The Mythean Arcana Box Set

by Linsey Hall

  Her heart pounded harder, as if to make up for the oxygen that her lungs were failing to absorb. He wanted to be with her. And he wanted her to say the same. Fates, the things she felt for him. She swore it could be love, yet a part of her couldn’t make that leap. Not yet. Not even in the face of all that stood before them.

  She pulled his head down to hers and kissed him. With everything she had in her, she tried to banish her fears of failure and what it would mean for them. She broke away and said, “We can do this, Cam.”

  He nodded, determination in the set of his brow, then turned to face the people who had just arrived. Esha and Aurora held onto Warren and Diana respectively. The two soulceresses nodded, then disappeared again to retrieve more of their party. Though all gods could aetherwalk, it was a talent not all Mytheans possessed. Those who did could bring one or two people at a time along with them.

  Before long, Esha and Aurora had brought Cadan and Vivienne. Esha returned for Fiona, the Acquirer, who grinned at her. Cora arrived with two other witches shortly after. Aerten was the last to arrive, directly from Otherworld. She tilted her head toward Cam, her expression a combination of wariness and hope. Still waters ran deep with that one.

  When the full thirteen of their party all stood on the crest of the hill, Cam addressed them. “Thank you for coming. This is too great a task for Ana and me alone. If Lea is correct about the extent of protective magics in this place, it will be dangerous even with our greater numbers.”

  “She’s correct,” Esha murmured. “Never wrong, that one.”

  Cam nodded, a grim set to his mouth. “For that reason, if anyone should wish to depart at any time, you’re free to go.”

  Aurora barked a laugh. “Not ditching you now, mate.”

  “Then we go,” Cam said.

  They set off down the hill, their plan from the previous night in place. The oaks loomed huge as they approached the wood, thick trunks supporting limbs that reached for the sky. Too large and too numerous to ever chop down with axes before the creatures of the wood killed them all. No, magic had created this place and magic would destroy it.

  “To the center, witches,” Cam commanded.

  As a group, they moved to the center of the pack, surrounded on all sides by the warriors armed with bow and sword. Guns wouldn’t fire in a place so thick with ancient magic, else they’d have used them. But tools of the present couldn’t be used in the past, and this place was imbued with a magic so thick that it hadn’t changed since the day it had been made.

  They neared the wood and the shadows of the trees reached out toward them, carrying unnaturally cold air. Humans would never approach this place. Nor would Mytheans, not if they didn’t have to. As it was, their band of warriors suppressed a collective shudder as they entered the shadows of the trees.

  Esha and Aurora moved away from the group, striking ahead on their own. Their black familiars stuck close to their sides. If they’d stayed with the group, they’d have sapped their fellow warriors’ strength and speed and magic. By forging ahead, they could cut a path through the monsters, weakening them for an easier kill, which both were handy at delivering.

  “Dark in here,” Ana muttered to Cam. It was as if night were only minutes away, and too cold and too silent.

  They led the pack, with Aerten, Cadan, Diana, Warren, Vivienne, Harp, and Fiona surrounding the witches. Dead leaves and twigs crunched beneath their boots. A heavy tension shrouded them.

  “There’s nothing here,” Vivienne whispered.

  She was right, and it made the hair on Ana’s arms stand on end. There should be monsters of the wood, creatures enchanted by Druantia into protecting the oaks. Instead, there was silence.

  As if they were waiting to strike.

  Perhaps Esha and Aurora would be able to repel them all until the group reached the center of the wood, where the witches would cast a spell to make the oaks break at their trunks.

  Eerie whispers tickled Ana’s ears as they crept deeper into the forest. Silence had turned to the rustle of oak leaves. It almost sounded like words. Were the souls of the Dryads speaking to her?

  She strained to hear, but instead of whispers, a sudden shriek echoed through the forest. She slapped her free hand to her ear. Her fellow warriors stiffened, turned in tandem toward the shriek that came from the west. Another joined it, and another, growing ever closer. Ana clutched her bow and nocked an arrow.

  “Caoineag,” Cam said.

  Highland banshees, foreseers of doom. To hear their cry meant death or tragedy for the listener.

