forbidden.
Seek him not.
—Sleepless prophecy
present day
Jerri had expected her call to be answered by a handful of Elderspawn that would cause enough chaos that she could find an opportunity to escape.
She had hoped for a more powerful Elder, but she knew those were in short supply. Even the Great Elders didn’t spend their stronger servants lightly.
So when the portal opened in her cell and Kelarac’s steel blindfold regarded her from the other side, she was paralyzed with shock.
She had spent many hours interacting with him without knowing his true identity, but that was no longer true. Jerri dropped to one knee the second her shock allowed.
“Great One, please allow me to—”
“That’s enough,” Kelarac said. He waved one gold-ringed hand. “I have gone to great expense to send you this opportunity. Now come to me. I have a task for you.”
“Gladly!” If Kelarac was speaking to her as an equal, then maybe she could serve as his envoy. He had always favored Calder, but she was more than willing.
“If I may ask, where are we going?”
She stepped into the void, where her feet were supported by a stone. As soon as she did, Kelarac’s image began to fade away like smoke.
“I will remain where I always have. You will be coming to me.”
The void spat Jerri out onto an island in the middle of the Aion Sea.
Perhaps “island” wasn’t the right word. It was more like a barge, a floating collection of debris that looked like it came from a crashed ship bound together by sticky, still-squirming tendons.
She had spent years of her life plotting courses across the Aion, but she couldn’t even guess where she was at the moment. There was nothing but water no matter where she looked. Maybe when the stars came out, she would be able to estimate their location.
But if this was where the image of Kelarac had taken her, she knew what she was waiting for.
And she didn’t have to wait long.
She dropped to a knee again as a shadow approached her from beneath the ocean. The water darkened before her as far as she could see, as though a cloud had passed across the sun.
Her excitement and terror matched each other, reaching a fever pitch so she could no longer tell where one ended and the other began. For the second time in her life, she was about to come face-to-face with the true form of a Great Elder.
The air around her shook like a building in an earthquake and her barge slid on uncertain waves. She was terrified in the best, most thrilling way.
When Kelarac finally showed himself, she found herself shivering.
It was like watching an island rise before her eyes. The water bulged upward, sliding off of the bulk that revealed itself from beneath. Water streamed down in deafening waterfalls.
Kelarac’s body was bronze and craggy as though he were an impossibly intricate statue. Moss and barnacles stuck to his sides, and his full shape was so incomprehensibly massive that it took her mind a long time to put together what her eyes were telling her.
What was in front of her was a head seemingly made of dull bronze. Its snout came to a rounded point, and she had to see silvery, triangular teeth before she recognized the shape: she was looking at a shark’s head.
The rest of the silhouette crested the surface, and she saw fins spreading out to the sides. A dorsal fin the size of a tower unfolded from his back; it had been tucked away before so it wouldn’t break the surface, but now it spread over Kelarac like a sail.
Across his eyes, or where his eyes should be, was a blindfold of steel large enough to cover several ships. Spots of rust decorated its surface, and it was pierced through by two iron nails, each driven into where she assumed the eyes would be.
The nails must be bigger than The Testament’s mast, and now that she looked, she could see at least two more, both driven through the pectoral fins and extended deep into the water.
It wasn’t much of a guess to think that there would be three more such nails driven through his body. The seven spikes of the Blackwatch. These might have been the originals.
Jyrine’s heart pounded, and she lowered her head in the presence of the Soul Collector.
His mouth didn’t move as he spoke, but his words shook the water around her barge.
“OUR FIRST PLAN HAS FAILED.”
“I do not mean any disrespect, Great One, but…what happened