I wailed in pain as it threw me downward, towards the beasts and Tanzieth below. Just as I was about it hit a rooftop, it grabbed my ankle and flung me back up high, into the sky.
The pain in my hand stopped me from focusing enough to control my flight. I was close enough to see the faces of those fighting below, and even though they had begun to fear me, it appeared they could not shake all that they had been told; they still believed I was their savior, the one who would defeat the Dazerarthro, save them all. Even I had begun to believe it. Heck, I’d thought I knew what I was up against, but this being, the Dazerarthro, it had power no one foresaw.
There was a flash of red and I could see spots, blinking did nothing. I could barely make out the buildings below me. I tried to wipe my eyes of their obstruction, but it was not something that had splattered onto them, the blood vessels had burst from the blow I had yet again not seen coming.
I reached out for anything. A blur moved across my spotted vision, and I released my hold on the energy swimming inside, hoping it would allow me what I needed to focus. It pushed through me, but didn’t leave. Instead, it expanded outward, as if it knew what I was after.
My vision suddenly cleared. A golden glow of light streamed out from me, wrapping itself around Moyeth’s form. The Dazerarthro was thrashing and wailing, shrieking like a strangled cat.
I’m doing it!
Suddenly, a spark of black lightning broke through my golden light. Freeing the Dazerarthro.
What the hell? That spark had come from the fucking ground!
The Dazerarthro took off, soaring high above me and out of sight. I looked from the Dazerarthro to the Fey fighting the beasts below and began to fly towards the battle. With the Dazerarthro in the clouds, I could stop some of the beasts. But I didn’t get a chance to save anyone.
There was a thud at my back and thick, blue-veined arms wrapped around my chest from behind, halting my descent. My throat burned as my lungs struggled to force any air into them. It had me.
But why isn’t it killing me?
It loosened its grip around me for a few brief seconds, allowing me to catch my breath for a moment and prevent me from passing out, as it flew me forwards, closer to the battle. The screams trumpeted in my ears as the beasts continued to slaughter the Fey and with each gasp the demon allowed, I could taste the blood in the air.
The Dazerarthro descended. Its grip tightened around my arms, and my chest burned as it fought to move with each breath I struggled to take.
The first thing to come into focus was my father. He stood above a mangled beast, a shimmery blade in one hand, the beast’s head in the other. His eyes widened as the Dazerarthro lowered us towards him.
I couldn’t speak. I could barely breathe. I felt myself weakening with every drum of my heart. All of the energy I had absorbed was gone; only the tingling remained, a result of the lack of circulation to my extremities.
“This is all you have. This weak little girl is all you send after me?” he called out, Moyeth’s voice mutated and booming out across the land, far enough that the Stalisies on rooftops behind the battle looked up.
“You might as well lie down and let the beasts tear you all limb from limb!” It spoke directly to my father. The beasts stopped mid-attack. Some Tanzieth took the opportunity to strike, but most stayed fixed in their positions, mesmerized by the Dazerarthro.
Why use beasts if you can control the Fey themselves?
It moved me closer to my father. I tilted my head to look away, not wanting him and the other Tanzieth to see the fear written all over my face. I knew I had lost; I knew I had failed.
On the arm of the Dazerarthro, a mark throbbed in black ink through the veined flesh. I used what energy I could to look for it in the visions, but it did not exist. It looked similar to the mark of stone, sort of semi-circular at the top, but his mark spread sideways, sharpening into what looked like lightning bolts from either edge.
Some marks were necessary in spells; others showed a connection to something or someone. Phoneas had Moyeth’s unusual mark tattooed on her inner wrist, normally covering it with a blue lace cuff—something that was private, only for her and him. But this mark was for something else.
Catching a glance of my father, my focus switched from the mark and fixated on his oddly pale white skin. His eyes bore into mine. There was none of that grandeur left in him, for the first time since I had met him. My father looked small. In that moment, I was able to see him for whom he was: the man who loved my mother, the leader of his people, the father that had sacrificed his need and love for his family to keep them all safe. He was my father and seeing him hurting hurt me more than I ever had expected.
