Chapter 33 CALAMITY
CALAMITY
Acacius
The summons led him to a wooded area outside of Tenebris, where the daylight met the permanent darkness atop the frosted peaks and tall, dense pines.
Where we danced.
Pressure built in Acacius’s chest.
Marina’s nightrazers filled the clearing, birthed from a vaporous fog spread across the snow. It writhed and jutted into violent spikes, spearing the flashing replicas of Soren that the nightrazers did not eviscerate themselves.
The creatures swam from the darkest point of the fog, its mass lapping thickly in place. It was as if they were protecting it.
Acacius’s pulse pounded harder in his ears.
She had to be there with the child.
Anxiety burned in his veins.
Why wasn’t she fighting?
A shadowy creature tore its talons down the side of one of Soren’s illusions, exposing mangled meat and flesh.
His wounds quickly regenerated as he swerved the specters, their monstrous, twisting forms speeding toward him at the scent of his blood.
The real Soren, in a sea of falsehoods.
He dodged the clawed strikes in tufts of emerald mist, always on the defensive. The waves of energy gathered, like the inhaling of a breath, for his next teleportation.
He materialized closer to the inky mass in the snow, swerving to dodge the feral strike of a nightrazer and the aim of a black spike sent from its umbral barrier.
The pressure in Acacius’s chest snapped, and he fabricated above Soren, crashing down on his small, agile body. The shadowy wraiths drew back, closing in on the mass.
Pulses of Acacius’s disillusionment latched onto the trickster, raiding his mind and bending his will.
Soren cried out, flinching. His knees buckled and he slammed his hands over the sides of his head.
Acacius towered over the god. “Where is she?” He spoke through gritted teeth.
Soren cringed and whimpered, eyes squeezed shut.
Midnight-blue flared around Acacius, and from within the smoke, hundreds of death’s-head hawkmoths swarmed Soren. The insects crawled over his skin, across his mouth and up his nose, burrowing into his eyes, his ears.
His figure distorted and a slice hissed in the air.
The moths scattered, revealing the empty space.
Acacius jerked his head sideways.
More, his Ruin coaxed.
Soren kneeled across the clearing, a hand still cupping his forehead, expression winced in pain. “You hail Ruin upon the land, and you will kill the boy.”
Acacius’s eyes twisted with fury. The thought to rain destruction down hadn’t even occurred to him for that very reason. But it didn’t mean he couldn’t make the god suffer.
Soren lifted his head, and in the quarter-second it took to do so, Acacius shot forth and caught the god by his little throat.
He squeezed trembling fingers into his flesh as he sank deathly close to Soren’s face, relishing in the sounds of his struggle. “Where is she?”
Soren looked up in elation, letting the sleet catch on his eyelashes. His gaze was detached, void of fear despite his place in Acacius’s jaws. “Dead,” he croaked out.
Acacius’s heart cracked like the bulb of a peony.
No.
A loud ringing overtook his ears.
His breath shallowed as he turned his head toward the source of the shrinking nightrazers.
The ghost-like beasts floated over a dying mass of dark, divine power against the bright snow. The nightrazers, the spikes, the fog, everything began to give way, revealing the bodies buried in the snow.
Through the distance, Acacius could hear the panicked stride of the child’s mortal heart. Nothing more.
Dead.
Time slowed to a slurring pace.
Acacius squeezed his hand like a primal beast crunching its prey’s bones.
Soren’s head rolled away as his body dissolved like viridian smoke in the breeze.
Just another fucking illusion, even the blood.
Acacius growled, ripping toward the child’s pulse.
He could see them both now—Marina’s black hair against the snow, lying still with her legs curled and arms snug around the boy. His sobs echoed against her chest.
They were created out of a place of anger and desperation, manifesting from my darkest desires of revenge.
Sickness filled Acacius’s stomach.
She’d finally conjured them to protect the boy, to take comeuppance on her traitor.
But what about herself?
Acacius materialized over the churning black horde just as it melted away entirely.
“Someone f-found us!” Ash crawled out from Marina’s limp arms, their skin tarnished with blood. “P-please.”
His blood.
“H-help her! She’s—” Ash reached a shaking hand out for Acacius.
Acacius recoiled, his breath ceasing at the sight of Marina’s face—streaked with crimson tears and dried, oozing streams from her ears, out of her nostrils, crusted in the creases of her lips.
His limbs shook, and he blinked through his blurring vision with Vale’s death haunting his thoughts, how he had bled the same.
Dead.
Paralysis snaked down his spine.
“No.” His divine hearing listened closely for her heartbeat, his eyes searching over her peaceful expression.
Lifeless.
Gone.
“No!” He snapped forward only to stop, hands drawn up, desperate to hold her, shake her awake. His eyes tracked the copper marring her skin, the demigod’s blood. If he touched it, he would—
Bile shot up his throat.
He ripped around as his stomach heaved, purging acid onto the snow.
