Chapter 60
Lunara flung her power down as they plummeted, the wind whipping by.
Fern shot like a verdant arrow past her, reaching Hedda first and grabbing her by one horn, then Faldir. Vann’s vines shot out in two directions, snatching Magnus to himself before winding around Faldir’s outstretched hand and arm.
She grabbed onto the group of them and wrenched their particles to herself, grunting with the effort of being stretched in so many directions—the shield, the air, their bodies.
Fern’s wings worked to help her, pulling them to a nauseating stop.
It was ridiculous, the way they hovered, wrapped around one another in a tangle of limbs and fur and flora. Worse still when Magnus—Pet—panted in her face and drew his rough tongue across her and Fern’s cheeks.
“Fuck off, you hairy bog troll, or I’ll drop you.”
Hedda let out a choked sound as Fern let go of her to shove a hand in Magnus’s muzzle, pushing his massive head away, and a huff of nervous laughter escaped Lunara.
“We should’ve jumped from the get-go.” Faldir pried Fern’s hand from his own horn with a slow breath. “Next time, maybe try to catch me somewhere else though, gorgeous.”
Magnus growled low at that. Fern seemed… intrigued.
“Honestly, Fal. Not the fucking time.” Hedda’s eyes were still wide and blinking, like she didn’t quite believe they were alright. “Now what?”
Vann cranked back and looked down into the murk. “May as well finish our descent, eh?”
A good idea as any, but not what they’d planned.
“Are you sure? There’s more going on than we thought. I can take you all to the surface, come back alone and—”
“None of that.” Vann pinned her with his emerald stare. “We stay.”
No one refuted the statement, though a part of Lunara wanted to beg them to go. Wanted them to be far, far away from the thing that had spoken to her.
“We stay, little sister.”
As it turned out, they were much closer to the chasm floor than they’d realized before she and Fern had stopped their fall.
“Bloody Solyrian,” Hedda muttered, swiping a hand down her face. “I never want to be high up again.”
Lunara felt that sentiment to her damned soul.
“Brace yourselves and be ready. I’m going to give us some light and—while I don’t sense anything living—there’s no telling what we’ll find.”
She ignored the twinge in her chest at the thought of the last time she’d done this, Brand at her side, and pulled from the well. Power concentrated between her hands and she threw the gathered sparks free, the shield blasting out.
And revealing nothing. Well, almost nothing.
The ooze had multiplied ten-fold, a hundred-fold, since she and Brand had been here. It bubbled up from cracks and crevices. It gathered in puddles and piles. Writhing. Crawling. More alive than she’d ever seen it.
Magnus shifted in a flash, bringing an arm to his face as he gagged. “Ach, that smell. Can’t fucking take it.”
Lunara plucked his robe from the ether, handing it over as she drew in a deep breath—the scent of burnt roses with it.
It was visceral, the way her senses locked onto the horrible, familiar stench and everything clicked into place at once.
Meliora. Baldrir. Glynmor. Fern. The Horned City. Nyri. Brand.
All connected. All hers, in a way. She’d known, but she hadn’t known. Not in the manner it was solidifying now. Not looking at all of it through the lens of the Prophecy and her presence within it.
A prismatic aura enveloped her, dancing up to tease her hair. To whisper in her ear.
“A shadow, once living, abides in bleak places.” She was in a kind of trance, Illamiata humming as the words left her unbidden. “A vengeance, once loving, on five towers gazes.”
The sludge churned, more agitated with every syllable that left her lips.
She had to find Brand, yes, but she also had a responsibility. A place in this mess that was bigger than just the two of them. She hadn’t understood before, but she did now. Could hear the song of it in her blood.
“Fuck, witchling. Not again.”
Her feet were moving without being told, out into the center of the chasm. To the worst of the pooling black.
“Their hate is consuming, biting and bruising. Eating and rotting and writhing and oozing.”
Fern and Hedda flanked her as the ground shook, rock crumbling from the cliffside. All of that oozing filth retracted, falling from the walls and racing towards itself—merging, growing—before shooting away into the distance.
The others joined them as Vann said, “That doesn’t bode well.”
“Naught more than the dark, being called by its darker master.” Her voice was back to its warbling tones, both the sound and the knowledge not quite hers.
“Well.” Hedda brandished her axe, eyes darting. “That’s ominous as fuck.”
“Hmm.” Fern grinned. “I love it.”
From high out of the far-off gloom, an object flew towards them. Closer. Closer.
