by Jamie Magee
His casual sway stopped just above her lower stomach. His piercing blue eyes met her shy stare. Zosime bit her lip as her eyes welled. “I have no choice but to fight, Draxous. Stay or go, I will not shame you.”
Dagen dropped his stare to where his hand was, and then closed his eyes and counted once more. Now the missing being whose soul Dagen could feel thudding in rhythm with his made sense.
“I’m staying...with you.”
No sooner than the words had left his lips did he feel the call to battle swell inside of him. Round two of the war at home was commencing. Dagen was on his feet in the next breath, he lifted and then ran with Zosime in the next. Getting back to the spell in play had just become his number one priority.
~~~~~~~
When you are in the zone, it’s easy to believe the universe is in concert with you. You need something, then presto someone walks up to you with it, or just as awesome a game changer idea pops into your head and sets up camp like it has always fucking been there.
Scorpio was batting a thousand right about now. He beat the phantom, (which gave a whole level up to the saying your biggest enemy is yourself!) he’d not only seen his families of the past he’d bathed in their approval. Now his son was standing before him with a weapon that would slay Akan. All in a days work. His only issue was yesterday’s work was still on the table needing to be dealt with.
“Are you ready,” he asked Toril. The sorrow he felt coming from her was not assuring. Toril did have vengeance in her heart, she had sought the gray witches death since before Scorpio could remember, but she was also an empath. It was not a far reached idea that Toril would shy from the only ending that would allow her to stay alive.
The spell Scorpio had used to get them to this day offered no option to change course. A spell Toril had all but forced him to use. Scorpio was sure she had seen forward to this day, and stacked the deck to protect her from failing at the last moment.
No matter how stacked the deck was, Toril would still have to feel the emotions of her opponent, live with them for all of time.
“I am,” she said as she slowly drew her stare from the spell and found Dust. With grace, she moved to his side and ran her palm down the stubble of his cheek, a silent promise she’d return to him. She’d be there to watch him rise.
Scorpio carefully tucked the blade meant to destroy Akan in his jeans. Toril held the blade of souls proudly in her hand as she moved to lay at his side. Words whispered across his lips, the call to battle was sounded. The souls far and unseen approached as spirits in the fog of the swamp. Though Talon and Saige were there, they could not feel the pull, the judgment of Reveca was encasing them.
As Scorpio felt himself drift he sensed Zosime’s approach, and to his surprise, Dagen’s.
When Scorpio reached the swamp with Toril at his side, he could see Reveca and Saige in a stand off in the distance, Talon and King bracing for anything. What none of them could see was the approach of the dead. The dead who knew part of their souls were within the blade that Toril held in her hand.
Beyond them, members of the Dominarum coven were emerging from the fog, both the living and the long since departed. Among the silently moving crowd were the Sons. A brethren Scorpio would honor for all his days.
They could see it, just like each and everyone else approaching, the wounds on Reveca’s body were slowly dribbling rivulets of blood down her skin. The tint of her body had shifted to blue, dark circles shadowed her stare, she was weak and growing weaker as awareness nipped at her heels.
Temple and Judge approached last, in their grips was Akan, looking smug as ever. Scorpio was positive he thought he had an ace up his sleeve. Whatever it was, it would have to wait.
Scorpio glanced to his right seeing Zosime and Dagen, to his left the beings he had not met in the flesh in his Throng. They were stronger when this began. And now armed.
Toril stepped forward. Scorpio stayed one step behind her on the right, Dagen the same on the left, Zosime just behind, the others flanking her. Silently, the dead filed in behind them, dropping their cure weapons that had gotten them nowhere when they went after Reveca before, all they cared to notice was the rhythmic pulse of the blade in Toril’s hand.
Toril was a step away from Reveca before both she and King noticed. Rage and betrayal slammed into Dagen as King used those emotions to slice into Dagen. They all felt it equally. And each member of the Throng held true to the task they were appointed to do by the course of life.
