Chapter Forty-two #2
But the monster wasn’t attacking. Instead, it seemed to guard the border of the chasm, twisting over itself slowly, as though its mere presence could deter her.
Across the wavering lines of the portal, the reapers withdrew their shadows, enough to show her the damage they’d done to her loved ones.
Wilder was back, his skin and clothes bloody as he fought against the talons holding him in place. That was the Wilder she knew.
Wren’s eyes were wide, her brow damp with perspiration and her complexion pallid. Cal and Kipp fared no better; each of them bore the marks of struggle, while Malik seemed frozen in place, terror rolling off him in waves, so potent Thea could almost taste it.
‘I’m coming,’ she told them, though she wasn’t sure if they could hear her.
She took an extra long run-up this time, to avoid the vine blight covering the perimeter of the gate. Once she was across, she could free Wilder. Together, they could take on the reapers and free the others. They had faced worse odds before.
Thea threw herself into action, sprinting hard and flinging herself over the final chasm, hurtling towards the solid ice on the other side.
Her breath shuddered when she landed, the surface slippery but hard beneath her boots. The scent of burnt hair was nearly strong enough to make her gag as the first reaper set its evil gaze upon her.
But Thea was done. She was done with the Great Rite, done with the obstacles, done with the threats to her and those she loved. She palmed Malik’s dagger of Naarvian steel, and braced herself.
Thea approached the reaper that held Wilder captive, putting on a show of bravado, as though she might allow the monster a taste of the very thing it lusted after above all else, the very thing she no longer had.
‘Take it, if you dare,’ Thea taunted the creature, flicking her blades in invitation, praying to the Furies that it couldn’t sense her power’s absence. Let it come. Let it find out the hard way that I’m just as deadly without magic.
A screech erupted from the reaper, and it threw itself at her.
Thea ducked and wove between the swipes of its talons and the lashes of its shadows.
She had been dancing with darkness long enough to know its rhythm now.
Like a shadow herself, she fought back, no matter the ice beneath her boots, or the wounds littering her body.
Determination blazing through her, she felt empowered, even as the other reapers sniffed the air and came towards her.
Five reapers.
One would-be Warsword.
She liked those odds.
Fighting through the onslaught of onyx whips and jagged claws, Thea couldn’t get to Wilder to free him. She could barely see the others through the wisps of darkness, through the nightmares the reapers conjured all around her.
But everything she saw, she had seen before, had already faced it in the maze of mirrors and had emerged victorious. They couldn’t break her. Not anymore.
She slayed the first reaper by leaping onto its chest and carving out its heart where it stood.
She killed the next by pinning its leathery foot to the ice with the might of her throwing stars and cleaving through its chest with her dagger.
The thud of their two cursed hearts hitting the ice was like the beat of a war drum that spurred her on.
When she looked upon the three remaining reapers, her own heart nearly stopped. For they were poised back at the plinths to which her family were chained. Dark shadows swirled around them, choking the life out of her loved ones, forcing their way down their throats.
‘No!’ Thea shouted, surging forward —
Blinding pain blazed at her wrist, unlike anything she had ever experienced before. White-hot and ice-cold all at once, it seared through her skin, flesh and bone, agony in its purest form.
Tears streaming from her eyes, Thea whipped around – to see the vine blight tighten its grip around her.
A mere brush against your skin will cause immeasurable pain.
Thea screamed as the torture intensified.
Spittle formed at the corners of her mouth as she fell to her knees with a broken sob. ‘Make it stop,’ she cried, her voice raw as layers of her flesh were burned away.
Somewhere in the distance, someone screamed.
Or was it her?
All she could think of was the agony that tore at her wrist, that inched up her arm, that was destined for her mind, too.
More screaming.
Thea blinked through her tears, through the swirling shadows, to see a reaper reaching into Wren’s chest with its razor-sharp talons. And another doing the same to Wilder, and to —
The vine blight twisted its grasp and Thea’s vision blackened.
A strangled noise escaped her and she forced her eyes open, forced strength into her one free hand. She groped for her sword, for her dagger, for anything —
Her fingertips brushed Malik’s dagger and she lunged for it with all her might, her fingers closing over the hilt. With a strangled noise, she plunged it into the arm of the vine blight, the horrendous scent of it spilling out in force.
But the monster only twisted her wrist harder, forcing a garbled scream from her throat. She retched, the pain making her long for death itself. She couldn’t cleave into it; its tendrils were too hard, practically impenetrable as she clawed at it with broken sobs.
It was the screams of the others that stopped her from plunging the dagger into her own chest. She fought with what little strength she had against the grip of the monster, which was dragging her towards the abyss.
The agony was nauseating, threatening to consume her to her very core.
Fierce pain lanced from where the creature gripped her, all through her body like a hot blade, followed by a wave of wildfire, sinking into her muscles, her bones.
Madness overcame her and she flailed in the blight’s grip, jabbing her knife ineffectively at its wiry limbs. It was no use. There was no stopping it, no weakening its hold on her – there was no way but one.
