Chapter 30 #2
I rush forward while the wolves try to stop me, but they seem wary of me this time. The only thing different is the medallion in my pocket. Is that pushing them back? But why?
I see something gleaming and notice that Conquest’s bow was thrown from his back when his horse crashed to the ground.
Not sure whether I can even wield such a thing, I dash toward it, lifting it up an instant before the horse slams into me.
I reach for the pendant around my neck, but I can’t get to it in time before I’m flung back and Kit falls off.
The wolves separate her from me, knowing they can’t touch me, but they seem to be able to recognize that without her, I’m disoriented.
“Don’t you see that you have no choice, Brother?” Conquest yells. “Just like the rest of us, you are merely prolonging your fate. You will do as the fates have decided, one way or another.”
“Kit!” I shout.
All I can see are the legs of the wolves as she scampers between them.
The bow in my hand seems to thrum with power.
The strange magic inside me wraps around it, almost like it’s thrilled to play with such a thing.
I draw the string back, much like the horseman had, and finally see myself when Kit finds a spot that looks down on me.
The magic thrumming through the bow makes me uncertain, but I try to aim it at Conquest while an arrow materializes inside of it.
Of course, Kit’s angle throws me as I let the arrow fly.
It misses the horseman but tears through the wolves, ripping them apart before they return to white orbs that float toward me.
Now they’re getting in my way, as though they’re magnetically attracted to me.
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Conquest yells. “Brother, you may think you’re saving these humans, but a fate worse than death awaits them if we do not comply.”
I draw another arrow that I aim toward him while Torin rushes the horse and rider.
Conquest’s attention is split between us, so when Torin charges him, he almost takes a sword to the chest before parrying.
But Torin is slowing and doesn’t stop the counterstrike soon enough.
He takes the horseman’s sword right to the side, yanking him off Quill who is slammed into by the horse.
Quill jerks back as I let another arrow fly that Conquest barely manages to duck, but it gives Torin a brief reprieve.
I run to him just as Conquest comes to deliver another blow that I’m uncertain Torin can withstand.
I dive in front of him, prepared to take the blow myself if it means Torin is safe.
Conquest pulls back a second before the blade would have hit and snarls at me while his horse jerks back, rearing into the air.
“Torin, I need you to be my eyes,” I say as I draw the bow. Torin’s hands, wet with blood, wrap around mine while he directs me where to aim and pulls my hand back, releasing the arrow. It strikes Conquest right in the chest.
He screams as he’s torn off his horse.
The wolves lunge for Torin, but with his body pressed against mine, they can’t reach him.
The magic inside me is swelling out of control while I try to use the bow again, but instead of creating an arrow, a swirl of white magic forms that keeps building.
I yank my hands back from the bow a moment before the magic explodes, surging through the area around us, ripping through the wolves.
“Brother, this magic is going to kill you if you do not come with me,” Conquest begs.
Pain is shooting up my arms. Kit rushes to me and I can’t even grab her because my hands ache so much.
She has to leap and scale up my body while I grab the bow again, but when I do, the power floods out of me.
Torin tears the bow from my hand, throwing it from me as the wolves dissipate, and all that remains are the three of us and the two mounts.
Conquest is bleeding heavily from the hole in his chest. His face is filled with anger and another emotion… one that almost looks like betrayal.
He reaches a hand out, and his horse runs up to him. He grabs the horse’s mane and swings up onto its back before fleeing toward the Door.
“He’s just going to hide until he’s stronger and come back again,” I say as I reach for the bow.
“It’s going to kill you,” Torin warns, stopping me.
“I can’t let another world die because of me,” I say, pushing him back and picking up the bow that I can barely manage to lift. I aim it at Conquest but realize that he’s stopped because an older man holding a sleek black cane with a dragon head on top of it stands in front of the Door.
“You are weak,” he says, and I recognize his voice as the man from beyond the Door.
The god behind this all.
I’m able to see him for the first time and find that he’s an oddly normal-looking man with black hair peppered with gray. Nothing about him stands out. If I met him on the street, I wouldn’t even spare him a second glance and might assume he had no magic at all.
“You hesitate because you are weak. Fate has a different plan for the weak,” he proclaims, then drives the pointed end of his cane right through the horseman’s chest. Conquest looks down at it in shock before he’s torn off the horse by the force of the god.
Black vines wrap around Conquest’s neck, dragging his bleeding body through the Door while the horse begins to thrash and flail like something unseen is attacking it.
It staggers and falls to its knees before the god sets a hand against the horse and it turns to what looks like sand that fills a small hourglass he’s holding out.
He flips it over and tucks it into the front pocket of his suit jacket.
Then the man turns to us, and instead of looking into my eyes, he looks into Kit’s, like he knows that’s where I’m seeing from.
“Time is ticking, Death. There’s nothing left for you here.
You’ll come home soon,” he says before he follows the blood streaked across the ground from the vines dragging Conquest through the Door.
The Door shakes and then shatters while Torin and I are left standing in stunned silence.
“Why… why didn’t he attack us?” I ask. “Why didn’t he… destroy the world himself? Why the fuck did he kill the horseman himself if he needs him to complete this spell?”
“He didn’t kill him. He wouldn’t die that easily. He took him,” Torin says.
I don’t want to face Torin, but the blood on my hands from when he’d cupped mine forces me to. “How badly are you hurt?” I ask, unable to look him in the eyes.
“I’m fine,” he says.
I nod slowly and gaze over at the white orbs—the souls…
or whatever they are—floating around me.
I want to assure Torin that Conquest and that man were wrong, but I can’t get the words to come out.
Instead, I feel like I’m being forced to face the atrocities I’ve done while standing in front of the very person I subjected to hell.
The barrier flickers before it goes down. I see people rushing toward us, but I don’t even want to face them. The second Torin’s attention is drawn to them, I slip away into an alley that I slowly stagger down. Everything hurts. My hands hurt, my legs hurt. My head hurts.
But more than anything, that knot of anxiety deep in my stomach hurts.
I can’t breathe. Do I even need to breathe? Am I really not even human? No… I’m a monster. I’m the reason Torin suffered, got hurt, and was forced to bury everyone he ever knew or loved.
How can he feel anything toward me but resentment? Hatred?
How could I feel anything but guilt?
I stumble and drop to my knees while I struggle to breathe.
My hands are shaking so much that when I try to push myself up, my arms collapse under me and I fall forward, hitting down on my shoulder.
Shakily, I reach out to lift myself back up, but part of me doesn’t even want to move.
I want to hide away here and suffer. Most of all, I want to wake up having forgotten everything.