  Ana’s gaze scanned the forest, looking for whatever monsters or attack the banshees prophesied. But instead, three horrifying women swept down from the trees to the west, wingless but possessing command of the air. They were gaunt, skeletal things with stringy hair and tattered dresses. The magic here was darker than even she’d expected, for the Caoineag were only meant to be heard, not seen. To prophesy doom, not deliver it.

  Yet Druantia had given them form and rage and set them upon anyone who dared enter the forest. Ana aimed her arrow at the nearest Caoineag. Shot. Watched in horror as the banshee kept flying toward them, arrow protruding grotesquely from its chest. She reached for her quiver to nock another arrow, but a tree root snapped up from the ground and tripped her.

  She crashed to the ground. In her peripheral vision, she saw Cam’s arrows fly at the Caoineag. Ana heaved herself to her feet and reached for another arrow, but before she could shoot the banshee that was nearly upon them, Diana leapt from her place in their group and charged the Caoineag, swinging her sword at its neck. Its head tumbled to the ground.

  Only then did the wailing horror disappear in a wisp of smoke. Cadan and Warren took their cue, charging after the other two and swinging their swords to decapitate. The banshees fought back, sentient enough to recognize their sister’s fate and fight it. A great bloody gash appeared on Warren’s chest from a swipe of its claws, but after a struggle, his sword hit home and she turned to a wisp of smoke. Cadan’s Caoineag followed. Vivienne and Fiona worked as a team, doubling up on one banshee at a time.

  Silence fell, but for the briefest second. The banshee’s howl ripped again through the trees. But instead of a banshee swooping out of the west, a horde of short, grotesquely muscled men poured from behind the oaks on all sides. They had long arms and wild red hair. Ana fired in tandem with Cam, slaying two of them. But two more poured out from behind the oaks in their place.

  “They’re Pechs,” Cadan yelled. “They’ll crush you if they get their arms around you.”

  Fireballs flew through the air, thrown by Esha and her sister, while bursts of colored magic shot from the witches’ hands, throwing the Caoineag off-track. Swinging swords took heads while Ana and Cam fired arrows through hearts.

  But the Caoineag never stopped wailing and the Pechs never stopped coming, as if there was an endless supply of them.

  “We need to keep moving. We’re close to the center,” Ana yelled. She could feel it, a tug like that which she’d experienced in Otherworld when she felt compelled to seek out her family. If they could just keep moving through the Pechs, fighting them off as they traveled. “I think—”

  A root reached up and tripped her again, catching her ankle so that she fell hard onto her hands and knees.

  She cursed and pushed herself to her feet. The trees tripped only her, the roots snapping out of the dirt to reach for her legs. She kept a wary eye on them as their group made slow progress to the center of the forest, toward whatever was pulling at her. Were there fewer Pechs? Or perhaps it was her mind, tired and terrified and hoping for an end.

  And then she saw it. A great oak, split down the middle by lightning. One side dead, the other alive. That was what had been calling to her. That tree, specifically.

  “Here!” she yelled, and the group ceased their slow forward movement, still fighting the Pechs. Though she wanted to go to the tree, to explore it, she and the other warriors would have to up their game now tha
t the witches would be casting a spell to destroy the forest instead of defending against the Pechs.

  The witches formed a small cluster in the middle of the group, joined hands, and faced outward toward the forest. As they chanted their spell, Ana and the rest began to shoot and stab and throw fire at the Pechs, barely holding them off. The Caoineag continued to wail, louder as the branches of the oaks began to tremble.

  A symptom of the spell? Ana had no idea, and was too overcome by Pechs to dwell. She’d shot so many already, and they still came in such great numbers that there would be no end to them. Not until the spell was broken.

  “It’s not working!” cried one of the witches. “The spell won’t hold!”

  Shit. They had no backup if the spell didn’t work. Cam had been right; the forest was far too vast and the defenses too strong for them to cut the trees down by hand. Magic was the only way, but it wasn’t working.

  Ana had no idea what to do, and the Pechs were driving her farther from the group. She’d been cut off when four had charged her. There was a hole in their defenses now, and she was surrounded on all sides by advancing Pechs. They stalked toward her, arms outstretched and ready to crush her.

