Chapter 17 #3
Kinnek’s wound closed fully, and he went back to stitching the tears shut, a dozen hands holding the seams together to make his work easy.
I pushed bullets out of bodies and stemmed the flow of blood, mended flesh and skin like Kinnek did the fabric of the veils.
We pushed the Koa Esher magic back together, and shuttered the muzzles of attacking guns with nothing but our hands.
They misfired, and the sparks that escaped looked like flowers.
I was spread so thin, my attention everywhere, but I made sure my mate was fine. I did leave him with a scar though. Just before I mended his skin for good, I knew that he would like that scar as a mark of how he had protected me, the one he cherished most, in this moment.
“Holy fucking hell, he’s a badass twink dispensomancer after all,” Vergis mumbled as he took aim, guided by Lady Death herself. His bullet found its mark yet again, and the Lady reaped.
We were at the last stitch faster than I had thought, but there it was. Kinnek closed the seam and sealed it with his magic.
And like that, with all of us, it had been done. The veil to the monster world was closed, the monsters who were here already stranded and alone.
The anointed before me whom Death had allowed one more deed, clapped their hands and slowly walked back to the Lady, each touching the Stone as they went, each turning to look at me, the last of their line. I saw their faces for seconds only, but I knew I would remember each one.
At the end of the procession came the green-eyed witch. She stopped and looked at me. We didn’t speak the same language, but I understood her smile and nod of gratitude, and I returned it. I didn’t even know her name, but I owed her and the others everything. We all did.
She looked over toward where the celadon was still raging at having to stay back from where our archers and armed guys could hit him.
Furious, he lifted his blade and brought it down on the first of the chains holding the purple beasts, then the other.
The mages with him were smart enough not to hold on and let go, and the beasts ran toward the Raikengana.
“Aljos,” my witch ancestor said before she returned to the Lady.
I assumed that meant something along the lines of, oh, look, another cola asshat, and she was right. Both the land’s and my attention turned to him.
Someone else is passing through the veils, the land said.
That could only mean more Koa Esher. I wanted to scream to everyone that we needed to get away, that they needed to fall back to the Stone, but Fellisse and Nokim were busy handling one beast, and Inkiri sprinted around the Stone to handle the other. Both of those purple things were coming for me.
In the time it took Inkiri to draw one of his swords and do his swoon-worthy decapitation move, I saw who was coming through the veils, but at first, I didn’t get it. I thought it was reinforcements, more people who wanted to kill us.
But it wasn’t. It was Aragis. The two Koa Esher mages who’d held the beasts had stepped back, likely afraid of the celadon’s temper.
He was enraged at seeing the beasts being dealt with by my guys.
He wasn’t paying any attention to what was happening around him.
He didn’t see Aragis, who had appeared behind him.
I got closer with my outside-of-myself sense, but the moment I did, I wished I hadn’t. Aragis had found a knife somewhere. No, not a knife. This was one of the things Gesango had packed, and I’d pronounced it for him: scalpel.
Aragis took one step, uncertain because of his mutilated feet, but he didn’t fall.
He grabbed the celadon’s left horn with force and jerked it back and to the side so that the celadon reflexively bent his head back.
There was a moment of recognition in his eyes, slick and sticky like dried tears and sweat against the skin.
Aragis sliced right through the celadon’s throat, driving the blade deep without a hint of hesitation, and the blood started pouring.
Inkiri, done with one beast, looked at where Fellisse was ramming his sword into the head of the other. Nokim had burned one half of the beast’s face, and it whined, both because it was dying and at the smell of blood it would never get to feast on.
Across the field, Aragis dropped the scalpel and stepped around the celadon.
He wanted the celadon to know that he had done this, I knew.
Aragis wanted his face to be the last the celadon ever got to see before he died, and he got that wish.
I could no longer see the Lady all that well, but her shadow passed across the field to collect, and collect she did.
The celadon died in the mud, his white robes filthy with his own blood.
But Aragis was still there, and while he’d acted too fast for the two mages to stop him, there were other Koa Esher there, using human guns, and Aragis wouldn’t be able to outrun them. He didn’t even try. He just stood there and watched blood ooze from the celadon’s corpse.
I had to go get him.
“Rory!” Kinnek shouted when I pushed out from under his arms. He tried but failed to grab me. “We need to get back!”
He shouted to the others in Lugarra. I couldn’t pay attention.
I rounded the Stone. “Ink! Aragis is over there, by the Mound. Get him!”
And my mate, the bestest of mates, didn’t ask a single question, he just ran. With a sword out. Okay, so maybe you were allowed to do that if you were good with a sword after all.
Land! Help! I considered. Yeah, it was time I did something really memorable. Bring the fucking lightning.
Was I being dramatic? Sure. Was I a badass twink dispensomancer? Check. Honestly, who would say no to throwing lighting like an effing thunder god?
Inkiri ran full speed, and I waited until he’d grabbed Aragis. That’s when I unleashed it.
The lightning came with the force of a truck hitting my funny bone. It was bright, the light of a dozen suns made into a blade, and it was loud enough to drown out everything else.
For reasons beyond me, I giggled when the first bolt struck. It struck the Koa Esher closest to Ink and Aragis, not leaving much behind at all.
I had the energy for maybe three more bolts, and I called them down, one after another. I aimed for the Koa Esher, hoping they would hit everyone who’d hurt the survivors we’d saved. It was in no way enough, but it felt effing amazing.
I passed out right while the light was still searing my corneas, but that was fine. We had won. Nothing else mattered.