Chapter 50 #2
My own fear didn’t matter in the face of that, my own reasons for needing to run from here falling away as I realised I had something so much greater to achieve here.
It wasn’t my miserable existence I needed to fear for.
It was that of the man who had become my whole world since the moment he took charge of my destiny by claiming my coin for himself.
I was on my feet in a flash of movement, breaking into a run and drawing my daggers as I placed myself between Drake and the servant of ill tidings who stared his way with a greed I knew could only equal something terrible.
“No, Kyra!” Drake barked. “He’s mine. Give me a sword.”
My postured tightened but the magic which bound me to Drake’s will forced my compliance and I forged him a sword while cladding his body in golden armour for good measure, not once moving my focus from Kalir even though he seemed to have forgotten us entirely.
The man who had once been the royal Prophet to an emperor whose name I couldn’t recall stepped up to the sarcophagus with a rolling chant building in his throat.
Kalir placed his palm down on the lid of the stone sarcophagus just as a furious roar escaped Drake’s lips, and I gasped as he broke into a sprint with his sword raised and murder flickering in his dark eyes.
“ Wait ,” I begged as a thunderclap of power echoed off of the stone walls, but Drake was beyond listening to my pleas, his own fury taking control of him as he leapt up onto the sarcophagus and swung the sword straight for Kalir’s neck.
The sharp blade cut through flesh and bone in a blow powerful enough to sever the chanting man’s head from his neck. But instead of cleaving him apart, a blast of power exploded from him, and Drake was hurled away while the wound to Kalir’s neck healed as if it had never even existed at all.
I cried out as I flickered in and out of my corporeal form, appearing at Drake’s side in a swirl of purple smoke as he slammed into the wall and the bones of the fallen Tirbeshi Warriors clattered down on top of him.
The moment the bones fell from their place against the wall, they began to move, skeletal hands grasping at Drake’s limbs and skulls gnashing their teeth as they rolled towards him.
“Fire, Kyra,” Drake demanded as he kicked out at a skull which was rolling closer to him.
A blast of raging blue flames exploded all around us, incinerating the bones and freeing him from their attention.
“We need to run,” I urged as Drake made a move towards Kalir again, my hand snapping out to grasp his arm.
“No. That thing dies for what he did me. He locked me up and scarred my flesh while I watched countless others die beneath his needle. I won’t let that nightmare draw breath a moment longer.” Drake yanked his arm free of my hold and I cried out a warning as he ran for Kalir again.
The chanting grew in pace, the walls starting to vibrate with the sound of the words I couldn’t understand, and an unimaginable power began to swell within the chamber of death surrounding us.
Drake bellowed a challenge as he leapt for Kalir again, this time aiming for an arm and bracing against the clap of power which blasted from the Prophet’s flesh as his blade carved into it.
He swung his sword again and again, aiming for Kalir’s limbs and hacking at them until both an arm and a leg lay severed on the floor, the Prophet’s blood washing over the white stone of the tomb and even through those injuries, he didn’t stop chanting.
As Drake swung his sword again, an echoing boom sounded and he was thrown back once more, colliding with me as I shot forward to help him, the two of us tumbling away across the floor.
“What is he?” Drake hissed as he shoved to his knees again, the light glowing from his tattoos brightening while Kalir’s body reformed itself once more.
“Death,” I replied, a ring of truth to the word which no one could deny. “We need to get out of here.”
Drake looked like he would rather pull his own teeth from his mouth than turn tail and flee from this place of blood and ruin, but as the sound of the chanting grew louder and the thing in that tomb made the walls tremble with its power, I knew it was the only choice.
“No. I need a sword which can destroy whatever the fuck he is,” he snarled, and I swore as my magic followed his command, imbuing his blade with some deep power I didn’t fully understand.
Drake shoved to his feet once more, hefting the sword in his grip and racing back into the fight.
He leapt around the sarcophagus and swung his sword at Kalir again, his tattoos glowing so brightly they were almost blinding.
As another wave of power crashed through the room, it slammed straight into the Prophet, and he absorbed every bit of it.
Drake’s movements took on a stunning fluidity which was utterly breathtaking, almost seeming to dance through the air while rushing at Kalir.
