41. Phaeron
Familiar shadowborn rage coursed through my blood as Myuna’s minions rushed us. Eleven supernaturals, all possessing strong magic or powerful, enchanted weapons. And the last of the dozen…I fixed my gaze on the dragon shifter that’d tried to incinerate my mate.
And on Roe as she recklessly ran ahead of our defensive line to punch said dragon in the face. I swore under my breath and burst into shadows, racing after her. With Cress occupying Myuna’s attention, I knew it was my duty to nullify the second worst threat here.
The dragon raised a taloned foot to crush Roe, flinching at the last minute as my shadowy claws punched through his scales and loosed streams of blood. While fire dragons ran hot, his blood shouldn’t have steamed as much as it had under normal circumstances.
Insane chatters of laughter accompanied the Void’s chilling touch. It surrounded me gleefully, frosting the dragon blood I flicked off my shadows as I regrouped next to Roe. “Defensive magic, now,” I ordered her. All we’d done was annoy the massive shifter, who to our luck was moving much slower than he should, dragging under Myuna’s control.
“Got it,” she said. There was plenty of debris lying around that answered to the magic of a guardian witch. She cobbled together a wall of cement, rocks, and tiles.
Our opponent turned one blazing eye my way, squaring his legs and sucking in a deep breath to feed the inferno at the back of his throat. I disappeared into shadows when he breathed out, to keep the gout of fire away from Roe.
Reappearing by his hindquarters, I lashed solid shadows into knotted ropes between his legs and tail. “Hey, ugly!” Roe shouted, accompanied by the sound of rocks cracking against scales. Fuck. The bold female had a death wish.
And I was acting on Cress’s wishes too much—trying to ensnare the shifter to lead him into a moment of weakness, to save him and his soul. She’d taken much of my sword skills and it seemed I’d gained her empathy. A dangerous emotion, given the stakes. I should’ve shoved my sword through his skull and been done with it.
Instead, I ripped my weapon through the wing membrane looming nearby, which flared with his shift of attention. I accompanied it with a shadowborn’s roar of challenge, hoping he would realize that Roe was not the opponent worth his flames. He swung his head on his long neck, lifting his wings and looking at me over his shoulder.
That’s right. Come this way.
First he tried swinging his tail and I took the blow, letting him impale it on my sword, which punched through scales and flesh before I was thrown several yards from the impact. I cushioned my landing with shadows, skidding to a stop and making an exaggerated groan to tickle his prey sense.
Light exploded in the chamber. Someone screamed, though it echoed over and over a hundred times with the rest of the voices the Void wanted us to hear. Still lying on the ground, my gaze flashed to the dais, where Cress crouched behind the crystal shield, her face turned to the ceiling.
Myuna was gathering rays of light, her hand held in that direction. “Phaeron!” Cress screamed, reaching out to our mating bond. She needed my darkness and I gave her nighttime, reaching upward too and blasting all the shadows over my form and every ounce of magic I could muster to block out the sun and cut off Myuna from its power.
The goddess’s furious bellow resonated with the Void. Auric was nearly done calling it down to envelop Myuna. Just a minute more.
“If you insist on interfering, then I will have every head in this room in addition to hers,” Myuna thundered.
I was sure she would turn her wrath on me and bared my fangs, welcoming it. I’d forgotten about the dragon for a few critical moments too long, though. He’d lunged at me and I noticed the crimson blur of his limbs and snapping mouth. With my power occupied helping Cress, I didn’t dare try to dive into the shadows.
Besides, he tripped over his back legs, his bulk going down. With his trajectory, he’d crush me under his barrel chest.
I rolled to my feet and leapt, sinking my claws into his scaled neck and climbing. The jarring impact of his body hitting the ground nearly unseated me, but I remained seated on his neck. “Are you okay?” Roe shouted.
“Fine! Hold his head if you can,” I called back. I searched him frantically with soul sight, locating the aura of his soul between his shoulder blades, where his wings met prominent flight muscles clothed in plate-like scales. It did not encompass his whole body, remaining the same size as it would be if he were in his true, human form.