“Ach, no.”
A severed leg landed with a wet slap a few feet away, bursting as it tumbled.
“What. The. Fuck.” It felt like a privilege to see Faldir so rattled, shock on his slack-jawed face.
A hand next. A head. A torso. All inside of her shield.
Vann made a canopy with his vines. The twins and Fern batted chunks away with their weapons. Magnus placed his body between her and the onslaught.
Except, she didn’t need his help.
A warm giggle sounded in Lunara’s mind.
Hello, Endellion.
The greeting didn’t come from her own conscious mind, it came from—
Illamiata pulled at her center and she shoved her way past Magnus. When he reached out and grabbed her hand, she turned around and locked eyes with him.
“Let go of me.”
He recoiled but didn’t release his white-knuckled hold. “Lunara, please. You can’t—”
“I can, and I will,” she whispered. “It was always meant to be me, from the very beginning.”
Of time. Of creation. Of her life. She felt the truth of it.
Magnus must have seen it in her face, that there was no stopping her. “Be careful. Brand would never forgive us if something happened to you.”
“Don’t worry.” A roaring thunder started up, shaking the fabric of the world. “I won’t be letting anything happen to us.”
“Weeping fucking Sisters,” Magnus breathed.
The others regrouped beneath Vann’s rudimentary structure and went still—resigned, almost, as they gaped at the sky behind her—and Lunara closed her eyes.
She had friends and a family now. A mate and a life worth living. Love. So much fucking love, she hardly knew what to do with it.
They needed her. Whatever was there, she would not be afraid. Not anymore. Not ever again.
With her hands clenched into shaking fists, Lunara turned and faced her destiny.
Hundreds of feet high, a tsunami of darkness was hurtling straight for them, churning with bodies and bones and blood.
A cataclysm of rotting death.
“This is the moment we planned for. It’s time. Time to accept your bright place in the sky. Burn, sister. Shine. Unleash fire on night. Release all your fear and wield vengeance that blinds.”
Release all her fear.
One foot in front of the other, Lunara flashed her fangs and tore the top from the well.
The barrier was no good to her anymore. Had no place in her life.
She loosened the nervous, spectral fingers she’d kept wrapped around Illamiata since claiming it, letting them slip away and finally unlocking the cage she’d built around herself all those decades ago.
“Yes, moth. That’s it. Let go and stamp your name upon eternity.”
She was free. At last.
As the darkness hit, Lunara erupted.
Power exploded from her in a tempest of wind and searing light, and she screamed into the descending void—screamed and screamed, releasing the torment that had followed her every day for decades, until her throat was raw and shredded.
As bits and pieces of cursed creatures rained down, she swam amongst her rage. Let it shine out from every particle and pore. Let herself burn.
Hotter than the sunstar and brighter than the moons. More staggering than the galaxies. More infinite than anything the cosmos had ever held within themselves.
She was a celestial fire of divine retribution. The Unknown made manifest.
A Star Goddess in her own right.
Illamiata pulled from the essence of the world and gave it back to her, and she used every drop to administer its vast destruction.
Her incineration was accompanied by shrieking death throes—quieter and quieter, less and less—until there was nothing left but ash and afternoon sunlight, beaming all the way down to the barren chasm floor.
Just before she collapsed—before her knees could hit the dirt and her body could crumple—Lunara looked up past the charred remains and at the scorched chasm wall.
At the perfect doorway carved there and the reddish glow shining from within.
At the cave he’d made to save her, where her life had finally begun.
Just before she collapsed, Lunara found him.
Brand.
Araxis spat, the misty fog of his midnight power drawing back and away from the thing he’d just suffocated with it. Not quite a Forgotten, not quite a creature—some abomination in between that curdled the blood in his veins.
Seeing was different than hearing. Brand and Lunara’s storytelling had done little justice to the reality.
Pandemonium reigned around him, the stink of death mixing with Nakarat’s wafting smoke to burn like acid in his lungs with every putrid breath. His brother’s dragon roared in the sky, pummeling the land in front of the Ghostwood with its fire.
The flaming wall was going a long way towards stemming the flow of monsters, but it was almost too little, too late.
Dead. So many were already dead.
And it did nothing to dispel the writhing pocket of darkness within the otherworldly trees of the ‘Wood. It had been there since the beginning. Unmoving, but watching. Waiting.
Doing an excellent job of matching Lunara’s description of the one who’d taken Brand.