His sword arm moved so fast that it was hard to follow its passage as he hacked into the Prophet, staining the white of his robes with blood as an ungodly shriek escaped his lips.
I ground my teeth as I was forced to watch, my power seeming useless to me in that moment while I was trapped, awaiting the will of my master. I wanted to fight too. I wanted to give myself to the movements of battle and feel the spill of blood on my skin.
Kalir whipped a blade of his own from within his robe and blocked the next blow, a hiss escaping his scarred lips as he was forced to turn and fight.
“You wield the power of the Esworn,” he snarled, parrying another blow before Drake whirled around and cut a bloody line into his back before he could block it again.
I flinched at that name, hating all it implied; that I was less than Fae, unworthy of my own name, unworthy of anything other than servitude.
“No. I wield the power of vengeance,” Drake said in reply, ducking beneath a strike of Kalir’s blade and thrusting his sword up and into his chest with a furious cry.
Kalir’s mouth parted, blood spilling from his lips as he gasped like a fish out of water and I sucked in a sharp breath as I stared at him, watching his death play out right before me while my magic buzzed and tingled like crazy within my flesh and my heart thrashed with the desire to join this fight.
Drake shoved the sword in harder, coming nose to nose with the man who had scarred his body with the marks of the lost gods, grinning at him wickedly with carnage flaring in his dark eyes.
Kalir continued to gasp and tremble as his life spilled out of him, but a creeping coldness began to work its way up my spine, and I shivered as I looked around for the source of it.
A heavy pulse began to throb through the air and a wild shriek sounded within my own skull a second before the dying Prophet slammed his hand against Drake’s chest and dug his fingers into his skin.
“I claim you, vessel,” Kalir hissed, blood spraying from his lips and I screamed as I saw this for what it was. A withered soul clinging to a false illusion of life while seeking out a body to house itself in for its true resurrection.
“Let me help!” I screamed. “Just say yes.”
Drake’s eyes moved to mine just as Kalir’s body fell slack at his feet like a puppet with its strings cut, and the dark essence of his spirit burst free of the bloodstained corpse.
The darkness which remained of Kalir swept up into the air above Drake’s head and fear slammed into me endlessly as I saw that wicked fate coming for him, the fate which Kalir had been planning when he’d marked Drake’s skin all those years ago.
A Tirbeshi Warrior whose body he could steal for his own, strong enough to withstand the presence of a twisted thing such as him.
“Yes,” Drake called, his wide eyes fixed on the shadow as it shot towards him, and he threw his sword up even as he blindly put his trust in me to save him and my heart swelled at his belief in me.
My body fell apart and I shifted in the blink of an eye, becoming a cloud of purple smoke which billowed across the chamber and got between Drake and Kalir’s spirit as the dark presence shot towards him.
A scream vibrated through my being as I felt the impact of his twisted soul crashing into mine, but the magic in me swelled, forcing him back and refusing to allow him to pass through me to get to my master.
Kalir roared as he flung the full force of whatever stolen power he had at me, trying to break through and steal my master’s body to use for himself, and my entire being vibrated with the energy required to fight him off.
But Kalir wasn’t like me. He might have been powerful and knotted up with magic he had stolen from the gods over the countless years he’d spent clinging to this semblance of life, but the immortality they had once granted all of us wasn’t a gift they offered out anymore, and he wasn’t bound to their power the way I was.
I had been shackled and chained, branded and remade.
The magic of the gods had been driven into me so forcefully that I’d had to give up my Fae body and feel every agonising moment of them remaking it around the cracked remnants of my soul to claim the power I now owned.
I wasn’t some scrap of a soul clinging to a facade of immortality.
I was immortality. Which meant that he was no match for me.
Drake yelled a battle cry as he swung his sword, decapitating the body which Kalir had now abandoned before hacking into it again and again, turning the flesh into little more than a bloody lump of meat while I fought to overpower his spirit, making sure Kalir had nothing else to return to within this place.
“I banish you to Hellravia!” My voice echoed off of the bone-lined walls as my power flared. The purple smoke making up my being engulfed Kalir’s soul, absorbing his attacks and taking the pain of every strike without so much as flinching.