Chapter 78
Ro
Atear slipped down my cheek as I beheld Nora’s unmoving state.
Part of me couldn’t bear to say goodbye, and another was nudged by Melody’s statement.
I thought of the scroll tucked in my pocket, the words on the page.
Rising to my feet, the world quieted, like my destiny was unfolding.
It didn’t make complete sense yet, but when I took a step away, Evenita stared at me with a smile. I walked toward the seer.
“How?” I asked, searching for understanding whilst battling the fresh, raw grief.
The sage woman delicately unclasped her necklace, one that held an array of crystals. They glowed beneath the sun, vibrant and radiant.
“I knew someone just like you once. Her determination survived generations.” She spoke with a fondness that brought another tear to my eye. “These were set aside, and I carried a portion with me. But they were always meant for you.”
As she plucked the sapphire gem from the string, she said, “Water.”
I didn’t understand how expensive jewels had to do with anything regarding our cataclysmic circumstance.
She continued, separating the next stone from its facet. With the light blue pinched between her fingers, she said, “Sky,” before setting it in her palm.
Was she assigning an element to each stone?
“Flora,” she said as she plucked the emerald gem.
A spark of understanding lit within, but I couldn’t be certain…
The next crystal was pink, and when she said, “Fauna.” my theory was confirmed.
“Fire.” She removed the garnet. My heart picked up its rhythm, waiting for her to connect the dots for me because I certainly wasn’t getting there on my own. What did some of the origin magics have to do with these crystals, or this atrocious battle?
Her purple gaze lifted. “I’ve been holding onto something for you for a long, long time, child.”
The necklace was now bare, stripped of all its stones, but she raised her fingers and isolated a single strand of silver shimmer from her head then yanked from the root. She placed it among the bright collection of crystals. “Wind.”
At the same moment colored orbs of light lifted from the crystals and her single strand, the glittering silver of her hair faded to pure white. The sounds of war raged around us, screams of pain, cracking trees, clashing steel.
She let the crystals fall to the earth. They were nothing more than pretty rocks now as the light from each remained hovering. In smooth motions, she used her hands to encircle the magic, and whispered in a language I’d never heard, “Sor il vires streamas ignitas, absorbetualis potentia et ilos.”
The magic combined into a unified ball, a kaleidoscope of colors.
She guided the collection of power and placed the fiery mass inside my chest. In the depths of my being, what had been laying dormant and asleep awoke with fierceness.
I could feel the expanse of magic, sense the edges that contained it.
My well was full. Around me, existence surged.
No longer muted and quiet from fear, but whispering for help. Fully conscious. Fully present.
I blinked, adjusting to the newfound sense I’d gained. Her amethyst eyes somehow held less luster, seemed milkier. “I-I don’t know what to do with this.”
She smiled. “You will. And when you do, embrace it.” The old woman’s shoulders fell into a relaxed state.
“Tell Alaina that it’s alright.” Evenita tilted her head back, closing her weary eyes.
She inhaled deeply, like she could finally breathe.
In the span of a few moments, the elderly woman aged at an accelerated rate.
Fragments of dust drifted off her clothes, her hair, her skin.
She began a deep exhale, giving herself over as less and less of her remained.
With the final note of her breath, she stared at the sky where a single sparrow soared, and the last of her faded away, drifting on the gentle wind.
Not a trace of the seer remained. I stood alone, vaguely aware of the continuing battle. Dae released a fear-inducing roar that dragged me from my foggy state.
Jasper speared through the air toward Dae and the dark wielder, telling Tio, “Tell Alaina she’ll have to patch me up again!
” before the gargoyle tucked in on himself like a cannonball, solidified to stone, and bashed into the member of The Eleven, cracking bones and ending the man.
There were no dark wielders in sight now.
Staring at the scene, the infection that painted the once lush and green land in decay, the fallen wielder who left his dark mark on the world, a fragmented ball of stone amidst the oily writhing ground, and my ferocious love, I understood my purpose. Fear doused my spirit.
