Chapter 22 #2
The glade vanished. Instantly, Lechuza was slammed into an overwhelming, deafening roar of fire raging, men, women, and children screaming, and the brutal, rhythmic thud of steel-shod hooves striking the earth.
The metallic, hot copper smell of fresh blood filled the air, leaving the bitter taste of salt and absolute terror on her tongue.
The great Inca Empire, which had stood for centuries, was falling, the choking ash of its death filling her lungs with suffocating finality.
The silver moonlight of the modern world became a frantic, erratic, blood-soaked rush through the trees.
She grasped the Tumi tight in her fist. Her chest was bare, painted with the chakana in fresh ash and pigment, and every acute, hammering beat of her heart was focused on reaching the font.
A deep, jagged wound oozed a steady stream of blood down her ribs where Vargas had pierced her side.
He was right behind her, coming for her now, hunting her the same way his merciless soldiers hunted her fleeing emperor and the bleeding remnants of her people.
The Veil was open, shimmering and pulsing just as she had left it. It was the threshold she had crossed countless times in her owl form to reinforce the heavy wards of Chaos’s prison, a duty her bloodline had held since the Weavers consolidated their power.
If the Spaniards caught her, they would force her. They would torture her and use her blood to breach the Veil and reach Chaos. Those conquistador bastards cared for nothing but gold and slaughter and had no concept of the cosmic horror they would unleash if they freed the Unraveler.
She sobbed as she sprinted, her muscles screaming, her entire soul aching for Cisco.
His absence left a massive, gaping crater in her chest. It should have been blasphemy that she wanted him, craved a conqueror from the very culture that was currently raping and destroying her world, melting down her revered icons to feed their greedy coffers.
But Cisco wasn’t one of them. He never had been.
His heart had turned away from the crown, from the church, from everything he knew, all for her.
Now she mourned the bitter certainty that she would never see his face again in this life.
A cold, suffocating terror gripped her. The open Veil was screaming in her blood, an agonizing vibration. The Spanish couldn’t be trusted. If they found the font, they would burn the world to ash. They were ruthless, conquering monsters, and she refused to kowtow to a single one of them.
When her feet finally hit the center of the glade, she stumbled to the font. Her hands slammed onto the basin, leaving smears of her own dark blood across the stone. She had to destroy it. They could never gain access.
Clutching the Tumi, she spoke the enduring words of power. The open, shimmering doorway of the Veil whooshed shut, a hushed, vacuum-like closure that rattled the air. She had been on time.
Footsteps crunched behind her.
She whirled, her vision blurring from blood loss. “No, stop! You’re too late!” she screamed into the shadows.
The silhouette kept moving toward her through the dark trees.
Terror seized her, terror that Vargas would torture her, break her, and force her to reopen the Veil.
Before her thinking mind could catch up to the primal, protective instinct of her ancestral blood, her hand moved with blinding, lethal malice. The silver knife flashed in her fist.
She plunged the Tumi straight into his side.
There was a wet, sickening tear of muscle and flesh. A sudden, agonizing gasp ripped out of the silhouette's throat.
The shadows shifted, and the moonlight caught his face.
Horror jolted through her. Not Vargas…no…no…oh gods, no.
His eyes didn't fill with rage or betrayal, just a devastating, unvarnished sorrow. He staggered forward, his strength deserting him, and fell heavily against her. His blood splattered hot, thick, and real over her trembling hands, painting the ash of her chakana in a horrific crimson ruin.
They tumbled to the dirt together. He cradled her cheek, his voice a raspy, fading whisper on his very last breath.
“Quri…qammi sunkuy kanki,” he murmured. You are my heart. The words were spoken in her native Quechua, fluid and soft with the ease of long practice, proving he had learned her tongue just to love her.
Her breath hitched in a silent, agonizing shock. His lifeblood pulsed one last time against her chest, and then the light died in his beautiful gray eyes.
An anguished, shattered cry tore from her throat, echoing off the trees. "Cisco!"
But even the crushing weight of her agony couldn’t stop the holy duty binding her.
