Chapter 15 Maize
MAIZE
The ground pulsed once. Then a second time.
Every primal instinct in my body screamed ‘run,’ but there was nowhere left to go. Not when it felt like the earth itself was waking, not when my mates and I stood at the crumbling edge of Oberon’s prison, having just defeated his most loyal soldier.
A deep, hollow rhythm echoed through the valley, heavy enough to make the fractured cliffs quake. Each beat felt like a pounding fist striking from beneath the crust of the world. My balance wavered as cracks spread through the ground, glowing faintly blue.
“Back up as far as you can!” Maddox shouted.
I could hear the others cursing in realization as the weight of the power building from the center of the valley pressed against us, thick and suffocating. I moved into the tunnel’s entrance with my mates, each of us frozen in awe as we watched Oberon’s awakening unfold in horror.
The forest began to die in shockwaves. The trees bent inward, bowing to an unseen force.
Bark bled to black, leaves withered to ash.
The once-green valley turned gray and brittle, veins of that same light spidering through the earth underneath them.
As though the life from the lush surroundings was being siphoned directly into him.
Then the sky changed. The blue drained away, the clouds bleaching to a harsh, endless pallor. It wasn’t sunlight—it was something colder. Something sterile.
Zagan’s bloody remains, which were scattered along the crumbling cliff edge, tumbled with the dislodged earth, vanishing as though he’d never existed at all. There was no triumph, no relief—only the suspended stillness that came before more danger.
The valley shuddered like it was breaking open, and in the vacant silence that followed, the hairs on my arms rose. This was so bad.
Then the valley split open completely. A deafening crack tore through the mountains, a scream of ancient stone fracturing under the pressure of a god.
Dust and flame shot upward as the ground heaved, sending avalanches of stone tumbling into the abyss below.
From the depths of the shifting earth, the colossal god began to rise.
At first it was too large, too impossible to comprehend.
Then came the shape of it, pulling free from the ruin of the decaying earth.
Towering limbs of translucent flesh and blackened bone, light pulsing beneath its surface like ink bleeding under ice.
The air shimmered with unbearable heat, bending and warping around his growing form until the valley itself seemed to bow.
Oberon.
His horns broke through the dust of his prison’s disturbance first, sweeping backward from his temples like polished obsidian. The lower half of his face gleamed like bleached bone, a skeletal mask fused seamlessly to almost translucent skin. Every inch of him was carved from nightmare and beauty.
Then his eyes turned to us.
No color. No pupils. Just reflection—cold and endless. The air turned solid in my lungs as he spoke, his voice filling the world in a tri-layered echo.
“Obsidian Butterfly. I see you defeated the unworthy.”
Oberon’s words struck down to my very marrow, vibrating deep inside me until my vision blurred. The world tilted, and the wind in the valley became violent, whirling out from him as if he were the eye of a horrific storm.
Before I could react, before I could speak, an invisible force slammed into me.
My body was yanked forward and off the ledge, into the blinding light. The magic wasn’t a pull; it was a command. My ribs compressed as if crushed by a titan’s grip. Breath tore from my lungs, pain spiking so acutely I couldn’t even scream.
“Maize!” Zed’s roar echoed distantly. I caught flashes of movement behind me—my mates reaching for me, Charm soaring after me—but it didn’t matter.
Oberon’s magic slammed them all back in a single ripple. His hand lifted lazily, palm turning upward as my body was dragged through the air until I hovered above it, suspended like an offering.
I didn’t even care that I hung hundreds of feet above the vast, broken valley below; the thing that made bile rise in my throat was how close I was to him.
Dread invaded every nerve. Oberon was supposed to be weakened. If this was him weakened…
“So fragile,” he murmured, the sound crawling beneath my skin. “So small.”
His magic tightened. The air in my lungs vanished completely, pain bursting through my chest in white-hot waves. My wings strained against the pressure, shuddering as his immense magic coiled around me like chains.
Then his actual fingers tightened around me.
The force drove through my frame until my bones felt poised on the razor’s edge of snapping.
Agony radiated through every nerve until thought itself began to slip.
My vision blurred at the edges, the air around me rippling with his saturated power.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him raise a wooden staff, pure energy gathering at its tip. He aimed it directly at my mates.
Something snapped inside me.
My familiars broke free, awakened in a form I’d never witnessed before.
Light burst from my skin as Sy tore from me with a sound like thunder booming across the sky.
A gigantic spider of obsidian landed in the center of the valley, long limbs glinting with a shimmer that mirrored my wings.
Her eight eyes locked on Oberon before she scuttled toward my mates, her massive head rising level with the cliff.
I wheezed out a breath of shock as Lu followed, a massive coal-colored serpent filling the valley so completely that even Oberon stepped back. Lu’s form solidified in an instant, body unfurling and stretching until he dwarfed even the god himself.
The shockwave of their awakening forced Oberon’s grip to falter, and I dropped through the air before catching myself in the updraft of their power.
Oberon, realizing his mistake, snatched me up again just as Lu released a hiss that shook the mountains around us.
He lowered his head slightly, ready to strike, a rumble of warning vibrating through the air between my familiar and the ancient god.
In the distance, I saw my mates climbing onto Sy before she raced across the valley with impossible speed, but the god holding me didn’t seem the least bit concerned.
Instead, Oberon chuckled.
