The Alchemy of Sorrow by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crimson Fox Publishing

Loena could dismiss the bloodbane all she wanted. Now that they were all huddled in the cellar, tension was etched on every face—including hers. It broke when his father shut the cellar door with a loud thud, and everyone jumped.

Then Lakyn, Danton’s only brother, challenged him to a game of cards, and as with every sky-fire Danton could remember, his family settled in for a long, watchful, and ultimately uneventful night.

Out here in the country, bloodbane pulled through the veil between the human world and the abyss usually ran away. Most of the time, the only evidence that one had spawned was a missing chicken or an upturned water trough.

It was worse in the cities. When tears in the veil appeared—as they did everywhere, by the thousands, during the annual sky-fire when the veil was at its weakest—the bloodbane that broke through had nowhere to go. Driven mad by walls and buildings on every side, all but the most benign caused property damage, and the gods forbid they run into people.

And the worst of them? They just wanted carnage.

So he’d heard from the stories traders told when passing through. He’d lived here in the endless plains of Arlana his entire life, so he didn’t know personally.

Lakyn snapped his fingers in front of Danton’s face. “Come on, it’s your turn.”

Danton blinked. “Oh. Sorry.” He set a card down, not paying attention to his move. He shuddered, an unseasonable chill running through him; the cellar was cooler, but not that cold. Then he began to sweat.

Temoth. He hoped he wasn’t getting sick.

Suddenly, Loena shrieked. Danton didn’t turn, expecting she’d lost a pin from her hair or some such nonsense, but when his mother gasped and called his father’s name, he paid attention.

He turned and saw it.

A dark slash rent the air near the year’s first harvests, in front of the shelves and to the right of the door. The tear grew longer and wider as he watched, as if giant, invisible hands were ripping the space in two. The baskets of peas and early potatoes were a dark, distorted blur behind the hole, and black flames licked out of it.

“What’s that?” one of his younger sisters, Kija, asked, her voice shaking.

“Oh, gods,” another sister, Kataryn, said. “Papa? Is that—?”

Their father was already striding toward the cellar door, giving the tear a wide berth. “Out, get out—all of you—now!”

Then Danton understood. Panic sent him in the wrong direction, backing into a far corner rather than the now-open cellar door.

“But,” Loena protested, “it’s the sky-fire!”

“It’s a tear! Get out! Get out!” their father shouted, which was unusual for him. He never yelled. Their mother was the yeller in the family.

The tear now stretched from floor to ceiling, and no sooner did his father finish speaking than the first rat emerged from the hole.

Not just any rat. It was a bloodrat, a demon rat from the abyss—twice the size of the largest rat he’d ever seen, with white, pupilless eyes and a mouth lined with razor-sharp teeth.

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