It was difficult to say how much time passed in the windowless lower rooms of Raven’s Roost, but Idris found that it did not matter. The defiant, painful action of bleeding himself mattered more than anything else. There was logic to it that negated emotion. Thistle, content on his shoulder, slept and purred.

Eventually, there was a steady drip of scarlet forming at the end of Idris’s stump. It would have to be enough.

Idris let it drop onto the stone, worked his loose tooth more to get some excess. The supply from his leg, while still red, was dark and edged with grey.

He was not entirely sure what he was doing. Nobody had taught him blood magic. All he knew was that it was wrong and harmed the user more than it harmed anyone else, but desperation demanded something. He supposed the commands would be similar to the ones he used for necromancy with the aria. Outside of that, he was fumbling in the dark.

There was a goal. That was all he cared about.

“Thistle,” he whispered, “time to wake up.”

He felt the needle-sharp claws in his skin as the kitten stretched.

“Off you go, now. Down.”

Once the cat was content with playing with the spiderwebs in the corner, Idris focused on his task. Surely he had enough blood, enough will. If a stance or sigil was required, he would have to forgo it. If he needed the aria… hopefully, the necrosis in his stump would provide.

Idris closed his eyes, went through the usual techniques. He breathed deep into his stomach, feeling the hollowness of his body, the aches in his shoulders and neck. The cold of the floor sank into his bones. He placed his mind on a single track.

I want to break my chains.

He pictured them, thick around his wrists, painful on his lower arms. He felt their strength. He thought of iron, the fires that forged it. The heat required to unmake them would be substantial. He thought of how he heated the ghost of his own foot, of how the air shivered.

The command was ‘burn’.

He took a second, concentrated breath.

He shifted his attention to his blood. The blood inside him, the blood on his skin, on the flagstone. There was no aria to draw from but there was his heartbeat, calm and consistent. He felt it in his chest, then repeated infinitely in every vein and artery. Drumbeats and purpose.

That was what an aria was. Drumbeats and purpose.

Every living thing had a death aria – Layton had said so. If the crystal prevented Idris from communing with it, then once it was outside of his body, did the crystal have any power over that?

There was one way to find out.

Idris parted his dry lips, listened to the beats, knew them to be his own percussion, and he whispered, “Burn.”

There was a pinching tug in his palms. He hissed involuntarily; the crystal exerted its pressure, pulling any vestige of the aria out through his fingertips like a thousand vicious ropes had hold of his very marrow.

He opened his eyes, looked at the blood on the ground, on his stump. Perhaps he needed more. Perhaps he was focused on the wrong thing. Sensation in his amputation was weak; maybe he needed a more responsive limb in the puddle.

Idris crossed his bare left foot into the blood. It was sticky, already cooling. He spat the blood from his mouth, too, letting it coat his toes.

A bang from above startled him from his task.

There was no way of telling whether the noise came from inside or outside. Idris wondered if Layton had already started his assault on Kurellan’s soldiers.

“Time to do this, Idris,” he whispered, looking at the blood.

He thought of the feeling of it. The sickly ooze. Its warmth, becoming cold. Its glint in the firelight, like clusters of rubies. How it pounded in his ears, in his throat. He moved his foot so it touched the steady drip, drip from his right leg.

Idris closed his eyes and thought outside of himself. He thought only of touch, of the blood, of its sound, and he whispered, once more, with awful urgency, “Burn.”

The sound came up his throat like a ragged, rusty blade. Idris gagged on it, lurched with the power of it. There was a smell like a blacksmith’s forge and -

And his wrists came apart, and he dropped the crystal.

Sound returned, like he had been temporarily deaf. The aria rushed through him like wine warmth, filled every pore.

Idris forced in breath, pulled his wrists around to check, dizzy and nauseated. His hands were coated with adhesive paste and black ink; his wrists were bruising. Hardly daring to check, he looked at the blood patch.

