Chapter 21 #2
The Seelie Queen didn't need to be told twice.
The red flowers that had been slowly advancing across the battlefield suddenly exploded into frenzied growth, their petals opening to reveal thorns the size of daggers and centers that pulsed with hungry light.
The Gle'Golun responded to her will like hungry dogs unclipped from their leashes, surging toward Valroy in waves of crimson death.
Valroy spun away from Ava's protective dome, his attention suddenly divided between the advancing flowers and the woman who commanded them.
“Yes, my love!” he called out to Abigail, his voice carrying delight even as he backed away from a cluster of blooms that snapped at him with jaws lined with thorn-teeth. “You fight me with true intention!”
Abigail didn't respond. Her face was a mask of perfect concentration as she guided her flowers in their deadly dance, creating a perimeter around Ava's position while simultaneously driving Valroy back.
Where the Gle'Golun touched the ground, the earth itself seemed to come alive, roots and vines erupting to entangle any of Valroy's forces that came too close.
Through gaps in her assault, Ava caught glimpses of the others.
Lysander had shifted to his cat form and was racing up the twisted tree where Alex hung trapped, his claws finding purchase on the nightmare bark.
Bitty flew alongside him, her tiny hands working with an iron knife at the roots and branches that held the purple-haired woman captive.
“Hang on!” Bitty called to Alex, her voice tight with effort as she began sawing through one of the thicker roots with her knife. “We'll get you down!”
Alex's response was weak but defiant. “About fucking time,” she gasped, blood trickling from her mouth. “Thought you were going to leave me up here all night.”
Nos and Ibin had positioned themselves between the tree and the advancing waves of Unseelie warriors, nightmare constructs, and the humans who had chosen to follow Valroy.
The mismatched fae fought with the efficiency of someone who had spent lifetimes learning to survive impossible odds, his sword carving through attackers.
Honestly, Ava was impressed. She didn’t think someone like him could move as well as he did.
Beside him, Ibin fired at her foes with her pistol, targeting the humans who ventured too close or who were firing at them from cover.
“Behind you!” Nos called, spinning to intercept a nightmare construct that looked like a cross between a wolf and a industrial shredder. His blade took its head off cleanly, the creature dissolving into smoke and bitter memory.
“I see it!” Ibin replied, already moving to counter a flanking attack from three Unseelie who had thought to overwhelm her with numbers. They learned their mistake quickly and finally. Three bullets. Three corpses.
Ava forced herself to look away from the battle and focus on the book in her hands.
The pages fluttered in a wind that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
She could feel the power building around her, reality bending and warping as she began to speak the words that would tear the worlds apart and rebuild them.
When she spoke, she couldn’t even hear her own words. It was like they didn’t even exist—or shouldn’t exist. The language she was speaking in wasn’t one she recognized. One she shouldn’t even know. One that shouldn’t be spoken, because it…well?
It could rip apart worlds.
So her mind simply rejected them. Said they were not for her to hear.
But their effect was immediate and overwhelming.
Reality lurched around her like a ship in a storm, and she could feel the barriers between the three merged worlds beginning to strain and crack.
Earth, Tir n'Aill, and the Web—all of them pressed together like three pieces of glass about to shatter under pressure.
Now, she just had to gently, carefully—carefully—pull them back apart. Without making things worse.
Y’know, like y’do.
Just don’t cut the red wire, Ava.
No pressure.
Through the chaos of battle, she caught sight of Valroy's face as he realized what she was doing. The predatory amusement vanished, replaced by something cold and terrible.
“No,” he said, and his voice carried such absolute authority that even Abigail's flowers seemed to hesitate. “I think not.”
What happened next wasn't grandiose. It wasn't dramatic or showy or accompanied by thunder and lightning. It was horrifying precisely because of its simplicity.
Valroy didn't gesture. He didn't chant or call upon cosmic forces or spread his wings in theatrical display.
He didn’t need to.
He simply…was.
And everything around him…wasn't.
The change rippled outward from where he stood like a stone dropped in still water.
The Unseelie warriors who had been pressing the attack stopped existing.
One moment they were there, swords raised and battle cries on their lips, and the next moment there was only empty air where they had been.
No bodies, no ash, no sign they had ever existed at all.
The nightmare constructs dissolved like sugar in rain, their forms unraveling into component fears and anxieties that dissipated on the wind. The humans who had followed Valroy faded away like morning mist, their lives ceasing to be. Not violently, not painfully—merely gone.
Abigail's flowers withered and crumbled to dust in seconds, their red petals turning black and falling away like burned paper. The Seelie Queen herself cried out and dropped to her knees, her connection to the growing things around her severed so abruptly it was like having a limb amputated.
And then Ava watched in horror as the same nothingness reached her friends.
Nos was the first to notice what was happening. His mismatched eyes widened as he looked down at his hands and saw them beginning to fade at the edges, becoming translucent like morning fog. “Ibin.” His voice was surprisingly calm despite the circumstances.
“I know.” Her own form was already starting to blur and dissipate. “I can feel it.”
They reached for each other, their fingers intertwining even as their bodies became less and less substantial. Nos opened his mouth to say something—probably her name, probably some last declaration of love—but the words were lost as he…wasn't there anymore.
Ibin lasted a moment longer, just long enough to smile sadly at the space where he had been. Then she too faded away, returning to whatever realm of dreams and possibility she had come from.
Bitty's scream was high, pure, and terrible as she began to dissolve.
