Chapter 43 #2
A huge, growling roar of energy cut our words off and I looked at the blocked door in alarm as it began to quake violently despite the power I still extended over it.
“What is that?” Bastian demanded.
“An underbeast,” Septa breathed, her eyes wide as she stared at the wall where the stone was trembling and cracking.
“I can’t Void it,” I cursed, backing up. “Is it powered with magic stored in runes?”
Septa nodded and I exchanged a look with Bastian who turned and blasted a hole in the opposite wall, carving a tunnel into it with his earth magic.
“How long do you need, Vesper?” he called but she didn’t answer, the words of ancient power still falling from her tongue, her body stiff with tension while she fought to pull the iron spike from the heart of the keystone.
“You’re going to do whatever it takes to help her,” Bastian told me, taking a bundle of herbs wrapped in a piece of parchment from his pocket and shoving it into my hand. “Burn that in her fist if you can’t wake her. And climb onto my back with her when the moment for our escape comes.”
“You’re mad,” I hissed, backing up as he dropped his trousers.
“Probably.” He shifted in the blink of an eye and Septa screamed as an iron grey Dragon burst from his flesh, its enormous size filling the space around us and forcing me to back up hurriedly.
My heart raced as I took in the majestic beauty of his Order form, his spiked tail swinging a breath away from me as he lunged for the huge, metallic contraption which burst through the blocked doorway a moment later.
Bastian roared, Dragon fire blasting the Stonebreakers’ machine before he collided with it, teeth and claws digging into the metal and forcing it to a halt.
He was so big that I could barely see anything of the fight he was engaged in, his sides crashing into the walls, spines striking the ceiling while he kept his powerful wings tucked tight to his body.
Septa screamed in fear and I snared her in a whip of water, hauling her away from the carnage before she could be crushed.
“He won’t hurt them,” I swore to her just as a lump of roof came crashing down onto the metallic contraption she’d named an underbeast. “Or…he won’t kill them at least.”
I hoped there was truth to that claim, but there was little I could do to aid in his fight, so I turned my focus to Vesper instead, moving closer to her as she spat words laced with power from her tongue and wept tears of agony from unseeing eyes.
She must have known the cost of doing this. She’d done it before. But she’d still come here, still walked straight up to this thing and exerted her power over it without so much as flinching.
“Vesper?” I called. “We’re running out of–”
I felt the moment Vesper shattered the dark magic tainting the keystone, the vile power abandoning the stone and severing its connection to the eschaton star for good.
With a tremendous crash, she tore the spike free of the stone monolith, an explosion of power bursting from the hole it had carved into Taurus’s brow and sending her flying backwards.
The power knocked Septa and me to the ground too, the force of it stealing the breath from my lungs and pinning me in place for several agonising seconds while the rumble of stone told of the cracks and damage to the keystone healing over at last.
I rolled onto my side as the rush of power ebbed then fell away, scrambling toward Vesper and cursing as I took in the ruined flesh of her hands where the magic had burned her right down to the bone.
I reeled at the sight of the wounds but before I could so much as consider how to help her, the skin began to knit over, her spine arching and eyes flying wide as every wound the act of repairing the keystone had caused her was healed away by some divine gift.
Vesper’s body tensed then fell limp, her unseeing eyes still staring aloft as Bastian’s tail swung over our heads and knocked a lump of stone from the walls.
She took a knife from her belt and dug it into her arm before I could stop her, her hand moving in swift and precise motions like a pen across parchment instead of a blade over flesh, leaving runes behind which bled in their wake.
Blood tarnished her skin as I threw myself toward her, capturing her wrist to try and stop her.
She smacked me away but I grabbed her again, taking the bundled herbs Bastian had given me and forcing them between her fingers.
She’d told me this might happen, that she might become lost in the flow of the ether and need help breaking free of it.
She started to shake and convulse before me, still cutting into her own arm, a curse falling from my lips as I ripped my pack free of my back and hunted inside it for a flint to light a fire.
“Hold on,” I commanded, shoving provisions and weapons aside until I found what I was searching for and tugged it free.
The magic which held her in its grip built to a terrible crescendo, her body jerking violently beneath me, blood running from the corners of her eyes, her ears, her nose.
A song lingered on the edge of my comprehension which sounded like the chorus of death itself and I had no doubt Vesper was going to die if she couldn’t break out of it.
I wrapped my arms around her as she cut into herself and screamed a wretched scream.
“Vesper Crossborn!” I yelled at her. “It’s not your time to die!”
The Void poured from me, the power lashing out at whatever dark magic had hold of the Sky Witch.
It connected to it, dragging me in too and I cried out at the agony contained within it, like it was built of purest death.
It was an echo of all that had happened in The Waning Lands, every battle waged in Avanis, every mother’s tears who’d wept for their lost child in battle, every broken heart, every abrupt loss.
It was a pain like no other, a wound in The Waning Lands itself.
I‘d felt this very anguish before, when I’d somehow connected to this roiling power in the earth of a battlefield in Pyros with Mavus watching over me.
I’d only managed to break free then because of the battle stims he’d given me, but there was no hope of that this time.
I pushed back against it, controlling the Void far better than I had when I’d felt this very anguish before.