I dove for it as he started to stand, abruptly jerking his head with the sound of flame igniting. With a great heave, I had his knotted soul between my hands and he slumped to the ground. I tisked under my breath. Myuna had tied his soul into two knots, a sign that he hadn’t gone to her control easily.
My hands were shaking. It was so cold, bitterly so. The Void’s presence made it nearly impossible to untie both knots, and it took my whole control for a few crucial moments.
Cress’s alarm and pain tore through me. I gasped for air, dropping the soul back into its body.
Myuna had my mate in her hand, crushing her with overlong fingers. The Void swirled around them both, closing into a cage while the goddess gloated. And then they disappeared together.
My mating bond intensified with agony, urgency, and distance all at once, a shrill tone at the back of my head. Sunlight returned to the chamber as I ripped my power back, appearing in an instant where Myuna had stood and catching Flame to swipe both of my swords where only Void mist remained.
I had my shadowborn form back in an instant, turning the wolfish maw toward Auric where he stood behind our allies’ defensive line. I was before him in the next instant, letting my shadows hold my swords. I grabbed the front of his suit, dragging his stout body up so we were face to face. “Send me after her,” I snarled.
“It’s too la—”
“Right now,” I shouted at him.
“She’s already halfway to—”
White-hot pain sheered down my back and my fingers clenched, tearing his clothes. He slipped out of my grip as I bent over, breathing heavily.
Cress!
She was dying. My bonds to her pulled taut. Energy flowed from me into the endless nothing, a tether of pure life force. Something—Myuna—guzzled the power greedily on the other side.
“If you’ve ever valued our friendship,” I rasped. “You will open the way.”
Figures crowded us. “I’m going with you,” Geo rumbled.
Ben helped support me upright. His face was dangerously wan, but his tone brooked no argument. “Me too.”
Instead of arguing further, Auric drew the Void’s presence back. Cold mist enveloped his fingers and it was the work of moments to open a rip in reality and expand its yawning black mouth wide enough to fit us one at a time. “I will leave you in the Void if there’s any sign of Myuna returning here,” he said, deadly serious.
“Fine,” I said, taking hold of my sword hilts.
Auric shouldered between the rip and me. “I will reverse part of the spell, so you can find her.”
“I’ll find her. No one should follow, though,” I growled. He nodded and stepped aside for Geo, Ben, and me.
On the other side, the rip was an oval of brightness in a world of encroaching cold and nothingness. “Whoa,” Ben murmured, bending to try to touch a ground that wasn’t there.
“Stop fucking around. Follow me and stay close,” I snapped, following the call of my mating bond. Ben recoiled, shocked, but did as I said.
I’d be able to find Cress even in the endlessness of the Void. Nothing, not even the whisper of voices and visions, would stop my forward charge.
I didn’t dare disappear into shadows to move faster, considering the other pieces of Cress’s heart ran to keep pace behind me. Without me, they’d be lost here in minutes and then reduced to laughing echoes. If one of us died, we’d all haunt the Void for eternity.
I spread my magic instead, forming a bubble of relative safety from the Void’s madness. As long as they didn’t listen too closely or stray to chase a vision, we stood a chance of making it to Cress in time.
“What is this place?” It was Roe’s voice. I flinched at the sound and glanced over my shoulder. It was the real her. She’d retracted her crystal armor into its pendant and sprinted to join us alongside Wren and áine.
My blood ran as hot as liquid flame. “You should not be here,” I said harshly. “I thought I made it clear that no one should’ve followed us!”
Roe puffed along, shrugging off my anger. “Cress is my coven mate and I wasn’t about to leave her behind…no matter where the hell we are.” She had a chipper enough tone, like a run through the Void was a Saturday morning jog, not a dip into a location of near-guaranteed insanity and death.
“Don’t worry.” Wren’s voice was a lot more labored. “The blue dude cut everyone else off. It’s just us.”
