Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Senara
The scent of Thorn's blood clung to my skin as I pressed my cheek against his chest, every muscle in my body still screaming from the flight through the forest. Exhaustion swallowed me in ragged increments and when the last tendril of consciousness snapped, I plunged into an unnatural darkness.
“Child of moonlight." The delicate voice cleaved through the darkness like a silver blade.
I jolted upright, bare feet sinking into velvety moss that hadn't existed moments before. Luna moths flitted around me in a slow celestial dance, each one bleeding soft light that painted the grove in teal and mercury hues.
"Goddess?" The word tasted of fresh water and blood on my tongue.
Light congealed into feminine curves robed in constellations. The Moon Goddess's presence vibrated against my skin, once warm as a midsummer night, now thin and strained like overstretched silk. Fractures of darkness swam beneath her luminous skin, pooling around her throat where a triple-star pendant that I had never noticed before hung, tarnished.
"Three trials guard the Grove's heart." The deity's voice shimmered between octaves, mother-soft cadences fraying into something raw and desperate. "Where silver roots drink from truth's well, your bonds will drown or bloom."
I stepped toward the glowing figure, the luna moths fluttering away from me as I moved. "What must we sacrifice?"
"Everything." The goddess's hand flickered translucent as she gestured to my chest. "Your mortal shell. His cursed lineage. The lies festering between you."
Ice crystallized in my veins. I reached for the goddess's disintegrating hand. "How do we?—"
The grove shuddered. Liquid shadows erupted between tree roots, devouring light as they surged. The goddess's form exploded into a thousand shards of mirror-bright light, each fragment reflecting a private nightmare.
The Void Dragon Empress coiled around Thorn's motionless body.
My own hands dripping black venom.
A silver-haired infant dissolving into stardust.
Wyn begging for mercy, from me.
The mirror shards reflected my scream as they fell.
I dropped to my knees in a spreading pool of liquid moonlight. Something vast and wrong uncoiled between the shattered oaks, its breath frosting the air into jagged crystals that cut her tongue when she gasped.
"Poor starlight whelp." The voice poured through the clearing like oil over water. "Did she neglect to mention you're the third sacrifice?"
The Void Dragon Empress emerged from something akin to a tear in reality. Deep obsidian scales lined a face that was too beautiful for words and yet was also completely devoid of humanity. Wings jutted from her back and her feet ended in talons that scored deep grooves into the glade's crumbling edges. The dark scales seemed to swallow the moon's radiance, drawing my gaze to her face once more. On her head she wore a crown of twisted talons, scales, and jewels which dripped with captured starlight. But it was her eyes that froze my blood, twin vortices of collapsing galaxies framed by lashes made from darkness itself.
The Moon Goddess's fractured light gathered weakly around her as though she was trying to form a barrier of some kind to protect herself. "Do not listen, child. Her truths are?—"
"Parasites," the Empress purred, snapping her claws. The goddess's remnant light constricted into a gilded cage no larger than my fist. "Your precious deity feeds on stolen power. Why do you think her consorts constellations fade from the northern skies?"
My moon mark burned as conflicting magic warred in her marrow. I pressed a hand to my throbbing moon mark, fingertips coming away smeared with silvery blood. "Liar."
A scaled tail flicked out from behind the empress, sending spider webbing cracks through the dreamscape's foundations. "Ask why half-breeds always die in their cradle, why they are portents of doom." The Empress leaned down until her breath brushed over my face, both as hot as a fire and as cold as the dead of winter at the same time. "You're not the chosen one, little moth. You're the kindling. You are but one in a long line of sacrifices she has used to keep her power."
Memories surged unbidden, Thorn's fevered whispers about our forbidden bond, the way moonlight sometimes slid off his skin like water from a bird's feathers. My knees buckled as the grove's remaining flowers wilted and died around me.
The cage dimmed. "Her darkness dies with my light," the goddess whispered, voice fraying at the edges.
"Silence, relic." The Empress vanished in a swirl of cosmic dust. Her presence swirled around the grove for a moment before reappearing behind me, her claws resting against my neck. "Shall I show you the grove's true trial? How does your mortal heart burst when forced to choose between his life and hers?"