Reveca didn’t stare long at Toril or even the entourage with her. Carefully her stare moved to the Sons she could see on either side of her, to the family she loved among them, the family she had lost just behind her. Lastly, her gaze landed on each of the dead.
Her wounds gushed.
“Stop it,” Talon raged at the crowd. “Back up, this isn’t a show.”
King moved Reveca into his arms and held her as she realized she’d lost long ago.
“Sister,” Saige said as Jamison forced his way to the head of the crowd. “The greatest of leaders fail with grace far more than they rise. You have done both...it has been an honor,” Saige’s words broke apart, Talon pulled Saige to him as he glared back at the crowd.
“With honor,” Reveca said to the dead, to the Sons. “We give what we want.”
Reveca stepped out of King’s embrace then forward staring at Toril now. “I did not.”
The shock of the crowd humbled Reveca even more. She had done this to them, proven more than once that she did not find fault with her actions. She did. Every single day she fought with the choices she made. She clung to balance. She clung to family. She prepared for the worst and struggled to hope for the best. This world had shown her little of its best. What she had seen she had captured.
Some may say she saved them, gave them another run at life. They’d say her Sons changed the course of history, that the world would be far worse if they had not. Right or wrong, Reveca would never know. What she did know was she was thinking of only herself at every crossroad. It was her nature, the humanity in her that struggled for survival.
“I did not give you honor,” Reveca said to the dead as her eyes landed on them one by one. “I had power. I could restore life. There were no boundaries. No endings, only beginnings. I was set to conquer the world and worlds beyond here. I hunted you.”
The Sons she adored each shifted on their feet, each of them were questioning their past now, wondering if it was how they remembered it to be. Reveca had made them feel as if fate landed them in her grip. Being hunted changed the vibe, big time.
“You were glorious,” Reveca said with a sheen in her eyes as she focused on the dead. “The best of your time. I wanted to give you forever...I wanted to create an army that would make empires bow.” Reveca pressed her lips together before she spoke on. “My greed tainted your rise. I know this. I rectified this.”
Reveca’s stare moved to Toril. “Or so I assumed.”
There was not a single harsh ray of emotion in Toril’s expression. Indifference wasn’t there either. Like Reveca, she was on the verge of crying for the past that could not be changed.
“There are many paths I’ve taken that have hurt people. I never meant to. I never awoke seeking damnation. Not entirely. I sought fairness. I wanted the world to cry with me.”
Reveca glanced at King before she went on. “Harming you and yours was done out of survival...will you forgive me?”
Toril bowed her head in silent answer, then without warning, plunged the blade in her hand into Reveca’s heart. The gasp from those around was not nearly as astounded as the gray stare of Reveca as she stared at Toril as the last of the blood in her body started to pump past the blade, more and more came as lights of power sliced into her, each one caused a member of the dead behind them to vanish. They were halfway gone before Toril felt her mind spin and her feet leave the ground.
She and Reveca fell to the earth. King had caught Reveca and laid her gently down, Scorpio had done the s
ame with Toril. “What did she do to her!” Scorpio raged.
“Her!” King snapped back trying to get Reveca to look at him, doing all he could with his vim to take the pain away, the shock away.
More mayhem erupted as more dead and living emerged from the thick swamp, they had the Sons and the coven surrounded. There was little either of them could do to help Reveca or Toril when they found themselves under attack.
Talon, like the rest of the Throng, was feeling the sick sway inside his mind, they’d gone to their knees, so had he but he saw determination in Saige’s eyes and gave Dagen and the girl with him a hard look, then each put their hand on Saige, giving her all the supernatural power they had.
It was enough for Saige to find her balance and crawl between the bodies, but she needed far more. Her gaze pleaded with the ancestors watching just feet from where they had fallen.