Her iridescent wings flickered like a dying candle as she desperately tried to maintain her grip on Alex, clearly trying to hold onto reality through sheer force of will.
“I don't want to go!” she cried, her tiny voice breaking with anguish.
“I don't want to—” The rest of her words were lost as she faded to nothing, leaving only the echo of her fear.
Lysander lasted the longest, perhaps because he was touching the tree, perhaps because his connection to Ava's subconscious ran deeper than the others.
He managed to free Alex's left arm before the dissolution reached him.
He shifted to his human form just before disappearing, the more substantial size giving him a few more brief seconds.
“Ava! Remember... remember that we chose this. All of us. We chose to be here, to help you, to—”
And then he was gone, leaving Alex hanging partially free from the tree, blood streaming from her wounds, calling out names that no longer had anyone to answer to.
“No!” The scream that tore from Ava's throat was a broken thing, carrying with it all the grief and rage and desperate love she felt for her friends. Her power exploded outward in a wave of pure emotion, reality bending and warping around her fury.
The golden dome of threads that had protected her shattered like spun glass, the fragments dissolving into motes of light that danced around her like angry fireflies. Book fell from her hands as she lashed out at Valroy with everything she had.
It was the sound of rending metal that came to her first.
What was it with her and large metal objects?
Bazooka.
But Valroy was no fly.
Even if she had just dropped a sizable portion of the corroded and deteriorated engine block of what might have been the Titanic on top of him.
Because not even that seemed to do any good.
Her attack never reached him. The several-ton block of rusted steel hurtling through the air at the Unseelie King ceased to exist, dissolving into nothingness.
And Valroy stood there, untouched by her rage, watching with her with an approximation of paternal pity.
“Was this what you wanted?” He lifted his hands and gestured at the decimation around him. “Are you happy now?”
“You bastard!” Ava snarled, tears streaming down her face. “You—you killed them all! How can you killed your own people?”
“They do not matter,” Valroy replied, his voice maddeningly calm.
“And neither do those constructs of yours. Life is nothing more than a dream of meaning.” He took a step toward her, seemingly unaware of the reality-warping energy that crackled around her like lightning.
“Existence is borrowed time, little Weaver. I collect what is owed.”
Lifting her hand, she struck out at him again, this time with threads of silver, her own power mimicking Serrik’s.
Ava's power hammered against him in waves, each assault more desperate than the last. But it was like trying to destroy a mountain with handfuls of sand.
He walked through her fury as if it were a gentle breeze, his expression never changing from that terrible, patient calm.
This was how she died.
There would be no stopping him now.
She had failed. Honestly, truly failed.
Valroy stopped a few feet from her and smiled sadly.
“I—” he suddenly stopped, his hand flying to his chest where the tattoo of the Maze was etched into his skin.
His face contorted with pain, blue eyes widening in surprise and…
respect? “Ah.” There was almost a pleasure in his voice mixed with the agony.
“That explains where my dear half-brother has gone off to.” His lip curled in hatred.
“It seems Mother Morrigan had one last half-truth to tell me.”
Ava felt a flicker of hope pierce through her grief. Serrik. Serrik had made it to the tree at the heart of the Maze, and whatever he was doing there was causing Valroy real pain.
Valroy straightened slowly, his hand still pressed to his chest, and began to laugh. It started as a chuckle, then grew into full-throated laughter that echoed across the battlefield like breaking bells.
“Clever,” he said, his voice rich with genuine admiration.
“Oh, very clever indeed. You hoped I would be distracted? That I would be too set on stopping your little ritual while the Exile pulled me to pieces?” His laughter grew louder, more manic.
“But this is your weakness. All three of you. You are too young! You still think like mortals—too linear in space. Too simple. Too thin in the way you consider the world. But worst of all, you believe that if you just try hard enough, sacrifice enough, you are destined for success.”
He raised his fist high above his head, and darkness started to gather around it—not the absence of light, but something deeper and more terrible. “It is time to end this. Once and for all.” His fist slammed into the ground.
The world exploded around them in a swirl of shadow and howling wind. The sensation of falling lasted forever and no time at all. Then suddenly Ava was elsewhere, standing in a clearing that pulsed with malevolent life.
She’d been there once before.
The heart of the Maze.
The tree that served as the source of Valroy's power towered above them like a cathedral of nightmares, its branches reaching toward a sky that couldn't decide whether it wanted to be real or not.
And at its base, golden threads sparkling in the strange light as he carved through root and bark with golden threads, was Serrik.
He looked up as they materialized, his multiple golden eyes taking in the scene with calculating speed. Ava. Alex, bleeding and barely conscious. Abigail, struggling to stand. And Valroy, wreathed in shadows and radiating fury like heat from a forge.
For a moment, nobody moved.
Why would Valroy bring his enemies to his most vulnerable location?
If he knew he could win.
If he planned to kill them all.
If he was, therefore, a threat.
Ava watched as Serrik straightened slowly, pulling the threads tighter around the tree. “Brother,” he said calmly, as if this were a casual meeting rather than a confrontation that would decide the fate of three worlds.
“Brother,” Valroy replied, his voice carrying centuries of accumulated hatred. “I believe you and I have some unfinished business to discuss?”
“Yes. I suppose we do.”
The two demigods faced each other across the clearing, and Ava could feel the weight of their accumulated history pressing down on them all. Here, at the heart of everything, with the fate of existence hanging in the balance, it would finally end.
One way or another.