She forced herself to rise from his corpse, dragging her broken body back to the font.
She took the silver Tumi and laid it flat into the basin of consecrated water, pressing both of her blood-soaked palms over the blade.
Their mingled blood spread out through the clear, pure water, tainting the reservoir.
With the last of her strength, she spoke the final words of absolute destruction.
The Guardian spirit of the font cried out in her mind, a mourning wail, but the world was already dimming for her, going heavy and gray at the edges.
The water evaporated into nothing. The brilliant blue light died.
But to her fading horror, the font didn't shatter.
The spell had twisted. Instead of destroying the basin, the ritual was pulling the energy inward, transforming the font into a lump of pitted, impenetrable rock.
It was solidifying, freezing the Tumi inside its very heart.
No. Her mind wept. How? She was the keyholder. It was supposed to be gone.
Her knees buckled, her body completely spent.
She collapsed onto the damp earth right beside Cisco, her fingers reaching out to touch his cold hand.
Through the trees, the heavy, thundering pound of Spanish hoofbeats vibrated through the dirt, but the conquistadors were too late. The font was sealed.
Quri let out one final, anguished sigh as the last of the life left her body.
The tears on her cheeks felt freezing cold against her skin.
The darkness didn't just fall over her. It felt like the very stone of the font was hardening inside her chest, locking her secrets and her sorrow away in an eternal, heavy silence.
* * *
The severed wire of the memory reconnected with the force of a splintering charge.
Flash tumbled right back into Francisco’s pounding, dangerous reality.
The boundary between centuries dissolved.
He was the scholar-soldier who had abandoned his platoon, his oath, and his God, his lungs still screaming with the gritty smoke of a burning empire.
He was out of his mind with a manic, consuming love, sprinting through the tangled branches because Quri was the only thing that mattered.
“Quri!” he screamed, his voice cracking with a five-hundred-year-old terror.
He saw her outlined by the font. He lunged forward to protect her from the hoofbeats at his back, and then the silver knife flashed in the moonlight.
The wet, sickening tear of muscle and flesh ripped through his ribs.
Flash gasped aloud in the modern glade, his hand instantly flying to his side as the haunting agony tore a ragged cry from his throat.
His knees buckled, sending him crashing into the damp grass.
The shockwave of the memory didn't just strike him.
Through their Shadowguard bond, it rippled outward, dropping Fly, the rest of the team, the Reavers, and the rescued Shadowguard to the dirt around him like men hit by mortar fire.
Flash lay trembling, his face pressed to the dirt, unable to untangle the centuries. His hand was clamped over his ribs, expecting to feel the hot, thick crimson of his own lifeblood spilling out over his fingers, painting her blessed ash-drawn chakana.
Memory jumbled and overlapped. He could still feel her hands on his face.
He could still taste her mouth, pulling the pain and sorrow right out of his chest, her desperate words echoing in his ears.
Jae, my heart…Cisco, courageous and mine.
He had learned those words just to love her.
He had died in her arms with her native Quechua on his lips.
“Quri…qammi sunkuy kanki.” You are my heart.
Beside him, Lechuza was sobbing, the weight of the ancient grief fracturing her modern composure.
Flash forced his eyes open, his gray gaze finding hers through the gloom.
The profound, unvarnished sorrow of his dying breath still vibrated between them.
The blood on his shirt had vanished, and their chakanas had ignited in a blinding clash of gold and blue light, but the emotional shrapnel remained embedded deep in his chest.
She had owned the trauma. He had remembered the sacrifice.
But as Flash watched, his vision still blurry from the psychic backwash, the liquid swirl slowed. Right before his eyes, the gray stone hardened once more, freezing the silver blade back into its impenetrable tomb.
The font remained sealed.
In the center of the glade, Fly was on his knees, his hands buried in his hair. The Visionary genius had mapped the negative space, forced the confession, and calculated every parameter. It should have balanced the ledger.
"Fuck!" Fly slammed his fists into the dirt, his voice breaking with raw, unbridled fury. "Fuck! Fuck it!"