89
I slowly turned around. With a heavy heart.
Mornon stood on the first landing of the stairs, resembling an invincible deity in his elaborate, incandescent black armor, the same he wore during our first fight. He already held his broadsword, its dark blade pointing downward, nearly touching the floor.
It seemed to snow more intensely where he was, almost as if his very essence was so cold it unleashed an unspeakable frost. Still, his irises burned like embers, just like that day a thousand years ago, with burning veins spiderwebbing across his face.
There was nothing human left in him. Amlach was gone.
Only the Abomination remained, impenetrable and ruthless and frightening.
He watched with satisfaction as the armor he had given me fit perfectly, and a ghost of a cunning smile curved his lips while his eyes were drawn to the Crystal in the center of my chest.
I seethed with ire and shame and pain.
“Why?” I hissed.
His head canted to the side, a movement as subtle as it was creepy. “Why what?”
His apathetic voice made me clench my fist until I felt my nails dig into my palm. “Why did you murder these people?” I asked through my teeth.
We had always believed he planned to enslave us all, but this massacre showed how unaware we were of his real intentions.
“Humans are nothing but fresh meat,” he replied with an eerie calm. “And my creatures hadn’t eaten in ages. I needed them to regain their strength for the start of my new reign.”
If this was the fate he had bestowed for mortals, I dared not imagine what he had in store for us elves and the remaining witches.
All I knew was that I had to stop him.
I couldn’t linger any longer.
So, as if it were taking me a great effort, I took an attack posture and proclaimed, “You shall not even see the sunset.”
His nostrils flared. “Is that so?”
Next, with an elegant rotation of his free hand, he threw a black-flames scythe at me. A glass barrier radiated from my sword, repelling the curved blade.
Mornon observed with slight surprise as the shield retracted into my weapon, then peered down at the Crystal.
“You don’t just have Calien’s powers,” he said, almost to himself.
“You also carry the magic of the Elven Spirits.” His gaze snapped to mine, almost making me jump out of my skin.
Slowly, he approached me. When he reached the bottom step, he stopped, slightly pulling back his arm with the broadsword as he studied me closely. “But are you really ready to use it?”
I put my faith in him one last time and closed my eyes to prepare myself. To say goodbye.
To my heart.
To my soul.
To the one I loved.
I opened my eyes and looked at Mornon with a resolve that tore me apart. “Yes, I am.”
Suddenly, I swung my sword at his head. He blocked it, and the clash of our blades echoed through the square like an explosion.
His irises and the veins on his face looked like they were burning more intensely. “Then let’s have some fun,” he said eagerly.
A burst of invisible energy shoved me away from him, and I crouched down, trying to claw at the ground with one hand as my boots left two furrows in the snow.
I barely had time to lift my head when Mornon’s knee slammed into my face.
Ignoring the blood flooding my mouth, I leveraged the momentum to spin with my sword extended.
He bent back just enough to avoid the blade, then attacked me relentlessly.
And just like during our first fight, within a few seconds I found myself so overpowered that I had to retreat into the alleys of the upper city.
Because Mornon was more lethal than I was.
His darkness blocked my path several times, forcing me to go down another street, or took the form of scythe-shaped blades that hissed just inches from my throat.
Thanks to Calien’s power of foresight, I was able to dodge Mornon’s blows when he vanished and reappeared a blink later in a different spot, but I never got the chance to counterattack.
He was pressing me so hard that I didn’t even have the luxury to think, the darkness swirling around us like eels, along with the white flakes falling from the sky.
Suddenly, I swung a horizontal slash at his neck, but Mornon dematerialized, causing my sword to crash into a house wall with some sparks.
I didn’t wait a second longer and started running back to the main square.
I had a very quick premonition an instant before entering an alley and managed to duck just in time to avoid Mornon’s broadsword, which hit the house wall so hard that it shattered the stone blocks.
I whirled my weapon, but he blocked it just an inch from his neck. He blocked it with his hand. A hand covered in black flames that stopped my blade from slicing him.
I shot him a furious stare, and he responded with a look full of twisted excitement.
A sort of shock wave emanated from his flaming hand, hurling me so forcefully against a villa wall that I broke through it.
The pain in my spine was so intense that it took my breath away for a few seconds. Surrounded by a cloud of dust, I pushed my hands through the debris to pull myself up and coughed up a rush of blood.
Blood that mixed with the one in the pool I was in.
Gingerly, I raised my eyes. I had ended up in a kitchen where cabinets and hanging wires with herbs and dried meat were studded with the remains of the servants, dripping and teeming with flies. One severed arm’s hand was still clutching a ladle, while another hand still held a bouquet of thyme.
These poor people had been caught off guard; they hadn’t even had a chance to try to escape.
I was so terrified by the surrounding horror that I didn’t sense the sphere of darkness that bolted through the gap I had made in the outer wall.
My left pauldron flew off, and a sharp burning sensation beneath my collarbone caused me to burst into a scream.
Quickly, I grabbed my sword again and stood up, retreating into the bloody pulp.
A second globe of darkness shot toward me, but this time I raised a glass shield to deflect it and ran into the long inner courtyard, pressing against the wall of the kitchen doorway.
“Oh, come on, Nauriel,” Mornon taunted me.
I ventured to peek out with my head to see if he had entered the kitchen, and a shadow-blade passed close to my cheekbone, scratching the doorframe.
I examined the burn on my collarbone for one brief second, grimacing at the sight of bubbles forming on my red skin, then I heard the debris creaking under my enemy’s boots.
“I fought by your side for months and saw what you could do when you were barely more than just a human.”
I somersaulted to the side a moment before a black fireball blew up the wall behind which I had been hiding.
Mornon stepped through the widened doorway, and our eyes met with a longing that shook me to my core.
“Now give me all your elven strength,” he said, then threw a crescent of darkness at me.
I deflected it using a glass blade of the same shape, then immediately raised my sword to block the slash Mornon aimed at my head.
“Give me more,” he provoked me, with such hunger that it stirred up his darkness within me.
“You want more?” I retorted.
I recalled what I had given him before I knew who he truly was, and what I had given him even after uncovering his identity. I thought about what he had taken from me without my noticing, and what he had taken from me as I watched him do it as if he were my entire world.
No, I wouldn’t give him any of the rest of me. Because I had nothing left.
Anger swept over me with the incisiveness of an avalanche. A shockwave, similar to the one he had used to push me away from him, radiated from Calien’s Crystal, throwing Mornon against the small altar in the center of the courtyard with such force that it shattered.
“ I’ve already given you everything!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.
And before I knew it, I summoned a glass stalactite from the palm of my hand and hurled it at him.