The only help provided was silence. Silence from the bloodbath all around them. A dome of serenity-based vim encased the Throng and Reveca and King. Nothing was serene about it. Saige had seen Reveca in every good and bad way, but she had never seen her body so ragged, felt her magic this tattered. There was not a question Reveca had used all life had given her and met her grave empty handed.
Saige said the words that were taught to her in her first private lesson, ones she prayed she’d never have to utter, she yelled them like the curse they had always felt like. The air throbbed with emotion as nothing happened. As hope faded.
Then like a tiny spark of faith, a gleam of light came from Reveca’s chest, then another, so many that one light turned into on brilliantly lit one. The essences hovered, then like a bolt of lightening dove into Toril. Her body bowed and moaned, but her eyes never opened.
Reveca’s did. Sleepily she looked at up at King and let the hint of a smile touch her lips. Then her hand fell to the blade in her chest. “Broken...” she rasped.
It was her last words before her body began to age, so rapidly that in a matter of seconds she was nothing more than dust. The wind picked up and swirled the ash through the air past the barrier and across the swamp.
This moment turned the battle. Each of the Sons, all of the coven, had felt the death of a queen. No matter the threat before them they would not look away as her ashes spread across the earth, her church, for a final time.
In the midst of this final passage, Toril stirred, then shot up from where she lay. Wide eyed she found Scorpio then launched her body on his, crashing their lips together. “I have a body,” she whispered. “I am new again,” she said holding him even tighter. It was hard to fight the urge to rush back to where his vessel was, to see and feel how strong Toril was now, to feel the life that had been paused for so long rising and taking the deepest of breaths.
There was work to be done.
As Toril stood, her gaze fell on King who was clutching the earth still stained with Reveca’s blood. “Return. It is what you do. Rise. It is what we do.”
Pain struck and strapped with sorrow, King never responded, his iced stare moved to Dagen as he vanished from the battlefield he had no interest in.
“Akan is making his escape,” Toril warned as the vim around them vanished, and so did the ancestors of the coven.
Temple was using magic to bind Akan but with all the distractions and the desperate need to survive Akan was making headway.
A volt of vim exploded from the Throng. The dead froze, those who were not wished they were when they felt the judgment in the power that has just knocked them winding.
A path cleared for Toril and as it did, she chanted words.
Following her and standing at her side was what Talon and Saige felt pulled to do, but they resisted. At least for now they were. Talon reached to bring Saige to her feet then held her as she cried on his shoulder. “I didn’t want to do it,” she sobbed.
Asking what she had done, or who made her do it was all questions that could wait. Right now, he had to hold her, had to bring her into the moment. He trusted the hell around him would end soon enough, but until it did, he and Saige could only live forward.
Toril chanted words from a departed language. Each one collapsed the dead, a beat later the Earth opened and swallowed them whole. The living that had chosen to fight for Akan were the next to feel the pain of tyranny. One roaring snap was heard as their necks twisted, and then a thud as they fell to the Earth seconds before it devoured them.
Now the lingering members of the coven looked on with the grief-stricken Sons as Toril and Scorpio stopped before Akan.
“Brother.”
“Sister,” he seethed. “Looking mighty...fleshy, are you.”
“No thanks to you.”
Akan swayed his head as he laughed. “You should’ve come with me sister, left the others behind. We could’ve been amazing.”
“Amazing is following your true course, enduring for the sake of greatness that is sweeter than ever imagined.”
“A very long true course as it turned out, sister. This will not end tonight. I have seen far ahead and even further back. A revolution was begun with my exile. It will live beyond my time. Beyond yours.” He winked at her. “Zale lives. Another Black will rise. You have not won.”
“I do not care for Zale, nor this figure you claim to be,” Toril said softly. She leaned in and kissed his cheek then pulled away staring into his eyes.
She could feel his betrayal, his shock. “You truly intend to kill me?”
“No,” she whispered stepping aside. “He does.”
