Ink And Bone Novels & Stories

Frank shouldered past me, and I watched without entering as he popped open old coffins and caskets, rummaging through different devices and supplies. When he came out, he had a strange compass and an old bottle in his hands. He shook the bottle at me with a toothy grin. “Blood of Christ. Want a sip?” He knew as well as I did that I couldn’t drink that if I wanted to, but I snatched it out of his hand anyway. “The sun’ll be up soon. This is staying in the back of the el camino with me until nightfall so I know you’re not getting sloshed behind the wheel.”

There was a bedside table next to her with a glass of water and a bucket next to the bed. "Hello," her voice came out in a cracked whisper. "Hello," she said even louder. "Is anyone there!? Can anyone hear me!? Please. I need help!" she said as she started to cry. This was real, and she had no memory of how this happened. How long had she been here now. Did she wake up prior to this and do the same thing? She looked down at her ankle, which burned the most. It was raw, and it looked like burnt flesh all around. She felt the metal around her ankle, and it burned to the touch. She was being captive with silver. Is that what was making her so weak?

She watched the magic with deep, unfiltered suspicion. "The clay binds to the bone," Irina answered without looking up. She scooped the heavy, steaming mass of clay out of the bowl. "It forces the cartilage and the flesh to reshape themselves to the exact mold. Once it sets, it does not wash off. It does not fade." Irina turned around. She held the steaming grey mass in her bare hands. She looked down at Kael. Kael was lying on his back. The healer was still pressing his bloody hands against Kael’s broken neck. Kael’s chest heaved. He stared up at my mother, his eyes wide, manic, and completely terrified.

I would come back to him. Julian rose to his feet, swaying. He stumbled to the corner and wrapped both hands around the heavy steel pipe. He closed his eyes. All he could see was me carrying him through the rain. He clenched his jaw, raised the pipe high above his head, and swung it down with every ounce of strength left in his body -- straight into his own left kneecap. *CRACK.* The sickening, brittle snap of shattering bone echoed through the tiny basement. Blinding pain ripped through his entire body. His kneecap was smashed to pieces. His lower leg twisted at a grotesque, unnatural angle.

The ink did not touch her wrist like a liquid; it hit her bone like a cut. The hard blue-steel nibs of her father’s fingers ripped through the salted meat of Elara’s left arm, pushing their cold drafting fluid straight into her radial artery. This was not the fixative from the lower archive chambers nor the green treasury voltage from the maritime bureaus. This was the Primary Concentrated Baseline, a mineral-rich indigo that Sovereign Queen Eleanor had imported from eastern salt mines.

If the bone heals, then a wound is easier to deal with. Grasping at the ground and digging my nails into earth and stone to try and hold in the pain. Kaelin administers his power in a larger dose, with a brighter, blinding glow, until I feel like I might throw up and start seeing black spots in my vision. The pain is immense, like he’s stripped my skin off and is slow roasting my bones on an open fire. The smell of burning bone and flesh fills my senses, and I am hit with a sudden wave of light-headed darkness that makes me keel over and gag.

But a long while later, Vasilisa announced the result. "It's just what you'd expect," she said wearily, sitting back. "I can't be sure of telling if we have got the right ingredients, but so far, I am sure of four. The feathers and the quicksilver are easy. The minerals are easy. But these little brown things can be flyclubs, and the bright things can be sunfish scales." "Which leaves one thing..." Cassandra said. "The human bone." Vasilisa nodded. "Can we do without it?" Ruslan said, looking as crept out as his cousin. "We have twelves out of thirteen anyway."

An abyss that neither of us knew how to cross. Nina took a deep breath and stepped back, moving her hand, and an object appeared in her other hand, a box made of bones from an animal that no longer existed, and I smiled, understanding that these bones were from some incarnation of mine so long ago that no one there could identify. Nina slightly confirmed my thoughts with a nod and opened the box, and I saw a kind of sand there, but it was of a golden hue, a mix of silver and a soft purple hue, a mix of these three colors that made the sand iridescent.

his sick taunts echo in the hall as I claw my way to my room leaving a trail of blood behind my. The sting of hot metal piercing my skin is one so unimaginable the scream that leaves my mouth is one so horrifying it would scar the devil away only it didn’t because he follows behind me carful not to step on the blood train I'm leaving behind.

The ink on the market nowadays would not carry such a unique scent. Only some old ink, will add ice chips, gold foil and a dozen other precious raw materials when making it, so the fragrance penetrates the muscles and bones, and the slag does not stay in the ink stone. This man was probably a scholar, and not just any scholar. This kind of ink was definitely not available on the market, she would find it familiar, had the two met before? "Have we met before?"