The puddle on the floor was smoking. Idris shifted his legs so they were no longer touching it. He patted his stump, checking for damage, but there was none.

Blood magic was surprisingly easy. Maybe that was the danger people warned against, the harm. Aside from the tearing feeling every time he swallowed, he felt fine.

“Thistle,” he whispered, holding out his hand. “Come, Thistle.”

The kitten obliged; Idris stuffed him inside his shirt and tried to make a plan. There was another, roaring bang from above.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“No foot,” he said, looking at his right leg. “Ah. So... no problem.”

Idris hauled himself onto his left leg using the chair Layton had left. The only place he had to get to was the vault. Hopefully, the seed he had planted there was still growing. Once he reached it, he could call through to Joa, who (if the plan worked) would be able to pull him through.

Idris had one thing at his disposal, now.

“Hey!” he shouted, hoping Layton had been predictable. “Lord Vonner! Layton!”

Carefully, he dropped back to his knees, just out of sight from the hallway, and waited.

Sure enough, a thrall came shambling through. Compared to some of the household workers, this thrall was in relatively good shape; there was hardly any decomposition and it wore thicker, newer clothes than they rest. Idris supposed Layton had saved it for defence of the tower and tried not to think too hard about where such a fresh body had come from. It plodded through the corridor to the cell and stopped, seemingly confused as to why the chains did not hold a necromancer.

Idris pulled the fastest, deepest breath he could, the death aria crashing in his ears and chest, rushing through him like water that had finally broken through a dam. So many nights he had lain awake, cursing the sounds of the aria in his blood, in his ears. The notes had never sounded so sweet as they did now, never felt so natural and full and joyous.

He had never done this before, but it felt like a day for miracles. Luckily, Layton’s library had told him everything he needed to know.

He held out his right hand, moving the fingers into a pentagon shape.

“Loose,” he said.

This one burned, like the aria always did, but instead of feeling the aria come though him, he felt it jump from within the hollow shell of the corpse. The thrall jerked. Idris felt the struggle – the thrall knew its master, was already filled with one will and could not contain two and did not want to give up the freedom the aria provided – it pulled at his spine, made his arm shake, made sweat run down his brow.

“Submit,” he said through the aria.

He heard Layton’s music. It was controlled, methodical – restrained and dull. Idris focused on its patterns, followed its tune, but he hated the sounds it made. He coupled the tame melody with his own percussion, with the low strings, and once they were in tandem, he grappled for control of the music, he wrestled to make it his own. His whole, exhausted body shook and sweated and burned; his legs trembled, hardly able to hold him upright; his eyes watered. The thrall thrashed and snapped its jaws.

“Obey,” Idris said fiercely, clenching his fist.

And the music snapped into place. The thrall stopped flailing and stood, still, waiting for commands. It was oddly quiet, without Layton’s flair in the aria.

“Come,” said Idris.

He did not have time. Layton would be well aware that Idris had hijacked a thrall. Likely, his father was already sprinting down the stairs to stop him. Idris hoped he could get where he needed to.

Commanding a thrall was much like thinking for two people. Idris had to transmit his full intent, without any obscurity, to a second, empty brain. When telling a group of thralls to do something unambiguous, like ‘fight’, it was rather simple. The hivemind provided and the commands were stronger. The first Braemar expedition would not have succeeded if telling six-hundred empty vessels to fight was taxing. What was more difficult was requiring precision or complex motion. Speech was hardest of all. If Idris kept the idea in the front of his mind – lift me up – the thrall could not figure that out for itself. He had to think, bend, and then, extend your arm. It had been such a long time since he had needed to do something like this that he was almost angry when he thought, lift me up, and the thrall did nothing.

The second problem was that every thought was physically exhausting. Exerting will that forcefully was tiring. By the time the thrall had Idris draped around its shoulders, he was ready to sleep.

“Walk,” Idris said, through the residual aria in his lungs, and the thrall walked.

