Chapter 20 #2
"We don't have two minutes," Aidon said, his powers barely managing to keep three Thessmark at bay. They pressed closer with every second, testing his defenses, learning his patterns.
There was a good chance that we would die in that hellhole because Aidon was right.
We didn’t have time. Taverner was moving toward the Scythe now.
She’d used the magic she had ingested to finish making the relic.
I couldn’t tell if it was ready. Chances were good that it was close.
Orange light bled from her fingertips as more of the stolen essence she'd consumed earlier flowed into the artifact on the altar. It pulsed, making my heart race.
"She's going to activate it," Tarja warned.
“She finished it?” I asked.
"Yes, though it’s unsteady. The magic has had time to properly fuse. Even unstable, it'll work long enough to harvest all of you."
"How do I stop her?" I gasped, pressing my hand against my bleeding shoulder.
"You can't. Not directly. But the primordial fire—"
My hand flew to my jacket pocket. The last vial was there, wrapped in a protective cloth and three protective enchantments. Mom's creation that could burn through anything and reduce it to nothing.
"If I use it, it'll destroy everything in the blast radius," I sent back.
"Including you," Tarja confirmed. "Unless you can get it directly on the Scythe itself. The artifact is designed to attract and contain magical energy. It might hold the initial explosion long enough for you to get clear."
A knot twisted in my stomach. "That's a huge 'might.'"
"It's the only option you have." I’d never heard remorse from her like that. It made the knot quadruple in size.
I hated that it came down to throwing a magical nuke at an unstable artifact and hoping it contained the blast long enough that we didn't all get vaporized. But what choice did we have? There was no way I was going to risk her being able to take my children’s power, killing them.
Taverner's hands were inches from the Scythe now. The corrupted wood was already beginning to glow brighter in response to her proximity. We had less than a minute before she was going to use it against us.
"Aidon," I said, pulling the vial from my pocket. "I need you to trust me."
I felt his instant agreement before he even looked over at me. There was no hesitation, no questions, and no demands for explanation. Just absolute faith that whatever I was about to do was necessary. That was courtesy of the deep love we had built between us. He trusted me completely.
When he finally looked at me, his eyes widened. “I’ll grab Nana,” he promised.
Nodding, I moved closer to my best friend. “Be ready, Stella.”
“For wh...oh, shit,” my best friend muttered as I unwrapped the vial carefully.
The protective cloth fell away to reveal glass that glowed faintly from within. The primordial fire inside swirled. It was beautiful, terrible, and utterly merciless.
Taverner's eyes locked onto the vial, and her expression shifted from triumph to horror in a heartbeat. "No!" she screamed, lunging toward me.
Aidon's shadows erupted between us, forming a wall of darkness that pushed her back. I felt the cost through our bond. He was burning what little power he had left, draining his magical core to its absolute dregs. But he held her, buying me precious seconds.
He picked up Nana, and Stella converged on my position without me having to say a word. Stella's pink fire created a protective barrier on my left. From Aidon’s hold, Nana fired on the Thessmark on my right.
"Whatever you're doing," Stella shouted over the chaos, "do it fast!"
I ran for the altar, weaving between Thessmark that reached for me with those elongated fingers. Their claws scraped against my enchanted jacket. Some found purchase in places where the vendor's protection spells had worn thin. Blood ran down my arms, but I didn't stop.
"Throw it high. Arc it over their heads. The Scythe will pull it in—it's designed to attract magical energy. Trust the artifact's nature." Tarja's voice guided me.
A Thessmark appeared directly in my path. Its mouth opened to reveal rows of needle-thin teeth. I didn't have time to dodge. Didn't have magic left to fight. I lifted my arm to throw the vial and prayed Aidon got them out of there.
Nana's shotgun boomed. The creature's head exploded in a spray of gray matter, and its body crumpled. "Move your ass, Buttercup!"
Laughing and happy to not be out of options, I jumped over the corpse and kept running. Ten feet from the altar, Taverner broke through Aidon's shadows. Orange light blazed from her eyes as she charged toward me.
I threw the vial. It arced through the air, tumbling end over end.
The protective enchantments Mom had woven into the glass shimmered briefly in the fluorescent lights.