  One was only feet away, reaching out with its long arms, when a hard arm jerked her about the middle and lifted her into the air. High, higher. She realized that it wasn’t an arm at all, but the limb of the great half-dead oak tree. She thrashed and kicked, desperate to break its grip.

  When it tucked her against its trunk as if it were holding a doll, the eeriest sense of euphoria and calm overcame her. It filled her every vein and every cell, a warmth and knowledge of incomparable strength.

  I am this tree or this tree is me. She gasped and seized as memories filled her mind. Memories of the night with Cam in this forest, memories of a life before the one she knew. As a Dryad. Part of her soul was trapped in this tree. It was protecting her from the Pechs who clamored below. And it was probably the reason she had a second chance at a physical body. She was still attached to the earth through this tree.

  “Free us,” it whispered in her mind. It filled her with a rage and desire to chop down every tree. For she wasn’t just fighting on behalf of Cam and the gods, but for her brothers and sisters whose souls were trapped in these oaks. The spell must work.

  She whipped her head around to find the witches, but their faces were just as desperate and strained as before. The spell still wasn’t working. Cold terror spread across her skin.

  What she caught sight of next made her stomach drop to the roots of the tree. Druantia was striding through the forest, visible only to Ana from her vantage point in the oak. An unholy light surrounded her as her features twisted with rage.

  “Cam!” Ana screamed, pointing toward Druantia.

  But he couldn’t hear her. No one could hear her over the din of the Caoineag that still swooped around the trees, reaching for her friends with outstretched claws.

  Cam continued to hold off the Pechs, desperately trying to buy time for the witches. His back was to Druantia. She would sneak up on him. Ana clawed at the tree limb and screamed his name. No matter how wonderful it felt to be so close to the other half of her soul, she had to get to Cam.

  But the tree wouldn’t budge, as if it knew something great and terrible were about to occur, and her cries were lost in the din. She strained to see Druantia. The priestess neared the group, only a dozen feet from Cam, and raised her hands as if to perform a spell. Just as she opened her mouth, Logan swept out from a tree behind her and snatched her up by the waist.

  Ana struggled harder to escape the oak, kicking and punching and screaming, but never taking her eyes off Logan and Druantia.

  Logan carried Druantia’s thrashing form toward Cam and yelled, “Hey, Camulos. I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I think you want this one.”

  Cam turned and cursed. Druantia shrieked and waved her arms. Tree limbs followed her motion, whipping out to knock Cam off his feet. Another swooped and yanked Logan off his. Druantia surged free and waved her arms, sending the oak limbs into a whipping frenzy that targeted Ana’s friends.

  “Is that the witch who enchanted this forest?” Cora yelled as she ducked beneath a branch.

  “Yes!” shouted Cam as he rose to his feet and sighted an arrow at Druantia. He shot, but she didn’t fall, just laughed maniacally with the arrow protruding from her chest.

  “You can’t kill me,” she screamed, a wild, feral look in her eyes. “These trees feed me from the power and emotion trapped inside them. Your power!”

  Cora stopped chanting to yell, “Make her bleed! Into the ground! Her blood is needed to seal our spell.”

  Of course. Blood sacrifice had been needed to create these trees. It was required to end them as well. Druantia screeched and waved her arms once again, directing a hail of flailing tree limbs that struck Cadan and Esha off their feet, as well as several Pechs. It was chaos below, yet Ana was trapped up here.

  “Please,” she whispered to the tree. “Please release me. I’ll free you. I’ll free you all.”

  She felt the tree’s resistance and begged again. It shuddered and dropped her, and she had a feeling that it was the strength of her desire to be freed that had done the trick, not her plea. With hard ground finally beneath her feet, she yanked out three arrows and cut down the three Pechs closing in on her. She ran toward Cam, who fought off whipping tree limbs as he tried to get another clean shot on Druantia.

  “Cam!” Ana screamed at him. “Use your sword. I’ll cover you.”

  He had to be the one to take Druantia’s blood, and an arrow would never be enough. Cam plucked the short sword from the scabbard at his waist. Ana ran up behind him, shooting at the tree limbs to make them snap back temporarily. Cam advanced on Druantia, who still waved her arms frantically to direct the trees. But with Ana as cover, the tree limbs couldn’t land a decent hit.

