Chapter 74 #2
The courtroom shared quiet murmurs as they took in Tethys’s words, searching for meaning in subtle admissions.
“That truly was moving, little bird,” Procyon mused.
“But your sob story won’t change anything.
The fact of the matter is, your son is a bastard.
You’ve broken our union and in doing so, there will be war.
If a band of angry farmers could burn your city to the ground, imagine what the full force of the Canissaen army will do. ”
“Let them try, Proc. Let them try,” Tethys hissed, flaring her canines.
“Silence!” Obscuros boomed. “I’ve heard enough from both of you. Tethys, there are powers in play far greater than you or me. Don’t speak another word of what you think you know. Bring in the next testimonial, I tire of this bickering.”
Movement flickered in the shaded corner on Tethys’s left.
Sitting limply in the shadows was a frail, full bearded figure.
He shifted into the light, and Tethys’s heart shattered.
Araes’s breathing was wheezy as he fluttered in and out of consciousness.
His wrists were bloody and irritated from the shackles that held him to the wall.
“This is my last testimonial. This mortal man who disobeyed direct orders and committed treason against the crown. He is an enemy to Venia and Canissa alike.” Procyon scowled and pointed a deadly finger toward him, then back at Tethys.
“Can you feel it? The Elytheran bond tethering them together? My wife performed the rites with him, and now she carries his son. The child cannot be allowed to live and neither can he.”
“You will not lay even a finger on either of them, Procyon,” Tethys said, cradling the infant closer to her chest. Araes glanced toward her with unseeing eyes. It broke her heart seeing him this way—so fragile and frail.
“Such a sharp tongue behind the safety of our brother’s shields, little bird. Do you feel your lieutenant’s heartbeat? Or did the bond break when my magic seeped under his skin?” Procyon snarled, pacing the courtroom.
“I’ll kill you!” Tethys cried, feeling the rage course through her veins, washing over each muscle and bone.
“The Elythera? What have you done, daughter? Those rites are sacred and to have performed them with a mortal? You’ve brought shame on us all.
” Obscuros’s black eyes flashed as he spoke.
“Procyon is right, Tethys. The child goes against our very nature. He is a threat to the mortal realm. A human body isn’t designed to withstand our power.
If he doesn’t burn himself out when that magic manifests, who knows what might happen when it comes to fruition.
” Obscuros’s tone held a foreign softness. “I’m sorry.”
“No. No. You can’t take him from me. He’s my son, Obscuros. Your grandchild,” she begged. “I won’t let you take him.”
“Father, you can’t be serious! The child is merely a babe,” Altair protested, stepping beside Tethys. “We don’t know if his magic will even manifest. Tethys’s didn’t. You’re talking about murdering an innocent babe.”
“Do not assume I’m taking this decision lightly,” Obscuros countered, directing his attention toward the oldest son. The primordial snapped his finger. His shadows slithered along the floor and circled Altair’s shimmering shield. “Lower your ward, Altair.”
“No.”
“I said lower it,” Obscuros repeated.
“Never,” Altair growled.
“You’ve left me no choice,” the primordial snarled as he snapped his finger again. Shadows crept up the iridescent veil until all Tethys could see was darkness. They tightened their binds, flexing the ward until it burst into aether.
“No, Father. Don’t do this!” she sobbed, struggling against the primordial’s power.
Frigid, translucent hands gripped her shoulders and twisted over her fingers, then her wrists. Aryx screeched in her arms, desperate for his mother’s warmth. Tethys strained against them, every muscle in her body rigid under their all-powerful grip.
“Bring me the babe, Otto.”
The screaming protest of her two older siblings echoed through the hall as they, too, fought the binds that held them. Polaris sobbed, yelling curses at their father; Altair bellowed and growled vicious threats.
“Don’t do this Father, please,” Tethys begged, holding her infant close.
General Otto descended the dais, his pale features ashen in the morning light. He faced his goddess, eyes glistening a sympathetic blue.