A Thessmark leaped for it, gray fingers extended, trying to catch it mid-flight.
It missed by inches. The vial shattered against the Scythe's corrupted wood.
"RUN!" Aidon roared.
We didn't wait to see what would happen.
Aidon held Nana like she weighed nothing, cradling her against his chest as he bolted for the double doors.
Stella was already moving. Her pink fire dripped from her hands as she sprinted alongside him.
I was ten feet behind them, and my feet felt frozen for precious seconds.
Around us, the lab went absolutely silent. Even the Thessmark stopped moving as their attention was fixed on the altar. Then primordial fire exploded. White-gold flames erupted outward in a wave of heat so intense it felt like the air itself was burning.
The shockwave snapped me out of my stupor, and I stumbled forward, gasping as the air was sucked from my lungs.
My shoulder—already torn open by Thessmark claws—screamed in protest. Blood was running hot down my arm as my feet finally got with the program.
My flight instinct kicked into high gear, and I ran. I didn't stop. I couldn't.
I had too much to live for. My kids needed me. Aidon and I had just begun. And there was so much I wanted to do with my magic and my company. No. I wasn’t dying in that place.
We ran through corridors that were already becoming unstable. The primordial fire warped everything so badly that the walls began melting. The floor rippled like water beneath our feet as the heat began consuming the tiles. Around us, the laboratory was being incinerated one inch at a time.
Lab equipment melted. Workstations turned to slag. And the glass containers—hundreds of them, each holding stolen essence—burst open one by one.
Like at the Corvus building, swirling lights erupted into the air.
Blues, greens, golds, purples, and every color imaginable.
The stolen essences of these murdered children had finally been freed from their prisons.
They swirled overhead like the aurora borealis and raced ahead of us.
As I ran, I could see them dance and spin.
I swear it felt as if they were guiding us through the chaos.
Showing us which corridors were still stable enough to pass through.
I stopped in the hallway with one hand braced against the warped wall and turned to look back.
Taverner was screaming. The sound was one of pure anguish that cut through even the roar of primordial fire.
She reached for the fleeing essences with both hands, trying desperately to recapture them.
To absorb them back into herself. The primordial fire caught her fingers instead.
White-gold flames raced up her arms, but they didn't burn her skin—they burned the stolen power inside her first. The essence she'd consumed, the false life she'd sustained for fifty years.
Orange light flickered in her eyes like a dying candle, guttering out as the primordial fire reclaimed everything she'd stolen.
I had to look away when she began to melt. It wasn‘t a pretty sight.
Parker ran for the corner of the lab where I'd seen him open portals before. His hands moved in the complex pattern of dimensional magic, and his power began tearing at reality itself. A rift began to form. It was unstable and flickering, but there.
He didn’t get a chance to jump through it.
The primordial fire hit it, and the portal collapsed in on itself.
The dimensional magic unraveled like a thread pulled from a cheap sweater.
Parker stumbled backward, and his hands began smoking where he'd touched the failing magic. Flames erupted over his body.
The Thessmark were burning now, too. It started with their connection to Taverner. The magical ties that bound them to their captor were severed one by one, and they began turning to ash. Gray bodies crumbled, leaving nothing but dust that scattered in the wind created by the spreading flames.
Taverner fell to her knees. The way she was melting made it look as if she had aged rapidly. It would be fitting if the fifty years of stolen life caught up to her. "I just wanted them back," she whispered, her voice cracking with age and grief. "I just wanted my girls back."
Then she collapsed, her body turning to dust before it hit the ground. The woman who'd murdered hundreds of children to resurrect her own daughters died exactly as her victims had—reduced to nothing but ash and bitter memory.
Thessmark bolted for the exit, abandoning their fight master without hesitation. Nana—still in Aidon's arms—raised her shotgun with steady hands. She tracked them through the chaos, took her time despite everything falling apart around us, and pulled the trigger.
The blessed buckshot caught one between the shoulder blades. It went down hard, its body sliding several feet before going still. "That's for every kid who died in this place," Nana said quietly.
"MOM!" Jean-Marc's voice screamed through my earbud, so loud it made my ears ring. "The support columns are failing! The whole building is coming down. Get out, NOW!"