Chapter 12 #4
When it becomes clear that struggling only prolongs the spectacle until the Red Hunter tires of watching, I force my body still.
I stop fighting the pull. I breathe in short, ragged pulls, feel the mud hold me around the waist and sternum, and find a kind of awful balance between breath and sink.
It isn’t surrender so much as preservation.
And with it, the words bubbling up in my throat finally find their way out.
“No!” I scream, glaring upward with as much conviction as I can muster, despite the suffocating press of the sinking ground around me. The crowd hushes slightly in expectation.
Above, Zyrel’s shadow stretches long against the edge of the pit. He tilts his head, his lip curling as he stares down at me like an insect writhing beneath his boot.
“No?” he echoes. He steps closer, his tall frame blocking out more of the fading light. The way he looms over me is deliberate, he wants me to feel small.
I force a shaky breath and summon what’s left of my strength. “The late Archpriest tried to take advantage of those women’s situation—”
Zyrel’s laugh comes slow, rolling through the air.
“Advantage?” he sneers. “The old man did everything he could to rid Calcatra of your kind.” He pauses, letting the words settle.
“Him not taking full advantage was precisely why…” His jaw tightens for the briefest moment, just a flicker of something unintended.
Then, just as quickly, he smooths his expression and straightens.
“... why the gods chose to remove him,” he continues in an easy, confident tone.
He turns in a slow circle, his long muscular arms spread wide in a metaphorical embrace of the crowd. He’s waiting, letting them simmer in the tension, drawing out the moment like a master showman before his final act.
Then, with a voice dripping in certainty, he delivers the killing blow.
“But when I am the Church’s supreme leader,” he declares, “I will set a bounty on the deliverance of the sinners. So no Crimson Tether cursed can hide from the Church ever again.”
The crowd doesn’t react immediately. The words land first, sinking in.
Then, like a slow-building wave, it begins. Gasps. Murmurs of understanding as they grasp what he’s just proposed.
I freeze. My mind stutters, recoiling from the weight of his words, their meaning sinking in like a dagger pressing deeper into flesh.
He is the Red Hunter by choice, hunting the cursed women for the sick pleasure of it. But if there was a bounty on our heads, if we became a prize to be collected, how long before desperation turns neighbor against neighbor?
How many would seize the opportunity to create the very problem they could solve for a reward?
How much would it take to force a kiss upon a helpless girl, condemning her to a fate she could never escape? Rust Hollow’s current living conditions would feel like a holiday compared to what awaits us if Zyrel becomes Archpriest.
“Ray, get out!” Eva’s scream rips the air, yanking me from the frozen stupor.
My eyes dart to the left, where the voice came from, where Eva is now leaning away from a guard, who dutifully holds my friend back to prevent her from charging forward. She looks like she might tear free, terror has burned through her features.
I glance down at the slurry around me, the slick mass already knitting itself back into hard earth, and something cold and fierce uncoils inside me. Zyrel isn’t allowed to win. Not as long as I’m alive.
I stop thinking and start moving. I scrabble at the surface with both hands, clawing for purchase. Mud slips through my grip, but I claw anyway. I kick my heels, shove my hips against the hard edge that isn’t yet moving, and use every ounce of stubbornness and pain to heave upward.
But it's no use, each side is closing in on me, threatening to entomb me so fast, I can barely form a question in my mind.
Is the Spectra Judicium considered part of the Trial? Could he actually kill me now without consequence?
Just inches away, the paved stone is spreading, closing in on me.
I brace for one last push, one last attempt to climb free, when the stone slams into my back and wraps around my chest.
I am too slow, and now I’m being swallowed by the earth in the middle of the plaza. Even my magic lets out a powerful shiver through my bones, unable to get through the stone swallowing me.
And even if it could, I know I’d never release it, not with so many people in such close proximity, not with Eva and Ryker so close.
“You have no right!” I scream, my voice raw, my ribs straining against the crushing stone.
Zyrel chuckles, but I’m not looking at him. I can’t. My vision tunnels, locking onto the nearest Sibyl, the figure standing motionless just feet away. Her head tilts slightly, but she does nothing to stop him.
