Chapter 48
CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT
Iraced into the cavern with the Sky Witch at my side and my gaze fixed on the shadowy abyss beyond the scrambling Reapers and lumps of fallen rock.
I knew that hole, the terrible place Kaiser and I had leapt into now torn wider by magic.
This chamber must have been forged around it with earth magic, the great opening in the roof above cutting right through the rock, up, up, up toward the snowy plain beyond where the blood moon shone down on us.
Crimson light flooded that terrible abyss where the eschaton star surely lurked, but it couldn’t penetrate the darkness within, only illuminating the hulking green crystals which stood in jagged formation around its edges.
Vesper broke from me, swinging her sword with perfect precision and slicing open the neck of the closest Reaper.
Before they could even think to cast magic at either of us, I let the Void tear from me in an unstoppable wave.
I cut off their power and they cried out in anguish, gold cloaks swishing as they scrambled to react but they had no blades to fight us with.
Vesper shoved me on and I leapt over the bloody man she’d cut down and set my gaze on the chasm.
“Void the power of the moon, lass!” Mavus shouted to me, even though I already knew that was my task.
Vesper swung her sword in a wide arc, making the Reapers stagger away from the abyss and the thing that lurked within it.
She herded them like cattle, swinging her sword in a threat of death while I focused the Void on the moonlight pouring down over the chasm where that beastly thing was fighting to break out into our world.
Large green crystals pulsed with energy around the hole, climbing the walls, scattered on the floor of the chamber, spreading out everywhere around me.
I gasped as my Void met with the power of the moon, the magic unlike anything I’d felt before. It was relentless, this pure, unquenchable power that fell down over everything it touched like a waterfall hitting rock. How could I stop such magic? How could I ever Void it?
I could no longer hold off the Reapers’ magic, having to use every ounce of power I’d been gifted to try and halt the force of the moon. It was all I could give my attention to.
A horrible growling came from within the pit and I glanced down with a cry of effort as I desperately tried to Void the moon’s magic.
Two burning eyes glared at me from the chasm, lashes of shadow and claw tearing at the walls as the blood moon beckoned it into our world from the place of horrors where it belonged.
Magic clashed in the air and I heard Kaiser, Bastian and Mavus join the fray as the Reapers fought back.
I gritted my teeth, throwing all of my energy into unleashing the Void upon the power contained within the moonlight.
Mavus raced to the edge of the pit, casting earth magic and pouring soil and rocks down on top of the monster to try and hold it back.
Large green crystals erupted from that hole, somehow created by the monster and shooting through the ground around Mavus’s feet. He pocketed a handful with a laugh, thinking of greed even now.
“That’s it!” he cried to me. “Look at ya now, a real legend in the flesh.”
Warmth poured through me at his praise, this man who had come to be something of a friend to me. Even if he was an unpredictable madman, the fact that he’d shown up tonight to put his neck on the line for the sake of the world had to count for something.
His foot slipped on the edge and he yelped in alarm as he nearly went tumbling into the hole. My heart lurched wildly, but he caught himself at the last second. Mavus glanced back at me with a shaky laugh and continued blasting stones down onto the eschaton star.
“Don’t go dying on me,” I called and he shot me a wink.
“Not today, girl,” he smiled wide, a feral glint in his eyes.
My feet skidded across stone as the moon’s magic pushed me back and I threw my palms out, the Void ripping from me in a torrent as I fought to stay in place.
The eschaton star didn’t seem to be climbing any higher, so it had to be working.
I just had to use every drop of power I possessed, show every damn Fae in this world what I was made of and hold back the moon itself.
I could do this. The Waning Lands would shatter if I failed and I wasn’t done living yet.
The eschaton star managed to claw its way higher and I screamed in defiance, digging my heels into the stone and shoving back against the moon once more.
Its light was guiding this creature of death and chaos into our world whether the moon desired this or not.
It was a beacon of power and no one could undo it but me.
The weight of that responsibility fell on me now.
The entire world was relying on me to manage this and if I failed all would be lost.
Vesper kicked a Reaper to the ground at the edge of the pit, slashing his throat with her dagger and calling the power of ether into her grasp as she offered up his death in sacrifice. Her eyes darkened, head snapping back as she fell to her knees and painted a rune across the stones in his blood.
“Stay back!” she ordered the beast through gritted teeth as if she could command it herself.
“You do not belong here!” I roared at that terrible monster reaching up through the chasm, letting the Void tear from me in a potent wave.
The moonlight flickered with the atrocity of my power, but its magic hardly waned.
Pain splintered through my body at the effort it took to keep fighting it.
But I wouldn’t stop, not unless I turned to ash and bone beneath the moon’s might.
And even then I might battle for this world with the Sky Witch at my side.
It may have been a ruinous place of bloodshed, but it was our home. And I was going to give all I had fighting for it.