Tongue Eater Preview

Time for the Book 6 Preview! Tongue Eater will be out sometime next month. (Exact date TBA)

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Hugh Stormward wasn’t paying attention to where he was going.

The halls of Skyhold were still mostly empty, save for Havathi corpses and scattered Skyhold patrols. It would be hours yet, if not longer, until the bulk of Skyhold’s population would be let out of the battle shelters, while Skyhold’s seers and patrols hunted for Havathi survivors in the mountains.

Hugh wouldn’t have noticed if there had been entire parades marching through the bloodstained, battle-damaged halls, though. All his attention was focused on a spot in the back of his mind, a connection that wasn’t gone, just… muted. Dull. Unresponsive.

He ignored everything but that bond, just let Sabae pull him along by the hand. 

They didn’t run if anyone was nearby, didn’t want to call any more attention to themselves than they already might have, racing to and from the Council chamber atop Skyhold. When the halls were empty, though, they ran until Hugh’s lungs ached.

Mackerel sent him a note of concern, but Hugh didn’t have the energy to reassure his spellbook. He didn’t have the energy for anything right now.

He just kept poking at the frayed magical connection in his mind, like a tongue prodding a sore tooth.

Just kept hoping to feel something from it. Reassurance. Comfort. Even pain or fear.

Any sign that his… any sign that Kanderon was still alive, still aware.

Anything at all was better than this empty ache.

“Is Mackerel still blocking scrying?” Sabae asked.

Hugh nodded, suspecting that it wasn’t the first time she’d asked.

Then he went back to poking at the connection at the back of his mind.

He didn’t even realize they’d reached the Grand Library, Kanderon’s home, until Sabae gasped.

When Hugh managed to focus, he saw why immediately.

The library was angry.

No. Not angry. Enraged, maybe, or wrathful. Angry wasn’t nearly enough to cover it. 

The endless leagues of shelves along the walls rattled and shook, more books moving at once than Hugh had ever seen before. Lights dimmed and flared seemingly at random, and he could feel the very walls trembling.

Out in the empty central shaft of the library, big enough to fit an entire mountain inside, grimoires and tomes swarmed by the tens of thousands, in great swarms and whirlwinds bigger than Hugh had ever seen in the library before. Ship-sized hovering shelves darted past one another at high speeds, barely avoiding impacts with other shelves moving just as fast. 

And everything in the library was lit with an actinic blue glow from the depths.

“It knows,” Sabae said. “The library knows about Kanderon's death somehow.”

“She’s not dead,” Hugh said automatically.

Sabae gave him a conflicted look, but didn’t say anything.

Hugh let go of Sabae’s hand and stepped forward. Slowly walked to the railing ahead of them, hoping that the blue glow was coming from immense crystal wings, even though he knew it wasn’t.

In the depths of the library, thousands of feet below them, an immense blue cloud boiled and seethed. Colossal crystal gears, axles, and flywheels burned with light, spinning so fast Hugh could hear the screeching and clattering from all the way up here.

Mackerel shuddered nervously and drew closer to Hugh’s side.

“Hugh, do you think you can get us past the Index to Kanderon’s lair?” Sabae asked.

Hugh shrugged, and trudged over to the nearest Index Node. The book was biting and flailing at the air above its podium, even tearing a few of its own pages in distress.

It snapped at him when he reached for it, but before Hugh could react, Mackerel darted out and flared its cover menacingly at the larger book.

The Index Node froze, then slowly settled back down onto its podium.

Hugh dipped the quill on the node’s stand into the inkwell, then wrote in the enchanted book.

We need to get into Kanderon’s lair.

Nothing happened for a moment, then the ink of his letters exploded across the page in angry, jagged tangles. The ink warped and shifted in a visual scream, then simply vanished into the page.

Hugh closed his eyes and took a deep breath. Then another, and a third, and did his best to keep them even and steady.

Then he dipped the quill in the inkwell again.

We need to get into Kanderon’s lair. Please.

The letters bowed and flexed, as if they wanted to shatter as well, but they slowly settled back down.

After a long pause, a single word formed by itself on the page.

hurts

Before Hugh could reply to that, the page ripped itself out of the Index Node. Not cleanly, as it normally would, but slowly and jaggedly. The page levitated into the air, then began folding itself sloppily into an origami golem. 

Hugh thought it might be a bird of some sort, but it was too jumbled and messy to tell.

The origami golem careened wildly side to side as it flew, but eventually steadied itself enough to lead Hugh and Sabae to a gap in the railing.

