Salt Storm: The Salted Series: Episodes #31-35 by Galvin, Aaron (top 5 books to read TXT) 📗

Kellen’s eyes widened upon seeing what he previously thought of as a true reality begin to melt away when Phantasos relinquished the environmental hallucination she had conjured.

Gone were the plates and whale carcass. The legion of Sancul vanished with the feasting too, each of them like ghosts banished by a sudden light. So too did the cavernous room that housed them all begin to fade away, revealing the truer one within. Like a massive, singular curtain being drawn, the illusion of the arena-like room changed and revealed the reality of the Cavern of Somnus.

At the room’s center, where the fictitious Blue Whale calf had been lain, now Kellen saw Hypnos stretched upon a bed of onyx stone. Surrounded by bioluminescent lanterns, bathed in an eerie and pale, greenish light, Hypnos trembled with the same continued seizures he had endured since leaving Orphan Knoll. The former, fiery glow in the mute Sancul’s eyes had lessened from what Kellen recalled in his dreams. But, when the Sancul twins hauled their stunned prize nearer toward the onyx bed, Kellen swore the blazing in Hypnos’s eyes grew stronger for each passing moment.

Kellen too began to seize, then, the whole of his body trembling in equal measure to that which Hypnos endured.

The Sancul twins bore him ever onward to a second bed of polished stone. An exact replica in shape and size to that which Hypnos lay upon, the empty bed was carved of gleaming white marble. The heading of it had been placed in opposite of Hypnos, all so that whoever lay upon the white marbled bed might be near enough for the pair to reach out and touch the other.

Dragged to hover at the side of Hypnos, Kellen saw one stranger among the rest; a she-squid who loomed over the heads of both beds. Tattooed runes and silver circlets adorned her forearms. A rubied pendant gleamed of darkish sorcery around her neck. The pendant stood out clearest of all in Kellen’s mind, the richness of its color and shimmering nature in stark contrast to the bone-white clippings that clung to the black and tattered garb worn by the she-squid witch. If she had any hair, it had all been gathered beneath a black hood that was shaped like a triangular shark fin. Mesh netting covered the entirety of her face, affording her full and total anonymity.

Kellen felt her hungry stare upon him all the same. Where he had once imagined Nyx as a dark sorceress during his healing ceremony, he imagined the one swimming before him now as a necromancer. The Mother of Masks . . . Kellen thought when the masked she-squid’s husky voice carried over all.

Here, my children, she motioned to the empty, white-marbled bed. Lay him here, beside your father.

Why? Kellen’s mind swam with the thought. Wh-what’s happening to me?

As the Sancul twins obeyed, Kellen’s body screamed at him to fight with what little strength remained to him. For all his attempts, he could summon nothing of his former strength, swearing the connection between his thoughts and body had been severed by the poison working through him. The world spun faster around him, and he blinking to maintain his hold on his environment as Phantasos and Phobetor lay him upon the empty bed to continue seizing.

The poison had removed Kellen’s control of his head too. His neck muscles no longer supported him either, the icy scorch continuing in its swift path to take over his extremities also.

Phantasos appeared behind him, her frigid hands touching the sides of Kellen’s head and forcing him to look upward. It seemed to Kellen that the world was turned upside down then, the view above him like staring up into a reverse funnel.

There were more Sancul looking down on him from the above too.

Perched atop an isolated crag, her tentacles sprawled over the rock face like living vines, Black Keerie sneered at him from afar. The Salt dragon, Phobetor, swam up to join her also. His elven-like face carried none of the malice that Keerie’s did, nor any real emotion at all for the ongoing proceedings.

Kellen knew better than to call out for either of their aid.

Above them, Kellen sighted a pair of centered doors that looked as though they were crafted into the stony, black ceiling. A hazy, greenish fog of biolumiscent light surrounded both doors too, as if someone meant to highlight them for Kellen to look upon. Where the doorway that Hypnos lay beneath glistened of bone-white, coral ivory, the door hung above Kellen was liken to a truss of what once may once have been a living reef with colorful sea-grass adornment.

All were long wilted now, the remains all dark and black and dead.

Kellen had little time to study the make of either door.

The Mother of Masks swam above him, creating a current of cold water to sweep over his face before she alighted down on the opposite side of him to better face her daughter too. While Phantasos held Kellen’s head in place, the Mother of Masks reached out with a pale and withered hand, running her skeletal fingers over his brow, muttering all the while.

Wh-what is this? Kellen dared to ask of her. Who are you?

The Mother of Masks gave him no answer, but her mutterings continued in a harsh, foreign tongue that Kellen held no knowledge of ever having heard before. When she touched him again, a seizing, cold fit wracked his body.

What’s happening to me?! He demanded to know.

Again, the Mother of Masks refused him.

The answer came from another in attendance; a descending demon from the above that Kellen had not previously seen watching him from the shadows between the doors.

Kanaloa, Kellen cried out as the elderly Sancul came to rest at his side. Help me.

We are, favored one, said Kanaloa. Soon the true Doom-Bringer shall finally awaken within you to lead us in the prophecied ascendency with body and mind both newly renewed and restored, the elderly Sancul patted him upon the shoulder. All thanks to