18 - Iona #2
Instead, her mouth falls open in sheer amazement. The dire scene before them has gone still. The fire falling from the sky floats aloft, the malefician is frozen mid-stride, and Marina’s look of terror is fixed on her face, unmoving.
All of time has stopped.
“I’ve seen this only once before,” Ariadne whispers.
“How…” Iona gingerly turns to look, unsure if moving will disturb the magic.
The staff’s gem pulses with light as it maintains the spell. Ariadne stares too, marveling at the scene before them with a mixture of horror and wonder.
Iona then remembers the morning of the solstice, when she’d been so sure they’d overslept. Ariadne had fallen asleep with the staff in her hand. She must have frozen time then, too. Perhaps she’d done it many times before without realizing it.
“I didn’t…” Ariadne shakes her head. “I’d thought it was an isolated incident when the staff presented itself but…”
She flinches, her knees buckling as if struck by a heavy weight.
“What ails you?” Iona asks, searching frantically for signs of any injury.
“It’s… heavy.” Ariadne’s every word is strained. “I cannot… I do not know how long I can keep it-”
With a terrible crash, time starts again. Marina screams, staring her death in the face.
“Make it stop!” Iona cries.
Eyes wide, Ariadne stares up at the labradorite stone, willing it to glow, willing the magic to work, but nothing happens.
“I cannot,” Ariadne begrudgingly admits. “Protect Nenet!”
“Wait!”
But Ariadne has already sprouted wings and hurls herself into the air. She throws an explosive spell at the malefician while she’s distracted by Marina, and she’s thrown backwards, falling in a heap.
“Gíinos,” Ariadne aims her staff at a mound of liquid glass and hurls it at the figure, but she narrowly dodges out of the way, extending a hand and cooling the glass so that it falls to the ground and shatters.
Ariadne flinches violently at the sound but manages to reach Marina where she lies.
The malefician sprints towards them with their hand outstretched, a spell nearly cast.
“Izrezati!” Ariadne slices through the figure’s torso, a diagonal gash from shoulder to hip.
She roars in pain and falls to the sand on her hands and knees. Iona holds her breath, but the malefician doesn’t stay down.
Through the many layers of black fabric, blood seeps from the gaping wound, until it heals before their very eyes, muscle and skin weaving together before a single drop of blood is spilled, and the fabric of her robe along with it, until it’s as if Ariadne hadn’t cast her spell at all.
Iona senses Ariadne’s mind going blank just as hers does, both of them entirely at a loss of how to fight a being so impervious to their power.
The malefician reaches out a hand and an even deeper laceration slices across Marina’s torso, making her scream in agony. Blood gushes from the wound, darkening the linen of her ruby dress, as she falls to her knees.
Ariadne goes to her, putting a protective arm around her shoulders.
A whisper of a laugh comes from the malefician as she approaches, lifting her hand to cast another spell. Just before she strikes, Ariadne creates a shield around them, and the spell doesn’t permeate.
The malefician goes still in confusion, then tries again, this time with vigor, but the spell has no effect.
When she tries a third time, the spell rebounds from the shield and hits the malefician instead, making her spontaneously combust in an explosion of flames.
She screams in outrage, running and extinguishing the flames, working to heal her self-inflicted burns.
“Philisa,” Ariadne presses her hands against Marina’s gaping wound.
She winces, hissing out a breath, then sighs in relief when the wound heals, the seconds ticking by agonizingly. When Ariadne pulls her shaking hands away, they are dripping with Marina’s blood.
“Pyrkagia!” Nenet screams, redirecting any fire still raining down upon them, sending it all to the figure in an impressive feat of strength fueled by her unimaginable grief.
The malefician lifts themself up into the sky to avoid the onslaught. Marina whispers something to Ariadne, then stands and sprouts wings.
“What are you doing?” Ariadne yells, but Marina ignores her and catapults herself into the air to follow the malefician.
While the assailant is engaging with Marina, Iona runs to Ariadne’s side with Aster and Wisp at her heels.
“We must retreat!” Iona cries. “We cannot fight her.”
But Ariadne watches her cousin attacking the malefician with practiced skill and grace. Marina dives through the air and throws spells that nearly incapacitate, but the malefician is always faster.
“No,” Ariadne says through gritted teeth. “I won’t run.”
Nenet leaves her sister’s body and runs to them. “She’s right. Our adversary is too strong.”
A portal appears behind them as Ariadne unfurls her conjured wings. “Go. When she is dead, I shall follow.”
