Chapter 43 #2
He Obscured away from her and dropped himself in the middle of the swarm.
His massive horse reared back, kicking one of the Dreaded Dead so hard its head flew from its body.
He drew Shadow Slayer, and the blade instantly ignited with violet flames.
As the wolves tore through the Dreaded Dead at hyper speed, Reeve’s sword set them ablaze.
A swirling mass of light caught her vision. A small Portal opened behind the continuous line of advancing Dreaded Dead. Two forms stepped through it: Roswyn and Mumford. More Portals opened up behind them, as more Bellator joined the line of Dreaded Dead.
Eryx’s bellow of joy echoed across the valley, between sounds of bones ripping and shattering and rising plumes of smoke. He dismounted his horse, clearly eager for the combat. Roswyn and Mumford Obscured, sandwiching him at once.
Roswyn was too occupied with Eryx to see what charged towards him with raging intent.
Antony jumped, his massive frame turning sideways to knock into Roswyn. Roswyn pulled two fingers back, ready to strike as the air turned thick with static. Antony’s side made brutal contact with Roswyn, but the bolt of lightning that expelled from him is what sent Roswyn flying.
His head hit the Earth, knocking the breath from him as remnants of lightning cracked across his body. He heaved, trying to upright himself in agony, but Antony’s massive body stalked over him. Roswyn’s eyes were impossibly large. His chest went limp as he fell back into the Earth.
He stared at Antony in realization, with much the same awe Maeve had. From the snarling behind his bared teeth, she thought for a moment Antony was going to kill him right there. His once friend. But he didn’t. He stayed over him, both their bodies still in the chaos of battle.
A wail, the one a man utters as his last, sang from Mumford’s lips as Eryx finished him.
Eryx moved towards Antony and Roswyn, but with a single glance from the black wolf, Eryx knocked Roswyn unconscious, and they took him captive, alive and virtually unharmed.
Antony rejoined the fight with barreling force as his teeth and claws shredded through Dreaded Dead after Dreaded Dead.
From the rising flames of burning corpses, the snow falling turned to black soot across the atmosphere. The Magic around her shifted.
A power signature entered the valley, one that triumphed over all the Dreaded Dead.
The blackened veins running across her body darkened and hissed in welcome at Mal’s arrival.
The Morconis, slick black with tattered wings, flew down towards the earth with a screech, baring its razor-sharp teeth.
Too many teeth. The creature slammed into the ground, revealing Mal atop it.
It bent beneath him, crushing the ground and sending chunks of compacted earth spiraling.
Maeve squeezed her legs together and raced down towards him, swinging her sword with deadly aim at every Dreaded Dead she flew by.
They burst apart beneath her power—beneath Reeve’s power.
The Morconis shrieked a nausea-inducing sound, its eel-like neck snapping up a wolf in its jaws. Then another. Maeve recoiled at the sight, plunging her sword through the hollowed abdomen of a mindless corpse before her. The Dreaded Dead continued to swarm—there were simply too many.
No. There couldn’t be. Not for Reeve. He could wipe them all out at once. So why hadn’t he?
He was enjoying himself. She could feel it through their bond.
Mal’s attention was not on Maeve, even as she hurled herself faster and faster towards him. A combination of swordplay and electric Magic destroyed each Dreaded Dead in her path. Mal’s dead glare was on Reeve—Reeve, who kicked his horse back and smiled traitorously.
“What’s the matter, Malachite?” said Reeve. “Why haven’t the Senshi come alongside your Dreaded Dead?”
The darkness that flowed freely from Mal was stomach-churning. It was acidic. Unpleasant at best. Then Reeve’s words struck her.
Why haven’t the Senshi come?
The mile-long Portal Reeve had opened remained stretched across the valley, and from it filed the entire rank of Senshi Warriors. With their weapons pumped full of siphoned Aterna Magic, they immediately began destroying the undead creatures.
They were not under Shadow’s control.
The Morconis gave another shriek, drawing Maeve’s attention back to it as Spitfire raced towards it. Her eyes traveled up, but Mal no longer sat atop the great beast.
Her eyes snapped to Reeve, but it was too late.
Mal Obscured, appearing out of thin air, before her. Her heart sank. His body slammed into hers, knocking her sideways off Spitfire. Before they hit the ground, he Obscured them both.