Dead.
His pulse drummed in his skull.
She’s dead.
A shrill scream echoed in his ears.
“Please h-help her!” The child begged through chattering teeth. “I-it was a-an accident. Th-the god c-cut m-my arm and…” He broke off into a cry.
Acacius glared over his shoulder at the child, hugging his own frame as he rocked back and forth. The tips of his fingers were a harsh purple, and his cheeks were stained from his tears.
Rage churned in his stomach, angry at the child, at Fate and how this was Marina’s ending.
An accident.
How tragic and furiously unfair. She was only trying to repent and uphold her father’s vow. And after months of her walking around, desiring Death’s hand, the spark had finally returned in her eyes. Eyes that no longer held life’s light within them.
An ache splintered in his heart, and he shook his head, refusing to let go.
There was nothing he could do—except flee to the Land of the Dead and find her.
Acacius dropped into a crouched position and burrowed his head into his arms to hide in her darkness. The only thing he had left of her.
A guttural sob broke from his lips, the sound like gravel scraping together. He pressed his palms against his damp face, reverberating his wail as his sorrows purged free.
It was his fault. He should’ve left Iliana and went straight to Marina instead of Augustus. The stupid gnawing in his gut was loud before they’d parted, and he should’ve listened to it. He never should’ve let her go alone to deal with Soren.
He raised his head up to the monochromatic sky. A river of tears ran down the sides of his cheeks, over the dip of his jaws, and down his neck.
It was cruel, so fucking cruel that after achieving what she set out to do, her life was taken while protecting the mortal boy. The stupid fucking mortal boy with virulent, baneful blood.
It was a fate that Acacius could not accept. A fate of his own that he refused to accept. Losing Ruelle, watching her death, had changed him. But losing Marina, seeing her corpse at his feet, would be the thing that broke him.
He thought of their last moment in the hot spring, and how he’d been greedy enough to believe that he had time—time to tell her what she meant to him.
These were the arrogant, foolish ways of deities, believing to be invincible against the sorrows of the world.
Acacius was sick of it all—the gods and goddesses and the mortals and the Council. None of this would’ve happened if the deities would’ve just let the boy be; if the witches left Ash alone in Hollow City; if the Council would’ve intervened and stood in solidarity.
Acacius’s divine power pulsed in his veins.
“Stay here,” he demanded the child.
Setting his sights on the tallest cliff over the forest, he fabricated on its ledge.
Up this high, he could see the entire village of Tenebris woven along the gorges, under a dome of unending darkness. Against the alien daylight, it appeared as a slow, quiet hurricane of charcoal looming over the civilization.
Acacius glared beyond its blackness to the rest of the world.
Destroy them all, his Ruin whispered.
The urge vibrated under his skin, begging to be set free.
She called you here to finish what she started.
Acacius clenched his hands at his sides. The right thing to do would be to return the child to his parents, and then come back for her—
You destroy everything you touch, it whispered back.
The cutting of Ruelle’s thread resounded in his head. Please take care of yourself.
The feel of Marina tucked into his side under the sheets of his bed, murmuring confessions in his ear. I would love to lay in bed all day, with you.
Acacius slapped his palm against the front of his head, gritting his teeth. “No. No. No! No!”
It is why you can never hang onto those you cherish.
Another frame played behind his eyes: his siblings in their fur pelts, warming in front of a fire, and the aroma of grilled meat trailing in the air.
Cassius turned to him, cheeks bright red, grinning as he flicked Acacius on the forehead. You forgot to fetch more firewood.
Iliana scrubbed her hand through his hair. What are we going to do with you?
The shrill in his head screeched louder, like nails to glass. He closed his eyes tightly. The nerves in his jaws tingled down his neck. Tremors quivered through his chest, and the sensation buzzed like angry wasps in his bloodstream.
You are a walking massacre.
He pounded the heel of his hand into his forehead over and over. His divine power swelled through his pores, fabricating all around him. It took shape and reached its coiling fingers out over the cliff.
“No, no, no, no, no, no, no…”
You destroy everything that you touch—everyone that you love.
“NOOOO!” Acacius roared, a burgeoning bellow of vengeance spilling from his chest and rumbling the earth around him.
His senses went black and the roar echoed on and on like a trapped cacophony between the gorges.
His Chaos and Ruin split up his skull, like a fiend possessing his mind. His thoughts stilled to the perfect hum, lulling him into a trance. The will to fight its tender voice drained away. His pulse throbbed in his gums as his focus locked on his overflowing rage and grief.
If this world cannot give me love, then I will reshape it.
His divine power lifted him in a slow ascension above the land, and he extended his arms and fingers.
Around him, the air lacerated in unfurling wounds, portals straight to Tavora.
As the gates opened wider, the winds and meteors of his realm soared through, bringing annihilation to the earth below.
His Heralds and Daemons jumped out in arcs from the throbbing, indigo fissures.
Unleash calamity upon them all.