39. Geo
We woke early and traveled to the hospital to join a gathering of fighters. Those staying behind to fight Myuna and her torchbearers filled the foyer, where instead of gathering to witness a mating circle ritual, all attention was on Madigan to explain to us how the upcoming battle would go.
Madigan spoke up, the acoustics of the room causing her hearty voice to echo up to the people lining the second floor landing. “We want to stir up Myuna’s forces and cause them to meet us at the lake where our ocean gate lies. To generate as much motion as possible, you have been divided into one of five teams to escort noncombatants from either the hospital or one of our four safe houses.”
A few glanced my way as I gave a grinding nod. I was in my stone form, placed prominently behind Madigan as the leader of team four. While I’d be flying there, most of the team would be driving and then we would approach the battlefield on foot, as our assigned safe house was closest to the lake.
“You have full authority to use lethal force on any torchbearer you meet today. They will certainly be doing their best to kill us,” Madigan continued. “We are outnumbered and outmatched if our intel is accurate and they are able to use their magic and wits against us.”
A hush of voices followed her declaration, some astonished looks being passed around. Many of those staying were the Crystal fae and guardian witches of Ashbough Protective Services, who had been spending their time defending our territory until the recent lull in activity. They knew about as much as the handful of doctors and nurses who’d dressed themselves in distinctive colors for battlefield triage.
“However, we do have the element of surprise. King Coral has promised to send myrmidons to help us defend the ocean gate. It is our chance to fight beside fresh and rested merfolk right next to their element. The tide of battle may easily turn to our favor here, pun intended.” She paused for a moment, waiting for a few groans amongst the crowd.
“While we engage the torchbearers, our noncombatants will be fleeing through the ocean gate to safety. I know it may seem counterintuitive, but we want as much torchbearer attention as possible while our civilian count dwindles. It’s a bait and switch, folks. We will be teleporting using dimensional magic the moment the gate closes and the myrmidons leave.” She glanced over at Auric, beckoning him over.
“We’re not mentioning the Void?” Cress asked quietly. She held hands with Ben a couple paces away, where they stood with the cluster of their coven.
Ben shrugged. “I still don’t think I understand what it is,” he whispered back.
There was no Phaeron present to attempt to explain it again. To get the last librarian witches to leave their posts at the library, he’d promised to personally defend Braza. I knew he’d rejoin us with her powercore half safely secured in his dragon scale. The only person who would truly remain at the library was Lucas, awaiting a delivery of Carly in one last containment room.
I could only hope that his unusual new magic could do something for her. Cress would never forgive herself if we lost her sister, especially this close to the end of everything.
“All right, listen up,” Auric said gruffly, cutting through the crowd’s murmuring. “Many of you haven’t met a dimensional that looks quite like me. I specialize in, ah, teleporting. My magic will look like a heat mirage. You will want to be ready to disengage from any fight and cluster up, else I’ll end up leaving you behind. The actual relocation will take three seconds, if that, and you will feel an intense chill on your skin. Questions?”
He didn’t pause. “Good. During the second half of our plan, I will drop us all in the same audience chamber where Myuna has been sitting this whole time. She…teleported here from my old home world and left behind a hole, so to speak. My goal once we arrive is to send her back through that hole and sew it closed so she cannot return again. It will take me a while to harness enough power to make it possible.”
“What are we doing in the meantime?” shouted a Crystal fae from the second floor.
Madigan gestured up at him. “Good question,” she answered. “We expect that a smaller force of elite torchbearers will remain behind with their goddess. Those of us who choose to fight will be holding them off from Auric as he works his magic.
“As for Myuna, no one is to engage her recklessly. Any attempts to do so may result in the consumption of your soul, or the possibility of being turned into a torchbearer and against your friends. Only Cress Darkmore and her circle will approach her and then it is only to distract. This way forward was seen as the most successful path by both of our Graygazers.”
She turned to Cress, who flexed the powers Braza gave her to make purple-black shadows slide into being, dancing and eddying around her when she raised an arm to wave. “Thank you for your bravery,” Madigan said.
After a tense smattering of applause, she opened the floor to questions. Madigan went over fine details before dismissing us to head off and put the plan into motion. I gathered team four, which mostly consisted of friends, both from Cress’s coven and the defenders who’d helped us clear the library of its monsters.
“Madigan would like a few of our cars to whip through the city streets en route for maximum attention,” I stated.
Ben and Bianca both lit up. “Race you,” she said.
“You’re on!” he exclaimed.
