Warrior Everlasting

by Knight, Wendy

  “If you don’t want me to hear it, don’t do it, Ariston.” She tried to jerk away from him, but he was too strong. His hand was like a vice on her arm. He dragged her through the darkness, the only light coming from the throbbing orb of his scepter. Through long hallways and into tunnels. Finally, he stopped in front of a huge door, black like everything else in his castle. Scout could still hear the souls screaming as they were shredded. Lil Bit. Lil Bit, please be safe.

  “We are, Scout. Not much longer now.”

  “Can you feel them, Lil Bit? Trey and Ashra and Torz? Do you know if they’re okay?” Scout knew it exhausted Lil Bit to try to talk to her — even more so to try to send Scout her strength, but Scout needed to know. The world was falling apart around them, literally, and she was so scared.

  Lil Bit didn’t answer.

  Ariston pushed open the door, leading into his personal chambers. The huge bed standing in the center of the room looked like something from a gothic daydream. Made of some form of deep, black wood, ornately carved with four posters rising at least ten feet high in the air. There was a sitting chair by the fireplace, the mantel of which matched the bed with sharp angles and harsh carvings.

  “Rest. You can’t hear them from here.”

  He shut the door behind them and finally released her, but she was still trying so hard to listen for Lil Bit that she barely heard him. It was true, the huge door blocked out the screaming. He pushed her gently toward the bed, but she swung away from him, sinking into the chair instead.

  He sighed and held his scepter out, lighting the fire. It was blue, light blue flames with bright blue tips.

  Scout stared at it, hopeless, numb, exhausted.

  Lil Bit didn’t answer.

  He sank onto the edge of the bed, laying his scepter next to him. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “I’m not the monster you imagine me to be, Scout.”

  She blinked, turning slowly. “I know.”

  He raised his head, just a bit, so he could see her through his fingers. “What?”

  “I came here expecting Satan. Something that relished in the capture and torture of innocent souls. Something that taunted my dreams and drove me mad. You aren’t that monster, Ariston. But you are a monster, all the same.”

  He dropped his head again. His voice was utterly hopeless as he said, “You don’t understand. I just want death, Scout. But I can’t have death without a soul. And Iros keeps my soul captive.”

  “Then why don’t you just ask for it back? I’m sure if you explained the situation—”

  Ariston laughed, a hard, bitter bark. “Iros is not the absolute saint you believe him to be, Scout.”

  “Iros fights for good. He fights you. He mourns the love you took from him and the loss of his unicorns — that your demons kill. That you killed.”

  Ariston flinched like she’d physically punched him.

  “Time to dance, Princess.”

  Scout nearly gasped. Ashra’s voice was so unexpected, yet so welcome, that she immediately had to fight grateful sobs. “You’re alive! You’re ali—”

  “Yeah, we’re alive. All of us. We’ll celebrate later. Cake, ice cream, balloons. Right now we have to hurry. Distract him and the soul stealers.”

  Scout’s heart stopped. “I can’t. I’m not with the soul stealers. They’re… the Corruption, Ashra. He’s started — and he doesn’t — he doesn’t want me to hear so I’m not with them, and they’re screaming and—”

  “Crap.”

  She stood up. “The souls are hurting. I need to dance for them. My sister needs me.”

  Ariston shook his head without looking up. “No, Scout. Not yet.”

  “How long?” She tried not to sound panicked, but her voice cracked just the same.

  He finally sat up, exasperated. “There’s not really a set time, Scout. They’re not on the clock here.”

  She swallowed, hard. “I’m going back.”

  He raised an eyebrow, watching as she crossed the room to the big door. “For one thing, you can’t open the door without me. For another thing, you can’t find your way back without me. And finally, you can’t survive my Taraxippus without me. So, to sum it up, you can’t leave the room without me and survive.”

  “Dance, Princess.”

  Scout’s mind raced. She was smart. School and homework and college applications were her life. She could figure this out. She could ”What if I dance for you? Just for you? Then will you let me go to them?”

  He blinked, his hands freezing in the air as he stared at her. “You — you would do that? Just for me?”