She ascends into the sky even as they call after her and Aster barks in protest.
“She’s going to get herself killed,” Nenet says through her tears.
Before Iona can reply, an inhuman shriek punctures the air. They collapse to their knees as their ears ring from the shrill screech of a language Iona recognizes as maleficium spell, an infernal anathema that incapacitates them, leaving them vulnerable.
Ariadne and Marina can hardly keep themselves in the air as they writhe in pain with their hands over their ears. They are unable to even hear their own screams over the paroxysmal clamor. Aster and Wisp run from the sound, bucking and cowering as they try to escape it, but they do not get far.
The sand shifts beneath them, roiling and churning. Nenet tries to reach her sister’s body, but the grains quickly cover Sara’s form, and she is lost forever. Iona reaches out for Nenet’s hand as they begin to sink.
“No, no, no,” she sobs, clinging to Iona for dear life.
“Halat!” Iona conjures a rope, binding their joined hands together tightly. “Sciatháin!”
Her wings form, feather by feather, and she tries as she might to keep her and Nenet above the surface so she can fly them both to safety, but behind them the dune becomes a rogue wave, crashing down upon them in a deluge of sand, burying them alive.
The pressure against every part of her makes it impossible to claw her way out of the darkness. Sand fills her ears, her mouth, her eyes, grating against her skin. She clutches Nenet’s hand even as she sinks lower, lower, lower.
Iona! Ariadne’s thought is a resounding scream.
The sand rips apart in a spectacular propulsive divide that frees them from the darkness, a new chasm forming with them its valley.
They cough and sputter, their mouths filled with sand.
Coarse grains scratch beneath Iona’s eyelids, making it impossible for her to have more than a faint sliver of vision.
She can barely see the glow of her pendant as her spell fades.
The deafening maleficium spell finally ceases, though the abrasive ringing still lingers in her ears. Blind and nearly deaf, she’s vulnerable against any attacks, but holds her hand out anyway to withstand whatever terrible spell the malefician casts next.
“Démolir!” Marina incants from the sky, and an explosion shakes the ground.
“Iona!” Ariadne’s cry is muffled.
“I cannot see!” She coughs, spitting out bits of mud from her dry mouth.
“She’s gone.” Marina lands a little way away, her voice muted. “I tried to… but she made a portal and disappeared before I could follow.”
“Neró,” Ariadne tilts Iona’s head back. “Blink,”
She flushes the sand from Iona’s eyes with a gentle stream of water until most of the tiny grains wash away and she’s able to open her lids without pain.
“Philisa,” Ariadne presses her hands against Iona’s ears until the ringing dissipates, and her hearing is renewed.
Then they both help Nenet, Iona with her ears and Ariadne with her eyes. To her horror, there is blood leaking from Nenet and Ariadne’s ears and dripping down their necks. She reaches for her own ear and finds fresh blood on her fingertips.
Elise had never been able to do that, to incapacitate with only the words of the spell, let alone its effect, but Elise had been a novice. She’d only practiced maleficium for mere months.
This malefician is much older, Ariadne agrees.
“Is everyone alright?” Marina asks.
No one answers. Wisp and Aster return, having been saved from the sand by Iona’s spell. The animals’ heads hang low, and they remain silent. Iona does not know what to make of their abandonment or their subsequent shame.
She looks to Nenet, who is in such shock that she cannot even cry anymore.
“I must… find my family.” Nenet shivers. “Tell them what has happened here.”
Iona’s heart breaks for her, at beholding the look of detachment on her face. It is too much for any of them to process, except Marina, who watches them with quiet compassion.
“Lethe,” Marina incants, her wand pointed at Nenet’s forehead.
Iona gasps. “What are you doing?!”
Ariadne takes Marina’s arm, but she pulls away and continues her memory spell until she’s satisfied.
“It had to be done,” she says.
“But… What are you… What do you mean?” Iona asks, her head spinning.
“There is no excuse for taking another witch’s memory!” Ariadne yells.
“I’m afraid there is,” Marina says. “Forgive me, I cannot explain here. Please, come.”
“Where?” Iona asks, just as Ariadne says, “We are not going anywhere with you until you explain.”
Marina glances between them, her red eyes an abyss of untold mysteries. If there’s any mind that Iona is curious to read, it would be hers, but when she tries, she finds Marina’s aura impenetrable.
“I’m afraid your despair must wait for the morning, but your questions will be answered in due course. We must return to Rome immediately,” Marina looks them up and down, “for a much-needed bath.”