Cress raised a brow, but shook her head rather than say anything. She was probably planning on carrying Ben in her shadows. Instead, she turned to Grant and Willow, making an offer to them in an undertone. They disappeared with her into the shadows and as the rest of us finished coordinating transportation, the merman who’d originally come here for Willow walked up to join us.
It took me a moment to remember his name. Zander. He dressed in what I assumed was a myrmidon’s battle armor, gleaming plates interlocking over his chest like oversized fish scales. One over his heart was etched with a symbol of jagged coral. Those plates continued over a leather kilt that looked like it was designed to wrap around the weak point where fish tail met man’s torso in his aquatic form.
He carried along his heavy trident, using its blunt end like a walking stick. “Where’s Princess Willow?” he asked, eyes narrowing as he took in our group.
“She’s taking a safe route to meet us there,” Ben answered, knowing I was practically incapable of uttering direct lies in my stone form.
“There’s such a thing as a safe route?” the mer warrior asked skeptically.
Ben smirked. “Let me put it this way, it’s less dangerous than Bianca’s driving.”
She shot him a venomous look. “We’ll see about that. I’ll meet you on the road.” With them both heading off to claim a vehicle, my team headed out behind them, while I emerged into the early morning through the front doors and spread my wings, carrying my shield for now. Flying might’ve been slower travel than the maximum speed of a car, but nothing could beat the feeling of air under my wings.
I knew the way from my trips scouting or performing search and rescue. The safe house was a dance hall, where an overflow of healthy noncombatants had been living ever since Myuna had consumed her unnatural creatures. The survivors were now out in the parking lot, many clustered in family groups. Some of them held suitcases or sacks of belongings, others had the clothes on their backs and clutched weapons, ready to fight for their freedom.
Spotting Cress’s purple head of hair, I came in for a landing nearby and checked my momentum with heavy strokes of my wings to land without cratering the asphalt. “Willow?” I asked the brown-haired girl next to her, who ducked her head too readily.
“Nope,” replied the changeling in his usual voice, before switching to speak in her usual wispy tones. “She’s wearing a set of Crystal fae armor over there. I assume she’s taking some of that off before she gets in the water and sinks like, well, a stone.”
I glanced in the direction he pointed. Her thin outline was bulked out by the hard facets of the armor. It did look too heavy for her. “Oh, I put a glamor over her trident,” Ambrose added. The graceful weapon seemed to resemble a hammer, like a guardian witch would wield. If anyone checked her aura, the deception would fall apart, but no one would be looking in the midst of battle.
“Did she make a separate bargain for such services?” I asked.
“Curious?” he countered with a lift of a brow. “As a matter of fact, no. I wanted to see King Laiken’s palace and politics for myself. It seems a shoo-in for a hellhole worse than the Autumn Court, but maybe I’m biased.”
“Perhaps,” I muttered.
“I mean, there shouldn’t be undead,” Cress pointed out.
Ambrose smacked his lips. “Guess it’s hard to get worse than that.”
We lapsed to companionable silence after that, with some of the survivors around us drifting close enough to eavesdrop. I noticed Ambrose practicing some of Willow’s typical poses and expressions, like he limbered himself up for a performance as her for the foreseeable future. I wondered what he planned on doing when he was asked to demonstrate some of her magic.
Well, a problem unrelated to the challenges ahead. While I pushed away any squirmy feeling of nerves with ease as a gargoyle, Cress tugged some of my stoic calm to wrap her own emotions in a dampening blanket rather than bounce on the balls of her heels or pace as we waited.
The sound of wheels screeching on pavement had all of us looking up. Two cars came zooming into the parking lot, engines purring as they came to an abrupt stop and fighters piled out. “Incoming!” Shouted one of the guardian witches coming from one of the vehicles.
A third truck struggled along, its side clearly gouged by massive claws. I loaded a quartz spike in my right arm, lifting my palm and waiting to sight the creature that’d done such damage in one long swipe.
Weapons unsheathed and magic ignited around me. We all heard it coming, the thump thump thump of heavy paws.
A shifter in full grizzly bear form charged into our midst with an ursine roar. Its tiny, round eyes blazed with Myuna’s white power and spittle ran in rivulets from its open jaws. Each stride was punctuated with its pants and grunts.
It noticed Cress mid-stride and changed course to head straight at her. A guardian witch jumped in the way and raised a portion of asphalt to serve as a shield. With agility that belied its bulk, the bear edged around the chunk of road to slam its paw into the witch and sent him crashing to the ground with the crack of his stone armor hitting concrete.