  “Yes. If you promise to let me go to the souls after.”

  “I give you my word.” His voice cracked twice, and he cleared his throat.

  “Hurry up, Princess!”

  Scout nodded. It was awkward dancing for him, knowing he loved her, knowing he needed her. Knowing she was betraying him and wondering why she cared. Her feet stuttered, and her arms were jerky as they rose above her head. She closed her eyes. There was so much pain here, so much pain in him, in her. So much confusion. She should want him to die. She should want him to suffer, but she didn’t.

  Scout used the pain, pulling it into her movements. She hid the hope — hope that Ashra was coming, that Trey was alive, that Iros would save them all. She hid that away, and she caressed the pain, letting it lend passion to her movements. She danced not for herself, not for the souls, not for anyone.

  Except Ariston.

  It was her apology for what she was about to do. It was her expression of gratitude for protecting her. It was her last effort to bring him peace before she was gone forever. She dipped and swayed, landed on her toes, swirled to her knees, and rose, reaching for the unseen ceiling. She brought herself closer and closer to him, as he stared, transfixed. The pain in his eyes muted, at least for a time.

  Scout saw the shadow through the window. A giant, terrifying shadow with a bright, glowing horn racing through the night sky. Desperate to keep Ariston’s attention, she moved faster, with more passion, her limbs shaking with exhaustion as tears streamed down her cheeks. She leaped, landed on one foot in front of him, and slowly brought her feet together; she raised her arms and spun, as if in slow motion.

  The glass shattered, and a huge, angry unicorn reared up on her back legs, fire shooting from her horn as she screamed.

  Ariston leaped to his feet as Trey and Torz exploded from the other side of the room, fire already dancing from the scepter Trey had leveled at Ariston’s heart. His cloak swirled behind him, and his dark eyes were full of rage.

  “Scout is mine, demon master,” Trey snarled.

  Ariston swung his own scepter toward them and it lit up, black flames shrieking across the room, faster than Trey and Torz’s attack combined. Straight at Trey’s face.

  Scout screamed and dove, hitting the scepter and knocking it out of Ariston’s surprised hands. She and the scepter fell to the floor.

  Ashra’s hooves shook the room as she galloped toward them, and then Ariston’s hand shot out, darkness itself seeming to escape from his palms, and Ashra was lost in it. He swung toward Torz as his hands gathered the fire from the fireplace and threw it. Toward Trey, toward Torz. It landed, smothering them, burning and not letting go, like a blanket of fire they couldn’t shake off.

  Ariston shook with the effort of holding the darkness over Ashra and the fire over Torz, one from each hand.

  Trey screamed as the fire burned through his cloak, eating at his flesh.

  Scout swung the scepter. She swung it with everything she had, all the pain, the frustration, the failure, the hope. She hit Ariston in the side of the head with a sickening crunch as his skull caved under the pressure, and he collapsed to the floor, his hands grabbing at his wound as he fell.

  The darkness abated, and Ashra exploded through it, racing across the floor. The fire claiming Torz and Trey died abruptly, leaving them both scalded, but alive. Trey met her eyes, stopping her
heart, and then swung away.

  “The door!” Scout screamed, aiming Ariston’s scepter. It didn’t work. Nothing happened.

  Ashra raced past Scout, not even pausing. “Jump, Princess!”

  Scout grabbed her mane and swung up, which under normal circumstances would have been a big enough surprise to knock Scout off her unicorn. But these were not normal circumstances.

  “We can’t get out the door. Ariston said I can’t—”

  Torz didn’t listen. His horn lit as Trey swung his scepter up, pointing at the door, and the big black wood shattered outward. Torz raced through the hole. Ashra followed, and Scout leaned low over her back, Ariston’s scepter clutched tightly in her hand.

  Until it wasn’t.

  It jerked away from her so violently that it nearly pulled her with it, burning her palms as it flew out of her hand and across the room. She twisted on Ashra’s back, watching as it landed in Ariston’s outstretched hand. He couldn’t rise to his feet, but he was still alive.