With another shout, hoarse with the chaos that seemed to overcome her, Thea palmed her weapon. And with a swift, precise motion, she carved not through the vine blight, but through her own arm.
The scream that tore from her was more animal than human.
She felt every inch of the blade as it passed through skin, tissue, bone.
Her breathing changed. Short, shallow gasps that refused to pump the frigid air into her lungs.
Red blood spurted from the gaping wound. Thea nearly fell with the momentum as the blade cleaved through the last remaining layers of flesh.
The pain was like fire, blazing at the end of her wrist, and Thea’s remaining hand shook so badly that she dropped her dagger as she scrambled back from the shadow chasm, dragging herself through her own blood.
The vine blight hissed and sputtered, coiling around itself, her severed hand still in its writhing tendrils.
Tasting bitter bile at the back of her throat, Thea nearly slipped in a puddle of crimson as she stood, swaying as she clutched the bloodied stump of her wrist to her chest. The warmth of her own blood seeped through her clothes as she panted through the pain and fought the urge to retch again.
Spots swam in her vision, but she stayed upright.
She had made one unimaginable choice after the other. Storm wielder or Warsword. Her lover or her friends. Her hand or her life… And now she stared at several more.
Wilder or Wren or Cal or Kipp or Malik.
Her magic was gone. Her sword was gone. Malik’s dagger was gone. All that she had left was Audra’s jewelled ceremonial dagger, a letter opener against the monsters before her.
Pain was a constant now, so prominent that she could hardly tell where one wound ended and another began. Her clothes were in tatters, crusted with blood, her braid half undone and equally matted. Her ankle threatened to give out beneath her, while blood still pulsed from the stump of her wrist.
Althea Embervale was in pieces, and yet… And yet she stood, clutching the tiny blade in her one remaining hand.
A spark of energy teased her fingertips, a whisper of what once was.
It should have been impossible, but there was no denying that sputter of power from within. She knew its song better than she knew herself.
Tilting her head to the sky, she embraced it all. The love, the pain, the reforging of herself amid the chaos. And there, barely able to stand, blood still flowing from her wounds, Thea decided that she would sacrifice no more.
She would not choose. She had been made to choose her whole life. No longer.
She had proven to within an inch of her life that she was strong of body, strong of mind, and at long last, strong of heart.
Thea gripped the dagger and raised her chin in defiance, ready to meet her fate.
‘Even the smallest blade can make a difference,’ she murmured.
She tasted rain in the wind. And then, the air crackled.
Thea breathed her first easy breath, recognising the call of the storm, recognising the surge as her own power, of which she had barely scratched the surface.
Until now.
I am the storm . The words echoed in her mind like a mantra.
Thea took hold of that kernel of magic inside and let it bloom, let it unfurl into something fierce and unforgiving.
Searing agony lanced through her as lightning cauterised her wounds, her flesh burning into newly formed scars. Thea let out a warrior cry as her magic charged through her, through the frozen lake beneath her. Brilliant white bolts danced across her skin and erupted into the air around her.
Ready to unleash herself upon the world, Thea drew upon her magic and used it as the extension of herself that it was, calling bolts of lightning into being and taking aim at the remaining reapers.
Their shrieks became the melody of her storm, only serving to enrapture her thunder and lightning further, the snow swirling around her, around the entire lake just as she commanded.
Her lightning cleaved the chains holding her friends apart, and she let the storm rage on, refusing to contain it or herself for anyone or anything. She forged the chaos in the sky and the thundersnow that now swarmed, engulfing the frozen lake.
With one hand, Thea summoned the might of ancient storms, everything around her crackling and churning with dark clouds, swelling with unimaginable energy, energy that she alone could master.
Bolts of blue-white lightning exploded in countless forks, spearing the ground below, illuminating the frozen wasteland and banishing the shadow portals across the lake’s surface in a near-blinding blaze.
‘I am the storm.’
Finally, she speared the screaming reapers with her lightning, burning their hearts with storm magic from the inside out.
One. Two. Three.
She conjured and wielded the storm, chasing the wisps of darkness with a torrent of snow and lightning, brilliant flakes careening across the land in a deadly gale.
Thea stood at the heart of it all, splitting the sky open, inviting the blizzard to dance with her storm, charging each flake of snow with her magic, causing them to glow with a vibrant iridescence, before drawing them together in a halo of brilliant lightning.
The force of it swallowed everything, an electrifying crown of her own making.
Thea’s thundersnow wiped away the final traces of darkness, of blood, of pain, and shook the very foundations of the mountain upon which she stood.
For she was back where this had all begun, back on the Furies’ mountain.
And she was alone.
Wilder, Wren, Cal, Kipp and Malik were gone.
Thea was resolute in her fortress of ice and power, channelling the very essence of the storm raging above her. She let her magic rage and clash, leaving a trail of frozen devastation in its wake.
She was unwavering, immovable – even as three cloaked figures emerged from the blizzard before her.
Thea gave the storm pause as each woman lowered her hood.
She knew them in her heart.
The original Warswords themselves.
The Furies.