Shadows wrapped around Cress, making her a purple and black version of Phaeron’s shadowborn form, complete with tendrils trailing after her resembling a pair of wings and a tail. She stepped forward to meet the bear shifter at the same time I fired my primed spike. It cut into its thick hide, emerging through its shoulder.
Left arm failing to take its weight, it skidded to the ground. An ordinary shifter would’ve bellowed in pain, but it was eerily silent as it struggled to its paws and accidentally shoved the spike further through its body. Several spells ripped into it as it lurched forward, gaze still focused on Cress with murderous intent.
She hesitated when it fell again, nearly at her feet. “You have to do this,” she said in a two-toned voice, but I had the feeling it was Braza speaking.
“He’s crippled. We could still save him when Phaeron arrives,” she said in response to herself.
The bear used its back paws to launch at her, stretching out in one last-ditch effort to tear out her throat. I moved to shove her aside and my hand met shadows when she reflexively turned to vapor and reappeared a couple feet away. It clipped my side with its bulk and I caught its head, ending its life with a flex of my stone fingers to save her from the task.
The bear dropped with a thud. In death, it shifted back into the limp form of a naked man, body covered in the same wounds he’d sustained as a bear.
“Let’s get moving,” I rumbled, to get attention off the dead body. Eyes averted slowly from him and the blood dripping from my hands. I flicked them and picked up my shield, while consolidating my quartz into a club for the fight ahead. The survivors found urgency and moved into a cluster, with fighters forming a protective ring around them. I walked at the front of the group and Cress and Ben moved into place a step behind me.
We took a back road, circling around the bulk of an abandoned strip mall. The ground sloped downward and we ran into a fence that bordered this side of the lake.
It was a mer-made thing, crystal green water rimmed by imported sand. There was no visual sign that there was an active ocean gate from here. It would be in the middle of the lake, where the water was deepest, connected to a network of similar gates for aquatic folk to move through freely.
I looked for any hint of movement on the lake past the placid ripples that flowed over it from the breeze. The myrmidons had to be scouting the area, awaiting us. There would be no reaching the ocean gate without the help of an oceanic witch or one of the merfolk.
Another team emerged from the tree line several yards away and headed toward us. Now that our allies were arriving, hands tensed on weapons and traps were set with pointed stones and sand stirred into a mire.
Civilians were placed behind a wall of defenders, backs to the lake. We wanted to look helpless to draw out the torchbearers in force, but Cress and Ben shared a feeling of unease that infiltrated our circle as more and more people joined us. All was quiet, save the murmurs behind us as we waited for some sign of movement from the lake.
“The hospital’s team hasn’t gotten here yet,” Ben commented.
“Do you think they’re taunting torchbearers?” Cress asked in a two-toned voice.
He exaggerated a shrug. “Hurry up and wait to find out.”
Wind stirred the crystals that formed my hair in gargoyle form. It would’ve been a beautiful spring day, the sky clear and blue, if this calm lakeside wasn’t about to become a battlefield. Even the trained Crystal fae and guardian witches started to shift and rub at their armor as time passed.
There was a splash of water and many of us turned to look. A dark-skinned mermaid emerged from the lake, dripping salt water from armor and a battle trident clutched in one crimson-finned hand. “Is the princess here?” She demanded. The coppery fish scales on her cheeks caught the light when she turned to Zander and Willow emerging from the crowd. “Good, let’s go. King Coral is expecting her.”
The real Willow, still concealed in heavy armor, turned to stare meaningfully at the changeling that was taking up the center of attention as her. “Um,” Ambrose said, scuffing his foot. “Everyone else first. I won’t go through the gate unless you help all these people.”
Willow nodded in agreement behind him.
The mermaid bared her teeth in a bloodthirsty grin. She snapped the butt of her weapon underwater, a swirl of bright blue magic emerging as a ribbon that sped away deep into the lake.
I wanted to say the surge of relief within me was from the mating circle. Cress breathed out with it as we watched figures breach the water’s surface. Merfolk of all kinds were here. I recognized the finned and sharp-toothed horses as kelpies, along with the long, sinuous form of a single sea dragon.
The combined power of the mer began to part the lake, creating a narrow path that led deeper and deeper through the silt at the bottom of the lakebed. It revealed the ocean gate, a pair of columns carved from cerulean stone with a sheet of magic stretched between them that looked as thin as a soap bubble.
The dry path expanded wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side and that was when the red-scaled mermaid nodded toward the fake Willow. “It is safe. Send your people to safety and I will remain at your side to protect you, Your Highness.” Her warmth faded as her maroon eyes landed on Zander. “Good job finally doing something useful for our kingdom,” she added to him tightly.