There was another shaking bang, but it did not trouble the corpse. Idris hopped along beside it, hoping that Layton could be distracted well enough from his escape that he might actually make it out. If he got to the vault and the flowers were burned, that was something else entirely. The point was that he did enough. He performed blood magic. He could get out of this nightmare. No more weak, pathetic -

The vault.

It lay as it did the first time Idris saw it, peering through the bars with his handmade prosthetic on. The huge metal door was closed; the bars still covered the entryway.

But now, there was a creeper as thick as Idris’s thigh shoving against the brickwork.

He wondered how Layton had not noticed it yet, how the flame-bright flowers had escaped his all-seeing eye, but that was not important. The vine had several tendrils curling off its sides, pushing beyond the bars, buckling the metal. The flowers reeked of fae perfume, too heady to be of the mortal realm, too intoxicating. Glitters of pollen trickled from their trumpet heads. It all seemed to glow. At a guess, Idris reckoned the whole plant, roots and all, had to have delved several feet beneath Raven’s Roost’s foundations and into the structure.

That was only part of its function, though.

Idris, still holding firm to the thrall’s shoulder, grasped a flower head and inhaled deeply, probably deeper than was good for him. Instantly, he sneezed, coughed hard. The aroma was too much. His eyes itched.

The words.

“I invoke the right of fae hospitality,” he said, his voice raspy and thick. “My name is Idris Yanis Eremont. I call upon Kin Willard and Joy-of-Autumn.”

Nothing happened. Idris spat bile, took another full breath of the flower’s perfume.

A shape impressed upon the creeper’s thick, emerald hide. The outline of a person, as if it was trying to escape from inside the plant, pushed forward.

“Black bells,” Idris muttered, stepping back.

With a squelching rip, Willard’s head shoved through the plant. He thrust a hand through, reached for Idris. Covered in sap and pollen as he was, it made Idris think of a new-born foal.

“Come on,” said Willard, his eyes bright, “let’s get you out of this cursed place, eh?”

“How do I-?”

“Just take my hand. Joa’ll pull us through. Quick, now.”

Idris, not knowing why, hesitated.

Layton was crazy, he knew that. Whatever The Remaker’s plan was, it was not over and it was likely going to be harmful to Idris, his friends and the kingdom he loved. The way Layton had imprisoned his only son, tortured him... none of that was forgivable.

And yet...

“Idris, King and Circle, please,” said Willard, his face strained, his fingers grasping.

“Yes,” said Idris, shaking himself from his paralysis. “Yes.”

“Hold tight, now.”

Idris gripped Willard’s arm at the elbow and held his breath -

And felt searing, screaming agony in his stump.

He howled, dropped to his left knee. Thistle hissed and leaped out of Idris’s shirt. The thrall teetered on its feet; Willard struggled to pull Idris up and stay within the creeper.

“What’s happening?” said Willard.

Idris could hardly see. The pain did not cease. He clawed at the flagstone, kept holding tight to Willard’s arm.

“Idris, I can’t hold you, you’re hurting me -”

Then the fire burned in the scar on Idris’s shoulder.

He let go of Willard’s hand, clutched at his chest, wailed uncontrollably. Through gritted teeth, Idris looked up at his friend and whispered, “Go.”

“Not this time,” said Willard firmly, releasing one of his legs from the inside of the creeper.

“Tell... tell Kurellan -” Idris flinched, focused on his words. “Tell him – Layton has a skull – necrotic skull – I think it feeds - “

Knowing Willard would not leave on his own, Idris gave up.

He grabbed Thistle, thrust the kitten into Willard’s outstretched hand, and gave a last command to the thrall.

“Push,” he said, thinking clearly about what he wanted.

Willard’s eyes widened.

“Idris, no, don’t do -”

The thrall rammed Willard back inside the plant. Thistle mewed, and was swallowed up in the creeper’s trunk.

Idris released the aria. The thrall slumped to its knees and toppled over.

“There you are,” said Layton, and gripped Idris by his hair.