Chapter Thirty-Nine #3
Both clerics answering in the affirmative was enough to release Malachi in all his chilling glory.
He roared and a maelstrom of shadows hurtled toward Rishaud.
A blast of golden light collided with it.
When void and solar magic—lethal darkness and deadly light—clashed together between the two kings, the magical recoil sent violent land tremors shuddering across the field.
Kadeesha widened her stance to remain upright.
As their magics slammed into each other over and over, Malachi raised his void scimitars and advanced toward Rishaud, not wanting to give the Hyperion king time to signal his armies to attack, all while emitting a furious war cry and sending a bolt of shadows shooting into the sky.
Kadeesha heard the gallops of mountain horses and the thunderous boot thuds of the Apollyon army obeying their king’s order to attack.
Rishaud sent a light flare into the air, issuing his own order.
While both armies surged forward, Malachi and Rishaud circled each other, each king ruthlessly assessing their opponent.
As badly as she wanted to bear witness to Rishaud’s demise, Kadeesha didn’t remain on the ground.
The Aether squadron Rishaud had brought with him flew toward the palace, their kongamatos already spewing flames along their flight path.
Her Nkita squadron zoomed toward their fellow Aetherfolk to intercept the flyers, and Kadeesha mounted Zahzah to help her sisters in the air.
Their mission was to disarm and disable.
The flyers and kongamatos they’d meet in battle did not have the same objective, though, which meant her sisters would be fighting for their lives against an enemy who sought to annihilate them, all while being hobbled.
For the first time, she and her squadron would engage in a battle that she wasn’t positive they’d come out of with the full thunder intact.
AS ZAHZAH BANKED a hard left to avoid a column of flames hurtling at her head, Kadeesha realized she had no clue how to actually achieve her mission.
A quick look around at her squad told her none of them did either and the sight of them all barely staying alive while ever on the defensive lodged her heart in her throat.
A scarlet-scaled kongamato flew at them from the right, its massive wings beating against the air. It rivaled Zahzah in size and its flyer was a decorated squadron general. “You don’t have to do this!” Kadeesha yelled at the Aether male. “This isn’t your fight! Take your flyers and leave!”
Flaming aether fire shot toward Kadeesha in answer as the scarlet kongamato kept up its furious approach.
The war serpent’s teeth were bared and its enormous jaws were angled toward Zahzah’s neck.
Zahzah read the kongamato’s intent without Kadeesha needing to relay it.
Kadeesha threw up a protective wall of aether flames in front of her that the enemy fire bounced off of at the same time that Zahzah dove beneath the scarlet kongamato’s snapping jaws.
The scarlet kongamato dove after them. Its teeth ripped into Zahzah’s side and tore a chunk from it.
Zahzah’s screech rent the air as fire erupted in Kadeesha’s right shoulder.
She didn’t need to glance down to know that her momentary lapse in focus had caused her to be hit.
She blinked past the agony tearing her shoulder apart and gripped Zahzah’s reins harder to stay seated in her saddle as Zahzah cut to the right, shot higher into the sky, and hurtled downward fast as lighting as the scarlet war serpent bolted upward toward her at the same speed.
If you collide, she warned Zahzah in case she was lost to battle lust.
I know. I’ve got you and our little one, Zahzah bit off.
Kadeesha gripped the reins tighter. A split second before the enormous war serpents would’ve collided, Zahzah banked a hard right, then pivoted around and snapped out at the scarlet kongamato. “No!” she screamed out loud as Zahzah’s teeth sank into the kongamato’s neck.
It is unavoidable with this one! Zahzah’s response was laced with misery.
She released the kongamato’s neck and sank her teeth into it again.
Like a winged cobra, Zahzah struck over and over and over again, spewing blood across the sky.
Zahzah’s head and Kadeesha’s entire body were covered in it by the time the other kongamato went limp and dropped out of the sky, taking its flyer with it.
Kadeesha looked on in horror as the pair plummeted downward.
A boom cracked out when the war serpent crashed against the ground.
The sound reverberated through Kadeesha, and she realized how na?ve she’d been to think they could engage in battle against their brethren and not accrue any casualties.
A high-pitched scream caught her attention and she jerked her focus to the left because she knew the voice behind that scream.
Aether fire ate away at Rassa’s midsection while her kongamato—an emerald-green beast named Thilde—was at the mercy of a blue war serpent that was tearing gaping hole after gaping hole in his side.
Get to them! she screamed at Zahzah. The giant kongamato streaked through the air but they were far enough away that ice solidified in Kadeesha’s veins over the prospect that they wouldn’t reach them in time to intervene.
She focused on the flyer who sat atop the blue kongamato.
He was the one who’d engulfed Rassa in aether flames and was killing her slowly.
As she neared, she heard him bellowing, “Traitor!” It was then that something inside Kadeesha snapped.
She stopped giving a shit about sparing lives.
None of it mattered if her sisters died in the attempt.
The world narrowed to Rassa’s and Thilde’s anguish and the two beings who were inflicting it.
Kill the war serpent. I’ll deal with the flyer, she told Zahzah.
She flung an aether bomb toward the fae, who was so focused on Rassa that he never turned to see it coming.
It collided with the side of his head and exploded on contact.
Zahzah rammed into the side of the blue kongamato, knocking it away from Thilde.
Her aether flames wouldn’t harm a kongamato, only mildly annoy them, just as the magic that bound Aether fae and kongamato as war serpent and flyer wouldn’t allow a kongamato’s flames to truly harm an Aether fae.
But kongamatos could incinerate other kongamatos if they chose to and Zahzah breathed out a wave of red flames that roiled over the blue war serpent before it had time to return its own assault.
The blue war serpent screeched in the sky and Zahzah circled around to its front and sank her talons into its right eye. Then she scored them across its neck.
It stopped screeching.
Its wings ceased beating frantically.
It hurtled toward the ground.
Kadeesha swiveled in the saddle to frantically check on Rassa and Thilde. Thilde’s wing beats had slowed. He looked like he was fighting with all he had to remain in the sky.
And Rassa … Kadeesha killing the other Aether fae had extinguished the fire, but Rassa was slumped forward, her limp and badly burned body draped over Thilde’s neck, a hole burned through her chest in the region of her heart.
Ask Thilde if Rassa is dead. Merely projecting the words to Zahzah was like a hatchet to the gut.
She is, Zahzah said tenderly after the span of a few breaths that felt like they’d stretched on for an eternity. Grief cracked through her. Later. She’d feel it all later. Right now, she had to keep herself and the rest of her sisters alive.
Ask Thilde if he has the strength to fly Rassa’s body somewhere safe and keep her hidden until we can get to her.
They were among the most awful words Kadeesha had ever needed to speak.
A moment after Kadeesha sent the question to Zahzah, Thilde let out a mournful, ear-piercing screech and took off toward the eastern skies.
All around them, their squadron and Rishaud’s continued to wage a fierce battle in the sky. Right then and there she resolved that she would lose no one else—and she would not feel bad for the decision either.
Tell the rest of the kongamatos to disseminate to the Nkita the altered orders, she told Zahzah. Attack with deadly force. It is unavoidable, and the chief priority is to lose no one else.
Kadeesha finally understood what she hadn’t at first. They weren’t only fighting against their own folk.
They were fighting against the sheer amount of control Rishaud now wielded over every individual within the Six Kingdoms—a control that had turned the opposing squadron into his agents of destruction.
And there was no place amongst faekind for mercy when savagery reigned.