The sound rolled through the valley, amused and endless, and his skeletal jaw twisted into something that might have been a smile. “I wonder what they’ll be like as my pets once I take your magic.”
His confidence would’ve broken anyone else, but I remembered what Balor had said, his plan echoing in my mind: Do not fight him. Let him consume your power to poison him.
My pulse slowed. My fear bled away, replaced by a strange calm. I didn’t need to overpower a god. I just needed to let him dig his own grave.
“You will not take my magic, Oberon.” My voice carried across the valley like a promise. “You cannot take my magic.”
He tilted his head, mock curiosity flashing in those mirrored eyes at my blatant challenge. Then the air between us flashed, our powers straining against one another in a quiet, brutal stalemate. And for the first time, I saw it—
A crack. A fissure in his perfect, godly mask.
Oberon’s expression faltered. The faintest flicker of doubt crossed his face at my confidence.
Through the bond, I felt my mates’ terror and wrath twist like barbed wire through my chest. They didn’t understand what I was doing—and maybe neither did I—but I sent a single pulse of reassurance through our connection anyway. Trust me.
Oberon’s fury at my words cracked through the air. His skeletal jaw snapped open and his arms spread wide, leaving me floating in the air between his two clawed hands.
“Then I will tear it from your very soul.”
Agony ripped through me as my magic—my pure essence—tore free from my skin in glowing threads of pink, blue, and violet light.
Each strand shimmered and writhed, pulled from me with such force that I could feel it detaching muscle from bone, every molecule of my body trembling in response.
I was being flayed alive from the inside out, tears leaking down my face.
But all I felt was victory.
My veins felt hollowed, my pulse a chaotic rhythm of suffering as the threads floated upward in spirals, twisting through the sky like ribbons as they spread outward, connecting to Oberon’s reaching hands.
Every cell sparked white-hot as the color bled from my vision.
My wings flickered in and out of existence on my peripheral, fragments of energy sparking off them weakly as my body wilted.
The threads that left me didn’t vanish—they clung to him, sinking into his translucent skin as he greedily demanded more. I could feel him consuming me—a primordial god draining a goddess.
It should have emptied me. It should have killed me.
But instead of weakening me, it did the opposite.
The power recoiled—not from me, but to me.
It surged back through the connection like a silent river current flowing in reverse.
My body convulsed under the force of it as Oberon’s power poured into me, filling the hollows he’d initially created.
The glow beneath his skin dimmed even as mine flared brighter.
I was both poisoning him and feeding on him… and he had no idea.
My magic took deep, ravenous pulls of his, and with each ounce of his stolen divinity, I became stronger. When he looked at me, truly looked at me, I saw the faintest flicker of disbelief cross his monstrous face. In that mere second he realized that the predator in this moment wasn’t him.
It was me.
My mates felt it. I sensed their astonishment through the bond, a rush of disbelief and awe. Through their eyes, I caught glimpses of myself: my nails lengthening into gleaming points, my irises reflecting mirrored light, my wings fracturing into pure energy that surrounded me in a protective aura.
My poison, once something I was ashamed of, flared to life in beautiful and powerful hues of pink, violet, and blue. It surged through Oberon’s veins like wildfire, burning bright as it unmade him molecule by molecule.
My mates and familiars encircled us, anchoring my magic. They fed me their strength, completing a toxic and lethal loop of power—our energies syncing in perfect, terrifying harmony. Our bond, our love, had never been so strong and all-consuming, enough to silence a literal god.
The more Oberon tried to draw, the more we gave, offering him everything he wanted.His lips curled in confusion, then frenzied rage, as he realized I was growing stronger.
“No! No! This can’t be! I will consume you, burn through you, until the world forgets you ever existed!”
I spoke with a calm certainty that felt like a blade coming down on his throat. “And that will be the death of you.”
The stolen power within him curdled, turning black and tar-like as my poison corrupted it. His divine body fractured, splitting into shards of smoke and light as my magic devoured him from within.
In one final act of desperation, Oberon released it all, every drop of stolen essence blasting outward in a blinding explosion.
The impact hurled me across the sky. Excruciating anguish seared through me, my wings tearing, body burning as if every nerve had caught fire.
The world spun violently until something enormous surged beneath me, Lu’s head rising to catch my fall.
I landed hard but alive, the serpent’s scales glowing faintly beneath my feet.
“That is my power!” Oberon roared, voice cracking into madness. “Only mi—”
The ancient god dissolved into glittering dust, vanishing all at once.
Then came the rebound. Every thread of magic Oberon had ever hoarded surged toward me in one violent rush.
Light engulfed the valley, flooding the shadows with brilliance.
My familiars vanished into the rush, their energy consumed by the tidal pull.
I hung there, weightless, suspended in the air as the stolen power poured into me.
Agony struck like a second impact, everywhere at once.
It wasn’t just pain, though; it was reconstruction.
My veins burned as if they were being rewired, my body redrafted cell by cell.
The magic that filled me was too vast, too ancient.
It clawed at the edges of my being, demanding space that didn’t exist.
But I wasn’t alone—my mates, connected to me through the strength of our bond, took the excess magic, filtering it through them and grounding the storm.
For a mere second, I felt as though I was floating through the heavens. Then my body went limp, drifting downward to the destroyed earth.
Strong, familiar arms caught me before I could fall. My mates’ voices blurred together—desperation and fear filling the air—their magic brushing against my fading consciousness before everything went black.