Page 273 of Vasmora

Like a ghost.

Humanoids with gray, mottled skin, their sharp teeth far too big for their faces, attacked men in long, ceremonial robes, and women who wore black feathers, with ravens painted on their foreheads. The Corvikae.

Across the room, I spied Morsana, garbed in black, her face more pale and skeletal than I was used to seeing. She stretched her bony hands out to either side, gaze fixed toward the humanoids.

The clacking of bones heightened to a fevered rattle.

“Rise,” she said, and somehow, over the chaos of fighting, I heard it.

The clattering grew louder, the pitch unbearable.

I covered my ears, squeezing my eyes shut. When I opened them again, the room was filled with men wearing black leather adorned in black feathers. Hundreds of them. Their skin pale, eyes a glowing silver.

Hollowyns.

I remembered the Lyverian priestess telling me about them.

“This has happened before,” I muttered. Hollowyns had fought the mutations.

The warriors charged into the fray, weaponless. Fearless. Violent.

The room spun again, the image blurring, fading for the present.

Screams snapped my attention toward Verena, who stood in a diminishing circle of humanoids, her arms swinging out weakly.

Zevander fought with flame and sword, nothing but a flash of black in a sea of pale gray bodies. His scorpion stabbed and lashed its tail in a wild frenzy.

Kazhimyr sent his mist over a cluster of humanoids, while Torryn, Fennyx and Lothare fought hand to hand. All of them outnumbered.

Overwhelmed.

The stench of imminent death clogged my nose, the ringing in my ears louder.

I handed Rho to Gavroche. “Please watch him. Don’t let him run off.”

The boy nodded, wrapping his arms around the pup who snarled and wriggled to get free.

Twisting back toward the attack, I held my arms outstretched and closed my eyes, focusing on the sound of the bones.

A battle cry.

“Rise,” I commanded, just as Morsana had done in my vision.

The clacking grew louder, and I opened my eyes to see bones shooting across the cavern, piecing themselves together. Snapping into place, like scattered puzzles taking form. From the toes to the feet, legs, hips, ribs, shoulders, arms and skull, they framed the rough sketch of a body. Glistening flesh bloomed from the bones, spilling over ivory like grotesque fountains of muscle and viscera. Veins and arteries, cartilage and skin. Reanimating before my eyes, as if time had reversed.

Until, at last, they formed the brawny, muscled warrior I’d seen in my vision, clad in leather adorned with black feathers and bones. In his hand, he held a petrified bone, its surface jagged, ends tapered, reaching the height of his shoulders, perhaps once belonging to a dragon. He tapped it on the ground, the sound heightening with each beat, and I swept my gaze over the cavern to find hundreds of warriors encircling the mutations.

The attacking humanoids stilled mid-battle and warily glanced around, as though distracted by the noise of the bones.

Zevander pushed up from where he crouched, and his brows pulled tight as he looked around then back at me, questions swirling in his eyes.

The tapping of bones stopped.

The cavern quieted, save the heaving breaths of my group.

“Now, fight,” I demanded.

The warriors jolted into motion in a wave of malice and brute strength that crashed over the humanoids. Unsteady breaths trembled out of me, my gaze trailing over the hundreds of bodies engaged in a violent clash.