  “Of course he’s alive, genius. He can’t die.” Ashra’s voice was grim.

  “Thank you. Like I somehow didn’t realize that,” Scout snapped, but it was sort of a happy annoyance. She was so glad to have Ashra’s sarcasm back.

  Even as her heart broke at the pain on Ariston’s face. He leveled the scepter at her, and Scout braced for one of his spells, but he dropped his hand, watching her go with agonized eyes.

  Ariston had said she wouldn’t be able to find her way back to the throne room without him, but Torz didn’t seem to have a problem. He crashed through walls standing in his way like they were cardboard. For thicker, more stubborn walls, Trey’s scepter blasted them with fire first.

  Trey. He was okay. He was battered and bruised and burned and beautiful. So beautiful. If they’d had time, even just spare seconds, she would have thrown herself from Ashra’s back and kissed him until he believed she would love him forever.

  But they didn’t have mere seconds. They had the opposite of mere seconds, like they were in debt seconds, so all she could do is hope and pray he knew how much she loved him, how much she would always love him. Just in case they didn’t survive this.

  He glanced over his shoulder then, looking back at her with flames and mist and falling castle as his background. And he winked.

  He knew.

  “Well yeah, Scout. You pretty much declared that you want to have his babies and grow old with him. We heard the whole thing. He’s not stupid, you know. By the way, super embarrassing. Thanks for that.”

  “Will you focus, please? Sorta running for our lives here!”

  “Not exactly,” Torz muttered from ahead of them. “More like running toward our deaths.”

  Ashra tossed her head as they leaped through another of Torz and Trey’s holes in the wall. “Well, isn’t that a happy thought?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  The air itself seemed to roar, and the castle shook again, the walls falling around them. Ashra and Torz were both tossed off their feet, crashing to the ground. Scout was thrown wide, but Trey hung on to Torz too tightly and went down with him.

  “Trey!” Scout screamed, twisting, trying desperately to find him in the rubble. She finally found him, half-pinned under his unicorn.

  But conscious.

  “Scout? Are you okay?”

  “If she can scream like that and not be okay, I’d like to hear it,” Ashra said, kicking her feet to get them back underneath her.

  Scout wriggled away, safe from Ashra’s razor-sharp hooves. Trey was suddenly just there, next to her, pulling her to her feet. His hands slid over her, looking for injuries, for blood. “Scout,” he moaned, pulling her tight against him.

  “Trey, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I love you. I—”

  Trey kissed her hard on the mouth, and all the pain, all the horror and the bitterness and the anger, it was like none of it had happened and her whole body felt like it was on fire from her head to her toes. “I know, Scout. I know.”

  The air shattered. Not just shook this time; it was as if the whole of Aptavaras was being torn apart, molecule-by-molecule. Scout wasn’t an expert, but even she knew what this meant, as Trey pulled his cloak over both of them, and the castle rained down around them.

  Iros had broken the gate open. Havik was coming.

  “We have to free the souls. They have a way out now, if we can hold off the forces here. The soul stealers that were chasing us will go after Havik and his army.” Torz half reared, on his feet now and impatient.

  Scout pulled away from Trey, feeling as if he took half her heart with him. He grabbed her around the waist and lifted her easily onto Ashra’s back before he spun and raced for Torz.

  “When this is over, I’m sleeping for a week. Just so you know. Don’t come calling me with your ten thousand questions.” Ashra panted as they dodged falling castle and broken beams.

  Torz leaped through a half-shattered wall and landed in the grand entryway.

  Ashra followed him, sliding on the black floors. “There! There’s the throne room!”

  Torz didn’t fit through the archway. Somehow, with everything crashing and tumbling around them, with the entire world shaking like a box of cereal when Scout would accidentally drop it down the stairs…

  “Focus, Scout.”

  Yes. Somehow, the archway hadn’t collapsed. Trey raised his scepter, light exploding from the orb, blasting the hole bigger as Torz roared through it.

  And into the hands of the soul stealers.

  “Right. Forgot about them.” Ashra sucked in a deep breath and launched herself through the hole after Trey, her horn already glowing.

