, shove off.” She looked at it skeptically. It didn't seem moldy, but it smelled a bit intense to say the least.

  Between stitches she took a bite. She didn’t know what force was involved, but the pain receded from her consciousness as she ate. The little lunch was a welcome respite as she quickly finished off the plate.

  Coralie paused, staring at her needlework. Somehow she found herself sewing stiches-of-seven. But why not? It was, after all, intended for Shadow Dancing. Her dear friend, Mythilli, deserved it after all those months of teaching her Viirn Spider Dancing from her other life.

  Stitches-of-seven, there they were lined up like little graves filled with crosshatches. Breakstitch bordered the seven memorials of the dead from both of her intertwined lives – Mom, Dad, Konth, Hadra, little Sela, Gramp Banthier, and Mirdray. No, it was never Mirdray. She would not give up on her little sister. It had been seven though, when last she'd stitched it. Now how many? Could it even be counted? Would the entire garment be lined with one long chain of memorials for all those she’d lost?

  Quentorn leaned to snatch the crumpled paper from his pack, and sat back again, smoothing it against his chest. “Where should we pin these postings?”

  “You're still on that?” Coralie said. “You really want half a million nutters ringing us at all hours?”

  “Wouldn’t bother me,” Quentorn said. “Let them come to us for once?”

  “Right, then. And on the off chance one of them isn’t completely off his rocker–”

  The pain moved again, as if its source were coming closer.

  Quentorn leaned back in his chair and kicked his feet onto the desk, clutching his forehead. “What on earth is he doing?”

  “Should I check?” Coralie asked.

  “Mythilli’s on watch,” Quentorn said.

  The world moved and Quentorn fell back in his chair, landing sprawled out, half-stunned.

  Coralie almost started to smile before she realized she too was falling. The earth was tilting. Her feet shuffled to keep her chair from tipping. Her arm flew out reflexively to regain balance, unintentionally flinging her gifting notebook. Several dozen books slid from shelves and tumbled in a heap of tangled pages. The sound of crashing furniture, shattering glass, and pottery pierced the silence. Then the earth rolled back the other way.

  An unlit lamp fell over, but, fortunately, did not break. However, she heard a shrill breaking sound down the hall as hundreds of bottles from her storeroom all shattered as one. Everything she and Quentorn had struggled for so long to build, destroyed in an instant.

  “Earthquake!” Coralie staggered to Quentorn, pulling him to his feet. Books rained down from the opposite shelf and she shielded her head with an arm. Brushing her hair from her eyes, she stumbled toward the door, but the earth tilted farther than she had expected. Painfully, she careened into the wall; her left knee smacked the wainscoting which ran like trousers around the girth of the room, held up by a belt of hardwood chair railing. She rebounded, grabbed the door frame, then braced herself in the doorway.

  Quentorn joined her.

  “An earth tremor on Kapurn?” She knew something was off. She had never felt an earthquake before, but she had read of them, and this was different. It wasn’t a quick and shallow rumbling, but a slower, more exaggerated movement.

  The ribs of the old house creaked and groaned as it tossed back and forth, and several windows strained before shattering completely.

  “It’s no earthquake,” Quentorn said as if reading her thoughts.

  “What sort of madness is it?” But she already knew the answer. This was the attack. And it was unlike anything they had prepared against.

  Quentorn’s back pressed against the other side of the door frame, his arm braced beside her head as if they were crossed trusses holding up the walls. Scattered belongings slid back and forth with every tilt of the earth. A picture fell from the wall and screamed its shattering note.

  “What’s happening?” She repeated.

  “Ever weather a storm at sea?” Quentorn asked.