جميع فصول : الفصل -الفصل 40

The Great Hall of the Citadel of Whispers was a room made of cold gray stone. The ceiling was so high it disappeared into darkness. The walls had metal baskets with green flames that did not give off much light or warmth. The room was very cold.The First Alpha was a man but he did not walk like one. He moved slowly and deliberately like an animal that knows it is in charge. His old wolf skin coat dragged on the floor behind him leaving a trail of frost. As he got closer to the center of the room the scars on his face and neck started to glow with a light. This was a kind of magic that people used before they built cities or had laws.He stopped a distance from where I was standing. My brothers stood around me ready to protect me. They had their claws out. We were very tense. Malachi stood behind me, his dark tattoos spreading out around my feet like a shield.The old man looked up at me with his blind eyes. But he was not really looking at me, he was looking at the Lunar Circlet that

The First Alpha did not say a word. The ancient warriors of the First Blood knew that words were not needed.With a scary roar the big Varg guards ran down the middle of the Great Hall. They moved fast and heavy, breaking the floor and smashing the windows into a thousand sharp pieces."Hold the line!" Kaelen yelled from the entrance.My big brother came out of the smoke, his sword covered in gray frost. Jaxon in his golden Varg form stopped the first guard and they crashed into each other like a mountain falling. Ryker was fast using his knives to find the spots in the guards old armor.The First Alpha did not look at my brothers. He kept staring at Malachi and me standing on the dais with our crowns casting a long dark shadow."A shared body is still a body, Elowen!" the old man shouted, his voice strong and loud. He stamped his foot and a big crack in the floor shot towards us. "You cannot run away from your family's debt!""We are not running, Grandfather, " I said.My voice was n

The white statue didn't bleed when it cracked. It made a pitched sound—a loud sharp noise that went through my teeth.As the empty space from our hands tore into its geometric center the white-gold lines along its edges didn't melt; they broke into glowing math problems that disappeared into the cold mountain air before they could touch the snow.Its not changing, Malachi shouted over the empty space, his dark wings made of shadow-matter moving to hold our position against the strong wind of collapsing reality. Its recalculating!He was right. The cracks on the statue's surface weren't getting bigger. Instead smaller interlocking triangles of white porcelain were shifting over the wounds sealing the dark ink beneath a fresh layer of clean sterile density.A second beam of light didn't shoot from the center. Instead the air around us began to turn into ice. The idea of distance was being rewritten. One second the statue was fifty yards away; the heartbeat the space between us had shrun

The white-gold Arbiters did not have bodies like we do. They were like boundaries. When they moved closer the space between us did not get smaller because they walked. It was like the space was just erased. One moment they were away three shiny figures against the empty sky. The moment their metal arms were right next to us.The air got so thick it was hard to breathe. It felt like a heavy weight was pushing down on me making my lungs hurt. I felt like I was going to break."Analysis, " a loud voice said. It was the sky talking. The voice was so loud it made my jaw vibrate. "Elowen is mostly made of stuff with a little bit of something special. Malachi is similar. With a different kind of special thing. When we combine them it's like they don't make sense. The system is having trouble understanding it. It's going to try to break them down."The lead Arbiter moved. Its metal arm did not cut me. It changed me. Where it touched my armor the armor did not break. It just fell apart into pi

The Lattice Core was not spinning smoothly like the sun or the Chronos-Weaver. It was. Making a loud noise. Each time it turned it made a snap that pushed heavy air down into the room.The liquid mercury inside the core was. Sending out sharp flashes of light that looked like they were made of silver and white. These flashes were going through the floor like they were made of iron.The voice from the sky said, "You have sixty seconds before the sector is wiped out." The voice was deep. It sounded like it was being torn apart. "We are going to erase all the coordinates. We will get rid of all the living things.""Elowen, Malachi, we need to use the anchor points, " Jaxon said. His big furred Varg body was standing on its own four legs. He was using his body to block one of the white-gold lines that were connected to the core. "I can hold on for forty seconds. You have to break the mercury capsule or everything will go black.""We only need twenty seconds, " I said back to him. My lungs