“You have no right to allow him to end me here! I am Calista’s Champion, and you said it yourself, I no longer belong to this realm. I belong to Calista!” My voice wavers, the weight of the stone constricting my chest.
“It is my duty to participate in the Trial, not to be buried in the ground by a cowardly fellow Champion,” I shift my glare back to Zyrel, forcing venom into my words, “who’s doing his best to rid himself of the competition even though I refuse to use magic out of civility.”
A murmur ripples through the crowd. Someone laughs, but it’s hollow. More watch in stiff silence, the thrill of spectacle fading as the realization settles in: this might not end in the epic demise they’d all been expecting.
Zyrel steps closer, placing a boot on the solid stone near my face.
“I am not scared,” he drawls.
“Of course you’re not scared,” I bite back. “It’s easy to be brave when you’re standing on the backs of the desperate. Let’s see how fearless you are when you fight someone who can fight back.”
“I am not scared of anyone,” Zyrel declares louder, “least of all you.”
The remaining sunlight dims too quickly as a slow, unnatural shift spreads through the plaza. The lit flames in the torches waver, guttering, their glow paling as something unseen slithers through the air.
The whispers come first. Faint. Indistinct. Like a breath against the back of the neck.
Then the shadows tremor.
The change is so subtle that it takes the crowd a moment to notice something massive hovering over all our heads, blocking the light like an ancient behemoth.
But when they do, the reaction is visceral. Gasps break the hush. Someone stumbles backward. The faint scrape of hurried steps, boots shifting uneasily against stone. The plaza itself seems to exhale.
A gargantuan maw of living shadow yawns open above our heads—an abyss of fangs and spikes, each thick as the Bluewater River, writhing from its formless, dark mass. It blots out the sky entirely, as if a monstrous night had uncoiled itself over Calcatra.
A voice that is neither fully sound nor echo drifts ominously through the plaza.
“Oh, but you should be.”
Then the maw stretches wider, wide enough that, for a heartbeat, I almost expect fire, the way it’s told in stories of the wild dragons of the past. But what spews forth isn’t flame.
It’s thick, mucous-black and glistening, a gelatinous shadow that bursts from its throat and rains down in heavy globs. It slams into the ground with bone-rattling force, cracking the paved streets beneath us like dried clay under a hammer.
The fallen shadows continue to move like sentient things along the cracked stone, stretching toward the pit. Toward me.
People do not flee, but the hush thickens. The first flickers of wariness sharpen into unease.
The Sibyls do not move either, still just observing.
Zyrel stiffens. His lips press into a thin line as his eyes dart toward the darkened edges of the plaza. His dragon huffs, stomping a leg against the ground.
Within seconds, the once-pristine square begins to splinter apart, cracks widening as the shadows seep through like black veins.
Within moments, it transforms into a landscape of shattered stone, save for the small patches where the Sibyls and the other Champions stand.
The air grows heavier. The ground groans, and all of the shadowy roots converge at a single point, beneath me.
The stone that trapped me crumbles, devoured into nothingness as tendrils of darkness coil around me. Not imprisoning, but freeing.
The weight of the hardened ground vanishes and the pressure lifts.
I gasp, air flooding my lungs, my limbs weak as I brace myself against the shifting ground. The darkness recedes, folding back into itself, twisting upward in a slow retreat.
And when the last of it unwinds, leaving the ground hollowed out beneath me, Kaelzar stands at the top of the steps—the steps his shadows carved for me to rise from the hole Zyrel put me in—his hand outstretched.
His dark monster floating above all our heads in eerie, jerking movements, begins to melt into nothingness.
I hesitate, my breath uneven.
He is offering his hand. The same man who once called me pathetic, unworthy. His words still echo in my mind. I glance up, expecting to see that same mixture of disdain and disinterest in his gray-silver eyes.
But instead, I find something else.
Beneath that fierce exterior, beneath the scowl and the ever-present restraint, there is something startling. Not softness. Not kindness.
Acceptance.
“It’s about all of us,” he repeats the words I said earlier, quietly enough that only I can hear, as if this alone is explanation enough for his dramatic rescue.
