Chapter 38
Chaos erupted, as the guards of Somnaris came rushing into the courtyard, screaming commands and shielding the guests.
The Faeries blanched and hid under their chairs or started to run away as arrows rained from the sky.
Somnaris cast a protective shield over me, Maelis, and the priest.
“Finish the ritual!” he shouted and unsheathed his sword.
It only took another moment for the Gods to appear in the courtyard.
Lythandra was the first to rush towards Ignara, their swords meeting midair, releasing a boom of energy.
I saw Caelan fighting two Heralds to the left of me and Lydia was wrestling with a noble Faerie.
Malek’s men were there too, attacking from the shadows and effectively trapping Somnaris’ men and guests in the courtyard.
Maelis only stood and watched for a second before stepping into the circle.
She turned towards the priest. “Do it and don’t stop until the harnessing is complete!”
He nodded, but nervously looked around him.
He began the incantation and the crystals around us started glowing faintly.
I had to try one last time.
“Maelis, listen to me. This isn’t the only path. It’s not too late. Release me, and we’ll find another way, together. We can still fulfill the prophecy. We can still get you home,” I said softly.
She didn’t look at me, she only stared at the chaos around us, the wounded and dead soldiers on both sides.
The priest stumbled over the words, but quickly regained control.
His hands were shaking as he was reading verse after verse, bringing us closer to completing the harnessing.
He was reading in a low voice, so I couldn’t hear the incantation he was reciting. It was impossible to tell at which point of the ritual we were, how much time was left.
The shouts outside the shield were getting louder, the court of Wisdom was clearly dominating the fight.
Somnaris separated from the group and stepped inside the circle.
“Your men are good, Auretheos, but I think it’s time to bring out the real monsters.” He laughed, raising his sword and ramming it into the ground.
The sky darkened.
Not with clouds or nightfall, but with an unnatural twilight that stretched across the heavens, staining the horizon in hues of deep violet and gray.
From the heart of this twilight, something emerged, a swirling, nebulous mass of shadow and light that coalesced into a form too fluid to define.
The air grew thick, almost suffocating, as though reality itself was resisting the presence of this otherworldly entity.
Time faltered.
Seconds stretched, feeling like hours, and then snapped back, disorienting everything around us.
The Gods, gathered in preparation for battle, felt the distortion too.
The normally firm ground beneath their feet seemed to shift, as though it had lost its anchor to the natural world. When the creature finally descended, it did so in utter silence.
I felt an unfamiliar chill wrap around my heart, like a cold hand grasping the edges of my mind. The whisper was barely audible, but its effect was immediate, a subtle, gnawing despair, a reminder of forgotten fears and long-buried doubts.
“Nytheris,” I breathed, and Maelis’ eyes widened slightly.
Before I could make sense of the fear in her eyes, Nytheris attacked.
Its form unraveled into tendrils of dark, living mist, each one moving with terrifying speed and precision. These tendrils did not strike with brute force but weaved through the Gods like the currents of a nightmare, twisting around them and distorting reality.
Iriath, the God of Light, summoned forth beams of pure radiance to drive the entity back, but Nytheris absorbed the light, twisting it into a sickly, fading glow that flickered and vanished into its form.
Velora, the Goddess of Strength, tried to charge forward, her war cry echoing through the battlefield, but as she reached Nytheris, her momentum was lost in the time-warped haze that surrounded it, her strikes landing against empty air.
The screams of the soldiers were deafening, and the priest had stopped chanting, his mouth gaping open at the horrors that unfolded before us.
“Priest, carry on!” Maelis shouted at him and grabbed the dagger from his belt.
He started reading again and she stepped towards me.
Several Gods had managed to make their way towards the circle and began attacking the shield around us.
There wasn’t much time left, and Nytheris was taking out my men one by one.
This was no fair fight, and they needed me at full strength if I was to win this battle for us.