There was once a time, not that long ago, I’d wanted him to be in pain, I’d wanted to see him suffer. To tell the truth, I had wanted to be the one to make him suffer. However, none of that mattered anymore. He was no longer the man who abandoned me. He was just… my father.
The Dazerarthro was not done. It squeezed me tighter, the moments between breaths became too much and the light began to disappear.
“All that you are is done, your filth will be swept away with the rains. You are nothing, and she is nothing. Your last hope, your every hope…” He paused, loosening his grip and allowing the air to seep back into my lungs.
I looked at my father, his face pained, and there was a second of release as the Dazerarthro withdrew his arms completely from around my chest. I heard a sharp snap as my head flung to the side.
I fell surprisingly slowly, drifting to the ground below. It was nothing like I thought dying would be. There was no pain, no sadness, no fear. As my body gradually made its way to the blood-soaked soil, I placed my focus on my father’s face. He felt pain. His eyes were glassy, his skin pale, mouth open strained in a scream I couldn’t hear. He fell to his knees.
Jax dashed to my father’s side, sliding to the ground beside him when he caught sight of me. I was almost to the ground now, my feet hitting first and crumbling to the side as my legs followed close behind. Jax stared through me, his green whirlpools blackening as his skin flushed red. He charged at the Dazerarthro. But before he came even close, my father took hold of his arm, pulling him back.
My body slipped down onto the soil, one arm twisted behind in what should have been a painful experience, but still nothing. My mind clear, it was as if I were open now to all the energy in existence. I could understand everything, but in that understanding came the one piece of information I somehow had yet to actually grasp: It had fucking killed me.
My shoulder hit the ground and my neck bent towards it unnaturally.
If I’m dead, then where the bloody hell is Heaven? And why don’t I feel dead?
I had heard my neck break, I’d seen myself fall—I was sure I was dead, but I could still see them all, a sideways view of their torment burning my eyes.
My father was on his knees crying, Jax by his side, weeping also.
Maybe I’m not dead. Oh fuck, what if I’m paralyzed?
I tried to take a breath, but there was no movement in my chest.
If I am paralyzed would I feel it move? Fuck this is confusing.
I tried to listen for my heartbeat, excited when I caught the faint sound of a soft drum. It beat slowly, but it was slowing further. The woman in the white space, when I was on the cliff, she had spoken of drums; did she know I would die? Bitch could have given me a heads-up.
She also had said to follow the signs. The only sign I had seen was the mark on the arm of the Dazerarthro, but in breaking my neck, he took my ability to do anything about that.
The beating slowed further; I was almost ended. I decided to open my mind to what was coming, resolved, but mighty pissed I could not help the way I was supposed to.
Before the last soft thud of my heart could signal my end, an amazing buzz flowed through me. It vibrated through every vessel, every nerve tingled starting from the top of my head, all the way down to the tips of my toes.
My brain sparked with new vitality. Every nerve hummed with life, but my body remained still, trapped inside an invisible cocoon. My heart made a final thump then did not beat again, and I wondered for a moment if this was what dying was supposed to feel like. I had never died, not really. I may have woken up in a morgue but I hadn’t been dead then. I was sure I was dead this time; I had heard my neck break and my heartbeat slow until it was a distant memory.
But why do I feel so alive?
When a final bolt of white light surged through my body, I didn’t need an explanation. The invisible cocoon tore open and the faces in the crowd became crystal clear. I was alive, the power inside me ignited by my brush with death.
The Dazerarthro drifted closer to my father. Silently, I rose up. Neither my father nor Jax saw me, but others did, and they watched on, mouths wide.