I stare at his outstretched hand, still catching my breath, when I notice the uneven skin on his palm, so deeply scarred it looks as though someone slashed it dozens of times with jagged blades, then repeatedly tore off the scabs as it tried to heal.
I shove the rising questions away, as a part of me wants to ignore this hand. To push myself up on my own, to prove that I don’t need him, that I don’t owe him anything.
But another part, a quieter, more exhausted part, knows the truth. I cannot do this alone.
“If you haven’t figured it out yet,” he murmurs, then raises his voice so the crowd can hear, loud enough for the Divinity Gazes to capture every word. “You’re Godbound. Your touch will no longer rot the living. Not unless you will it.”
As if fear of my blackened fingers was the only reason I might’ve refused his hand.
Still, a tight knot loosens in my chest at his words. If I’m to believe him—and I have no reason not to—then my touch isn’t deadly anymore. Not unless I want it to be.
Reluctantly, I lift my hand.
His fingers close around mine, not gentle, but not forceful. His grip is firm, steady, grounding, as if anchoring me rather than rescuing me. He leads me up the stairs and onto the plaza ground.
He does not let go immediately. And neither do I.
“You should be scared,” my Godbeast murmurs to Zyrel, so softly that only Zyrel and his huffing dragon can hear. “You’re only standing here because my Champion chooses to keep her magic leashed... for now.”
Zyrel’s dragon, sensing danger, scrapes its massive paw against the ruined ground, sending gravel that morphs into sparks of fire flickering through the air. The same magic as Zyrel’s, I note and realize that mine and Kaelzar’s magics have nothing in common.
Just another fact to highlight how different our partnership is from other Godbounds and their beasts, how unnatural.
Before the dragon can take a step, thin tendrils of shadow coil around its legs, so subtle they are nearly invisible, yet strong enough to pin the creature in place. The dragon strains against the shadows, but Kaelzar’s grip holds firm.
Zyrel clicks his tongue, urging the beast to stay calm, no doubt to avoid the public embarrassment of seeing his Godbeast tumble to the ground in defeat.
“My Champion has spoken,” Kaelzar’s voice booms over the crowd. “You would be wise to put your faith in her word or you would deserve what you will endure under the likes of him.”
He turns in a slow deliberate motion, forcing Zyrel to watch as he steps away without a second glance.
I move with him, matching his stride, not failing to note that he called me his. A private, foolish grin wants to surface at this, but I bury it. It would hardly be appropriate.
The Red Hunter’s presence still clings to my skin as we return to our place next to the other Champions. But Kaelzar’s unwavering presence stands as a shield between me and the man who would see me buried.
When Zyrel rejoins the line of Champions, the Spectra Judicium continues.
Alaric takes to the sky, his form a blur of motion, while his dragon leaps effortlessly from one invisible perch to the next, despite its deformed wings.
Liona, Champion of Zoya, Goddess of Water and Life, steps forward next.
She is short, her white hair slicked back, her movements compact and sharp, like a current surging through the riverbanks. She lifts a hand, and the water pooled in the cracks of the plaza stirs at her command, tendrils of liquid rising into the air like serpents weaving between her fingers.
Her Godbeast, a sleek, pale pink dragon, its frame nearly blending into the growing twilight, moves beside her.
Then comes Seraphina.
She goes last, spacestepping through the plaza, her voice like silk as she promises Calcatra a golden age of prosperity unlike any before.
Her dragon follows, obedient, poised, yet as it watches the Alaric’s still-airborne Godbeast with glittering, sorrowful eyes, something about the creature’s stillness unsettles me. I have to look away.
Then, it is over.
The Sibyls give the command, and the plaza begins to empty. As the crowd peels away, whispers trail behind them.
And still, my Godbeast stands behind me. Unmoving. A silent shadow at my heel, no more than a breath away.
Even when I whirl on him, my voice cuts sharp from the ache of having been left. “You’re free to leave again,” I say. “Your job is done. I’m safe. You don’t need to follow me.”
He doesn’t waver. He doesn’t argue. He simply stays.
And when I turn away, expecting silence I hear footsteps. Falling into rhythm with my own.
Always at my back.