Cold spread from the Empress's touch, branching through my veins like petrified roots. In my mind's eye, Thorn lay gasping beneath a dead oak, obsidian shards protruding from his chest as my own hands dripped with viscous shadow.
"Never." I grabbed the Empress's wrist. Smoke hissed where my skin met her scales. The Empress recoiled with a snarl, her wounded arm leaking void-stuff that dissolved entire sections of the dream. "Foolish child! When your goddess strangles you with her need for power, remember this mercy refused."
The goddess's cage flared once, violently bright. "Strike now! Her essence is thinnest here!"
I lunged, not for the Empress, but for the disintegrating remnants of moonlight. The glowing cage melted through her fingers, reforging into a slender dagger humming with the energy of the goddess and moonlight itself.
"Interesting choice," the Empress mocked, even as cracks spread across her alien features.
The blade pulsed in time with my frantic heartbeat. "You don't know me."
I plunged the dagger into the ground where the caged moonlight had sat, hopefully destroying the dream itself. Reality peeled back like rotting skin, revealing the Empress's genuine desire, a ravenous hunger clawing at the edges of creation. My scream scattered as the void swallowed me whole, plunging me into an abyss deeper than night. I clawed desperately at nothingness, my lungs burning for air that no longer existed. Just as panic threatened to consume me, I burst through the surface of consciousness with a strangled noise that was half gasp and half scream.
Thorn's arms tightened around me instantly. "Senara! What happened?"
I gulped air greedily, my eyes wild as they darted around our makeshift camp. The pre-dawn forest was eerily still, as if holding its breath. No birdsong, no rustling leaves. Just the pounding of my heart and Thorn's ragged breathing.
"Vision," I croaked out. "The goddess... and the—the Empress."
Thorn's face paled. "Both of them? That's... unprecedented."
I nodded weakly, still trembling. The memory of the Empress's touch lingered like frost on my skin. "The goddess warned of trials in Moonweaver's Grove. But the Empress... she said terrible things. About sacrifices. About you."
Thorn's jaw clenched. "We can't trust anything that creature says."
"I know, but..." I hesitated, searching his face. "Your mark. The way moonlight sometimes seems to fight you…" I didn't know how to put my thoughts into words yet. Everything was still too fresh.
A flicker of something passed through Thorn's eyes before he looked away. Fear? Guilt? I wasn't sure.
I opened my mouth to ask further, but movement in the trees caught my attention. Kaelyn emerged from the pre-dawn shadows, her hair disheveled and her eyes haunted.
"Did you feel it too?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. "The wrongness in the air?"
I nodded, a chill running down my spine. Whatever invaded my vision hadn't stayed in the dream realm. Its taint lingered, a miasma of dread settling over our little group. It wasn't over either. The wrongness only seemed to get worse as the seconds ticked by.
Thorn stood, his hand instinctively going to the hilt of his sword. "We need to move. Now. Whatever's coming, we can't face it here."
As we hurriedly broke camp, I couldn't shake the feeling that we were being watched. The forest seemed to close in around us, branches reaching out like grasping fingers. And beneath it all, a whisper so faint I might have imagined it:
"Run, little moth. But remember, in the end, you'll fly straight into her flame and be begging for my help."
I shuddered, quickening my pace. But as we plunged deeper into the forest, racing towards Moonweaver's Grove and the trials that awaited us there, one question burned in my mind: What if the Empress was right? What if I wasn't the chosen one, but just another sacrifice in a long line of victims? The thought chilled me to the bone, but I pushed it aside as we raced through the forest.
The wrongness in the air grew thicker with each step, pressing against us like an invisible fog. Branches whipped at our faces, roots seemed to reach up to trip us. Even the very ground beneath our feet felt unstable, as if it might give way at any moment.
"We're close," Kaelyn called out, her voice strained. "The Grove's magic is fighting against... something. I've never felt anything like this before." She stumbled, her face going pale as the darkness surged around us.
A low rumble shook the earth, and the trees ahead of us began to twist and writhe. Thorn drew his sword, his mark flaring as he did so, its golden light a stark contrast to the creeping shadows.
"Whatever's coming," he said grimly, "we face it together."