I grunted. It was the least he could do, after banishing my mate to the Void with the likes of Myuna. If we survived this, he’d be lucky if I didn’t gut him like a fish for the oversight.
And if we didn’t…
I felt the currents of magic around us shifting. Cress’s presence was coming toward us as Auric reversed his spell, as promised. She was no longer left halfway to Soiluire, where she’d perish long before we’d manage to find her. In fact, we were drawing close enough to hear the echoes of distortion from what had to be Myuna’s voice.
My pace faltered and I nearly tripped to fall into nothingness. Between the numbness brought on by the cold and the suction of magic and life force, I was fading faster than expected. Geo and Ben had to be faring similarly…but we would limp to Myuna if we had to. She could not have the considerable power of our mating circle, plus the half of Braza’s soul Cress carried.
Still, we slowed, and there was some relief between Ben, who was limping, and Wren, whose breath sawed as she clutched her side. I strode unerringly toward the glow of white light marking the first landmark in this place of nothing.
Myuna was thrashing around, occasionally screaming in her chorus of agony shriek. At first, I thought it was from a Void feeding frenzy, but her belly bulged and roiled, jerking her hollow body around as if she were a ragdoll.
It looked excruciating. I grinned, finally speeding ahead of the group when the rest of the way forward was obvious. My boot met her shoulder, knocking her prone on her back. “Indigestion?” I sneered.
My mating bond tugged straight downward, toward her stomach. Cress was in there, fighting back. Before Myuna could consume me next, I drew my swords down her middle, splitting open the gaping blackness within her.
From the nightmare of her guts, human fingers emerged. I grabbed my mate’s hand to lift her free, gasping in shock when I got a good look at the light blazing from her.
Myuna’s guts were like a portal to another world. Braza and I fell and fell and fell like we were on our way to some kind of twisted Wonderland.
“Good going, getting us eaten,” I thought to her irritably. Without the crushing grip of the oversized goddess, I’d begun to breathe again and consider whether or not it’d be possible to condense into shadows to escape from between Myuna’s lips.
But Braza was not responsive, nor were her shadowy powers. I realized I was leaking a trail of black and purple and feared the worst. Was it Braza’s lifeblood? Were we both already dead and I hadn’t felt it?
Eventually, I landed face down on a soft heap and pain ricocheted through me. Fuck, definitely not dead yet. I hurt all over, especially in my burned shoulder. My clothes fell right off me when I moved my arms to lift up to my knees. That expensive robe, reinforced with magic, disintegrated into threads before my eyes.
My naked skin blistered and reddened, the pain quickly excruciating. I’d taken an acid bath somewhere on the way down—Myuna was digesting me. “Well,” I said from a raw throat. “Hell of a way to go.” I took heart in knowing Myuna would die eventually, starving to death on the planet she’d already destroyed. My sacrifice wouldn’t be in vain.
But my men. When I died, so would they. I wished I knew how to sever the mating circle so I could do it here and now. If only they could keep going, to escape Cerris City and enjoy a blissful Myuna-free life.
Phaeron wouldn’t want that without me. I felt him like he was still with me, the mating mark on my shoulder pulsing with flashes of hot and cold prickles.
Maybe someday, someone would discover the dragon scale he carried, with the other half of Braza’s soul. She could live on…I mean, I didn’t know for sure about that. Could half a soul as big as a powercore’s continue to exist without the other half? It was an unheard of situation. She’d be the first and only one to attempt it.
Shadows sputtered around me, lacing into two thin wraps for my breasts and hips when I gestured. “Braza?” I projected hopefully.
“Cress,” she answered. Her voice was faint. “Touch the souls.”
What? There was nothing here but us. I looked up first, seeing the white-lined layer of Myuna’s stomach. Then down…ugh. What did I think I’d landed on? Those were…souls, I guess. Parts of them, sucked dry of everything except for a paper-thin layer.
There were heaps of souls everywhere I looked, mountains of the remains of the dead who’d passed the same way I was about to. My gorge rose and I gagged, swallowing down the taste of vomit before it could burn my throat any worse.