I needed to talk to Dae, and now that he didn’t have the dark wielder to contend with, we could—
Roots encircled my feet, closing over my ankles like a lasso, ripping me from where I stood. I slammed into the ground, landing on my back. Before I could get my bearings, a woman crawled atop me, pressing me against the ground.
Not just any woman. Val.
Branches wrapped around my wrists, and I wasn’t able to move. I tugged and strained, thorns tearing my skin, but they didn’t budge. More roots continued to gather, reinforcing themselves. Prone and splayed beneath her, I couldn’t fight back.
“I knew you would only cause problems. How does it feel to know you’ve lost?
” She snickered, her face ugly as she did.
“You thought you were so clever, but in the end, you were never going to defeat us. I am better than you.” She unsheathed a dagger at her side, the metal glinting under the sun.
“I should have done this that night at the outpost.” With both hands clasped together over the hilt, she raised them above her head, ready to plunge it into my chest.
A black, blurring mass moved over me. The next second, no one was on top of me.
Tio called my name, landing beside me, using his hunting knife to cut through the roots that bound me.
I craned my neck to see Dae crushing the woman beneath his massive paws.
His teeth clamped around her head, silencing her screams as he ripped it from her body. Blood spewed, and I flinched.
Tio cut me free. “I think we’re winning,” he said on a disbelieving breath. In the distant south, smoke barreled into the sky as legendary creatures swerved and dived, still dealing with the members down there.
He helped me to my feet, and Dae appeared at my side in his god-like human form. I threw myself into his arms. It felt like a lifetime ago that I had felt his touch.
“I can stop them,” I whispered into his neck. “I’m not sure exactly how, but I know I can.”
“Good.” He didn’t question me, didn’t disbelieve the outlandish statement I’d just made.
Rearing my head back, tears welled, burning, stinging with the truth. “But I can’t bring myself to do it.”
“Why not?” He searched my eyes.
“Because I don’t know what will happen to you,” I admitted with a sob.
He smiled, like I hadn’t just told him what weighed in the balance. “It’s too late for me.”
“No.” I shook my head vehemently. “No, that’s not true. I need you.” My tears dotted the ground.
“You have me. You always will.” He placed his hand over my chest, above my heart. “If you can stop them, Ro, you have to do it, no matter what happens to me.” The muscle on his brow twitched, a flicker of pain evident.
Overwhelming sadness consumed me. “Don’t make me,” I whispered, my lip trembling uncontrollably.
His manly hands cupped my face. “I love you, Ro Collins. From the moment you shot me with an arrow, until my last breath, until we’re reunited with the gods.”
“I love you, Dae.” I launched onto his lips, pouring everything I had, every part of me, into that kiss.
“Guys,” Tio said.
Breaking our kiss killed a part of my soul, but I turned to look. Tio pointed northward.
From the depths of the northern trees, a single man emerged from an impending cloud of darkness.
Marvoe strode toward us, hands outstretched at his sides.
Dark magic curled like a wall of waves behind him.
What I’d felt before nearing the Black Pool paled in comparison to the solid wall of death that loomed before us.
Receiving whatever combination of power Evenita had given me opened my magical senses, allowing me to feel the scope of its raw, malicious power on a new level.
It almost drowned out the energy that radiated from the forest around me, the life that lived in every leaf, every branch, and patch of soil.
Almost.
Dae stepped in front, sheltering me behind his broad, solid body, and threw his hands out before him.
The tendrils of magic that Marvoe wielded curled in on themselves at Dae’s command, shrinking back ever so slightly.
Marvoe halted a couple hundred yards from us at the edge of the small clearing, still obscured by green forestry now rotting beneath his putrid magic, a smile growing on his corrupted face.
