Cassandra Pendragon

Right. I had forgotten where we were, but now… oh boy, this was going to hurt. I felt my emotions change as if someone had flipped a switch, elation and happiness turned into anger and rage, a consuming tide I had felt before, when the Furglows had attacked me back on Boseiju for example. Shassa and her ilk had nearly taken everything from me and now there would be a reckoning, consequences, caution and casualties be damned.

My voice was steady and controlled but judging from the change in Ahri’s expression I knew that she heard the seething fury underneath: “I can, but you will stay here, whatever happens. Promise me or I’ll hold us here until everything’s over, one way or the other.” I could practically hear her thoughts, my threat was rather weak, she knew as well as I that I wouldn’t leave anyone else to die if I could prevent it, but I was also stubborn enough to drag this out for quite a while.

“Fine, at least until I’m fully healed. That’s all you’re going to get.” She kissed me again. “And it better be enough, you wouldn’t even promise me as much if you were in my place.”

Not quite satisfied I gave in and nodded. Quickly widening gaps appeared in the curtain of energy, revealing a sea of shadow beasts that had surrounded us from all sides, more of them still crawling through a single portal, the other one had vanished. They weren’t within my range but if they were to pounce, they’d reach us in the blink of an eye, moving with a speed that far surpassed mortal boundaries. “Maybe staying here isn’t such a good idea, after all,” I murmured and sent more energy towards my brain to fully grasped what was happening.

Behind the slavering horde, the tides of battle had changed once again, Mordred’s death defying flight had been much more successful than my own attempt. Horus was still pinned to the ground, while Mordred, pale, in pain and on the verge of collapse, pumped more and more magic into him, paralysing the fallen god to allow the dwarfs to go to town. With reckless abandon they chopped, hacked and slashed at the golden figure, chipping away with their enchanted weapons while their deep voices filled the hall with cries of vengeance. A pool of ichor was slowly spreading beneath the gruesome scene, bits of flesh and splitters of bone drifting over the red-gold surface. Immortal or not, Horus would have one hell of a time to pick the pieces off the floor and put them back together.

Further to my left, around the ruins of the statue, my mom, Astra, Aspera and Mephisto were in trouble. Remember the dark bolts Shassa had sent into the walls? Somehow she had taken complete control of the defensive enchantments in the hall and since the wisps had spawned as a part of the structure, they were now under her command and closed in. Spells simply vanished when they got too close to the silvery silhouettes of light and mundane attacks like Aspera’s strikes or the rocks Mephisto picked up telekinetically and bombarded them with, passed through without leaving a mark.

I had lifted my wings just in time to witness one of the wisps suddenly rise high into the air and descend onto the elven sisters, its energy pulsing madly. They managed to whirl out of the way and Aspera even slashed at the thing in passing, but this time her blade didn’t pass through. Instead there was a short burst of light and with the smell of superheated metal, half of her sword dropped to the ground, the edge still glowing where it had come into contact with the wisp.

Save behind the line of magical manifestations, some of them even dancing directly around her torso, Shassa had climbed back to her feet, but at least she wasn’t unscathed. The holes in her carapace the exploding statue had left her with, had closed, but one of her legs and an eye were missing. Several disconnected runes were flickering all over her body, remnants of Mephisto’s incomplete attacks. They were still messing with her magic but they hadn’t been completed and thus couldn’t invoke fully. While I watched, they were slowly vanishing, her own dark energies swallowing them up to leave nothing but black chitin behind. In her claws, the remaining three statuettes had manifested, bolstering her power, even though two of them seemed dull and lifeless, and the third was shaking in her grasp. Each part the dwarfs chopped off Horus resulted in another tremor, the equivalent part of the statuette flashing brightly before it dimmed again. And while the wisps were protecting her from the steady streams of hellfire that flowed from Mephisto’s raised hands, she was again working on another spell.

Isis had risen even higher and was now hovering directly beneath the ceiling where only those of us with wings could reach her. It didn’t stop the occasional dwarven bolt from heading in her direction, though, but she easily deflected them with lazy waves of her hands.

Meanwhile she was pulling more and more power from the other realm and channeled into into her Ankh, which by now had transformed into a blinding formation of light that resembled a dragon more and more. Luckily she couldn’t concentrate fully on her task, as our own winged furnace had left Horus to the dwarfs and was now battling his mother with everything she had. Erya was still on her back and Viyara’s silvery tongues of fire, mixed with the fey’s green sparks, were dancing around Isis, bathing her in torrents of power, heat and destruction. For now, they had prevented her from finishing whatever she was trying to accomplish but some of the wisps were rising steadily, headed towards them. They would protect Isis the same way their brethren did with Shassa and she’d have the chance to complete her magic.

My mother was… heck, I had no clue what she was doing. For the moment she was more or less undisturbed and had her eyes closed, her brows screwed up in concentration. Wave after wave of mana was pouring from her but it didn’t disperse or was channeled into a spell. It stuck to her skin and layer after layer it spiralled around her until all I could see was a storm of energy, my mom at the centre. Whatever she was doing, it sure looked impressive.

“Those silvery things have got to go.” Ahri didn’t speak out loud, her thoughts reached me through my tattoo, apparently she didn’t want to waste more time. “They contain a spark of your power, don’t they?”

