Chapter 23: CHAPTER 23

Light bloomed in the hall beyond the judgment chamber as the Temple doors groaned open. Hydrim inhaled deeply and a shiver rippled across his skin. The traitors had arrived. Even at this distance, his ears pricked at the low moans and frightened whimpers reverberating in the hallways above him. Fear emanated from the prisoners in powerful waves, and the aether at Hydrim’s disposal absorbed this raw energy.

“Blood flows like oceans, and bones break like twigs,” Dardajah chanted within Hydrim’s mind. “Emotions drain like sewage, and auras cook with sins.”

The dokojin’s recital seeded Hydrim with anticipation. Dardajah had used this quote before—a precursor to death of some degree. Although Hydrim alone could hear the dokojin’s voice, the energy evoked by its words charged the chamber air with a dreadful tension. The row of Elders who lined the dais step below him stiffened, and their murmurs vanished.

Silhouettes appeared on the top tier of the egg-shaped room. Hydrim relished the terrified looks on the victims’ faces—each wrinkle of stress and bulging set of eyes.

Dardajah’s impatience spiked at the sight. The dokojin’s invisible hands tugged at the prisoners, lifting them with aether into the air. They soared towards Hydrim and the Elders like puppets on strings. A renewed sense of terror coursed through the family as they dangled in front of their judges. Dardajah barked feverishly over the panic that spilled from the children in particular.

A giant chandelier constructed of antlers hung above the elevated podium at the center of the chamber, providing a dim emerald light that bred with the shadows. The paralyzed prisoners swam in the green glow. The scene reminded Hydrim of writhing seaweed beneath the ocean.

“I want to hear them,” Dardajah rasped. “Ungag them.”

Hydrim complied with the voice in his head and lifted the aetherbinding from the prisoners’ mouths. Their shrieks erupted in the chamber. Dardajah screeched as well, and reveled in the noise of their joined sounds. Hydrim found an odd beauty in the chaotic clash of the families’ cries mixing with the dokojin’s gleeful screeches. He thought it a shame that only the two of them could hear the sound.

The pitiful noises from the family soon aggravated him though, and Hydrim silenced them once again. Too much commotion made it impossible to hear himself think. He looked down the line and made sure to catch each prisoner with a devoted gaze of retribution.

Dardajah chattered in a garbled frenzy. Hydrim made out a few phrases of what the dokojin planned for the family upon their execution, once they’d passed into the Apparition Realm.

“You mudminded pieces of filth.” Hydrim’s voice carried like a feather yet pierced the air like a sword. His eyes fixed on the obvious patriarch of the family, betrayed by his fading red hair and weathered look.

“Do you know what your daughter has done?” asked Hydrim. He paused despite the father’s inability to answer. “Do you know of her blasphemous crimes?”

Dardajah’s voice clanged in his head. “Can you feel that?” asked the dokojin, panting like a ravenous dog. “Their terror drips off them in buckets. Let me taste. I promise they’ll scream. Spill some blood, maybe from one of the children. Just a little aether.” A deranged cackle echoed inside the confines of Hydrim’s head.

Somewhat accustomed to the duality in his mind, Hydrim swam through the fever-pitched chanting and found his own voice again.

“Delilee took an oath to protect the chieftess at all costs,” continued Hydrim. “She was given privileged access to my Tecalica’s vulnerabilities in order to perform that duty.” Unable to contain his fury any longer, he howled. “She betrayed her own flesh and blood! And she betrayed her Sachem!”

Hydrim trembled as he rushed to box his emotions again, satisfied that only two of the younger prisoners bled at the ears from his outburst. Controlling the amount of aether Dardajah bestowed him was like trying to tame a behemoth serpent—especially when his emotions were triggered. The dokojin’s aether held a wild nature that tended to mutilate those around him. In this case, the unintended result was welcome. He wanted these vermin to suffer.

“Weak flesh. Can I feed on them now?” Dardajah asked. “Those two can’t even hear the rest of your pompous speech, you idiot. You’ve rendered them deaf. Give them over to me.”

Hydrim shrugged away Dardajah’s reproach and ignored the request. The dokojin could feed soon enough. He latched back onto the father. The man’s eyes appeared red and his nostrils flared, no doubt in reaction to the harm done to his youngest children.

“You think I care?” hissed Hydrim. “Your family is a threat to my Tecalica. Everything I’ve done has been for her, and anything that challenges her, challenges me. I am the Sachem, and you will face my judgement.”

He broke his gaze with the father to survey the whole group. The wife and children sobbed hysterically, and only the father appeared gripped by anger rather than despair.

“With Sahruum’s permission, I will grace you with the aether your daughter has stirred within me,” said Hydrim. “It will decide your fate.”

“Let them scream!” Dardajah howled. “Open their mouths and let them scream!”

Hydrim closed his eyes and gathered the aether that rushed through his veins and billowed around him. The link between him and Dardajah afforded him the gift to see the plasma energy, but he knew others in the room couldn’t see the movement of aether. His muscles grew taut under the intense energy at his disposal.

He could claim some of the aether as his own, conjured by the passionate emotions roused by the circumstances. Aether had incredible charge when elicited by an emotional trigger. But most of what surged around and through him belonged to Dardajah. From the first day the dokojin had entered his body and intertwined with his soul, aether had been as vivid an attribute as Hydrim’s own heartbeat.

The level of power this coalesce had created overwhelmed Hydrim’s sanity with every breathing moment. Neither the mirajin teachers nor the templite proteges of Hydrim’s childhood had ever hinted that a human could wield aether of this magnitude. The uncharted territory both terrified and exhilarated Hydrim. Often, the line blurred between where he controlled the aether and where aether controlled him.

Hydrim lost his bearings, and the world transformed until only the plasma energy remained. He sensed the churning souls around him and locked his attention on the prisoners. From their auras permeated an aroma of primitive terror that Dardajah demanded to consume.

A muffled voice rang out amidst the storm of aether. Hydrim hesitated mere seconds from unleashing his wrath. He knew that voice. That voice alone could startle him out of such a trance.

Dardajah’s protests clamored to drown out all other thought, but Hydrim’s eyes were already open. His gaze seized on the figure that stood above the chamber on the top tier step, flanked by two hirishu. Hydrim’s rage dissipated as intoxication soothed him.

Jalice’s beauty never failed to captivate him. Whenever in her presence, he attempted to absorb every enchanting element of her existence—from her oceanic blue eyes to the flowing dress that trailed behind her like a blazing white comet. Red paint traced her face, accentuated by white crystal stones scattered through woven hair. A thin layer of fresh craddleberry branches stretched across her chest, bursting with crimson fruit.

Aether continued to stir within Hydrim, granting visibility of Jalice’s aura. Her hypnotic grip over him wavered. Hydrim puzzled over why his wife’s aura was bathed in both a ferocious determination and fear. Something about her seemed different. She felt both close and far away, as if in some distant land. Perhaps the sight of the prisoners had disrupted her characteristic calm, reminding her of the attempt on her life earlier in the week.

Dardajah’s voice raged, overthrowing his ponderings.

“Take my aether and send these filths into the abyss of my Realm,” the dokojin demanded. “Don’t let her distract you.”

The dokojin’s voice threatened to tear Hydrim’s attention away from Jalice, but he resisted. His ears absorbed her silvery voice as she followed her initial cry upon entering the chamber with an emboldened statement.

“Your Tecalica asks that you hold your judgement, Sachem of the Tribes.”