Chapter 65 The Veiled Oracle
They hadn’t made it fifty yards into the catacombs before the world went sideways.
It started with a flutter, like a skip in a heartbeat, or a stutter in the light. The stone tunnel flickered and warped, ancient runes bleeding blue fire, the echoes of fleeing prisoners turning into an insect buzz. Then the air thickened, and the gravity of the world re-centered itself in Daisy’s skull.
She stopped, braced against the wall as a pressure wave rolled over them, thick and sweet as syrup. Samuel grunted, staggered, and fell to his knees. The first row of ex-prisoners behind him dropped in a domino, hands clutching heads or spasming in fitful bursts.
Eleanora resisted a second longer, her face a mask of contempt, before she, too, crumpled. Her sword clattered on the old stone and skittered away into the dark.
Daisy blinked. For a second, everything was muffled. Not just the sound, her blood felt distant, as if she was outside her body looking in. The spiral on her wrist pulsed a warning, the color shifting from dull red to a furious, living flame.
And then she saw Mira Stone.
The Veiled Oracle, without her veils, stood in the center of the passageway, blocking their only way forward. Her face was nothing like Daisy remembered: the lines of youth and beauty erased, replaced by a lattice of scars and arcane sigils, etched so deep that the flesh shimmered with every move. Her eyes burned blue and gold, set so deep it was hard to tell if she was actually seeing or simply sensing.
“I wondered when you’d find your way here,” Mira said, but the words didn’t come from her mouth. They bloomed full-grown in Daisy’s head, slippery and hard to hold.
Daisy grinned, all fang, and shifted her stance. “I’m surprised you didn’t run.”
Mira tilted her head. “Where would I go? Everything worth having is right here.” She looked at the battered, wailing crowd behind Daisy. “A new city, a new order. The question is, will it be yours or mine?”
Daisy drew on the dragon, hard this time, not just for power but for clarity. The world snapped back into focus, every edge sharp, every scent distinct. Mira’s magic didn’t slide off her scales so much as fail to get a purchase: for every psychic probe or spike of suggestion, there was a diamond edge of draconic will to slice it up and spit it out.
The next attack was a hammer. Daisy saw it before it landed, the way Mira’s hand twitched, and the sigils on her face flared. She braced, letting the pressure hit her full on. The magic crashed, tried to slip under her scales, and rearrange her memories. Daisy watched as her mind’s eye filled with images: her mother’s death, Rose and Mina in a charnel house, Oliver’s smile ripped away as he bled out on the old block.
She blinked, then bit the inside of her mouth until she tasted her own blood. The hallucination faded, replaced by the real world, and by Mira, now surprised and more than a little impressed.
“Interesting,” Mira said, this time aloud. “The dragon’s influence runs deeper than I thought.”
Daisy didn’t wait for round three. She sliced her palm, flicked her wrist, and sent a whip of blood across the corridor. It hardened in the air, a razor ribbon that sliced at Mira’s exposed throat.
Mira moved in a way that made no sense: her body didn’t react, but the whip missed, as if the space she occupied was no longer real. Daisy growled, sent a second whip, then a third, and each time the magic slid off, the air shimmered around Mira like heat off pavement.
Xeris’s mind pressed in. She is like the first hunters. Hunt the mind, not the flesh. If she thinks you’re predictable, she’ll corner you.
Daisy grinned, tasted the blood still hot in her mouth. She let the whips dissipate, then crouched low, channeling her energy into the spiral at her wrist. The old blood-magic patterns surfaced, rewriting themselves over her skin in a language she barely understood, but it felt right. Each sigil was a lock, each drop of blood a key.
Mira bared her teeth. “Cute trick. But if you really wanted to impress me, you’d show your true form.”
“Only if you go first,” Daisy said.
Mira obliged. She flicked her hand, and the air filled with shards: memories, ghosts, fragments of voices and faces. For a second, Daisy heard every scream that had ever echoed in the city, felt the hunger of every child that had died in the dark, tasted the despair of a million unmarked graves.
But for each phantom, Daisy let the dragon answer. For every scream, there was fire; for every sorrow, a hunger that turned it to fuel. She turned the onslaught into a furnace, stoking her own power higher with every fresh pain.
Behind her, Samuel writhed, still clutching his head. Eleanora crawled, hand over her eyes, dragging herself toward her sword. The ex-prisoners were a wall of moans, most unable to move.
Daisy summoned another blood construct, this time a shield, but not for herself, for Samuel and Eleanora. The blood pooled, then snapped up in a barrier that shimmered like stained glass, the sigils spinning in tight, protective orbits.
Mira’s eyebrows rose, but she only shrugged. “You always were sentimental,” she said, and then ramped up the pressure, sending another lance of pure mind-magic at the shield.
Daisy felt the impact, but the dragon in her laughed it off. Her scales thickened, her senses sharpened. She let herself enjoy the power for a second, then charged.
It was not a fight in any normal sense. It was a collision of intent, a brawl fought in the field where thoughts became violence. Daisy went for the throat, throwing a volley of blood daggers at Mira while feinting left with a psychic feint of her own: she let Mira believe she was going to break, let the surface thoughts scatter, then lashed out with a memory not of her own, but one she’d stolen from Mira’s own past.
A single moment: a child, cold and alone in a ward, staring up at the ceiling and realizing that the world had already ended.
Mira gasped. For a split second, her shields dropped. Daisy sent a spiral of blood directly at her heart.
The impact was tangible. Mira staggered back, one hand pressed to her chest, the other forming a hasty sign in the air. “You bitch,” she hissed, but there was respect in it.
Daisy let herself laugh. “I thought you liked survivors.”
Mira glared, then glanced at the control panel embedded in the wall behind her. Her hand hovered over a single, red switch.
“Last chance,” she said. “Walk away. Take the cattle and go. You’ll have your revolution, and I’ll have what I need.”
Daisy looked back at the crowd of refugees, most barely standing, some still caught in the throes of whatever spell Mira had thrown.
“No deal,” Daisy said.
Mira didn’t hesitate. She slammed her palm on the switch.
The tunnel howled, alarms shrieked, and the world went red. Every pod in the fortress, every last one, even the ones Samuel had already unplugged, hummed to life, pulling on the nearest source of magic. The extraction system was set to overload.
Samuel screamed, the sound high and animal. Eleanora managed to stand, sword in hand, but her skin glowed as red as the pods; she was being drained.
Mira smiled, cold. “Stop me if you can, Daisy. But the prisoners will be drained dry before you succeed.”
Daisy bared her teeth and got ready to bleed.