Chapter 30
Morgana
The ruined stretch out their gray limbs, the wounds they’ve gouged into their own rotten flesh gaping as they scrabble over the sides of the wagon.
One swings her head around toward a cleric, an eye bulging from one socket, the other an empty, oozing hole.
The cleric lifts his hands to cast, but he’s too slow.
She grabs hold of him with clawlike hands and starts to rip at his face, her teeth bared in feral rage.
The ruined do not discriminate. Everyone is their enemy.
Everyone is their prey. They spread out, sprinting after those who flee from them like they’re possessed.
They attack our soldiers and the Temple’s, leaving nothing but mangled bodies and terrified chaos in their wake.
Across the forest, inhuman shrieks tell us more have been let loose.
It’s easy for me to find the darkness this time.
All I have to do is look into the ruined’s rotten faces and see that darkness reflected back at me.
Whoever these people were, they’ve already been lost to ephilin—the drug that offers a crazed, painless state of oblivion to the mind even as the body is destroyed piece by piece.
What I’m doing now is showing them mercy.
As I reach out for the inner spark of the ruined nearest me, I find its light is ashy and trembling, like it’s being doused in water. I snuff it out, and the ruined drops softly to the grass, dead, as easily as if we’ve both released a breath.
I turn my attention to the next, killing one before it can strangle a cleric, snuffing out the life of another as they sink their teeth into the leg of a terrified Trovian soldier.
Again and again I strike, trying to take out every ruined I can see, saving not just their victims but also them from themselves.
So this is why the ruined were removed from Hallowbane, why Sophos said that people have been going missing from Godom. Caledon’s not just been rounding them up—he’s been making them, feeding people ephilin to create these monsters all so he can release them on us at the opportune moment.
He doesn’t care that they’re tearing his own forces apart as much as ours. Anything to buy himself the time he needs to reach the last artifact, to finally combine the tokens.
“Ana,” Leon shouts to me across the mooring. “We need to get out of here.”
Only now do I realize my hearing is gone, and darkness is creeping across my vision. Killing the ruined doesn’t take much, but I must’ve snuffed out forty celestial flames in five minutes, and it’s taking its toll.
Leon shouts something to Captain Drisha, and then the captain’s grabbing hold of my reins, forcing my horse to gallop alongside his as we push deeper into the forest. I look behind me and see that the Trovian soldiers are starting to rally.
But there’s still so many rotting, drug-crazed souls sprinting across the forest floor.
“Help them,” I call to Leon across the mooring. Though my vision is still blurry, I manage to meet his gaze before looking past him to the Trovian soldiers. He understands. A few more minutes of our help, and they should have the upper hand again, but right now it’s still touch and go.
“Okay,” Leon agrees. “I’ll catch up to you soon.”
He knows I have to keep going with my guard.
We have to find Caledon. I watch him jump from his horse, swinging his blade as he charges into the battle.
After a few minutes of us galloping through the forest, my hearing starts to return, and my vision clears at the same time as I recall what I’d realized as I was wiping out the swarm of ruined.
“That was the final distraction,” I yell to the guards over the sound of the trees, which are still creaking angrily—though, thankfully, none have attacked. I wonder now if so much violence taking place on its ground makes the Miravow reluctant to shed more blood.
“What do you mean?” Will frowns at me.
“He released them because he’s found the cup,” I say. I’m certain of it, the feeling in my gut a curdling mixture of urgency and rage. “He wanted time to combine the tokens. He’s not planning on leaving this forest as a mortal.”
They don’t have time to respond as we burst out onto a long clearing filled with freshwater pools. I can’t tell if it’s the same one we passed on our last trip to the Miravow, because the place has become a battlefield.
Part of my army reached here before us. Clerics and Trovian soldiers wrestle on the banks by the water, fighting hand to hand where they’re too close to effectively cast magic.
Bodies float in the nearest pool, dyeing it an awful shade of pink.
The sun shines on over the scene, light dancing across the water to illuminate the lifeless faces of the fallen.
I recognize Harman in the fray, fighting with his rebels, as well as Hyllus past him, busy bringing clerics to their knees with his sensic magic. And beyond all of them, beside a pool in the far distance, is a collection of people wearing purple sashes and a man in a white cloak.