It wasn’t Scorpio’s style to smile as he killed. Death was a passage that deserved to be respected, even if you did die on the wrong side of a cause.
It was hard not to show a glimmer of satisfaction as Scorpio lifted the blade to show Akan. “The best hiding places are right in front of you.”
“You had no knife, not that one,” Akan seethed.
“No, but I had a female with sight and a son that the devil himself would think twice about crossing. This is a just punishment. Walk into death knowing you left this earth by your choice, not my hand.”
Akan had no time for a snarky comeback. The blade lodged into his chest. Instantly, all the power of Akan’s Throng swirled and roared as it made itself out of the damned vessel the dove into the synced vim of Scorpio’s Throng. The volt was enough to kick any confusion or sorrow from the present mind of each of them.
When the swirl of power had ended, fire consumed what was left of Akan burning so fast and hard that he was ashes in no time.
Silence hung in the air as thick as the recent stench of death. Jamison bowed his head then walked softly into the night, his witches, all but Saige, followed him, each with bowed heads and sorrow wrapped around them.
Scorpio glanced to Dagen and Zosime, thanking them for their help and releasing them from the spell, seconds later they vanished, as did the others. Talon and Saige stared down Toril and Scorpio.
“What do you have to say for yourself ?” Talon asked him, as the Sons crept forward waiting, and hoping that Reveca would bounce onto the scene and clear all this shit up for them.
“You have my sorrow, but not my regret.”
The Sons stared down Talon waiting for the order, how to answer for this.
“Is there pain where she is?” Talon asked.
Scorpio paused before he answered. “A different kind of pain, her immortal life in a mortal world ended, along with the agony it brought her, and she gave it.”
“Boss,” Judge said for the others. “Where is she?”
Talon stared down Scorpio, taking in his emotions, seeing the reasons behind them. It didn’t matter if he liked them or not, it was how it was meant to be.
“Ride home, low throttle...we’ll say goodbye together.”
The shrill of pain and shock rocked the members of the Throng that were still standing. In an answer and display of their power, they pulled the sorrow from the Sons, not all of it. They left enough for them to understand this was their new reality, but not enough
to cripple them. For their fight had never been as hard as it was about to become.
Chapter Four
When Dagen opened his eyes on the platform of the now water garden, the last two faces he wanted to see were Thrash and Shade.
“What now?” Shade asked shortly.
“The witch is dead,” Zosime said rising at his side. She may have felt like she owned the world, but she was still battling her weak stomach and made quick work of leaving to either find food or a place to puke, whichever came first.
“What?” Thrash roared.
His questioned went unanswered as the walls around the garden began to groan as they shifted and moved, once settled there was a massive opening that looked out into a distant field touched by a rising sun. If Shade wasn’t mistaken, he was sure he was looking at lands around the Boneyard.
To his disbelief, riders, his brothers, were creeping down the highway flying black flags with the Sons symbol on them, at half mast.
“So is Akan,” Dagen said rising to his feet.
Thrash grabbed Dagen prepared to make him answer for all this bullshit, but Dagen wasn’t in the mood to make any Son feel better. Right now, his best friend was lost in the wind and Dagen had no way of ever telling him he was sorry. That he had no choice. He could not let Zosime stand on the battlefield without him, and the Throng had no choice but deliver Reveca the end of her life.
Dagen grabbed Thrash’s hand and ripped it from the hold on him. “You want answers, there’s the door. I don’t think a fucking one of us could explain this simply. Sometimes we play roles we have to, not ones we want to.” With his words still hanging in the air Dagen made his way to follow Zosime. They were a long way from ever being right, but no journey started without the first step.
Shade looked to Gwinn who was staring down Evanthe and the six. Gwinn had no answers.
Bastion spoke up. “Neptune hovers in New Orleans, in our backyard. Akan is gone, so we are free. The damage he has caused is still in play.” His burdened stare moved to his mother. “So my mother and company are still trapped.”
