The Moon's Fangs | 1

“You didn’t deserve it, Amelia. Any of it.” Nolan’s apology rang through my bones as realization struck. “My back’s been up against a wall.”

This must have been what he meant. Had Sio forced his hand? Did Sio plan to kill him now?

No.

No!

I tripped out of Reks’ hold, towards Nolan. Reks yelled something, but I couldn’t focus on his warnings as a cacophony of screams erupted in the gala around us.

“Stop!” I cried out, dress tangling between my legs.

The opalescent cobra arched its neck, mouth opening wide as it bared sharp fangs.

I wasn’t going to make it. I–

“Nolan! No!” Nikoe had somehow already ripped through guests toward his vulnerable brother. Something was in his hand, then over his head as he flung an object–his boot–at the striking cobra.

People screamed out in retaliation. Not at the cobra, but at Nikoe. As if he attacked their God.

His boot nicked the side of the serpent’s hood, but it swept out of the way from the brunt of the attack. Nikoe slid between it and Nolan, using his own body to shield his defenseless brother. “Forgive him, please!"

Sio showed him no mercy.

Reks had his arms around me again, hauling me behind his back as horror froze over. Sio, fast as light, glided across the floor and struck Nikoe before he had time to counter.

Sio’s fangs sank deep into the back of Nikoe’s neck. Deep enough to crack bone. His body seized up on impact.

Danika’s screech echoed off the walls, but arms held her back at the crowd’s edge.

Etch, who had made it halfway across the floor to possibly help, now froze in fear.

A gurgled, inhuman sound ruptured from Nikoe. Like an animal in agony.

My stomach twisted from the sound. The sheer horror threatened to empty it on the spot. A disembodied plea fell from my trembling open mouth.

This was a nightmare. A nightmare.

Nikoe’s body convulsed. As if Sio’s fangs were a venomous seed, black veins branched out in every direction across from the source, moving at a much quicker rate than it had for his brother. Blood oozed from his orifices.

“Silence.” Nikoe hissed in an archaic voice that did not belong to him. A voice that sent goosebumps racing across every inch of my body. A voice that demanded every soul’s compliance.

Reks kept me partly behind him, but even he shuddered from that single command. And everyone in the room fell silent to it. From fear or its sheer will, I didn’t know. Stunned, unchallenged silence encompassed us.

“Much better.” Sio spoke through Nikoe, using him as a puppet on its strings. “I have awaited this day far too long. How fortunate you are to witness such a consequential fortuity.”

Nikoe’s head tilted to the side, bleeding eyes surveying the wide-eyed guests. Then Sio turned his attention to Reks and I. He offered us a slash of an inhuman smile, as if amused by how Reks kept my body behind his. “Always the protector, Reks Arlen. How lonely you must feel to be the sole vitiate among a fallen empire of strangers.”

High ranks in the room balked at the usage of his vitiate title. Some of the soldiers and the council members, including the General himself, showed recognition.

They recognized his name. Like Nolan, they probably heard stories regarding Reks Arlen, The Moon’s Fangs. By the extra layer of fear painting their faces, the stories they recounted were not pleasant.

Reks slid his hand down my arm to grasp mine as his throat worked. “We’re here for answers, Sio. We’re not here to play your games, or be a part of whatever Shayd-damned show you’re trying to broadcast.” he ended with a sharpened snarl, gesturing towards the audience of witnesses.

“Shayd? Now why would I put on a show for the Crowned Prince when key components are lacking?” A hoarse laugh came from Sio–from Nikoe’s mouth.

Luk slithered from Reks’ wrists, looping up his arms in preparation, taking care of his blind spots.

“You were always such a hothead, Reks Arlen. Once you get fired up, there is no stopping you. Well… except for one thing.” Sio’s tail flicked behind Nikoe. The black veins crossed paths on either side of his neck, like a jagged thorned choker with a goal of ensnaring his entire body.

Reks tensed from whatever Sio had implied. A hidden meaning only they knew about.

“Amelia’s best friend.” Reks started, taking me by surprise when he didn’t start by asking about Ellison first. “Blaire Bailey was captured and is now under the control of The Full Spectrum. Is this something you are capable of fixing?” The bite from before intentionally dissolved from his earlier tone, as he forced himself to be more pliant.

Nikoe’s prince and knight ensemble stained a dark crimson as blood continued to gradually ooze from his eyes, nose, and ears. With every passing second, the stain spread farther and farther.

“A useless question, yet I will humor it. What The Full Spectrum has physically done to the changed human girl cannot be undone. However, if certain conditions are met… there is a way for my influence to sever the cerebral prison in which she suffers.”

Its answer made my heart break and ache in such intense waves. “How? What conditions?”

Nikoe’s bleeding eyes fell on me with chilling fascination. “Once I am bonded, I will agree to disclose the conditions in full detail. Though, I expect those desires to change once the prerequisite is fulfilled.”

How the Guide phrased its answer struck a cord in not only me, but in Reks as well. A muscle ticked in his jaw.

If Sio could only be bonded to someone of the Lucil bloodline, did that mean Ellison really was alive somewhere out there? Stuck in cryo, just as Reks had been. But that wouldn’t make sense as to why Sio wasn’t with her now. Why the two were no longer bonded. Separated.

Yet, Sio’s intention came clear enough. Sio wouldn’t help us for free. The deadly cobra wanted something in return. It likely wanted us, or Reks at least, to track down someone of an appropriate bloodline to link it to.

Maybe that was why Ellison guaranteed his survival - because she needed a vitiate to make it work.

