Chapter 20 #3
His voice grew louder, more passionate. “Don't you understand? This is pointless! The world will always demand more sacrifice, more suffering, more beautiful things thrown into the maw of necessity. The Morrigan sits and laughs, moving us around like pieces on a chess board, and we dance to her tune like obedient puppets!”
Valroy spread his wings to their full span.
“The only solution is to destroy everything! To reduce the whole of creation to the void where it belongs! Make the Morrigan answer for what she has done to us all! Or, perhaps we should finally trap her within that prison my dear brother so carefully built for her.” He grinned.
“Aah…yes, what a wonderful plan. Ava dear, why do you not come here? I have a proposition for you.”
“What?” Ava blinked.
“I will allow your dear spider to survive. I will allow the Seelie to survive. I will even allow…some humans to survive.” He wrinkled his nose as if the idea was noxious to him and waved a hand dismissively.
“You may rend the worlds apart as you planned. Send Alex to be the anchor-point for Tir n’Aill.
You, for Earth with brother-dearest to keep you sane.
But use the Morrigan to anchor the Web in place.
” Valroy laughed. “There! Is that not a wonderful compromise?”
Abigail looked horrified. “You would place the Morrigan herself inside a prison for all time. The very creator of our race. Your mother. Who is to say what would happen to our magic, all of us, if that were to occur?”
“No more chaotic than anything else we have endured, certainly. What love do you have for that be-feathered bitch-queen?” He huffed a laugh. His glee faded. “And no more tragic than losing you, my love. To choose between the Morrigan and you is no choice at all.”
“And how do you plan to trap her?” Abigail arched an eyebrow.
“The Weaver. Or Puck. Or I.” Valroy shrugged. “Once we are agreed, it can be dealt with easily enough.”
“No.” Abigail shook her head. “No, you are not to be trusted. This is a stall tactic, a ploy, nothing more.”
“It is not for you to decide.” Valroy turned to Ava. “What say you, Weaver? Abigail, or the Morrigan? War or peace?”
“What the actual fuck.” Ava paced away half a dozen steps.
“Don’t you fucking put this on me, you two overblown telenovelas on legs.
” She put a hand over her eyes and groaned.
“Give me a second.” Staring up at the sky, she watched the stars twist and the auroras between the worlds flicker and struggle to stay lit.
“Valroy, if I agree, and we could trust you, and we could get the Morrigan into the Web, what about your war?”
“I continue it. I told you, some shall survive.” The way he said it was as casual as a man saying he was about to go out for groceries.
“But millions won’t,” Ibin pointed out.
“And?” Valroy seemed both amused and blissfully ignorant.
“And even if you said you’d agree to a truce, it’d just be the same treaty bullshit.” Ava shut her eyes and felt the familiar sensation of defeat fall over her. “This is just the same snake eating its same tail again, and again, and again.”
“Precisely, Ava.” Abigail spoke up. “We must end this cycle, even if by doing so, it ends ourselves. It demands that we end him.” She turned to Ava. “Begin the spell.”
Ava felt her heart rate spike as she opened Book, its pages fluttering in a wind that seemed to come from nowhere. The words of the ritual were there, burning in her mind with clarity, but she hesitated. Once she started this, there would be no going back. “Abigail—”
“You seek to destroy me, my love? Very well. We shall see how well you fight when you are in chains.” Valroy snarled. “Attack!”
Abigail smiled. “And we shall see how you fare in turn.” Suddenly the ground around them began to change.
Red flowers burst from the earth in expanding waves, their petals gleaming like fresh blood in the strange light.
But these weren't the gentle, decorative blooms Ava had seen before.
These were something else entirely—predatory, hungry things that turned toward Valroy's forces like sunflowers following the sun.
The nearest nightmare constructs shrieked as the flowers engulfed them, their forms dissolving as the blooms fed on their essence.
Unseelie warriors tried to retreat, but the flowers followed them, growing faster than anything natural had a right to grow, turning the battlefield into a garden of beautiful death.
“Finally, yes!” Valroy's voice carried genuine delight even as his forces scattered before Abigail's assault. “At long last, you wield your Gle’Golun in battle! You show your teeth! This is what you were meant to be, my love—not some passive guardian, but a force of nature unleashed!”
Abigail didn't respond. Her attention was focused entirely on her flowers, guiding their growth with gestures that were almost like conducting a symphony. Where her power touched the earth, reality itself seemed to bloom with new possibility.
Ava felt the ritual pulling at her consciousness, demanding her attention. The words were there, waiting to be spoken, the pattern of power ready to be woven. But as she raised her voice to begin, a shadow fell across her.
Valroy stood above her, having moved faster than should have been possible, his sword raised and gleaming with dark fire.
His expression was almost regretful. “I am sorry, little Weaver,” he said, his voice gentle despite the circumstances.
“But I cannot allow you to cage us all in separate worlds again. Perhaps it is time we discovered just how immortal the Weaver truly is.”
The blade began its descent, and Ava found herself staring up at her own death, Book clutched to her chest, the ritual half-formed on her lips.
Time seemed to slow as the sword fell toward her, and she had just enough time to wonder if this was how it all ended—not with noble sacrifice or tragic gestures, but with steel and blood and the simple mathematics of violence.
The blade cut through the air toward her heart, and Ava closed her eyes, hoping that someone, somewhere, would remember that she had tried.