The light inside me burst through the surface of my skin. Glistening wings that resembled the leaves of a mighty oak spread out behind me. A bodice bejeweled with white diamonds covered my chest and the closer to my waist they got, the more the diamonds resembled a fine dust of glitter that spread down my long, silky skirt. It threw rainbows of light as it sparkled under Shulun. I arched, my wings swayed, and the skirt swam in the air.
The Dazerarthro spun and froze. The demon afraid of the fairy.
And he bloody well should be afraid. I’m going to rip his fucking head off.
Every Stalisies, Tanzieth, and beast looked to me as I flapped my wings, sending me above the Dazerarthro and the battle ground.
“Weak?” I questioned, swooping down past the Dazerarthro and above the crowd, coming back to stand in front of them all again. The blood on the ground felt thick against the seam of my skirt.
“Little Girl, I do believe you said.” I took a deliberate step closer. “Now, let’s get a look at what this little girl can do,” I said as I flung my wings forwards, pulled them back and shot myself towards the demon. I grabbed the stolen body of the Dazerarthro and flung it high into the sky. In in a flash and whoosh I was above it, ready to grasp as it came towards me, sailing through the clouds.
I laced my fingers around its neck, pulled it in close and whispered so that only he and I could hear.
“Now you see here,” I began, a sly smirk lifting the corner of my mouth.
“Something helped you back there. I want to know what, and if you want to exist longer than thirty seconds you are going to tell me.”
“You are nothing, little girl. You will fall just like all the others stained by their bloodlines, impure and weak.”
“Weak, really?” He thrashed at me, but I grabbed his mutated arm and twisted it so far that the bones creaked. “Do you want to see how weak I am?” My nose gave a sinister twitch.
The Dazerarthro, enraged, clawed at me with its free arm, but its talons did less than the Noxuer once had.
I let go of its arm and lifted the Dazerarthro up with my no-longer-broken left hand, wrapped around its neck. The Dazerarthro glanced to those bellow and instinctively I followed his stare. Below us, I could see what looked like flies circling as they rose higher. But they weren’t flies, they were lightning bolts. They created a funnel as they continued to circle on their way towards us.
“You are done,” the Dazerarthro hissed, and the black bolts shot into Moyeth’s body, encasing us both in complete darkness. As the lightning absorbed into his flesh, it sent snakes of black veins across his rotting skin. He grabbed my wrist and pulled free from my grasp.
“How?” I let out in disbelief.
He sneered at me, spinning me around and grabbing my wings. I struggled to pull them back into me, to release his hold, but they wouldn’t move. They shook under his clawed hands and he swung me around, sending me flying into the trees bellow. My head hit the ground with a thud and my wings lay at my sides, soaking up the blood from the soil and leaking its own from the many scrapes where they caught on broken branches on the way down.
He joined me in an instant. The sounds of the resumed battle filtering into my mind gave me the strength to roll just before his knee would have connected with my face. It was only a moment’s reprieve as his hand grabbed the back of my hair and smashed my face into the ground several times, the dirt filling my nose and mouth.
I tried to summon the power I had felt before, but it was gone. Jax called my name and the Dazerarthro let me go. I turned my head, spitting out clumps of bloodied dirt just in time to see Jax flung into a tree, his limp body sinking to the ground. I tried to stand, but my legs betrayed me. I felt him behind me and rolled again, bracing myself for his impact with my hands outstretched.
He flew at me, but suddenly he was sent backwards as if pulled by a rubber band. He came at me once more. I kept my hands forward and felt them vibrate with energy. Again, he spring-boarded backwards.
“I will kill you, all of you. You might have bought yourself some time, but you will die.” He howled into the air, signaling the beasts to withdraw. “Let’s see if you are still their savior now it is their blood on the ground.”
He took off into the sky and I fell back onto the ground. I could just make out Jax’s form still slumped under the tree. I tried to crawl to him, but my wings were heavy with blood and dirt. My father called my name from somewhere far away but was suddenly at my side. Then nothing. Darkness.
