Chapter 52
CHAPTER FIFTY TWO
The moon’s power thrashed against me with all the impossible strength of the heavens.
Sweat slid down the back of my neck, my teeth clenched together as I tried to hold it at bay.
The Void was like a dark shield that was the only thing slowing the moon’s magic as it was sucked into the abyss below, but it wasn’t enough.
My knees hit the floor as another frightful wave of the moon’s power clashed with the force of the Void and I screamed with the effort of fighting it back.
“I am Everest Arcadia!” I roared. “I am born of Cascada, a runt, a nothing creature of this battle-torn world. But I made myself into something. I will not be denied! I will be seen! My power will be answered!”
The crimson light flickered, the room shuddered, the violence of the Void somehow grew to a crescendo.
Mavus worked desperately to fill the hole with stone and soil while Vesper stained the rocks with blood magic in desperation to buy me more time. They were pouring everything into this endeavour while Kaiser and Bastian sliced through the Reapers who wished to thwart us.
We were giving all we had, each of us worn to the bone as we offered out our power in refusal of this fate. This monster would not rise. I wouldn’t allow it. None of us would.
The eschaton star bucked against the mound of rock and soil, blasting it out of the hole. It started climbing again and terror speared through my chest. I had to stop it. I couldn’t let it get through.
“I am the Void!” I bellowed and power tore from me that was built of the fabric of destruction itself.
The green crystals in the room shattered with the inescapable force sweeping from me in a deluge. The moonlight faded as if somehow I’d weakened its power, dulling the magic of a celestial being.
I gasped as I gazed up through the hole in the roof towards the moon in muted shock, a great ripple of magic daggering through the sky as the Void poured from me in a torrent and connected with the immense boundary that domed over The Waning Lands.
It was a tear that became a crack that became a fissure which crossed the entire heavens.
Vesper moved closer to watch it too, her grey eyes wide and unblinking as they reflected the glittering rainbow-shot ribbons of magic that were shivering out of existence in the sky.
“The barrier that keeps us closed off from the rest of the world…it’s falling,” Vesper breathed.
“By the stars,” I rasped, unable to believe what I was seeing as that unholy boundary of unspeakable magic began to fall.
It had been cast so long ago, by who even knew. Perhaps the instigators of the war, perhaps the Reapers themselves.
The sky shuddered with its fall, the isle of Never Keep trembling violently and Vesper caught my arm to pull me away from the edge of the chasm.
The chamber shuddered so hard that we stumbled and Mavus went tumbling into the hole with a cry of fear.
I yelled out in horror, lunging for him, but the fabric of his shirt slipped through my fingertips.
He crashed down into the shadowy grasp of the eschaton star and Vesper steadied me as I reached for him, sending a chain of ice down into it for him to grab hold of.
But he was caught under some dark spell, jerking and writhing as the shadowy grasp of the monster held him tight, its claws gouging into his flesh.
The beast itself was cloaked in shade, its features indistinguishable outside of two hellish eyes and its slashing talons.
“Mavus!” I screamed in fear, trying to reach him with magic as he wailed in horror, but then his face began to change, confounding me beyond all reason. He was no longer Mavus but Solomon Imai, the Cardinal Reaper himself yelling out to me instead.
“Everest!” he yelled. “Pull me out!”
I shook my head in confusion, Vesper and I drawing back another step but the ground shook and threw us to the floor at the chasm’s precipice. So all we could do was hold onto each other and watch.