“Otto, please. Don’t do this. Don’t take him away. Please,” Tethys whispered, feeling her heartbreak stream down her cheeks.
“I don’t have a choice, Goddess. I…I’m so sorry,” the general replied, his deep voice tainted with ragged despair.
“I beg of you. Please,” she whispered. Otto lowered his eyes to the marble tile and reached for Aryx. The infant wailed as he pulled him from his mother’s arms. Every panicked cry shattered Tethys into a thousand pieces until all that was left was stardust.
The babe screamed for his mother, his tiny voice filling the silent courtroom.
The eyes of the audience, once blazing with contempt, all looked away.
They couldn’t witness this. Tethys’s knees cracked on the tile as the shadows forced her down.
A cold, invisible hand pushed her cheek to the floor, its cold surface cooling the heated rage from her cheeks.
“No, please, Obscuros. Please. Give him back. I beg you, please,” she sobbed, still fighting against her binds.
General Otto ascended the dais and placed the screaming infant in Obscuros’s arms.
“Mother, Phosphora, please. You cannot allow this. Please,” Tethys begged, searching for her mother in the aether. But Phosphora was far from here. Floating some place where time and space couldn’t reach her.
Tethys’s very existence came rushing down upon her.
She couldn’t breathe. Her child screamed for her, searched for her in a stranger’s arms, and there was nothing she could do.
All her life, she was powerless, unheard, ignored, betrayed.
Now, when it mattered most of all, when her golden haired boy begged for her, wailed for her, she couldn’t fight.
Couldn’t change the fate decided for him.
A talon scratched across her mind, one attached to ruby red eyes and ruthless chaos.
Then, Tethys sank into the depths and succumbed to the chaos.
“No!” Tethys unleashed a scream, more beast than woman.
It exploded into the air, sending shockwaves through the council, through her siblings, through the primordials themselves.
A flurry of tingles rushed up her body, stretching and growing with every last sound that poured from her lips. This wasn’t a cry of defeat.
No. It was a roar.
“He’s arrived, husband, the door opens,” Phosphora whispered. “The door opens. He’s arrived.”
Power rushed in from the void, shattering the veil between realms. Tethys called to the Rift, summoned the chaos and violence that lurked there, and siphoned it into one last shockwave that shattered the stained glass windows and sent the mortals flying from their seats.
Her skin was electric, every hair on her body pricked with violent delight, as she shredded Obscuros’s shadows.
Nothing but hunger thrummed through her chest.
Nothing but death coursed through her veins.
She took a step and the marble tile yielded to her, cracking under each footfall as she approached the dais.
“Daughter—” Obscuros whispered, but she raised her palm and sent another wave of pure, concentrated chaos, beaming toward him.
Time stood still. The moon eclipsed the sun. Even the heavens halted their endless circadian rhythm.
“Give me my son,” she commanded, the voice of thousands interwoven with her own. Her once golden eyes now blazed a deep shade of ruby.
“Tethys, you’re not in control,” Altair whispered, lunging for his sister. But she wasn’t his sibling. Not anymore.
She was a creature of the shadows—chaos incarnate.
Procyon unsheathed his gleaming golden blade. Her eyes shot to him. Irises with light of the endless sunrise branded into his skin, igniting flesh in kindled flames. He dropped the sword, cradling his burning brow.
“Cowering before me, Proc? That’s so unlike you,” she whispered, prowling toward him.
“You bitch,” he spat, clawing at the embers of skin melting from his sharp cheekbones.
“Not a little bird anymore am I?” Tethys knelt beside him, her eyes cutting into his with violent delight. “Let me show you just how satisfying I can be.”
The goddess snapped her fingers and Procyon’s bones cracked. His breath cut off as he gasped and wriggled and writhed on the cool floor. Guttural roars from the Rift filtered through the air and Tethys grinned with lethal satisfaction as the autumn king begged for her mercy.