  When Cam neared Druantia, a tree limb swiped him across the back, opening a great wound that poured blood. Druantia laughed and sent another limb at him. He dodged, but not before it sliced his arm.

  Finally, he reached her. Cam kicked Druantia to the ground and stabbed her through the chest so that the sword pinned her to the ground, her blood soaking into the dirt. She shrieked and writhed, but wouldn’t die.

  But the tree limbs stopped fighting, and Ana felt their relief like a physical thing. The witches chanted louder, faster, as Druantia’s blood soaked into the earth. The Pechs stopped fighting, but the tree trunks didn’t snap as they were supposed to.

  Free us. Ana heard it again and turned toward her tree. The magic just needed a boost.

  She ran toward her tree, pulling her borrowed short sword from the scabbard at her hip. She took a great swing at the trunk as if the sword were an ax. It sank an inch into the wood, and Druantia howled louder. But a reverberation flowed through the forest, stretching outward toward all the trees.

  The Caoineag finally stopped screeching, and with the silence, the witches’ chants carried through the forest. Suddenly, the sound of cracking wood punctuated the chants. The trees began to topple.

  Ana darted toward the witches and Cam to get out of the way of falling trees, hoping that they wouldn’t topple toward the witches creating the magic. It worked. The warriors stood in a cluster as the great oaks crashed to the ground around them.

  Ana looked down at Druantia. She lay still now, with hatred gleaming in her eyes. When she caught sight of Ana looking at her, she gritted her teeth and swung her arm in an arc. So quick that she barely saw it coming, the branch of an oak swung toward her, whipping around until it pierced her through the chest.

  Incredible pain tore through her as the limb yanked free of her flesh, leaving a great gaping hole. Through the pain, Ana swore she could feel the oak’s regret. But all she could see was the glee on Druantia’s face.

  Ana fell to her knees, then toppled backward, lying so that in some cruel twist of fate, she could watch Druantia’s face as her blo
od seeped into the earth in an ugly parallel of what had happened here so many years ago.

  The distant sound of Cam’s roar of pain echoed through her as he fell to his knees beside her.

  Mortal. She truly was mortal enough to die. Trees crashed around her, the ground trembling with the impact.

  She felt Cam’s shaking hand on her cheek, tilting her face toward him. “Ana, Ana, Ana.”

  She tried to talk, but could only cough.

  “Damn it, Ana, I love you.” Pain laced every syllable.

  He loved her?

  “You’re so close to having a life on earth. Fight this,” he said, grief for her loss clear on his face.

  Fight it? There was no way to fight a giant hole in her chest. She would die.

  Though her vision was going black, she caught sight of her tree looming behind Cam. So close to the rest of her soul and to Cam, yet so far away.

  Her tree stood strong, as if waiting for its compatriots. Finally, as Ana’s vision became nothing but a blur, the trunk began to crack and lean. The oak crashed to the ground, and as it did, a whoosh of something glorious filled Ana’s being. It filled in the hole created by Druantia’s last strike until the pain was but a memory. It continued to flow through her, filling holes she hadn’t known existed.

  Her soul. Half of it had been trapped in that tree, and she’d never had any idea she’d been missing it. But everything was so much brighter now, so much fuller. And she was healing. As a Mythean would. No longer mortal.

  She gasped, the first decent breath she’d taken since her wound, and opened her eyes to see Druantia’s withered form. She was halfway to mummification. Within seconds, she was nothing but dust, as if she’d aged 2,600 years in a minute. Behind her, Ana could see the wisps of souls flying from the downed trees, up into the air and away toward freedom and peace.

  “Cam.” The words were rough in her throat.

  “Ana, you’re healing.” His voice was awed.

  She turned her head to look at Cam. His cheeks were wet.

  She reached a shaking arm up to touch his face. She could see him now. Could really, truly see him. In the light of understanding and their past. All the hesitation that she’d felt over her feelings hadn’t been about him. They’d been about her. About her being unable to feel so much because she lacked half her soul. But, oh, how that had changed.