Chapter Thirty-One #2
The tree hungered for him…so she fed him to it.
That’s when things went wrong.
Hyacinth trembled, “She didn’t even want to kill him! He’s the one who returned to her.”
“Silence!” Marquis slammed the end of his staff against the ground again. “I’ll not have your hearsay taint his memory.”
“You better run back to your temple, priest,” Austin spat.
Only Marquis didn’t respond a second time.
Instead, he raised his other hand up and over his head.
The trees behind them immediately hissed like scared cats and skittered further away.
Branches burned, leaves turned to ash, and roots slithered away fast. Hyacinth glanced around once more to find them even more alone in the forest. The smoke crept closer to the point it made her eyes burn. Like it were some sort of noxious gas.
You need to stop them. Hyacinth clenched her fits, bent forward, and did the one thing she did know how to do.
She screamed. It rattled through her body, shaking the earth.
The sky vibrated as the encroaching clerics were pushed back another foot.
Their boots dug into the loose soil. Each leaf that passed under them shriveled up and burned like a tiny match.
Smoke rose off the ground in tiny silver plumes as she stared at Marquis directly.
He hadn’t moved. He stabbed his staff into the earth directly in front of him and brandished some sort of symbol at her.
Everything was so hot. Like he’d lit a fire under her.
She flung her arms, left and right, trying to brandish plants or trees or anything.
Something to disrupt their spell. Each branch lit up with tiny black flames and turned to ash.
It only made her angrier. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks as her wings fluttered rapidly behind her.
Their robes whipped around them till they were forced to cover their eyes.
Marquis continued to approach, one boot after another, yelling into the wind that kicked up around them.
The skies darkened to a slate gray. With one crack of lightning, the other clerics’ eyes widened.
Her feet left the ground, her body following the magic into the sky. Marquis yelled out into the air, lurching after her.
It was like the world turned into a painting. Dripping paint slowly on a canvas, everything stopped. And she watched whatever spell he was conjuring, mid-cast. She was in the air, staring down at him, his staff pointed at her.
But his spell never reached her. Austin burst through their painting like a bull in a room made of porcelain.
Hyacinth’s air was stuck in her throat, another scream lodged in her body, as Austin threw Snuffles to the ground.
He barreled into Marquis, taking the spell to the chest. As the pair tumbled back to the earth, they snapped out of existence.
Austin and the silver eyed cleric Marquis disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
No…no.
No.
No-no-no-no! no! You can’t have him! The world shattered.
Glass fragments of reality separated from each other as an unknowable despair filled her chest. Hyacinth shrieked.
Trees sprouted out of the ground, impaling two of the clerics, bark dripped in crimson as their faces were embedded in wood.
Dryads creaked, reaching with their hand branches for the other clerics.
Their screams echoed as Hyacinth’s feet touched the ground.
Her dryads ripped another cleric from seam to seam, the air filling with the sound of his skin and its terrible ripping.
The sky opened up with torrential downpour, their black flames going out with a hiss.
Hyacinth whirled around in the mud, her toes soaking in it, she stared at the three still left alive.
You all die—you die! You took him from me!
Something climbed up her throat till it slithered out over her lip.
A snake made of mud-brown scales and red eyes dropped into the mud at her ankles.
It snapped at one of them, getting him by the ankle.
His death rattle cut short as his body went rigid instantaneously.
Hyacinth didn’t even have to kill the other two.
A bundle of black fur whizzed through the rain.
She saw him between flashes of lightning.
Her rabbit stretched up on his back legs.
Crack…crack…crack… Two antlers ripped out of his forehead, bloody velvet dripping from their gnarled ends.
His once round belly flattened as he stretched to a taller size.
Once silky fur turned into matts of mud and moss and underbrush.
She could see his ribs protruding around the outside and swirling red eyes stared at the two cleric he had cornered.
While a dryad held one in place, Snuffles launched on his newly, oversize feet, into the belly of the other.
His antlers tore the cleric to pieces. He kicked.
Tore. Shredded. Destroyed until the cleric was a pile of parts in the mud.
Hyacinth found the last cleric. Her feet heavy, they slapped against the soggy ground as she lumbered toward him.
He writhed in her dryad’s arms. Snuffles dislodged himself from his kill, her mud snake at her other ankle, she stared at the cleric.
There was nothing but ice in her chest as she grabbed him by the cheeks.
Flesh that was so warm, so alive, so fresh!
Everything spun. Her world existed off kilter.
“Yooooouuuu,” she wheezed through clenched lungs, drawing out the word. Her fingers clamped down around his jaw, feeling how easy it would be to snap the bones holding it together. “You took him from me!”
He was a young thing. Much too young. He didn’t even have circles under his eyes. A round, freckled, youthful face. Green eyes like the color of fresh mint wavered as they searched her face. The cleric was maybe an inch shorter than her, hair still a mop of brown tendrils in a vague bowl shape.
“I-I didn’t—I don’t—I didn’t!” The cleric rambled, tears streaming down his face. Even with the rain drowning the world around them, she could tell he was crying. It was the way his lip quivered.
Her lips, however, curled up into a cruel smile. “You’re right, he did that. He took him. He took him!”
The cleric shrank back as she yelled in his face. Frenzy vibrated through her as she shushed him. Petting his head, she matted up his hair with blood and mud.
“Show me where he took him. Took my Austin,” She giggled, the sound cracked.
She was loose like glass clattering to the ground from an old mirror hung on the wall.
Everything felt fake and real, too in focus and too far away.
She giggled louder, stumbling back in the mud, Hyacinth pointed at the trees.
Snuffles and the snake bared their teeth at the cleric as he lurched out of the dryad’s hand. “Show me.”
“I can’t—”
The dryad twisted up the cleric’s arm and he yowled in pain.
“You can. I know you can,” she laughed, hand to her aching stomach.
Hyacinth cupped the pudgy, dirty cheeks of the terrified cleric and squeezed.
“I believe in you. Now… Show me!” She shrieked into his face.
He bolted, racing off into the trees. And Hyacinth followed him, her collection of dead monsters hot on her heels.