The sound of battle vanished, replaced by complete silence aside from the chilling wind and the sound of soft moving water.
The entire backside of her body hit cold, wet ground.
She tried to turn, flip herself over, but Mal’s frame above her locked her in place.
His hand pressed against her throat, holding, not choking.
Half-frozen, half-freezing water from the Black Deep pushed and pulled at her head, soaking her hair. She continued to squirm beneath him.
“Stop,” he ordered, his voice colder than the ice clinging to her hair.
He was on the verge of breaking completely.
She fell still beneath his hold and allowed herself to look at him.
His eyes, the whites, were a faded red. His skin was thin, exposing all the spots of deep purple muscle and blood vessels.
His sharp cheekbones were hollowed further, getting dangerously close to starvation territory.
His hair was oiled, dirty in a way he would never have allowed it to be.
Are you alright? Reeve voiced across her mind.
“You don’t look so good, Mal,” she whimpered, her voice filled with regret, not boastfulness, despite that such a thing meant breaking him from Shadow might be easier in this state.
She shivered, pushing down on the realization that it wasn’t just the frozen ground that chilled her. His fingers were like ice against her throat. He stared down at her. Just stared.
Maeve, said Reeve.
“Strange,” she whispered. “I can hardly feel your Dread Magic at all. Guess we both lost it, huh?”
Maeve, Reeve’s voice snapped, dripping with fear at her lack of response.
“Why am I here, Mal?” she asked. “Why did you show me where the attack would be?”
His expression shifted at her words, like he debated between crushing her throat and bursting into tears.
“I don’t know,” he said at last, completely at war with himself.
“Let down your walls,” she urged gently. “I want to see something.”
Mal’s fingers constricted fractionally, and his lips tightened, but her breathing hitched as he dropped his mental shields completely.
She remembered her teaching, drawing on the lessons she’d vicariously studied through Shadow’s memory, and reached for the shackles that dug deep into his mind.
The sharp chains of indestructible steel seeped out of his mind and into his nervous system.
They clung to him like disease, and his body was far from immune.
Each chain held more potency than the Enslavement Curse that had been on Zimsy, and Mal was covered in them.
At his center, his core, was his remaining Dread Magic, fluttering like the last of a flame desperate not to be extinguished.
Breaking Mal free. . . suddenly seemed impossible.
She pulled from his mind, letting her body sink fully into the frozen ground beneath her.
“Gods,” she breathed, more to herself than him, “how am I going to do this? I don’t stand a chance when she has taken so much of you—”
Her words were cut short by a flash of white light flooding her vision. The memory, Shadow’s memory, appeared in an instant.
Judyth, as she was, then, stood with her long white hair gripped tightly in the hands of a masked individual.
The memory was blurry and jumpy, but there were many masked men who appeared to be soldiers, part of a military of sorts.
They wore deep emerald uniforms with a serpent crest on their breast pockets.
Judyth’s neck, wrist, and ankles were bound in solid Elven steel, laced with all manner of stones meant to suppress her Magic. Judyth’s face was wracked with horror as she watched the young man who was at her side in all of her memories of Vaukore, Nevian was his name, bleed out.
“Take a look, girl,” said the man gripping Judyth’s hair. “That’s what happens when a filthy Shadow clings to the delusion they are stronger than the Dread.”
His fingers tightened, drawing tears at the corners of her eyes, as his grip on her hair became unbearable.
The soldier called out to the others as he heaved her to her feet.
“Search the entire school,” he ordered, “leave no Shadow filth alive. You’ll know them by their silver wings pin.
” Jerking Judyth away from Nevian’s dead body, he brought his lips to her ear.
“All but you, of course. The Dread King is expecting you.”
The memory shattered into darkness, propelling Maeve back to where she lay, still pinned beneath Mal. The memory had come and gone so quickly and had been so fragmented, she tried to recount it as accurately as possible.
“She has your eyes,” blurted Mal, his expression vacant, his voice cold.
Maeve’s heart raced faster.
“Those are your eyes, aren’t they?” he continued.
“I think about them all the time. They are the only part of her I think about.” His fingers against her throat moved, dancing up her jaw with a hesitation Mal never had.
“She never lets me think about you.” His fingers moved back to her throat, and his other hand joined them. “Not even right now.”