Chapter 490: Drowning in Pursue
The white dragon cut through the water. His scales caught the fractured moonlight filtering down from the surface, gleaming silver and pearl.
He moved, terribly yet gracefully, one of creatures born to rule the skies but no less lethal in the deep. Wings folded tight against his flanks, tail lashing with each powerful thrust, claws extended as he closed the distance between himself and the pack of corrupted orcas circling below.
They were wrong. Everything about them was wrong. Their black-and-white bodies were streaked with veins of pulsing corruption, their dorsal fins jagged and broken, their eyes, where eyes should have been, nothing but hollow sockets leaking trails of black ichor into the water.
REEEEEEEEEEEEE—
Their song had warped into a grinding, metallic shriek that vibrated through the ocean like a death knell.
The first orca lunged. The white dragon spun, his body coiling through the water in a spiral that brought him above the attack, and his claws raked across the creature’s spine as it passed beneath him.
Black blood bloomed in the water. The orca screamed, a sound that was part whale song, part static, all agony, and thrashed away, its corrupted body already beginning to dissolve.
Two more came from his flanks, faster than creatures their size should have been. The white dragon folded his wings and dove, the water screaming past his scales, and the orcas collided above him in an explosion of teeth and corrupted flesh.
He twisted mid-descent, his tail catching one across the jaw with enough force to shatter bone, and his claws found the other’s underbelly, opening it from throat to tail.
The ocean had become a battlefield painted in shades of black and white.
More orcas were coming. A full pod, maybe twelve or fifteen, their corrupted song growing louder as they closed in.
The white dragon hovered in the deep, his wings half-furled, his misty-grey eyes tracking each target. His chest burned. His muscles ached. He had been fighting for a month now. Rift after rift, monster after monster, throwing himself into every corrupted pocket he could find.
A massive bull orca, easily twice the size of the others, charged from the darkness with its mouth gaping open. Rows of serrated teeth, stained black and glistening, filled his vision. He didn’t dodge.
BOOM—
He met the charge head-on, his claws plunging into the creature’s upper jaw, his tail anchoring against its lower jaw, and with a roar that sent shockwaves rippling through the water, he tore the orca apart from the jaw down.
The rest of the pod fell silent. For a moment, the ocean was still. Then, one by one, the surviving orcas turned and fled into the dark.
The white dragon watched them go. His claws dripped black ichor. But ahead of him, glowing faintly in the abyssal dark, was the rift they had come from. A jagged wound in the ocean floor, pulsing with that sickly light.
He swam toward it.
The rift swallowed him whole. For a heartbeat, there was nothing. No light, no sound, no sensation but the cold and the dark and the weight of another world that was not his own. Then the corrupted ocean of the other side exploded into view, and he saw what had become of this place.
The water was black. Viscous, oily black of corruption. Almost no light penetrated here. No life stirred, except for the things that had been twisted into something unrecognizable.
And waiting for him, arranged in a circle, were dozens more of the corrupted orcas. They had been expecting him.
The white dragon hung in the center of their formation, his white scales the only point of brightness in the endless dark. His wings unfurled. His claws extended. His eyes swept across the ring of monsters, counting, calculating.
Somewhere in this dead ocean, a rift core pulsed, and he was going to find it.
Not to destroy it.
At least not yet.
He looked at the far surface of the water, searching for something blacker than the corrupted ocean, then closed his eyes.
He charged forward.
***
The opening notes of Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony drifted through the mansion.
Its opening bassoon theme were low and trembling, climbing slowly into the strings, filling the cavernous space. The music wound through the marble corridors, slipped beneath closed doors, curled around the crystal chandeliers that hung cold and unlit from the ceiling.
And somewhere, from a distant wing of the mansion, a woman was screaming.
The sound came in waves. Hoarse, broken. It sounded as if she had been screaming for a very long time and could no longer remember how to stop. It rose and fell beneath the symphony like a second melody, a counterpoint of pure human agony woven through Tchaikovsky’s elegy.
The servants had long since learned not to hear it. The guards stationed at the perimeter had been chosen for their ability to ignore it.
Only the music acknowledged the screaming, and only in the way that sad things acknowledged other sad things.
Arzhen Vasiliev stood in the center of the foyer.
His posture was perfect. His suit was immaculate, deep charcoal, tailored to his frame, the fabric so dark it seemed to absorb the pale morning light filtering through the frosted windows.
His hands were clasped loosely behind his back. His tiger ears were unusually relaxed. His tail hung still behind him, the tip barely brushing the polished marble floor.
He was looking up.
The mansion’s foyer was built to intimidate. A split staircase of white marble curved upward on both sides, its balustrades carved with scenes from Vasiliev family’ humble history.
The ceiling soared three stories overhead, and everything in this space was designed to remind visitors of their insignificance in the face of Vasiliev power.
But Arzhen wasn’t looking at any of that. He was looking at the landing between the two staircases, at the great wall that dominated the center of the house.
A rectangular object hung there, imposingly draped in a curtain of dark blue velvet. The fabric had been hung with care, its folds arranged to conceal the object entirely, and it had remained that way since yesterday. Waiting. Waiting for this moment.
The symphony swelled. The distant screaming hitched and fell silent for a breath before beginning again. Arzhen raised his hand and signaled.
Two men, dressed in the somber uniforms of household staff, stepped forward from the shadows beneath the staircase. They grasped the velvet curtain by its edges and drew it aside.
The painting emerged from beneath the fabric.
It was massive, twelve feet high and eight feet wide, its frame carved from dark wood and gilded with gold leaf that caught the muted light and glowed softly.
The talented artist had worked from photographs, scarce, but enough and the result was breathtaking. Cecilia stood in the center of the canvas, her blonde hair cascading over bare shoulders, her blue dress catching an imagined breeze.
Behind her, Arzhen was posed with one hand resting gently on her hip, his chin tilted down toward her, his expression soft.
Their faces held the ghost of a smile, a smile shared between two people who had no secrets from each other.
The background was abstract, a wash of gold and rose and pale blue that suggested dawn. The brushwork was exquisite. It was the portrait of a perfect marriage.
Arzhen stared at the painting. The symphony poured its sorrow into the marble halls. The distant screaming continued its endless counterpoint. And he stared at the painted face of the woman.
Tap—tap.
Footsteps.
Igor appeared at his side, his face lowered, his eyes fixed on the floor. In his hands, he carried a tablet, sleek and dark, its screen glowing with whatever information he had been sent to retrieve. He extended it toward his master without a word.
Arzhen accepted the tablet.
Boom! The french horn and the drum percussion jumped at the same time at the eleventh minute of the first movement of the symphony.
His eyes, which had been dreamy and distant, sharpened as they scanned the contents of the screen.
A gentle smile bloomed across his features. Soft, almost childlike in its hope, utterly at odds with the screaming that still echoed through the halls and the sudden burning energy of the symphony.
"With this..." He whispered quietly, reverently, on the verge of having everything he had ever wanted. His thumb traced the edge of the tablet, and his smile deepened. "She’ll finally return to me, right?"