Maelis took a shattering breath and dragged the dagger across her palm.
Blood pooled in her palm and she winced at the stinging pain.
She reached over to me, I tried to fight her off.
But the chains had weakened me and the wounds on my wrists and neck were deep.
I winced in pain, and she managed to get hold of my hand.
She dragged the dagger across my palm and looked over to the priest.
He nodded and stepped into the circle with us.
Over the noise from outside the circle, the priest now shouted:
“Ashar’il venyr oskalar!
Vorithiel neth kaelith or’en,
Dathen sylae, velru asmarith.
An’daru ithir ven eirith,
Kalasai thrond uln’rithar!”
“The chains of thought are bound!
Through forgotten words, we claim her mind,
By will and shadow, the truth is unmade.
Let the essence of wisdom grow,
And her power deplete!”
Her power.
Her power.
She was harnessing her own heka.
* * *
Maelis
Theo’s head shot up.
“No, Maelis!” he breathed, fear and confusion written all over his face.
The priest kept reciting the verse, over and over again.
I took his hand in mine and as our blood mixed, I said, “Let’s fulfill the prophecy, Theo.”
And for the last time I whispered:
One breath. One act. One choice.
Do good. Stay clean. Hold steady.
I could feel the vibrations in the air, power crashing down into me. Pain erupted in my chest, making me fall back, but Theo steadied me with his hand.
He was screaming now.
“No, stop this at once. You are killing her! Maelis, put an end to this!”
But I couldn’t move, all I could feel was pain all over my body. The priest kept reciting the verses and my vision turned blurry. Purple light erupted around us and the shield that Somnaris had put up shattered.
Theo laid me down on the ground and tried to extract his hand from mine, but it was too late. My grip on him was final, not something he could undo.
I could hear myself screaming in pain, bones breaking and the very essence of life being pulled out of me. Theo was panting, shouting something to the people around us, but there was nothing left to do.
One last time, I told myself.
One last time I could make him feel my love and so I thought of every moment I had shared with him. Every touch, every look, every word merged into one as I sent it all over to him with a last push of my energy.
He screamed out then, a blast of light erupting around us, knocking back everyone nearby.
The pain came swiftly and disappeared just as fast.
Everything went still around me.
There was no more pain, no noise, no fear.
I saw Theo, gleaming with unbridled power, his sword raised, cutting through Nytheris as if this creature was nothing more than a bad dream.
Ignara’s eyes widened in understanding. “You bitch! You will pay for this!”
She raced towards me with her sword, but all I could think to do was laugh, because I was dead. There was nothing more she could do to me. Before she could reach me, Lydia stepped in front of me and halted her advance, plunging her sword deep into Ignara’s stomach.
I turned my head away towards the night sky.
That’s when I heard it again.
The whispers, the voices that had echoed through my mind at the Citadel.
“Sela ti’oré ana.”
I was slipping away, slowly and gently. I could feel a warmth starting at my toes, spreading through my limbs, encompassing me like a gentle blanket. I thought of the night on the terrace when Theo had conjured a blanket for me and the way he had looked at me with his beautiful eyes.
And somehow, I wasn’t scared anymore.
Theo had fulfilled his prophecy, he was free.
The battle would be over soon, and I could finally sleep. I smiled then.
The fight around me calmed down and I heard Theo kneeling down beside me.
“Maelis, stay with me. We will get you some help, just hang on a little longer.”
My eyes were so heavy, but I willed them open one last time. There he was, my beautiful God of Wisdom, his eyes overflowing with a purple glow that was stronger than I had ever seen. I smiled at him and shook my head.
“Don’t give up, Molly Mae. Help will be here soon, the healer is on her way as we speak. You just need to hold on a little longer.”
But there was nothing left to do. There was no fear, just happiness in my heart. And I understood now what the Fates had been whispering to me all this time.
With my last words, I repeated their chant: “Sela ti’oré ana.”
I love you.