I saw the question form across Reks’ expression before he gave it voice. “Tell me what happened to Ellison.”

Sio made Nikoe’s head cock to the side, looking at Reks like the answer was obvious. “Ellison Lucil died shortly after giving the order to have you placed in cryo. She used the last moments of her life instilling the astral barrier to protect as many as she could. It was the best she could manage with the state she battled at the time. A rather unexpected turn of events. The Full Spectrum came into possession of a deathly blight by aligning with a place, an entity even the Divine Fates hold no control over. Their polar opposite in power. The Crowned Prince of Shayd himself.”

Nikoe’s blood blended from crimson to a vile black as the branching veins thickened across his flesh. Like a tangle of spiderwebs. “The Crowned Prince of Shayd supplied The Full Spectrum with the blight responsible for killing off the Lucils.”

What? I vaguely remembered overhearing an argument when Nox snuck me into Reks’ mindscape without permission. Someone had been freaking out over this Shayd guy wanting to claim Ellison... or something along those lines. But not to kill her.

Nox shivered within me. ~The Crowned Prince of Shayd is loosely similar to legends that refer to Hades or a sinister king of Hell. He claims Unguided souls, trapping them into eternal servitude. His power is equal to the Fates, but his power derives from something else entirely.~

Like an opposing god.

The color in Reks’ face paled from Sio’s very first sentence but turned even graver by the last. His fists clenched, as if he didn’t know how to react or what to do with the rise of emotions.

“Why?” was the word which escaped the prison lock of his jaw.

“Why did the Crowned Prince of Shayd supply the empire’s demise? No... you wish to know why Ellison Lucil saved you.” a thin stream of black blood spilled from the corner of Nikoe’s mouth, following Sio’s belittling answer. “She saved you, Reks Arlen, because she requires you to fulfill a role. A vitiate of your stature is a rare breed. She found a way to conserve you until she had need of you once more.”

Not because she loved or cared for him? Something sharp dropped to the pit of my stomach. Ellison saved Reks because she wasn’t done using him. She saw him as a special weapon that needed to be hidden until she picked it up again.

“Conserve me? She’s dead. I serve no use to her now.” his response came out in a decrepit laugh.

Life seemed to drain from Nikoe. How much longer could his body handle Sio using him like a puppet? Even the light shade of his eyes started to fade. Like his soul prepared to cut ties with his body.

“Oh, come now. The Moon’s Fangs must have put it together before reaching this point. Death is merely an obstacle to demolish. Ellison Lucil intends to wholly return. Granted, it had taken far longer than anticipated, yet it will come to fruition soon enough.”

I blinked. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Again, that eerie fascination studied me. “Whether it be ignorance or denialism, it changes nothing.”

Sio’s long tail flicked behind Nikoe’s back and he brought a hand up like a quivering puppet on strings, making a large sweeping gesture. Holographic projections flew from the sweep, scattering out in front of us like multiple, variously sized screens. Each played clipped memories or visuals of Ellison.

Everyone in the room, still quiet because of Sio’s first command, soaked in the visuals before us all. Many stared open-mouthed at the ones where they could see the late empress, clear as day.

An expanded clip depicted Ellison dressed in regal attire next to three others – her family. Her parents and brother embodied different hairstyles of white hair, but it couldn’t compare to the iridescent sheen of moonlight Ellison’s possessed. Like a living portrait, she seemed to simper down at us with captivating, glacial eyes.

Another displayed her consoling a man of another race, one who possessed a human body save for the expanse of wings webbed between feathered arms.

Reks squeezed my hand as he watched one where Ellison’s skin had turned deathly pale, veins turned black, similar to how Nikoe’s looked now. A tear trailed down her cheek, spiderwebbed black from the blight, as she held her unconscious vitiate in her lap. Reks. Fresh battle wounds left marks across his shoulder - scars he wore today. A pair of vitiates went to a knee behind her, claiming to have fulfilled her request. She took a blade and slashed her own flesh where she hadn’t yet been infected, coating it in her blood. “You must lock him in an indefinite stasis, my blood the only key. Do you understand me... Sorren?”

Reks’ breathing turned ragged.

The image next to that one displayed her as a little girl. A little girl with blonde hair and blue eyes, exploring outside.

My heart dropped. The little girl looked like me — was me. But that couldn’t be right. That little girl, who my dad had framed pictures of at home, snuck around in a forest with glowing flowers, petting a little creature born from stories, and spoke to it in the orleizen language.

I knew that was me. But the memory was all wrong. I remembered sneaking out of the house around that age, remembered bringing a bug-catcher net out into the forest behind the house. But… nothing like this. Never like that.

Dread unfurled inside me. My breaths became stifled.

Another visual unfolded of that same little girl, around eight or nine years old, listening to an elderly woman with terrified polar eyes begging someone unseen to take the girl. She clutched onto her hand, as if terrified the little girl might run. The girl, identical to what I looked like in the third grade, made no notion to leave. She caressed the side of the woman’s tear-soaked face. “You don’t need to be scared anymore. Sio comes to me in my dreams, and it led me here to take your pain away. You don’t need to force me. Sio says it belongs to me now, not you.”

Sio came to her through her dreams, leading her to it. That sounded all too familiar.

Reks’ hand fell from mine, and something broke inside of me when I met his stare. Betrayal. Pure, unreconciled betrayal. Aimed at me.

Author's Note: The story continues to heighten in intensity! Am I right? Yeeessshh. What do you think we'll find out in the next chapter? What/Who are you worried about the most right now? Leave a prediction!