Nothing happened for a few heartbeats. Finally, a single flagstone flew up from below, corkscrewing drunkenly through the air. Others soon followed, bouncing off one another and flying tomes. 

Instead of the usual seamless flagstone platform, the cobbles came together unevenly, many of them tilted at one angle or another. There were empty spaces where flagstones were simply missing, making the whole construction even less reassuring. 

Hugh stared at it uncertainly, but Sabae didn’t even hesitate before stepping out onto the platform— though she was at least careful to step on the level parts.

Hugh took a deep breath and followed her.

The platform jerked, almost unbalancing them, then began slowly descending. 

Neither of them spoke for the first few hundred feet, but Sabae eventually broke the silence.

“This is probably a stupid question, but how are you doing, Hugh?” Sabae asked.

Hugh smiled bitterly at that. “I don’t think there is such a thing as a good question to ask right now. I’ve, uh… I’ve been better.”

Sabae started to respond, then seemed to think better of what she was about to say. She frowned, shook her head, then wrapped him in a hug.

Hugh hugged her back, and neither of them spoke for at least a dozen floors.

Finally, Sabae extricated herself and looked around. “Why do you think the library is…?” She gestured at the rampaging books flying about. Thankfully, none of them had decided to take umbrage at Hugh and Sabae’s presence.

Hugh surreptitiously wiped at the corners of his eyes before speaking. “It’s the Index. It’s… linked to Kanderon, somehow. I don’t understand how, exactly, but it’s how I pacted with Kanderon through the Index, when we were down in the labyrinth. Kanderon never really explained it to me, but I think it might be based off of lich demesne enchantments and theory. I don’t think it was a proper attempt to become a lich, though. It’s almost like… a mental prosthesis for Kanderon, that extends her mind beyond what was possible before?”

Hugh realized he was rambling, and snapped his mouth shut.

Sabae nodded absently, but kept staring nervously at the seething blue mist as they sank towards it.

At first, Hugh worried that the fog wouldn’t part for them, but finally, as they drew close to it, a narrow whirlpool opened in it. The countless dust-sized grains of Kanderon’s aether crystal that composed the cloud were moving much more quickly and erratically than usual. Several times, the cloud started to constrict towards them before stopping.

Finally, they broke out of the bottom of the cloud. 

Hugh didn’t know what he’d been expecting— for the platforms of Kanderon’s lair to have fallen, or to be cracked and listing at terrible angles— but the lair looked identical to the last time he’d seen it, save for Kanderon’s absence. Nothing was out of place, nothing broken.

He felt irrationally angry at the floating daises for that, but the rage only lasted a few heartbeats before fading away. 

Sabae breathed a sigh of relief as they stepped off the cobblestone platform onto the central crystal dais, then looked around. “Do you remember which of the smaller daises Kanderon took me to last time I was here?”

Hugh nodded, then reached out to the dais with his crystal affinity senses to push magic into the controls that Kanderon had once showed him.

Or tried to, at least. 

His magic seemed to… slip loose of his grip, somehow. His mana poured out of his reservoir, but rather than flowing into the enchantment, just dissolved into the aether.

Hugh tried again, then a third time. On the fourth attempt, he managed to make it flow into the enchantment, and a smaller dais drifted over towards their own.

When the two smoothly came to a stop, just inches away from one another, Hugh and Sabae stepped across, and he started the process of opening the embedded bookshelves for Sabae. There thankfully weren’t many defenses to worry about— Kanderon was paranoid, certainly, but no one else short of a great power should be able to get down here, other than Hugh and Kanderon.

His magic took even longer to work this time, but Hugh didn’t say anything to Sabae, and finally, the bookshelves rose up out of the crystal platform. He just idly stared at one of the shelves as Sabae browsed for what she was looking for. It was filled with the journals of long-destroyed liches, volumes of Kanderon’s personal notes, and treatises on crystal magic. 

One shelf contained only several copies of a single massive tome, each of which looked to weigh more than a small child. You could probably fit two or three copies of Galvachren’s Bestiary inside of one of them.

Galvachren’s Guide to Worlds.

Hugh couldn’t work up the energy to care.

Mackerel, for once, actually behaved himself around other books— Hugh’s spellbook was worriedly focused on Hugh instead.

Finally, after what felt like hours, but was probably only a few minutes, Sabae found the book she was looking for, and they departed Kanderon’s lair.

As they rose up into the mist around the Index once more, Hugh couldn’t help but glance back at the lair once more, hoping unreasonably that Kanderon would be there.

The platforms remained just as empty as before.