Chapter 12 #2
My head snapped up as I realised I now knew which direction the Void power had come from and for the briefest of moments my gaze met the wild, horrified eyes belonging to my kitty cat.
I grinned and she looked inclined to vomit in reply. I wasn’t certain if she’d just saved my ass on purpose or not but I did know that I’d been tasked with capturing her at all costs.
The knot of Cascadian warriors surrounding her was thicker than anywhere else in the field and of course it was – they were guarding their prize with all they had. But that wasn’t going to stop me.
I scanned the ground quickly, picking out several Fae from among the ranks of my enemy and swooping straight for them in a sudden, violent dive.
I drew my bow, smearing a drop of blood from my split finger across the tips of six of my arrows before taking aim and loosing them one after another.
A volley of arrows were fired in return but I sped away from them, leaning low on my windrider and zigzagging to avoid their aim.
I felt the strike of my arrows in their targets like the strum of fingers down my spine and fell into the call of the ether.
It shrieked my name as I gave myself to its dark power and I muttered a promise to listen to it later before drawing it to my command in thanks for the six souls I was sacrificing in its honour.
The dormant power roiled at my gift and with a jerk of my fist the Fae I’d targeted all turned their weapons on their allies.
Chaos broke out in the ring of guards surrounding Everest as they found themselves defending against their own and in the melee she broke free, sprinting towards the battlefield like she’d been waiting for the opportunity to do so.
Everest didn’t see me speeding through the clouds above her or circling around behind her where the crash of my air magic returned to me like an old dog racing into the doting arms of its master.
I dropped like a lead weight, speeding up behind her with a lasso of air magic whipping ahead of me just as she swung for her first real opponent.
My air magic yanked Everest off of her feet a breath before she could decapitate the Skyforger and she screamed bloody murder as she found herself hoisted into the air beneath me.
“Let me go or so help me I’ll rip every bit of power from your limbs!” she yelled as we shot for the sky, her hair billowing across her face so that she could see her captor and I laughed darkly.
“Go ahead, kitty cat. I’d like to see how the power of the Void will save you from a fall from the heavens themselves!”
“Vesper?” she growled indignantly but my chance to reply was stolen by the tremendous roar of a Dragon and a blast of fire which nearly roasted us both alive.
We weren’t the only ones making use of the clouds.
I cursed, yanking on the magic holding Everest and drawing her to me. She landed heavily on the windrider behind me and the machine lurched downwards violently.
“Hold onto me,” I barked.
“Fuck you,” she snapped but she wound her arms around my waist all the same, gripping me tightly enough to prove that she didn’t want to risk falling into that battlefield.
She may have been able to catch herself with water magic before she went splat but from up here in the clouds there was no way of knowing if she might land among Cascadians or warriors from Stormfell.
“You have the Dragon,” she hissed angrily as Bastian lit the clouds red again and I veered away from him, not wanting to end up burned alive.
“You met him on the battlefield at Cinder Vale,” I said in agreement. “I captured him the same night I left Never Keep.”
“You lied to me,” she accused.
“Says the Void.”
Silence fell for a moment and then she released a growl of frustration. “Fine. We both withheld the truth. But this is bullshit, Vesper. I saw that man wielding earth magic on the battlefield – how did you convince him to choose to ally with air?”
“He didn’t choose it,” I said, looking back at her, my gut twisting with guilt. “I took that option from him. And I know he wouldn’t have made the decision lightly. Though I can guess what Dragor gave him in return for his allegiance.”
I’d known it the moment I saw him crest that mountain with his wings intact.
Bastian had nothing left to lose but he’d had a whole lot left to gain.
I couldn’t even blame him for accepting a deal which returned his wings to their magnificent glory and saw him able to take to the skies once more.
It was the same choice I would have made if I was given it.
“My people will kill him. The first Dragon seen in hundreds of years and he’ll end up the last, just like that.
” She snapped her fingers and I might have punched her for the disparaging comment had I not been able to see the sadness in her brown eyes at the declaration.
It wasn’t that she wished that fate upon Bastian. She feared it.
“I wouldn’t count on it.”
“I can’t Void him,” she said, almost to herself. “Is that a Dragon thing?”
