Chapter 59 #3
Fiza dove, catching her around the middle and sending them tumbling into the snow. They rolled, and Elizabeth scrambled up, running deeper into the forest.
Even though Asmodeus had healed her, running on her freshly healed leg was not enjoyable in the slightest. Her finger and arm still burned like they had been seared with an iron. Elizabeth gritted her teeth and kept running, her feet skidding on the ice-covered trails.
If she catches me, I die.
Suddenly, Fiza tackled her ankles, sending her sprawling. Fiza pounced and held her in a freakishly strong grip. She fought, but she couldn’t wrench herself away.
There would be no escape.
Elizabeth stilled and looked at her friend, her enemy, one last time. “Just tell me why.”
Fiza snarled. “Why should we lie in the waters and shadows when we were designed to prey upon you? We have grown—no—evolved to destroy you.”
“I thought you hated the surface, and you loved your home in the Underworld? Why not just return there?” Elizabeth asked, desperate to keep her talking.
Fiza slowly smiled, choosing not to reply.
She was cornered, with no magic left, and they both knew it.
The water demon opened her mouth, razor-sharp teeth glinting, and tore into her arm.
The pain was unbearable, like being stabbed with a hundred needles.
Her vision edged in black. She thrashed, kicking and pushing with all of her remaining strength, but Fiza held on to her arm like a viper.
Fiza held her down and lapped at her wound, and Elizabeth looked to the skies and pleaded to any deity or angel who was listening.
“Please…” she pleaded as Fiza suckled on her wound like a grotesque babe. Fiza raised her face, and her lips and chin were covered in red.
Moments passed in silence as Elizabeth counted her last seconds among the living. Soon, she would be no more, and the world would grow dark.
Her vision flickered.
A rustling sounded in the bush. Perhaps Maud had come to gloat and revel in her end.
Elizabeth lifted her head to glare at Maud one last time. But it was not Maud who had stepped into the clearing.
A cloaked figure walked swiftly. Two others trailed a step behind her. She saw a faint light that grew stronger and watched in wonder as purple fire gathered at the stranger’s fingertips.
The world blinked in and out as she struggled to stay awake.
Not yet, she wanted to whisper.
The cloaked figure pointed a long-nailed finger towards her, as if damning her.
“Let her go.”
That voice—she recognized that voice.
Fiza crouched over her, hissing like a creature of the deep. There was nothing kind, nothing human in her face anymore.
Elizabeth watched the scene as if detached from her body, as the cloaked woman twirled her fingertips, and a sphere of pulsating violet magic formed in the air. The figure shot her palms forward, and her magic slammed into the demon.
The force from her blast of magic threw the woman’s hood off, and Elizabeth gasped.
It was Charlotte.
Elizabeth blinked in surprise.
Charlotte? Was she hallucinating?
Fiza snarled and lunged, but Charlotte threw her palm out, shouting something. The water demon was wrenched into the air, suspended by violet magic.
Charlotte had magic? Not possible.
Fiza snarled madly and made snatching motions towards where Elizabeth was lying in the snow.
She was so cold.
The two other cloaked figures approached her.
She felt around with her unruined arm, feeling the snow underneath her fingertips. She clenched her fingers over the icy ground, as if it were an anchor that might keep her here just a moment longer.
One figure bent to her side and began muttering strange phrases in a soothing feminine voice as the world blurred around her.
She recognized that voice, too, but in her state, she couldn’t place where she’d heard it.
Elizabeth lifted her head to see Charlotte in the clearing.
A cloud of black smoke billowed out of Fiza’s form. As the demon’s dark magic flew overhead, tiny black drops fell to the ground and sizzled like acid.
Charlotte shouted something, crouching, and magic crackled around her like a shield. Black magic shrouded the purple sphere, obscuring Charlotte from view.
No.
But a whoosh of air swept across the space, and the black magic was sucked into nothing.
Charlotte rose from her crouch and stood tall and uninjured.
Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief.
Fiza broke free of her magic and took a menacing step towards Charlotte.
“Run,” she tried to shout, but it came out as a wheeze.
Fiza attacked, sending a spear of black magic towards Charlotte.
Charlotte raised her hands.
Black and purple collided, exploding overhead. Charlotte forced her magic towards the demon, and the dark magic retreated an inch.
Charlotte pushed, her fingers twitching and tensing from the effort, until Fiza’s magic was no more, and purple shot into the demon.
Dark wisps of shadow bled out of Fiza, dispersing into the air.
Fiza suddenly broke free and scrambled on the ground, trying to get away.
Charlotte stepped towards the demon, palm outstretched. A burst of power exploded from her palm, colliding with Fiza.
Fiza’s body slumped.
Charlotte rushed to her side. “Lizzy—are you alright?”
Elizabeth blinked blearily. Her lips moved slightly, but she couldn’t seem to form words.
Charlotte turned to one of the cloaked women, whom Elizabeth recognized as Nasera. Worriedly, she said, “She’ll be alright, won’t she?”
Elizabeth tried to summon the energy to respond when the world went black.