Chapter Forty-Five #2
I could barely raise my arms now, but I refused to stop.
With gritted teeth, I called on the last of my good power, the magic that stemmed from Charles, and the effort made my vision swim.
The power that had once surged through me now came in faltering waves, each one weaker than the last. I felt my friends’ exhaustion.
We wouldn’t last much longer, and Charles’s magic was almost finished.
I didn’t know if Neamh even existed anymore.
The ground trembled, and my next blast of light was feeble. Craos laughed, tearing at the gateway and making it larger.
I staggered back, falling to my knees, my limbs trembling, my energy gone. My connection to Charles and the other Druids felt frayed and distant. Wraiths poured from the portal now by the hundreds.
A flaming fist burst through the rift, and fire coalesced into a spear of molten flame. I lifted my hand instinctively, but no barrier formed. Fear almost paralyzed me, overtaking my resolve.
Craos thrust the spear at me, but I twisted at the last second and it grazed my side.
I screamed in agony, pain searing through my ribs, and I collapsed into the ash.
The impact scorched the ground beside me, and a firestorm erupted inches from where I lay.
Owen and everyone else disappeared in darkness and flame, and smoke filled my lungs as my vision blurred.
Lying on my back, gasping for air, I used the last of my strength to dig my fingers into the ground, searching desperately for earth, for anything, but only ash sifted through my fingers. No roots stirred. No life remained.
A wraith hovered above me, its shadowy form a roiling mass of smoke and hunger, its glowing red eyes threatening to consume me.
It reached for my chest with tendrils of smoke, ready to enter my body.
I lay motionless on the muddy battlefield, my breath faint, my pulse flickering.
I tried to reach for my power, tried to stand or roll over.
Anything. But I had no energy left. All I could do was watch in horror as the wraith’s tendril brushed my chest and pushed inside.
Owen’s roar of fury filled the battlefield as he charged through the smoke and dark. His power was like a rising storm, a thing of nightmares and raging death. His gear was scorched and torn, and his side bled heavily. He must have fought through hundreds to reach me.
He was the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen.
The wraith turned to Owen and hissed.
Owen’s stride didn’t falter, his boots slamming against the ground as he sprinted forward.
The wraith shrieked and swelled, its form enlarging as it lashed at him.
He ducked low, rolled, and rose with another roar.
The sword arced upward in a clean, brutal slash, tearing through the wraith’s form.
For a moment, it tried to hold itself together, screaming and writhing in the air, flickering.
But the sword’s symbols burned brighter, and with a final cry, the wraith unravelled, dissolving into ash and silence.
Owen crouched down and gathered me into his arms.
“You’re okay, love, you’re okay.” I didn’t know if he was telling me or himself.
The wind shifted, and a ripple travelled across the field. For a brief moment, the lights flickered and the sounds of battle dulled. My gaze whipped toward the Yew, where the spirits of the dead were stepping forth from the Fortingall graveyard and the surrounding hills.
Ancestors and warriors long dead, their armour rusted, their bodies spectral, poured onto the battlefield: a Highlander with a broken blade, a Celtic queen with a tattered robe, a nameless Roman still clutching his torn banner.
And then there were the ones we recognized, drifting silently toward their loved ones.
Across the battlefield, Marion stood near the Yew, staring at everything with dismay.
On the other side of the field, Shae’s grandmother, Joan, joined her at the side of a fallen soldier while tears streamed down Shae’s cheeks.
Beside us, Ava and her mother, Sophie, stood next to Owen, who looked at them in shock, his sword glowing with extra brilliance.
My parents smiled at me, and I sobbed as I tried to hug them, my grief a gaping wound that had now been reopened.
Charles’s words echoed in my mind: I would only do it again in the most dire of circumstances.
Already the spirits were beginning to fade, their edges blurring and thinning. I clutched desperately at my parents and cried out how sorry I was for failing to save them. I begged them to speak to me. But they could not, and their eyes filled with sorrow as they watched, helpless to comfort me.
Why, why had Charles done this?
The sky cracked open, and I screamed in pain as the darkness in my chest burst free, the wraith’s brief touch having been enough for Craos to fully enter our world.
The most dire of circumstances.
Craos pushed one enormous arm through the gate. His eyes burned with fury, unblinking and merciless, as he unfurled gigantic wings. The clouds evaporated and the moon vanished behind a wall of darkness and flame.
With his claws, he dug deep into the earth and unleashed an otherworldly power that caused the land to shudder and the trees to wither into blackened husks.
Then Craos looked to the Yew, and my heart stuttered with terror.
Craos breathed in, and Charles, who had stood for thousands of years, who was older than most things on the Earth, began to moan.
The harrowing sound reverberated through the battlefield. Every soldier, Druid, and wraith stopped fighting. They looked to the Yew as flames licked at the tree’s base. The grass around Charles blackened instantly, curling in on itself, and embers rose and whirled in the wind.
Charles roared in agony and lit up from the inside.
His hollowed heart, full of ancient sap and centuries of memory, ignited with an unnatural fury. Fire crawled up his limbs, fast and alive, burning and consuming as his bark blistered then burst. Smoke poured upward, thick and choking, and his bark peeled back in flaming sheets.
And then the Yew shattered, the sound like bones breaking, and I screamed.
Drained of every last bit of magic that he had protected for eons, Charles gave a final, agonizing gasp and died screaming. The Druids who had surrounded the Yew turned to ash, having been cut off in the middle of casting their spells.
Stunned silence fell across the battlefield.
It was a holding of breath, like the stillness after an execution, then a great, mournful cry began to rise.
It started slowly but grew with intensity, terrible and filled with pain, emerging from the depths of each person’s soul, and I realized with growing horror that we were never going to win because Craos had always been one thing.
Inevitable.
“We have to go, Kira! Now!” Owen hauled me to my feet and half pulled, half dragged me toward the ruined Yew. I could barely keep up with him. I was still in shock. This couldn’t be how it ended. Not like this.
The only thing saving my sanity was Owen. Owen would have a plan. He always did. He would know what to do.
Craos, half leaning out of the rift now, formed another spear of fire, and as he aimed it at me, I felt my chest spasm.
The beast that was my dark magic gnashed its teeth at its cage, desperate to get to its master.
I cried out and almost fell, but Owen pulled me upright and forced me to keep running.
Craos drew back his arm, preparing to throw the spear, but as we stumbled over dead bodies and pieces of artillery, the spirits turned as one toward Craos and charged en masse.