Lightbringer (Empirium #3) - Claire Legrand Page 0,163

the Deep. A door leading out from the abyss. Through it, Elysium was clear as a spotless reflection.

You’ve done it, came the Prophet’s voice, dim but triumphant.

Then the cruciata dove.

They tore down from the sky, plunging out of the Deep and into Elysium, a monstrous river of fury. Their clamor was so great it was as if all the beasts in Avitas had lifted their heads to the sky and howled as one. They screamed and wailed, clawing at each other, hungry to be the first to fly through and feed. Some were immense and bulbous, hulking beasts with flat snouts and paws like bludgeons. Others were slender and serpentine, and still others were avian, their hides a mottled mix of scales and feathers.

Eliana’s blood iced over as she watched the raptors fly. She remembered them from the attack outside Karlaine. One had grabbed Patrik and flung him to the ground, breaking his leg. Eliana had killed another with her dagger. The light of Ostia scorched them as they passed through it, leaving their feathers charred, but they flew on uncaring, their fanged beaks open wide.

The cruciata had come from another world. Hosterah, the Prophet had called it. They were mighty enough to survive the Deep.

But Elysium would not survive them.

Her gut clenched with horror as she thought of the innocent lives below that would end in claws and teeth. How many beasts had she already loosed from the Deep, and how many more would fight their way through?

But she did not see another way to fight him, not without this distraction to help her. And if she did not fight him, they were all dead anyway.

Only once did she allow herself to imagine Remy, pursued down a blood-stained street by a monster with gaping jaws. Then, slowly, her hands trembling, she crouched at Ostia’s threshold, its ragged hem sizzling around her. The force emanating from it threatened to hurl her back into the Deep. She clung to Ostia’s bright rim, watching the churning stream of cruciata. Not all of them were able to escape the Deep’s pull. Some were tossed away from Ostia; others clawed at nothing, pinned immobile by a force they could not fight.

But the stronger among them were able to escape. Eliana saw a nearing raptor and liked the look of it. The Prophet said something, a warning, but Eliana ignored them and threw herself onto the raptor’s back as it passed her. She hit it hard, flung her arms around its meaty scaled neck, and braced herself for the fall.

A ring of heat burned past them as they dove, peeling scales and feathers from the raptor’s hide. But then they were through, the beast shrieking as it steadied its wings. It tried bucking Eliana off in midair. Its tail caught an angelic statue and sent it smashing to pieces on the road below.

Eliana, her eyes blurred with tears from the wind, saw a rooftop nearby. She tried to roll as she landed, but she was out of practice and fell badly. The impact jarred her knees, and she cut her arm on a jagged slate tile. She slid down the roof, grabbed on to the cornice and clung there, legs swinging, until she realized the ground below wasn’t far and let go. On the road, she stumbled forward, gritting her teeth against the starbursts of pain that lit up her legs. As the Dread, she could have jumped onto that roof and felt nothing. The thought came and went swiftly, an echo of her former life.

She raced through Elysium with no sense of where to go next, desperate to call for the Prophet. Ostia’s light had darkened, washing the city in an angry purple-red, as if every tower had been dashed with blood. The Prophet had told her that her friends would soon arrive and then they could act, they could meet at last. But when? And who?

But she asked the Prophet nothing and kept her mind firmly shut. Corien would be looking for her. Using her mind to seek the Prophet would light her up like a beacon.

Instead, she imagined her river, the cool satin currents of it carrying her swiftly into the city’s congested heart. She climbed a low wall, raced up a slowly winding staircase to one of the city’s higher levels. Cruciata streamed past her, their tails lashing, their wild calls a ravenous chorus. Some—feline, quick and yowling—darted over rooftops and up walls with ease. Shrieking flocks of raptors glided fast