  Scout grabbed her scepter, grateful that Ashra could call it to her when Scout had lost it, and swung, beheading the creature waiting on the other side.

  “We’ve fought more than this without you and survived. No problem,” Ashra said, flicking one ear absently back at Scout like this was just a walk through Paradesos. Paradesos, with a slight bug problem.

  “How long do you think we’ve got until Iros and his forces get here?” Scout yelled to be heard over the shrieking. Her eyes strayed to her blankets. To Ariston’s throne. And she felt awful.

  Over the bad guy. She felt guilty because she’d betrayed the bad guy. “I’ve lost my mind,” she muttered.

  “Too long. We’ve got to get them out of here, and hopefully he’ll meet us and save the day when everything looks its darkest,” Ashra said, ignoring or not hearing Scout’s conversation with herself.

  Trey yelled over his shoulder as he swung his scepter, shooting it like a rifle. “We lost Scout and had to fight without her. Things have already been their darkest. And we saved ourselves.”

  Ashra tipped her head to the side, considering. “True. We’re heroes. Someone give me a medal. That does not taste like paper.”

  Torz reared, attacking the creature in front of him with his hooves. “What is wrong with you three? We’re fighting for our lives here!”

  “Actually, we’re fighting for their lives. So yeah, focus, Scout!” Ashra launched them into the air, her horn taking out several demons in the process. Her wings lit as she pumped them up and then down, lighting everything around her on fire. The heat from their flames warmed Scout’s hands and face

  “Wow, you really don’t need me. Maybe I’ll just take a nap. You guys do the heavy lifting,” Scout said.

  Ashra’s tail flicked her like a mini-whip. “We’ll get the cage. You fight off the soul stealers, Torz.”

  “Get to Aella!” Scout yelled. “Break her cage open!” Before Iros had attacked the gate, Scout didn’t even know if it was possible to break the unicorn bones. But his attack had caused significant damage.

  Trey nodded as they fought their way toward the center of the throne room.

  Scout had to turn her back on them, which felt wrong, so wrong. She gritted her teeth and studied the cage. With just a few well-placed swings, they could break it open, piece by shattered piece.”Lil Bit? Wh
ere are you?”

  “Top right, big sister. Watch for my hands. They’re clasped with Mom’s and Dad’s.”

  There were many desperate hands reaching through the cage, hundreds, if not thousands. But there were only three sets of hands holding on to each other, like a lifeline.

  “There, Ashra! Higher!”

  Ashra responded, taking them higher and higher while her horn and Scout’s scepter threw attack after attack at the creatures in the room.

  “Tell them to get back. I’m coming through!” Ashra yelled in Scout’s head.

  Scout nodded. “Get back! Give her room!” Then she stole a move from Trey and blasted the bones with her scepter as Ashra crashed right into them like a sleek, black bulldozer. She’d expected it to be hard. She’d expected the bones to hold strong, to be unbreakable. But instead they cracked and broke away easily, tumbling to the floor below, some of them smashing soul stealer skulls on the way with a very satisfying thunk.

  “Only a unicorn or their rider can break unicorn bones. It’s code. Like OSHA.”

  “I don’t think you understand what OSHA is, Ashra.” Scout grunted as she swung her scepter, smashing the end of it through the hole.

  Ashra tucked her wings, and they plummeted, with Scout’s scepter and Ashra’s hooves tearing their way down, down, down to the floor.

  The souls were free.

  “Run, Lil Bit. Escape the castle. Run to the valley. We’ll meet you there as soon as we get everyone out.”

  Scout’s eyes strained, but she couldn’t make out her tiny little sister through the rush of souls escaping, and she knew if her parents were there, they wouldn’t let her stop to say hi. So Scout had to content herself with praying hard that her family and Trey’s were among the first racing from the room.

  It was harder toward the bottom. The souls wouldn’t move out of the way. It was like they didn’t care enough anymore to try to save themselves. And the bones were more dense, and sharper. Ashra’s forelock was a bloody mess as she kicked again and again, but the bones wouldn’t break, and the souls inside wouldn’t try to climb out.