34. Chapter Thirty-Three
34
Nicholas
H e couldn’t breathe. Pressure weighed upon him. An inky gloom consumed all. Dirt stung his eyes, clogged his nostrils and lungs. He was trapped, encased, buried.
Let me out, Nicholas yearned to scream, but soil filled his lungs, weighed him down. He was a child again, taken, terrified, whimpering in the dark. There were no flames to conjure, no tears to cry, no fear to scream into the endless void. This void took and took, cementing around his flesh, creating a tomb where he would rot for eternity, no more than food for the worms.
Back then, Nicholas did not believe he would survive his capture. Laurent would be sorrowful of the loss of a shade, not a son. He had others that did his bidding, and probably with less fight. He laid there, believing he would never escape, that his life would end before it began and no one would miss him. No one would care. He could scream and scream, but no one listened, and he had never felt so pathetic, so little, so helpless and pointless.
He felt the same now, confined by an earth promising an eternity of silence, but then warmth squirmed in his grasp and he remembered; William. Nicholas lurched for him when Fearworn entered the room. He grabbed William’s hand. The ceiling collapsed. They were dying together. In a way, nothing sounded more beautiful, but Nicholas had never felt so determined to survive, to escape, and he was not that child anymore.
Power singed his veins, shrieking, amplified, ready to burst, then it did. A blast sent Nicholas hurtling from the debris. Chunks of earth rained around him. Snow stung his cheeks and hands. He rolled through it, falling to his hands and knees. He spat soil across bloody snow. Noise pounded his eardrums. Explosions. Gunfire. Screaming.
He blinked the soil away. The battle raged in a field like the end of time. Beast, mortal, and fae tore each other apart. Blood, guts, and limbs scattered the landscape like bursting roots. William strangled a cough at his side, shivering on his back. The dirt made his form hardly visible. Nicholas forced him onto his knees so he could spit up the soil he breathed in, then he took an agonizing deep breath. Charmaine laid beside them, trembling under the falling snow and wiping her face clean. William must have had a hold of her, too.
“Fearworn,” William coughed. “Where…”
The ground trembled. Dirt rose from the hole Nicholas created for their escape. As if a monster lived and breathed beneath the surface, the ground swayed, rising ever higher. Then the soil cracked. Fearworn ascended within a turbulent violet mist that matched the fierce glow of his eyes.
“You, again,” Fearworn said softly, almost kindly. His gaze fell to Charmaine. “You came to steal my creation.”
“She doesn’t belong to you,” William snarled, voice hoarse. He tugged on Charmaine’s arm to hold her against his chest. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head. She tried to speak, but coughed up more dirt instead.
“She was the first. I had many more tests to conduct, experiments to try, and you have ruined her.” Fearworn’s calm expression twisted into a fearsome rage. The skin of his face cracked like broken pottery, revealing vibrant violet lines the same colors as his wide eyes. “You’ve ruined her and now I must try again. I shall try on both of you. You will make wonderful subjects.”
The snow came to life around them, icy tendrils that cut and grabbed. Above them, countless knives formed from scattering snowflakes. They descended like a hale storm. Nicholas raised his hands, creating a pink-tinted shield. The knives shattered, and the tendrils slithered over the shield, searching for a way to break through.
“Find the generals,” Nicholas ordered. “Tell them to do what they must and find as many fae as you can. Order them to fight with me.”
“Fae will not take orders from me,” William argued while slipping Charmaine’s arm over his shoulder. She was on the verge of blacking out.
“They will see my battle with Fearworn if they haven’t already. They will listen.” Nicholas winced from a blast of energy that shook their haven. Fearworn sent another and another, each threatening to break through. “Go. Now!”
“Be careful,” William whispered.
A path opened, letting William and Charmaine stumble out of the shield. The icy tendrils lunged at them. Nicholas released the shield to melt them in a wave of heat. The last he saw of William was his back as he and Charmaine forced their way through the battle. He could think of them no longer. His prey hovered before him, enveloped by a bristling power that sang an eerie tune.
“Do not look at me as if I am not the reflection of your future,” said Fearworn. Lightning danced at his fingertips, a deeper shade than wine. “Speaking from a shade to a shade, this is our glorious end, the path we all must take. One day, you will let go, as I did, and you will find magic like no other.”
Fearworn spoke of temptation, of what Nicholas felt from the moment his abilities came into being. There had always been an energy coursing through the earth beneath his feet, the surrounding air, the water he drank and the food he ate. Everything felt connected to him, somehow. He could reach into the world and pluck at the strings of her heart, make her sing exactly what he wanted, but at a cost.
“I find my current self positively superb company, so pardon me if I do not leap with joy from your comments,” Nicholas replied and commanded flames to lurch at Fearworn.
Lightning crackled in the surrounding storm. The flames flickered into nothing. Lightning broke forth. A jolt pierced Nicholas’ gut. He hurtled through the air and fell, breathless and spasming.
Suddenly, Arden dashed out of the fray, a dagger of harsh vines in each hand. He swiped at Fearworn, who retreated into a pair of vicious jaws. A fae morphed into a wolf tore through the tendons of his ankle, releasing when Fearworn raised a hand. Arden and the wolf, presumably Amos, circled Fearworn, and Nicholas joined them.
“What is the plan here?” Arden licked his crooked lips.
“Exhaust him,” Nicholas replied.
He would not mention how they could close the Scar for a short time. Arden knew of it, having been around Nicholas and Laurent, so when the time came, Nicholas and he would do what they had to. He couldn’t risk Fearworn hearing and thus losing their opportunity. If they wore Fearworn out and he hurried to the Scar to escape, they would have a moment of his surprise upon realizing he had nowhere to go. That small window could be enough, it had to be enough.