“More like a crystal thing,” I grunted, realising too late that I probably shouldn’t have divulged that much to her. But the lines between us had always been too easy to blur.
“Crystal?” she questioned and I cursed my own stupidity.
“It’s the reason he was stuck in his Dragon form in that cavern. It keeps him trapped,” I said, realising that those crystals might just be a very real way to resist the power of the Void. An army in their Order forms was formidable indeed.
“The ether is still calling my name,” I blurted, uncertain if I was trying to distract her or just pleased to have someone I could tell about it. “I think it wants me to repair more keystones, return the natural flow of the ley lines.”
Everest looked at me as we sped through the clouds, the sound of battle growing distant between us.
“Oh.”
“That’s so helpful, thank you,” I drawled.
“I’m hoping to get in contact with someone from the Magistrine to help with that monster at the Keep,” she said almost defensively.
“Hoping to? Sounds like you’ve been busy working on that then.”
“I am the Void, you know? I have a lot going on,” she replied defensively.
“I guess we all do,” I said with a grunt of frustration because it wasn’t like I’d done much of anything to deal with that monster either. “I’m a General now – and I have a new name too though I don’t much like it. Oh and a prince wants me to marry him.”
“Prince Dragor?” Everest recoiled and I snorted a laugh, the screams of the fighting enemies now so distant it could have been the crashing of the sea against the shore, though the bellow of the Dragon was less easy to ignore.
“No. Evard.”
“Isn’t he the one who collects the heads of his enemies and keeps them in a great chamber somewhere deep beneath the palace?” she asked with distaste.
“Apparently so. Though I’ve never seen them myself.”
“Well, he sounds…lovely.”
“How’s being the Void going for you?” I shot back at her.
“Great,” she said enthusiastically, though there was a flicker of something in her eyes that told a different story. “Pyros basically rolled over and gave us their lands. So now we just have to get Stormfell and Avanis into line and the war will end and–”
“Oh, kitty cat,” I sighed, angling us towards the ground. “This war won’t ever end.”
We landed on a rocky outcrop so far from the battlefield that I knew she wouldn’t be able to Void anyone from here. Or at least I hoped she wouldn’t.
Everest dismounted and half-heartedly drew a dagger.
“Like that, is it?” I asked, drawing one of my own in turn.
“It has to be,” she replied bitterly though the point was aimed at the dirt.
“Does it?”
The question hung between us because the answer should have been obvious.
We were enemies born and bred, designed for nothing more than to kill one another.
Worse, she was the one thing which could decide the fate of this war.
I should have taken her directly to Prince Dragor not to this rocky crag in an abandoned corner of Stormfell. But there we stood.
Everest frowned. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Cute that you think you could,” I teased and her frown deepened.
“I could Void you.”
“Mmm, and I could taint your blood with a curse that would rot you from the inside out and make you claw the flesh from your own bones in desperation to rid yourself of the pain of it before you died. Want to find out which is more effective?” I took a sprig of yarrow from my pocket and crushed it against the tip of my still bleeding finger, ether rushing to answer my call and making my pupils dilate.
“Don’t do that,” she demanded and I shrugged.
“I thought this was a stand-off?”
“It’s a fucking shit show, that’s what it is!” Everest burst out. “I’m supposed to be down there winning my first battle and you’re supposed to be…well, I don’t know, but not here with me twenty miles from the battlefield talking shit to the wind.”
I sighed, turning my head so that I could gaze out toward the battlefield too, though there wasn’t much to be seen from such a distance besides the cloud of dust that had been thrown up from the clash of war.
The warriors who fought on the ground were reduced to a stain of darkness against the land and nothing more.
A blight upon the greenery. And wasn’t that the truth of it?
“Sorry I didn’t kill the Fury for you,” I said. “But I’ll do it if I ever lay eyes on him again.”
“No need. I did it myself. I set myself free.”
“Did you now? And how did you manage that despite the bond?” I asked curiously.
“Well…I’m the Void, so…”
I broke a laugh and she smiled too though there was a hint of sadness in her eyes. Weren’t we just a fucking pair.
“Vesper…”
My name urged me into action, whispered in voices only I could hear once more.