Caledon stands beside the water with his bearers, and he’s holding a cup in his hand.
No, no, no. The word beats in my heart like a drum. There’s still time—there must be. I can still stop this.
I cast around me for an idea of what to do. My guards are holding firm around me, but they’re fighting hard against a nasty crop of cleavers. I blast two down with my sun beams, leaving their corpses smoking on the ground, and urge my horse forward.
I’m too far to orbit the cup from him—I can barely make out his face at this distance—so I need to get closer. I squint, making out the curve of the bow strapped to his back and the glint of light on his chest that I suspect is the sunlight catching the seal.
“Your Majesty, what are you doing?!” someone shouts after me, but I pay them no attention, eyes fixed on the scene unfolding in the distance.
A bearer steps up beside Caledon, holding something out to him. He lifts it, and I see the crescent blade—it’s the scythe.
“Your Majesty! My queen!”
I dig my heels into my horse’s flank, pushing it onward into the water of the nearest pool. I’ll never make it past the forces fighting on the banks in time to reach Caledon, but if I go through the water, rather than around…
A body bumps my shin as my horse wades deeper. I nudge it away as I watch Caledon lift the scythe to his neck. In one swift movement, he cuts his own throat.
I blink, unable to make sense of the scene.
Like with Leon, there’s no blood. Caledon slumps to the ground, the bearer catching him so that he comes to rest on his knees.
Another bearer holds the cup to Caledon’s hands, lifting the limp arms until the chalice hits his lips.
Caledon’s head tilts back as the bearer pours water down his throat.
No. The word rings in my head like a shout. I didn’t come this far to watch this play out in front of me.
But before my horse can take another step, a wave of water hits me so hard I’m nearly knocked from the saddle.
The animal rears up, trying to climb the rising water.
I splutter, desperately looking around to find the source, and locate a cleaver standing in the shallows.
Another surge of water hits, dragging me from my horse.
As I’m pulled under, I throw out my magic to find the cleaver’s inner flame. I snuff it out, and the waters above me still. Then I kick off from the bottom of the pool and breach the surface, finding my horse again and climbing back on.
Pushing the soaking hair out of my face, I find Caledon again.
He’s no longer a limp shell now. Somehow, the cup revived him, and he’s pointing his bow toward the sky.
The mosaic in the high temple flashes into my mind, showing Ethira shooting an arrow into the stars.
This must be some part of the ritual too.
I search the sky for a sign of the arrow through the trees.
There’s nothing, but Caledon’s staring at one spot expectantly.
Then, like it’s slipped through the fabric of reality, the arrow blinks into sight, its glinting tip pointed earthward. It plummets down toward Caledon, dragging a shadow with it.
Not a shadow. Caledon’s soul.
As easily as if he was pinching a drifting feather out of the air, Caledon catches the speeding arrow, then drives it into his chest. The pieces of the ritual fall into place in my mind: the seal protects him, keeping his body safe as he separates his soul from it with the scythe, the cup makes his physical form immortal, and then with the arrow he retrieves the soul, reuniting it with its new vessel.
The ritual is done. We’re too late.
As the soul sinks into Caledon’s body, the whole world starts to shake.
A roar rises up from the trees—not just the rustling of the leaves but a deafening susurration, like the wood itself is frantically whispering.
The fighting slows as the combatants look around fearfully, and a bright, white light flashes across the clearing.
When it fades, I watch Caledon climb to his feet, finally immortal.
Leon
I cleave open the earth, watching a rotting gray body tumble into the newly carved ditch with a shriek of fury.
It doesn’t take me long to turn the tide for the soldiers fighting the ruined.
I concentrate on creating small, well-placed rifts, opening them up right under the ruined’s feet so they go down fast and hard.
They don’t feel any pain, of course, not in their state, but unbalancing them buys the Trovian soldiers time to strike without getting their faces clawed off.
I’m helping out with some neat sword work of my own when I feel a spike of alarm across the mooring and know Ana is in trouble. I leave the soldiers to finish off the ruined, following her pounding heartbeat to a clearing raging with the crackle of magic and clash of weapons.