After each of Nicholas’ attacks, his kin responded. More and more joined, they swiped, scratched, and stabbed at Fearworn whenever he stumbled or got a smidge too close. His shadowed disciples came to his aid, but bullets rained upon them from the mortal soldiers. Another fell dead at Nicholas’ feet, a gunshot wound through their neck. In the mass of warring bodies, he made out William’s eyes, calculating and watchful, his guardian.
Fearworn held his hands high. The sky lurched down like a crumbling tower, then broke apart in fearsome sparks. Spears of lightning rained from above, stretching far as the eye could see. His enemies and monsters alike fell to the attack.
Nicholas swerved around the assault. Fearworn concentrated above. Violet overtook his eyes. Nicholas sent anything he could: fire, ice, rocks, fallen blades, anything and everything at Fearworn. He narrowly shielded half his body from Nicholas’ attack. Sparks devastated Fearworn’s shoulder, singing the cloth from his left arm and eating the skin from his cheeks. Snarling, he sent that fire back and Nicholas deflected the blaze, leaving it little more than a hot puff of smoke.
Fearworn became the eye of a storm, and the world reacted to his presence. He commanded the elements with such fluidity that Nicholas hardly kept up. He wouldn’t, if not for his kin standing guard. They slipped in when they could, distracting Fearworn for brief moments where Nicholas attacked. The team work helped because Fearworn had slowed down and not one of them was short of breath yet.
In the distance, a Scar shimmered, little more than a single thread peeking out of the cracked earth. Fearworn retreated toward it. Nicholas sent Arden a look, and the fae understood. Arden surged away from the battle in search of the mortal mages. The last attack had to be now. Fearworn was lashing out, desperate against the onslaught of attacks from all angles. His monsters fell in droves, incapable of withstanding long assaults. Most didn’t have the minds for strategy. They did well with unexpected attacks, using their massive forms and fearsome claws to tear soldiers apart, then retreat. Here, there was nowhere to retreat to.
Nicholas kept at Fearworn. He threw everything he could think of. Fearworn’s snarls grew until he was barely more than a growling beast like the creatures he loved to create. Nothing was more frightful than a cornered animal.
Fearworn lashed out in a wave of energy that sent the world to its knees. His shrill shriek, like Charmaine’s, had everyone screaming in agony. Nicholas’ ears rang, a pressure pierced him and sent his thoughts scrambling. The earth shook, breaking apart in jagged points that cut through skin and trapped others behind swollen embankments.
Nicholas hissed when two rocks joined to lock his ankle in place. Another rose at his side. He kicked out of his constraints, then rolled away, cursing when another rock wall rose at his back. The earth cut his back. He pressed his hands to the rocks and commanded them to wither. Scrambling out of the dust, he scarcely avoided being impaled by a final spike springing forward from where his body once laid.
A debrak stormed out of the soldiers. Nicholas couldn’t dodge its wide swing. The beast caught him and squeezed tight. He screamed and summoned a blast to tear through the beast’s forehead. The debrak fell, and Nicholas shoved his way out of its grip. He thought himself safe until the hair stood along the back of his neck. Fearworn hovered nearby. He pointed his hand at Nicholas’ back.
“Nicholas!” William screamed and shoved him.
Nicholas fell. A siege of violet light threw William aside.
Nicholas tasted blood that did not belong to him. Time stopped. The world faded. All he saw was William’s limp body drowning in red snow. His right arm laid a foot away. His right leg was nowhere to be seen. Cracked bone peeked through ruined flesh, hanging like loose strings from an old coat.
His William didn’t move and wouldn’t respond to his name no matter how wildly Nicholas called it. On hands and knees, he scrambled to his wicked. Blood caked his fingers, William’s blood, hot and sticky. The flesh along the right side of his neck and cheek hung like wet paper, hair laying in clumps of blood.
Nicholas’ kin called for him. Their desperate pleas meant nothing, not as he held William, heard the blood gurgling in his throat. His eyes peered ahead at nothing. He coughed and a spittle of crimson stained his lips. Each breath came smaller than the last, strangled, scarce, eerie.
They needed a healer, but moving William resulted in a high-pitched whine. Nicholas cursed when his fingers felt more bone peeking out of William’s back. Fearworn tore him apart. They couldn’t move. None heard William’s cries for a healer, even when he knew mortal magic could not fix this, either. William would die and he could not stop that.
Fae, with all their natural talent and power, were helpless in the face of death. Mortals could spare one another. Fae couldn’t. They couldn’t spare any they cared about. They could glamor, lie, trick, and steal, but when the time came that they needed power more than anything, it laughed in the face of their desires.
“Why would you do that?” Nicholas croaked, wondering if what he felt on his cheeks were tears.
William did not answer. He just gazed at him, silent and shivering.
Whimpering, Nicholas pressed their foreheads together, willing William’s heart to continue beating. “Why would you risk your life for me? I’m just a tool to kill Fearworn, to warm your bed at night. You shouldn’t have. You are a fool.”
“You are the fool,” William croaked. “You are so much more than that to me… trouble.”
Then his eyes closed and chest stilled.
“Do not leave.” Nicholas’ words came out panicked and choked. “Wait for me.”
Nicholas would give anything, anything, anything , to spare William. He would find time’s strings and unfurl them. He would chase after Death itself and pluck William’s soul from their bitter grasp. He would tear this world apart.
Power slithered beneath Nicholas’ skin, whispering and promising the end he desired. He always said no, always strangled that indescribable need, but today, he accepted. He gave in. For William.