“Tethys! Enough!” Obscuros boomed, sending shadows spewing toward her. She swiped them away once more.
“No fun,” she mused, rising back to her feet. Procyon rolled to his side, panting in agony. Although the smallest of her siblings, the spring queen towered over every immortal and primordial alike.
“I’ve let you win for far too long. You have pushed me away, isolated me, ignored me, allowed my abuse. But this time, you will listen. Give me my son, Obscuros,” she commanded.
Araes groaned in the corner, pulling at the shackles keeping him chained to the wall. His heartbeat pulsed next to hers, like two rhythms orbiting the other, in perfect time. But Tethys didn’t feel it. She burned in the calamity unleashed from the Rift.
The realms crashed into each other, spewing flames and death across Venia.
Screams thickened the air outside, stretching over the endless horizon.
Lowborn and highborn alike succumbed to it.
Their bones snapped and hearts stopped. In an instant, those made from earth and sky perished.
Only the marked ones, touched by the void, remained.
“Tethys, sister, stop!” Polaris cried, sending her midnight borealis through the air.
It dissipated on impact with Tethys’s gleaming golden light.
Altair, with a sweat-dampened brow, focused his daylight power into an all-encompassing sphere.
It cracked with the intensity of a vicious thunderhead as it barreled toward the spring queen.
She snapped her finger and it burst like a bubble, scattering droplets of magic, like rainfall, to the floor.
“Tethys, please!” Altair groaned, flexing his palms as he slid to his knees, utterly exhausted of power.
The onlooking audience fled for the exit, but Tethys threw out her hands and the heavy oak doors snapped shut. Their fists pounded on wood like frantic drumbeats.
Some prayed. Some begged for mercy, but when Tethys snapped her finger again, all went still and collapsed to the floor. The life, leaking from their ears, was an expanding stain on the pristine white marble.
“Jaide,” she growled, her eyes locking on the lady-in-waiting.
“Tethys please, he made me say those things. The autumn king forced me to testify. Please, I love you. Please.” Jaide crawled across the floor, her lips spewing words like a frantic, gurgling fountain.
“I trusted you,” Tethys seethed, closing the distance between them.
“Please, my lady. He was going to kill me if I didn’t. Please! I’m sorry—” Jaide’s words cut short with another snap of Tethys’s fingers. One moment absolute terror encompassed the lady-in-waiting. The next, only quiet death.
“Goddess,” Araes’s weak whisper beckoned her. She stepped toward him, the soles of her feet barely touching the tile. “This isn’t you, I know it.”
But Tethys didn’t hear him. She’d burrowed too far into her own depths, letting the Rift pull her strings like a puppeteer.
“Yes, Daughter of Dawn. Give them no mercy. Make them feel your pain. Your heartbreak. Slaughter them all,” a cold voice licked down her spine.
She knelt down and wrapped her fingers around the hilt of Procyon’s discarded blade. The god still shrieked like a piglet, dousing his eyes with the pitcher of crystal water laid out for the mortal council members. The golden blade dragged across the floor, slicing the silence in the hall.
Even Obscuros froze, still clutching the babe in his arms. He was utterly powerless against the flood of magic now dripping from Tethys’s every pore.
Only Polaris moved silently, racing to the dais.
She took the babe from her father’s hands, soothed his frantic cries, and lunged for the hidden alcove behind the thrones.
“Tethys, put the sword down,” Araes whispered.
The man kneeling before her was a stranger now.
A mortal standing between her and her child.
She raised the blade overhead, feeling its perfectly balanced weight in her palms. The sword, crackling with golden embers, became an extension of her arms—a lethal limb designed to kill.
“Remember who you are, please,” he begged.
With teeth bared, she swung the blade in a near perfect arc. Her roar drowned out the whip of metal through the air.
Then, like a tear through fabric, the realm split in two.
One side, an iridescent reflection, like a blurred, rippling image. The other, violently clear and reeking of death.