“I have orders to capture you and deliver you into the hands of Prince Dragor,” I said, returning my focus to my kitty cat, my heartrate settling a little as I met her brown eyes with mine.
“I’ll die before I let you capture me,” she hissed, all feline.
I arched a brow, sweeping my hand out to remind her of where we currently stood and how we’d gotten here.
“And what would you call this if not captivity?” I drawled.
“I see no chains,” she scoffed. “No cage. No prince for that matter either.”
The corner of my lips twitched into what was the first smile to have tempted me in weeks.
“I missed you,” I told her.
Everest’s brows rose in surprise. A flicker of movement drew my attention to that little blue lizard she kept as a pet as it crawled up onto her shoulder to peer at me too.
“I missed you too,” she admitted, her cheeks heating at the words as the smile captured my lips in fullness.
“No one is quite so brazen,” she added quickly.
“Or sharp of tongue. You are amusing company, even if you’re my sworn enemy.
And I can’t imagine you simper to anyone either. ”
“Simper? Don’t tell me you’ve been subjected to the heinous company of ass-lickers since your elevation in the ranks of your army.
I can’t bear to think of us as similar in that regard – though I suppose there is true reason to fawn over you as the great and powerful Void.
Whereas I find myself celebrated for accomplishments I’d sooner not lay claim to. ”
“Well, you’ll be a princess soon. So I suppose you’d better get used to it.”
“No,” I disagreed, the truth of my words coming so easily to my tongue. “I won’t. It occurs to me here on this rock, in the middle of nowhere, while a battle I’m supposed to be fighting in rages on without me, that I won’t become a princess or any other kind of pawn. Not now and never again.”
The sincerity of that declaration struck something deep within my bones as if a call had gone out and roused me from slumber. What was I even doing here? I should have taken Everest straight to Prince Dragor but instead I’d spirited her away from him with all the haste I could muster.
“Then what will you be?” Everest asked, a note of caution to her voice.
“That is the real question.”
She arched a brow at me and I gave her a wicked grin.
“Want to chase monsters into the dark with me and follow the call of my name into the forgotten places of this world?” I offered.
Everest balked like I’d offered her up a steaming turd instead of a chance at freedom and she shook her head as she backed up a step, the point of her dagger finally finding its way to aim at me with purpose.
“I’m the Void,” she said forcefully as if I’d somehow questioned that.
I considered her for a moment, the way her eyes flared with defiance and the deepest desires of her heart reached out to coil around my senses.
She wanted to be the one who brought this war to an end.
She wanted to be the Void in all the ways I had no faith she could be.
She wished to use that power to force peace upon The Waning Lands.
But how could there ever be true peace with one land ruling over the others?
Perhaps her power could subdue Pyros, Avanis and even Stormfell – though I doubted it could do so truthfully because she couldn’t be in all lands at once, in all cities and all towns, ready to stifle any uprising or rebellion.
But even if that did come to pass, her power didn’t grant immortality.
My land and the others would only have to wait for death to come for her and they’d rise up once more.
And they’d all be sending their assassins her way too.
If there was going to be an end to the war then peace would have to be chosen by will, not force.
But I could see that she wouldn’t be convinced of that by me.
“I’m done,” I said finally, sheathing my dagger and releasing my hold on the ether, its power rushing from me like an exhale of icy wind.
It abandoned me with a soft cry of my name and I knew in my heart that my mind was made up.
“Get the fuck out of here, Everest. Run back to your army and turn their attention to Pyros or Avanis but leave me the hell out of it.”
“That’s it?” she demanded as I backed up, tapping the rune on the side of my windrider to bring it to life once more.
“That’s it,” I agreed. “Turns out, I really am a traitor after all – so I figure I might as well do the thing properly.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” she shouted as I launched myself into the air, abandoning her to a rock in the middle of nowhere.
“It means that you should probably run if our paths ever cross again, because I can’t be certain of what I’m going to do next. But I know in every dark corner of my fractured heart that I’m not going to be shackled any longer.”
Everest called after me as I sped away from her but I didn’t turn back. I was seeing things clearly at last and it was time I showed my prince exactly who owned me now.