Fuck, that’s disgusting. Still, I did as Braza commanded, putting my palms down beside my knees. The ribbons of her leaking magic reversed course, flowing downward and out like a wave.
The nearest souls twitched. Each held a spark of magic from Braza and the colors quickly shifted from black and purple to skin tones. Souls inflated with new purpose, glowing from within and erasing major features with the joint shine of everyone.
These husks turned into souls once more. Ghosts. Hundreds, then thousands, and then more, all of the damned turning eyes limned with light toward me, the only one still alive amongst us. “Um, hi,” I said to the nearest person, a human man who must’ve died quite recently. He stared at me without any comprehension. Most of those around us were tall and horned, similarly blank.
“Make way,” said a female voice. She spoke in Soiluirian, but some vestige of Braza translated her words. “That is my daughter! Make way!”
The souls murmured, a sound like a distant crowd, but parted for the liveliest one. A glowing gray figure pushed her way to me, her red eyes like liquid rubies. “Brazita…no. You are not her.”
Keshora et Sudaira’s kindly face fell with disappointment. Something broke between Braza and I in that moment and she flowed free of me, standing beside me in shades of black and purple. “It’s me,” she answered. By some miracle, I understood, and tears pricked my eyes when both souls crashed together for a strong hug.
A third figure piled into their hug with a girlish laugh. “Braza!” Ravai exclaimed, her voice high, on the cusp of breaking to the deeper tones of adulthood. I was struck by how similarly she looked to Phaeron, an impeccable female version of him with her mother’s red eyes.
“Ravai! Wait, how are you here?” Braza asked. She looped an arm around her sister, holding both of her lost family members close.
For a moment, Ravai looked baffled by the question. “I…oh. Uncle took my soul and carried it to the goddess to eat.” She looked around at the silent audience of souls, blinking twice. “I guess I’ve been here ever since.”
My heart broke for her and everyone else who’d formed mountains of husks within Myuna’s stomach. There had to be millions here. The foundation under my feet was shifting as more and more souls stood back up, briefly reanimated to bear witness to this reunion and my eventual death. Think, Cress. There had to be a way to escape.
“She’s been using your power as her own,” I said, mostly to myself. Thousands of eyes blinked. Ah, shit, most of them were from Soiluire, and had never seen a human in their lives. I tested the thread of connection between Braza and me and tried to repeat myself in their language.
Keshora was the one to answer. “That’s right. I watched for an age as more and more of my people came here, before the true end came…”
Cutting herself off, she released Braza and stepped toward me. Her pupils narrowed as she lowered toward my shoulder, inspecting the mark there. “You have mated my male. Who are you?” she asked suspiciously.
“Oh…” I stammered some nervous laughter. Maybe Myuna’s stomach acid didn’t have to kill me. Keshora, for all that I was promised that she was nice and gentle, looked ready to tear my throat out.
Braza put her hand on her arm. “Mother, please,” she coaxed. “You have been dead quite some time. This is Cress, his new mate from the world we traveled to.”
“It’s nice to meet you. I’ve heard…well, I haven’t heard much,” I said, apparently deciding to put my foot further down my mouth. “Braza speaks well of you. And Phaeron had a very difficult time overcoming your death.”
Keshora’s eyes gained facets as she made a sound of pain deep in her throat. A set of hands seized mine, feeling as soft and pliable as jelly. “What about me?” Ravai blurted. “How is he? I’ve missed him so much!”
“He’s…” I didn’t know how to answer her questions, considering my impending death.
“Take a look at her soul,” Braza whispered to their mother, in the meantime.
I squeezed Ravai’s hands. She had infectious energy and I wished I had more time to get to know her. “Your death is something he still can’t bring himself to talk about. I think he’s missed you just as much as you’ve missed him.”
It seemed I was here just to cause his old family pain, as she made the same dimensional noise that I’d started associated with their way of crying. She pulled me into a hug while she wailed. “I’m sorry,” I said, squeezing her jellylike body tight.