His tight response was drowned out by Madigan and others shouting, “Form a line!” With her arrival, heading up the group that’d traveled here from the hospital, the trap was fully set. The first survivors rushed to the safety promised by the ocean gate, disappearing the moment they touched the gate”s bubble of magic.
A handful of guardian witches helped maintain calm and stopped the shoving that resulted when most of the survivors saw the truth: salvation was real and in sight. That didn’t stop several screams, most shrill with the panic of children, when another shifter announced itself with a roar, followed by the howls of several wolves.
The shifters were sighted first, each with flaming white eyes that prowled the line of the fence, growling. “There are so many,” Cress muttered.
They came from sidewalks and back streets, forming a crowd in minutes. While our guardian witches fired volleys of sharpened stones toward them, Myuna’s turned guardian witches nullified the rocks into dust and crumpled lengths of metal fence like balling up paper.
I had to acknowledge that she and her chosen ascendant had practiced well. These torchbearers moved like they were in charge of their own bodies and actions, though many faced us in torn and stained clothes, wielding makeshift weapons. They may have the numbers, but we were more prepared to fight.
As they fanned out and their shifters prowled looking for weaknesses in our defensive lines, each of the torchbearers began to speak at the same time. In the past, when Myuna wanted to talk to us, she used her discordant voice straight through her victims. These men and women used their own voices, forming a monotone chorus.
“Where is the son of night? All this trouble and Phaeron refuses to face me?”
“Release your hold on these people, Myuna,” Madigan shouted back at the crowd. She flashed a quick look over her shoulder, where survivors were still fleeing through the ocean gate, now a coordinated line with fighters and mer placed at regular intervals to shove civilians along.
A flat chuckle sounded from the chorus. “It seems we have not be properly re-introduced. Myuna has sent me to crush you in her stead,” they said. The crowd tremored and parted for a petite figure.
Cress gasped and I felt her vertigo second-hand before Ben steadied her and murmured in her ear. Across the short stretch of beach stood Carly, a white apparition with a sneer on her face. Myuna’s light glowed from her irises, a subtle difference to set her apart from the blank white stare of the torchbearers who surrounded her. She held a length of pure white light in her hand as if it were a celestial witch staff.
“Carly!” Cress screamed.
It was so unusual to see Carly turn such a hateful look toward her sister. But as Phaeron had said, this wasn’t her, but a twisted version with any good qualities sanded away. Myuna’s ultimate vision was to turn her into another soul-consuming monster and with that came the death of who Carly used to be.
“My lady has seen potential in me above all others. I am an ascendant now, the one who commands the goddess’s legion.” Though Carly’s lips moved, it was the torchbearers who spoke for her. “However, we do not need to fight. Surrender Phaeron and Cress to the lady’s mercy and the rest of you may run to safety.” The crowd gestured dismissively as a unit.
“Carly, this is crazy! You are the one who should surrender to us. We can help you,” Cress called. Tears pricked her eyes even as the shadows around her stirred, ready for the fight ahead.
“I don’t need your pity anymore. I am more powerful now than you could ever imagine.”
“I’ve never pitied you! You’re my sister, no matter if you’re a supernatural or not. Come with us and we will get the corruption out of you.” She shifted to the side, shouting around the bulk of the fighters who moved into position, bracing for a fight.
A cold smile crossed Carly’s face. “Look, now that I have power, here you are begging me to let it go. If you will not surrender, I will take you to Myuna by force.”
“There is no sense in arguing with her while Myuna has her claws in her,” I gritted out. With a nod, Cress called upon the shadows, letting them wrap around her with an unearthly howl.
In answer, Carly pointed with the staff and her torchbearers surged forward, meeting our forces fist for fist and spell for spell. I flared my wings and took up a defensive stance in front of Cress, assuming rightly that several white-eyed shifters would be going for her throat directly.
She threaded her shadows around my bulk, striking at vulnerable openings as a pair of wolves and a tiger shifter maneuvered around the shining surface of my shield and the swing of my club. I was a living wall. No force that Myuna had called up could get past me to hurt my love.
But for every enemy we downed, two took their place. Ben fought at Cress’s back, relying on his old combat training with daggers in hand and blood runes drawn. Cress channeled some of my durability into him, trading to me some of his agility.
If the torchbearers showed any hint of emotion, they might’ve been surprised at the speed I countered attacks and came back swinging, or how spells designed to gouge and burn flesh only grazed Ben.