The forest floor erupted before us, sending us sprawling. As I scrambled to my feet, my blood ran cold. Rising from the torn earth was a creature of nightmare, a mass of writhing tentacles and glowing eyes, its body a patchwork of fur, scales, and pulsing veins.
"The corruption," Kaelyn gasped. "It's taken physical form!"
The creature let out a bone-chilling shriek and lashed out with its limbs. Thorn's blade flashed, severing one appendage, but two more grew in its place. I tried to summon my moonlight but for every flicker I could conjure; the shadows ate away at its edges, making me lose my grasp on it.
"We can't fight this," I shouted over the creature's roars. "We have to make it to the Grove!"
Kaelyn's eyes glowed with an otherworldly light. "I can hold it back, but not for long, and I'll be useless afterward."
"Do it!" Thorn commanded.
As she raised her hands, roots burst from the ground, entangling the monstrous form. The creature thrashed and howled, but the roots held firm, for now.
"Run!" Kaelyn cried, sweat beading on her brow, her body swaying as she turned to lead the way.
Thorn scooped her up, and we sprinted through the twisting forest, the sounds of pursuit growing closer with each passing moment. Ahead, I could see a shimmer in the air and hope leapt in my chest.
"Almost there!" Kaelyn called out.
But as we neared the shimmering veil, I felt a sharp pain in my chest. My steps faltered, and I stumbled to my knees.
Thorn spun at the sound and the look of terror on his face mirrored what was coursing through my own veins. "Senara!" Thorn cried out, shifting Kaelyn to one arm and reaching for me with his free hand.
As his fingers touched my arm, an arc of energy crackled between us. We both cried out in pain, forced apart by some unseen power.
"What's happening?" I gasped, struggling to my feet, the pain in my chest intensifying. Thorn reached for me again, but an invisible barrier repelled his touch. Panic flashed in his eyes.
"The Grove," Kaelyn wheezed, her face ashen. "It's...rejecting you."
Thorn's eyes widened in disbelief. "That's impossible. Senara is the Moon Goddess's scion!"
But even as he spoke, I could feel an invisible force pushing against me, driving me back from the shimmering veil. The corruption behind us roared, the sound of snapping roots and splintering trees growing ever louder. The corruption was breaking free.
"Go!" I shouted at Thorn. "Get Kaelyn to safety. I'll find another way in."
"I'm not leaving you!" Thorn growled, his mark flaring brighter.
The shimmering air before us pulsed. "Don't condemn someone who was just trying to help us," I pleaded. Deep in my gut, I knew if Thorn and Kaelyn stayed with me it would be Kaelyn that suffered the consequences. Kaelyn wasn’t a fighter, and this was way over her head; I didn't want her to die trying to help.
Thorn hesitated, torn between duty and his bond to me. He opened his mouth to object again, but I cut in, pouring all my determination into my words as I met his gaze. "We'll find each other. We always do."
He hesitated for another split second, then, with a cry of frustration, he lunged forward and pressed a desperate kiss to my lips. "Find us," he whispered fiercely. "I don't care what the Grove says. You belong with us."
I gave him a tight nod before he turned and scooped Kaelyn up, carrying her through the shimmering air, his long legs putting distance between us faster than the two of them would have been able to separately. And just like that, they vanished from view. It wasn't a veil like the one that separated the human lands from the fae lands, but it was close and was probably what the fae mages had drawn their inspiration from.
The ground trembled. Trees splintered as the monstrous corruption burst into view, its many eyes fixed on me with predatory hunger. I scrambled backwards, desperately trying to summon my power, but the moonlight slipped through my grasp like water.
As the creature's tentacles lashed out, an icy voice whispered in my mind. "Now do you see, little moth? Your goddess has abandoned you."
I stumbled, my back hitting a gnarled tree trunk. The corruption loomed over me, its maw gaping wide. In that moment of terror, a flicker of doubt wormed its way into my heart.
What if the Empress was right? What if everything I believed was a lie?
As the corruption's tentacles wrapped around my legs, dragging me towards its waiting maw, I faced a horrifying choice. Trust in a goddess who seemed to have forsaken me...or embrace the power offered by the Void?