“You poor, sad cow of a woman,” she said with false compassion and stepped out from behind the boulder. She needed nothing standing between her and Lidra when she attacked. Lidra stopped mid-sentence and stared open-mouthed. “How terrible to live in my great-grandmother’s shadow all these years. That even after killing her, my mother and my father, you still are not the prettiest Aellei in the land.” With a blinding brilliance, Alandra released the Light within her. “Rovu could never want a thing as ugly as you.”
Lidra shrieked and returned fire with everything she had. The pain was terrible, akin to the agony Alandra had suffered under Arim, but worse, as Lidra used the Dark to aid her.
Not willing to go the way her unfortunate parents had, and unwilling to allow Aelle to suffer the fate of the many dead worlds the Dark Lords raped and tore to pieces, Alandra allowed the love she felt for Aerolus to fuel her righteous anger.
As Dark met Light, showers of fire lit the grey sky. Cries and shouts feathered into her consciousness, but as their energies met and clashed, something had to give. A loud boom rent the air, and she and Lidra were thrown back. The sick crack of a broken spine made her look to Lidra, only to see her twisted body curdled with age, lying lifeless under a large tree now scarred by Light.
A constant buzzing filled her ears, and the taste of blood made her stomach sour, as did the smell of burnt hair. Glancing at the blurring image of Lidra once more, she saw her aunt’s once bright hair curling with flame. Then a seething, ripping pain tore through the Dark numbness that had settled within her. Agony, the stinging of a million needles piercing her brain, her magic, began to invade the places of Light within her. Her vision darkened, and she prayed Aerolus would find her.
He’d brought her back from the Next once before, but she feared if he didn’t find her soon, she wouldn’t wake to see his face for a very, very long time, if ever again.
Tired and sick of fighting these cretins when his every cell called him to join his affai, Aerolus focused on the well deep within himself for ancient power. Winds and lightning raged, pouring from his eyes and mouth. Torrents of static flew from his fingertips, riding the same air that threw his enemy into a great vortex of wind so vicious that nothing survived in its path.
A sudden explosion in front of him told him to move, and quickly. Ignoring the burning in his body, the myriad cuts and blows he’d received battling an enemy that clearly outnumbered him, he rushed through the same winds that crushed his opponents, only to see Alandra and another woman shuttling through the air away from each other and him.
Alandra landed with a solid crash, jarring her slight form into a moan but not sending her unconscious, for which he was profoundly grateful. The other woman faired not so well. Her body snapped as she hit a massive tree at an odd angle, and as she fell to the ground, her body decayed into a decrepit creature more pulpy flesh and blood than whole.
Not wasting any time, he quickly reached Alandra as her eyes slowly closed. He called her name, stroking her head and cradling her to his chest, but she didn’t give him the slightest response. Worried, he tried to see her aura, but found, to his shock, he could no longer feel her power within or around him. Clinging to her, he began to waver, and finally realised what terrible shape both of them were in.
He was bleeding from more wounds than he’d ever had in his life. Darkness clawed at his core, breaking the Light within him into small, useless pieces. His head throbbed, and he kept seeing spots that he had to blink away to maintain focus. Yet he was awake and moving, while his affai was not.
Studying the face more precious to him than life itself, he saw her perfect cheeks bruised, her lips bleeding and her left eye slightly swollen. She had been struck, battered, and even now lay perilously close to death. He turned away from the thought she might already be dead, unable to accept even a hint of such truth without losing his tenuous hold on life itself.
Knowing of only one thing that might cure his affai and bring her back, he used every last reserve of energy he possessed and teleported them into Tanselm, into the shadow of MornMountain. Finally at his end, he laid her down as gently as he was able and toppled next to her. He reached out and clutched her hand, willing her to recover even as his soul struggled to separate from his body and seek the Next.
Chapter Fourteen
Arim worked to escape the whip of Darkness lashed around his throat, his eyes watering with the effort. He’d been fighting Lexa for nearly an hour, getting no closer to defeating her than she was to defeating him. Oddly enough, he sensed she meant to keep him at arm’s length, as if she had more in store than this simple battle.
“What do you really want?” he asked for the fifth time. He saw her eyes flash, a sight that never failed to stir him. At that moment he wasn’t sure who angered him more, himself for still being attracted to the traitorous witch, or her for being so…Dark. She smiled slowly, toying with him again. Annoyed he’d let his irritation with her show, he deliberately grinned at the pain in his neck, disconcerting her before she slipped her mask of hatred firmly back in place. Interested despite himself, he wondered just what lay beneath Lexa’s cold exterior.
Where had the shy, sweet girl he’d once known gone, or had she never really existed at all?
“Hmm, what do I want, you ask?” Her lips curled though her eyes remained flat. “I want you to die like a man, instead of the snivelling Light Bringer I know you to be. What a poor excuse for a mage.” She sneered and shot blue flame from her fingertips, scoring marks across his cheek.
He retaliated with a burst of Light, almost hitting her full in the face had she not dodged at the last minute. A sudden and foreign sense of shame hit him as they fought, an unfamiliar feeling that he was fighting a losing battle against a woman not his enemy. From where the thought had sprung he didn’t know, but a painful spear of Dark through his thigh cleared the notion in a heartbeat.
Ice burned at his legs, middle and arm, and while he struggled to undo the noose at his throat, he waited stiffly for another blast of blue flame to hit him. Surprised she would hesitate to take advantage of his weakness, he glanced at her face only to see her fierce expression now serene, her eyes closed.
Recognizing a vision when he saw it, he hurried out of her clutches and would have turned the tables on her when she vanished without a sound.
Shocked, he instinctively encased himself in a powerful shield and waited. The Lexa he knew had never fled from a fight, and he wondered what she meant to do next. Attack him from behind, draw him into the open searching for a vulnerability he didn’t intend to give? She’d caught the one weakness in his shield earlier, but he’d fixed that problem and—
“You have to see this,” Sava blurted from his right, ducking the ball of Light Arim instinctively threw. “Shadows, man, get a grip. You’ve obviously finished playing with Lexa. You need to see this, and tell me what it means.”
Grabbing Arim by his uninjured arm, Sava flashed them behind a large verum tree.
“Watch,” Sava whispered.
There, in a clearing littered with scarred tables and chairs, two Dark Lords battled viciously. Stunned, Arim could only stare as ‘Sin Garu and B’alen tore into each other.
“This makes no sense. They know we’re here. Why turn on each other when the smart thing would be to exterminate the Light Bringers?”
“I don’t know,” Sava murmured. “But they’ve been at this for some time now. Lidra’s dead,” he said grimly. “And Alandra and Aerolus are missing.”