39. Chapter 39
Aharsh wind blew through the valley, extinguishing the flames that had begun to lick up Rida, an unnatural quiet settling over Hythe.
Swords dropped from hands, shields fell from arms, and arrows dropped out of the sky, as if time itself had been stopped.
The roots loosened just a fraction at this, and I scurried from their embrace, turning to find Myaella back on the ground, hair flowing in the dark cloud of smoke that blanketed the battlefield.
Devastation was written across her face as she looked between Malik and I, something like familiarity flashing in her eyes.
With a flick of her hand, all the mainland men disappeared from the field, nothing but mist trailing in their wake. Mass death so easily, as if it was nothing to her.
She whispered then, so softly that her voice blended with the wind.
"It wasn't supposed to happen like this," Myaella said. "This sort of destruction was never supposed to find this world, as it did mine."
Myaella looked up to Rida then, her eyes shining, and I found myself curious about her words and how the Caelium had fallen.
I knew the fear I felt at losing everything the Mother Blessed had built here on Yllsora, how impossible it felt to save it, and could not ponder the thought of actually losing it all.
She looked back at Malik and I with a pain in her eyes that could only come from experience.
She took the both of us in, me covered in dirt and blood, my fingers darkened from the use of so much of my power, and Malik, panting, his eyes near black with dark veins surrounding them, the perfect picture of death.
"Neither of you were supposed to push yourselves to this point. It wasn't supposed to be like this. I tried to do what was best for this world, tried to show you before it got to this point, yet you didn't listen. And I am so sorry for what I had to do."
I shook my head, confused. "I don't know what you mean. What did you have to do?"
“There is another part to all of this. Something I did not tell you before,” Myaella began.
“You remember that day, Allyra, when the Astaros killed that boy…I was watching. Hopeful that the Mother Blessed would learn their lesson, would see what I was so desperately trying to show you, but you did not guide them to do that.”
I felt my body sway at the recollection of that day, the one I had tried so hard to forget, the day that had haunted me all these years, and that I had shared with no one.
It was my darkest of memories, something that I had carried with me, and pushed down to the deepest parts of my being as it was the source of all my shame and all the hate I carried for myself.
I had hoped no one but the Mother Blessed would ever know of it, that even the Divine would turn a blind eye, but I was mistaken.
"When I saw you all burn him, scatter his ashes to the wind so there was no trace of him, covering it up and trying to continue as holy, I knew the path you were on. That I had to intervene. So I sent the Shroud to teach you all a lesson, and to save what the Mother Blessed were destroying."
I trembled as Myaella continued speaking. I had hoped it was left behind, never to be spoken of again, that it would become forgotten in the history of the Mother Blessed. But I would not be that lucky, for Malik's voice sounded behind me.
"What is she talking about, Lyra?"