But there was no way of forcing this power to answer to me, the claws it had hooked into us made of magic so different to that which my Void knew how to banish that I found myself powerless against it.
We were both lost to it now, both trapped in the confines of this hell which both terrified and called to me.
A flare of burning pain against my fingers snapped me out of the turmoil of dark magic with a violent crash which left me panting and blinking on the stone floor of the chamber with Septa backing away from us, my flint falling from her hand.
I looked to the scraps of burnt herbs and parchment which were crushed between mine and Vesper’s fists.
“I heard what the Dragon said about burning that,” Septa said, backing away from us, the vines which had been wrapped around her now heaped at her feet where she’d broken free of them. “Consider my life debt repaid to you, Everest.”
Vesper groaned as she fell back into reality too, her eyes unfocused as she blinked between me and the Stonebreaker who had just saved our lives.
“Thank you,” I said.
“I did it for The Waning Lands,” Septa replied. “And so that you’ll leave here before the Dragon hurts anyone else.”
“We will,” I swore, the bellows of Bastian’s fight with the underbeast still echoing around the room.
I pulled Vesper close and she leaned into me, panting and bloodied. I held her as my heart began to slow, relief consuming me. I’d almost lost her. She had come so very close to death, perhaps she’d tasted it.
“Vesper?” I whispered and she lifted her head, blood red tears falling from her eyes and staining her cheeks crimson. I wiped them away, my chest tight, but no more fell.
“I almost gave in to it,” she admitted.
“There’s no point in dying until you’re either a hero or a villain who’ll be remembered for the rest of time,” I taunted and she cracked a smile.
“How about we try being both? Save the world but kill a lot of bastards along the way.”
“Sounds like the perfect way to live to me.” I shared her dark smile, then hauled her to her feet, yelling Bastian’s name so that he knew our task here was done.
“That was…” Septa spoke, looking horrified by what she’d witnessed.
“It’s true, what you said. This place was wicked.
But you’ve fixed it. Whatever foul magic was here, it was a taint on the earth, I felt it as though it whispered its horrors in my ears.
But you shattered it.” She stared at Vesper, eyes bright with confusion.
Vesper made to answer her but instead crumpled to her knees and I barely managed to catch her before she could hit the ground.
A potent blast of Dragon fire heated the space around us as Bastian turned, more flames bursting from his open jaws and down the new tunnel he’d blasted into the walls.
I didn’t waste any time and called on my water magic, a whip of it wrapping around both me and Vesper, hauling us into the air and launching us up and onto Bastian’s back where we landed heavily in the joint between his tightly tucked wings.
He broke into a run at once, wooden and metal spears hurtling towards us as we made our escape and Earl Tarlord and his warriors burst from the belly of the broken underbeast to chase us.
I threw a wall of ice up at our backs to shield us from attack, holding Vesper tightly as she teetered on the edge of consciousness before me.
Bastian blasted the wall of dirt ahead of us with more Dragon fire and I sucked in a sharp breath as it broke apart revealing the bright sky beyond as we burst free of the side of the mountain.
Bastian’s wings snapped wide as he leapt from the tunnel and we were launched into the air, my heart racing furiously as I found myself tearing into the sky on the back of a beast of legend.
A roar broke from Bastian’s lungs as we made our escape and I whooped in victory, my head turning left to right as I took in the stunning landscape which spread out beneath us.
Calcifiend crawled out of my hair, chirping loudly in my ear and a flash of fire caught my attention to the south. I yelled to draw Bastian’s focus to it too, my stomach knotting with concern that I refused to accept I felt.
“Kaiser is over there!”
My stomach swooped as Bastian dipped his wing and we turned hard, air whipping my hair from my face while I clung on to Vesper so she wouldn’t fall.
Another flash of flames burst into the sky above the tip of a towering pine tree and I caught sight of two figures clambering upward through its branches.
A group of Stonebreakers bellowed and threw magic at them from the ground. I threw my hand out to place a shield of ice between the Flamebringers and the warriors who hunted them.
Kaiser made it to the top of the tree, hauling North up behind him while we closed in fast.
Bastian dipped low, talons outstretched and I held my breath as the two of them leapt from the tree, nothing but blind faith and hope guiding their movements.
Bastian’s powerful body lurched beneath me as he snatched them from the sky and North howled in victory while Kaiser released a booming laugh filled with adrenaline and the thrill of the dance he’d just taken with death.
The knot in my stomach loosened and a breath of laughter fell from me too while Calcifiend licked my cheek to display his own happiness.
Bastian beat a path straight for the clouds above, taking us higher and higher. The endless greenery of Avanis spread out to the horizon, the view so beautiful it stole my breath.
Vesper fell slack in my arms, my heart lurching as she threatened to tumble right off of Bastian’s back, causing me to cast ice to fix her in place.
“Hurry!” I shouted to Bastian, unable to do anything to help her from here and he replied in a growl which let his concern for her be known.
We turned west sharply and I sent a silent prayer to Delphinus to grant us the luck we needed to make it back to Mirelle’s stronghold without incident, the miles speeding past at a ferocious pace as he raced for the archway which would deliver us to Ravensview once more.
“Just hold on, Sky Witch. You haven’t finished painting your fate yet.”