“You can’t stop this,” he bellowed. “The darkness will spread over every part of this land, consume every creature, feeding it with more and more power as it grows. The darkness is everything.” He stepped forward, the inky ocean advancing a step with him.
Dae shuddered, his arms shaking as he tried with all his might to stop the encroaching darkness.
When he reached his limit, he dropped to a knee, still attempting to hold his ground.
Marvoe moved again, the booming force of the dark magic pushing back against Dae’s instruction.
His other knee hit the ground, his body buckling from the overwhelming control Marvoe had over the magic.
“That’s enough of that,” Marvoe said. With the flick of his wrist, Dae’s arm snapped at an ungodly angle and he cried out in pain.
“No!” I reached for him, but Marvoe moved his hand, and Dae’s body tumbled and rolled toward him, like being reeled in on a fishing rod.
Marvoe could control the dark magic within Dae, and his body was now a puppet.
Dae screamed with every roll against his broken arm until he stopped within the confines of the dark magic.
I couldn’t get to him. The moment I’d touch it, I’d die.
“I never should have let you go,” Dante appeared beside me, heaving in his beastly form, malice dripping from every word as he shouted to the poisoned man. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
Marvoe chuckled. Laughed, as if Dante said something heartwarming and entertaining.
“You know, I heard you can control your shifting now. Why don’t you say that to me again as nothing but a man.
” His eyes darkened. He mimicked plucking something from the writhing veins around him.
Swirling up at his command was a trail of shadow.
Marvoe flipped his palm, so it faced the sky, and the darkness gathered until it changed from a shapeless entity to shiny solid.
An obsidian crystal hovered there. “This will require no blood.”
Dante’s body phased. Red light was being sucked from his body, the silhouette of his beastly form in a flickering state lifted from the man’s shape within.
Then, traveling on the wind, the vermillion aura retreated into the black crystal, like the stone inhaled the magic. Marvoe must possess transference magic.
A surge of red light wrapped around Marvoe, and before our eyes he shifted into a terrifying black creature, more mutant and disturbing than anything that should exist.
Dante studied his arms on his now involuntary human body. Marvoe had siphoned his magic and fed it to himself.
“Let’s see if yours feels any different,” Marvoe glanced down the snout of his awful maw toward Dae, who struggled to lift from the ground, which told me the dark magic was pinning him in place. Sweat danced across his brow, and my heart ached for his pain.
As Marvoe lifted the obsidian crystal, I fired.
My arrow pierced through his heart. The massive beast flinched from my devastating shot, simply glancing down at the unexpected attack.
This was nothing like firing at Alba or the boar.
I harbored no hesitation, no remorse. If I’d just ended Marvoe’s life, I would gladly bear any burden that followed.
But the tail of the arrow simply disintegrated into shadow.
My hopeful expression fell, so I loosed another arrow, aiming directly beside the first. Barely a twitch of the heinous canine’s ear when it struck. I walked forward, firing another. Then again. Nothing but determination in my strides or on my face.
“Ro,” Dante called from behind, warning me about my proximity to the corrosive magic soiling the earth.
But I stepped forward again, and fired the last in my quiver, this time aiming for the beast’s skull.
That hit caused him to stumble, and I ignored the nausea sweeping through me at Alba’s memory on that pole.
But I didn’t tear away my gaze this time.
I watched, engulfed in hope. I wanted to see this creator of destruction fall to his knees.
Wanted to behold the moment the light left his eyes.
All my weapons, every attempt to stop this monster, dissolved into black dust. Marvoe shook his beastly face and targeted me, aggravation in his soulless eyes. “That’s enough of that.”
Time slowed as Marvoe launched a ferocious paw in my direction, commanding the magic to surge upward from the ground in a cylindrical wave toward me.
I blinked, and with my last moment, peered at Dae.
His mouth contorted in what I assumed was a shout of my name.
Utter desolation marked his face, and I had no time to offer consoling words as the wave crashed into me, as corrosive and noxious as I’d imagined.