I tuned out the screams of the dying and of panicking civilians as our allies were inched backward under the onslaught of the torchbearers. It was only when the possessed guardian witch that’d crossed weapons with me twitched and spoke, did I take a moment to listen. “Too cowardly to fight, son of night?” The torchbearers were everywhere, speaking slightly off sync mid-combat.
I didn’t bother trying to find him, knowing he’d be an elusive curl of smoke until it was time for us to trade places. The librarians must’ve finally passed through the ocean gate for him to have revealed himself.
When he’d first suggested the plan we were about to engage in to save Cress’s sister, I hadn’t thought Carly’s corruption would run so deep that she would seem to willingly turn on us. But he’d told me everything to expect. That name, son of night, was all Myuna. There was every possibility Myuna was watching and puppeting this fight through her ascendant, which meant the threats would begin now that she’d noticed Phaeron’s presence.
“Did you know I used to look up to you? I thought you would save me when Myuna first held me,” Carly continued, the confession too raw to be anything but her own. “How foolish of me. Like any shadow, there you are, tiptoeing around conflict. Look at what happens when you pick the light.”
A ray of white radiance blasted from her direction at the back of her forces, reflecting off the lake’s surface. It appeared to be a direct hit, as Phaeron slipped out of his shadow form and crashed into the water. He emerged, sputtering, on the back of a nickering kelpie.
The glance over at him also had me catching a glimpse of the dwindling number of civilians. The other side of the battlefield was full of the drowned corpses of torchbearers who’d crossed the red-scaled mermaid and her forces. But instead of pressing their advantage, they began to retreat toward the water with Willow at the back of the procession of noncombatants.
I fought on. Though the mer had helped, they wouldn’t stop the onslaught of possessed aiming for Cress. It did not take long for Phaeron to emerge at my side, drawing his sword. He dripped salt water, looking pissed but unharmed. “Go,” he said. Black shadows swarmed up his arms, forming talons over his fingers.
“You don’t want to do the honors?” I confirmed.
“You are better suited for the task. I will make amends with the girl when she is back to her senses.”
I nodded and sucked my quartz club back into my arm, reforming it into the tool I needed. I flared my wings further, careful of where my allies were standing, and lifted off the ground with a heavy flap. Phaeron moved into the place I’d been after a second flap took me airborne and sailing over the heads of the combatants.
Carly realized what was happening when I landed with a thud before her, letting my weight knock her off balance. She bared her teeth and turned the staff toward me, shooting a superheated wave of light at me. My obsidian body sizzled and heated, but stone could be heated hundreds of times without sustaining any damage.
I took a step forward and she scrambled back. Whipping the staff, her next attack was a spinning disc of white light, which I deflected with a lift of my shield. “You cannot harm me. I was tempered to fight the Hungering Darkness, whom you are not,” I rumbled.
Her breathing quickened, a glimpse at the scared teen girl under the overwhelming influence of Myuna’s magic. “Get away from me,” she yelped, this time without a monotone echo.
“It is for your own good,” I answered, grabbing her wrist and smacking the staff out of her hand with a bash of my shield, before I purposefully dropped it on the sand. A set of quartz handcuffs emerged from my hand, sealing around one wrist. We wrestled for her other hand before I managed to grab and secure it. Carly screamed at the top of her lungs when I grabbed her and took to the sky.
The screaming faded as the air thinned. I sped through the sky as fast as my stone body would allow, pumping my wings with urgency. My destination, a single containment room and the young man waiting to see if he could do anything to help her return to herself.
Carly whipped her head around suddenly, hitting an unnatural angle that caused her neck to crackle. “Unhand my chosen ascendant now,” she said in the fully wailing cacophony of Myuna’s rage-filled presence.
I met her glowing white eyes. Here was the moment Phaeron knew he was not strong enough for. “Or what?” I asked.
“I flood her with my power,” Myuna answered with a flourish of light pulsing from Carly’s body for a moment. “To your simple mortal mind, she will die. She will become something greater than Endaeron ever was, capable of consuming even your rock-encased soul.”
She inspected my expressionless face, the threat hanging between us. Then I said, “Bullshit.”
The answering bellow was deafening. “Do you not care for this girl at all? Would you not mourn if she died?”
“There’s no need for mourning,” I stated. “You are not powerful enough to do more than bluster.”
“Hmm. The prophecy only concerned the son of night, his mate, and his daughter. It never mentioned a man of stone impervious to magic. Who are you?” Myuna asked.
“My name is Geo.”
“Geo. I look forward to consuming you whole.” Her presence left Carly, who fell into a limp faint in my arms.