“Thank you for bringing him comfort. And being a good friend to my sister.” She glanced toward them. “She wouldn’t speak up for just anyone.”
At this point, Keshora and Braza were deep in conversation. It seemed the older dimensional was relaxing, at least, listening and nodding as Braza fell into the tones of explaining something as quickly as possible.
When she was done, Keshora breathed out slowly and squared her shoulders. She turned to me. “You are still alive,” she stated. “Your soul is made of light, just like the creature I once revered as a goddess. For the ages I have rotted here, she has used up every bit of what made me who I was. I had no choice in this because there wasn’t a choice.”
She stepped forward, putting her clawed hand over my marked shoulder. “But now there is one, and I choose you.” When nothing happened and we just blinked at each other, she put pressure on my skin. “You may be a strange being yourself and not a goddess, but you may use what is left of me all the same. Make me anew in your light.”
The spark within her dimmed a fraction, while I started giving off a hint of a glow. I glanced down at myself with a gasp.
“Oh, me too!” Ravai exclaimed, putting her hand on my other shoulder. “Make me anew in your light!”
Another soul’s hand landed on Keshora’s shoulder and she flinched. But power flowed from her, into me. Yet another soul joined him and then a dozen more, and then a hundred, a chain reaction spreading through the lost souls as they gave me what they could in the name of salvation.
I filled from within with light, growing stronger and stretching the limits of my magic to find them a well filling itself with pure power. These people gladly fed me what they could. It wasn’t that they knew me, but as a unit they decided that I was better than Myuna and more worthy than the monster that’d originally consumed them.
I became strong enough that my skin healed of its burns and blisters. “We have to get out of here. And the only way out…is through,” I said, pointing at the wall of Myuna’s stomach. The chain of souls moved with me, all of us beginning to hammer at her from within. The material of her skin stretched and morphed around our fists like wet clay.
A force slapped the other side of her belly, sending me tumbling backward and many others flying. That must’ve been her hand. So, she felt us in here. I hoped it was painful to have a roiling sea of spirits hitting every wall of her stomach. The Iorsio tribe souls even took flight and slammed bodily into the sloping roof of this inner chamber.
A terrible, distorted noise vibrated her skin. She must’ve been saying something, but for once those she’d damned did not scream out through her mouth, but hit her with more ferocity than ever.
The only thing that stopped us momentarily was when the whole chamber rolled. Myuna must’ve flopped onto her belly, as she pitched all of us forward. The spirits weighed no more than a feather each, but I still felt crushed until they started regrouping and hitting her again. It was working, it had to be. She wouldn’t be reacting at all if it wasn’t.
Soon she was rolling around pretty constantly, churning us in a whirlpool. Many spirits brushed past me, only adding their magic to mine in the process. There was no pain when I was flung into one of her stomach’s walls anymore. The material was bound to tear eventually under our onslaught.
My marked shoulder itched intensely. I felt Phaeron when I touched it…he was close? But that was impossible. Auric would’ve sealed the way behind Myuna, not risking any chance of her returning again.
With our next onslaught, I had the sensation of movement. We could’ve been curving Myuna’s spine or tugging her around…or, I don’t know. There was nothing to see in here but the furious souls now given the freedom to do something against their murderer. All I could tell for sure was that she was definitely screaming.
We were flung one more time. I got up and launched myself at her again, just to see the tip of something sharp breach the top of this chamber and drag down. There was a sheen of darkness between us and…more darkness beyond. But a pulse of urgency in my chest had me reaching through the darkness for the spray of cold beyond the humid depths of Myuna’s guts.
A leather-clad hand wrapped around my own and pulled. I drew in a breath of chill Void air and met Phaeron’s gaze. He was in full shadowborn form, practically vibrating with the fury that came along with it. The sudden surge of my mating circle’s heightened emotions hit me like a punch to the gut.
They were all here, and a few of my friends besides, all gaping at me as I emerged like the sun, fully naked and blazing with light from within.