I woke in my room, surrounded again by Dandielillies. Jax sat asleep on the chair beside me. I reached out to nudge him, but stopped short. He had bandages wrapped around his left arm and a gash on the side of his head. He looked so fragile. I suddenly remembered my wings and felt for them at my back, but they and the glistening bodice had disappeared.
“Shh, don’t wake the boy.” Traflier startled me. I hadn’t seen him on my other side.
“Is he ok?” I croaked out.
“He will be. It is good to see you awake. You had us all worried. That did not go well.” Traflier said as he made his way around to the end of the bed.
“It was weird, something wasn’t right.” I started vague memories of the battle returning.
“Des,” Jax whispered from within his slumber. “Des, don’t die.”
Traflier raise a hand, “Come and see me when you feel up to it, we can work on your magic together.” He smiled and stepped softly around Jax still mumbling in his sleep on the chair.
I reached out and ran my finger down his arm. He woke suddenly and grabbed my wrist, eyes wide.
“Jax, it is okay,” I croaked. “It’s me.”
He blinked a few times then smiled. His eyes could light a stadium.
“How many died?” I asked him, trying to sit up.
He reached over and helped me up against the pillow. “Too many. We couldn’t have known it would be that strong, that the beasts would be so lethal,” he tried to sooth me. Truth was, it was my fault we’d lost—I was supposed to be the savior. I’d failed.
I should just figure out the portal and go home, I thought to myself miserably.
“The healers from Sayeesies and Baldea worked together to help the wounded, so we saved many,” he said taking my hand. “How do you feel?”
“Okay, I guess,” I lied.
He raised a brow, just one. It made his cheek lift on the same side, showing his dimple. I tried not to smile.
“You should rest. Traflier and the Seers have created a temporary barrier to protect us for now,” he said as he helped me to slip back under the covers. “The barrier won’t last, the Dazerarthro will be back.”
“Jax, I can’t do it. I can’t win.”
“Yes you can, we can. Just rest, and tomorrow we will work on a new plan for next time.” He pulled up my blanket and tucked it around me, then left the room. I laid there looking at the ceiling for a moment, stretching out my legs beneath the covers.
“This is insane,” I said to myself. “I have to get out of here.”
I sat up and grabbed the books from the bedside, thumbing through them, looking for information on the portal in and out of Sayeesies.
Then I saw it—not on the page, but in my mind. I saw what I would have to do, how I could get home safely and be free of this crazy place.
“Now these visions could come in handy.” Time to flee this cuckoo’s nest!
I climbed out of bed and grabbed a few things from the room, leaving the elephant cannon and Sacorasies in the dresser drawer. I wouldn’t need those any time soon. I would have to call on magics I did not fully understand to open the portal, but if I did it the way I’d seen in the vision, I should be able to walk out of here and into an exhibit in the Art Gallery. From there, I could hop a train home.
I dashed out the door and headed towards the entry. I would have to go through the town center to get there. Hopefully, no one would be watching when I tried to leave.
I didn’t make it to the portal, I didn’t even get close. The Stalisies swarmed me the moment I left my place.
“You have to defeat it,” one called.
“She can’t save us, she is a half breed just like her father,” another yelled out across the crowd. “She should leave.”
“Traflier should banish her like the others; it’s them the beast wants anyway.”
It was getting out of hand. They grabbed at me, and shoved me this way and that. Half of them pleaded for me to try again and the other half called for my banishment. I hated to admit it, but the Dazerarthro was right: when I’d failed, half of them had lost faith that I was the prophesized one, myself included.
“Excuse me.” A familiar, small voice giggled from behind me. I turned around to find no one there. “Desmoree, go back inside.” The giggling voice came again and I realized it was in my head. I was not getting close to the portal anyway, so I did as it asked. The Fey continued to knock and call from behind the door long after it closed.
“Who are you?” I asked the empty space in my room, hoping the voice in my head could hear.
Enchanting the Fey- The Complete Series Page 15