“I think so. Shassa, the spider, used some of the energy she stole from me to feed it into the creation of those things. I could even feel them when I was still nailed to the ground. But I don’t know how much good that will do now, I’m not connected to them anymore.” She flinched when I mentioned how they had found me but pressed on regardless.

“I think you can still reabsorb or claim them, you just have to touch them, forge a new link. You’ll have to try, otherwise this won’t end well. They’re effortlessly repelling every spell thrown at them, even Mephisto’s more complicated magic. See?” Indeed I did. Maybe even more clearly than her, but the truth was that now that I had to, I was afraid to leave her side. The few seconds when I had feared she might have been lost to me had scarred me more deeply than the torture I had had to endure beforehand. I couldn’t bring myself to allow her to face the army of shadows on her own. As much as I wanted to rain down bloody vengeance on the spider, protecting her was more important.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

“And what are you going to do,” I asked. Since our emotions were flowing freely, she knew exactly what I meant, one of the drawbacks of telepathy and while she was somewhat flattered, she was mostly getting angry. I could even understand her, I wouldn’t have like to be patronised as well…

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to fight the beasts, that would be silly. The portals closed when you killed the other two and now that Horus is incapacitated the third one vanished. I’ll help the others in bringing down Isis and Shassa. My flames are a bit more powerful than everything they have at their disposal. We’ll keep them occupied so they won’t have much time to stop you.” Great, that naturally made me feel much better. “I think I’m fully healed, so you don’t even have a reason to complain,” she added scathingly but the quick peck on the cheek she gave and the physically whispered “I’ll be fine” in my ear took the fire out of her response.

“I know, it’s just…” “Cassy, imagine how I felt after I saw you pinned to the ground. I don’t want to leave your side, either, but that’s not important right now. You know that. We both have to do what we can. Ready?” I breathed her scent in one last time, before I nodded. I hated that she was right but I would have hated myself even more, if I had allowed anybody else to get hurt when I could have prevented it.

Reluctantly I flared my wings and vanished into a shower of sparks that danced around her for a second before she manifested hers and took to the air, a beautiful display of fire and grace. The shadows howled and like a crashing wave they surged forward only to have their jaws close around empty air. Both of us were gone.

Despite my burning anger and lingering fear, I tried to go about my task as sensibly as possible and refrained from materialising in the bulk of wisps. Instead I appeared close to the outskirts with just a single, pulsing figure of light in range. This time, my bones didn’t protest against the transition and even my thoughts were as sharp as I needed them to be, my sluggishness burned away by the rising fires of fury. Like striking snakes, several of my wings coiled themselves around the quivering mass while I plunged the rest of them directly into its centre, silvery sparks igniting along the way. They didn’t go in smoothly, it was like cutting through cheese with a normal knife, the further I got the harder it became to continue but with another burst of energy from my core and a sound like shattering glass, I finally broke through. The strangest sensation followed.

In a away, it felt like I had split in two and now I had to decide how to proceed. On the one hand, I could draw my power back into myself, similarly to how I had absorbed energies before. Like a hungry predator I could take back what was rightfully mine and leave behind nothing but a burned out husk, void of the force that had kept it alive. Or I could nourish the feeble thing, for that was how I saw it now. Small and weak, a drop taken from the ocean, unable to exist on its own.

By chance or intuition I had used my wing with the fiery core to create the connection and it allowed me to give even more, instead of taking. I could fill the magical construct with enough energy that it could become something else, something free of the binding spells its creation had placed upon it. Instinctively I knew that by doing so I would also surrender my control, the speck of power would be free, able to grow and flourish on its own but our link would be severed, permanently. What was I supposed to do?

Setting them free was a risk, maybe a small one, but there was no way to predict what the wisps would do once they had the chance to decide for themselves. Absorbing them seemed cruel, like ending a life before it even began, sometimes the better choice but cruel none the less. In this case though, I didn’t think it’d be necessary. The only instance where we’d be off worse if I freed them was, if they decided to aid Shassa, Isis and Horus. Highly unlikely since one of them had put them into chains from the moment they had been created. Since they had been spawned from my energy, I couldn’t imagine that they had taken kindly to that form of existence. Besides, it’d take a seriously screwed up masochist to come running back into the arms of someone who had enslaved you before.

I knew that I was projecting a lot of emotions onto an artificially created existence but the thought of erasing them appalled me and I was desperately grasping for arguments why it’d be preferable to keep them around. In all honesty, though, they were probably going to vanish the very moment they were free anyways and that was just as good as killing them off, preferable even. Unless they turned out to be murdering psychopaths from the start, of course. I’d know for sure after the first one, though, and I imagined that I’d easily be able to deal with one of them, murder hobo or no.

Streams of light flooded from my core and traveled through my wings. At first, tiny stars appeared within the diffuse, pulsing speck of light only to solidify and grow a moment later. The stars started to move, circling around each other, faster and faster they spun until they exploded with a blinding flash, leaving behind nothing but silvery sparks.

A wide smile spread across my face, I had been right, it happened once in a while. The wisp was gone and it had even left behind a present of sorts. With its dematerialisation it had conjured an expanding bubble of energy that raced through me and my wings without so much as singeing a hair on my head or stirring the silvery torrents of energy but as soon as it reached Shassa and her wall of unwilling slaves, its destructive power became obvious.

Like leafs in a storm, its brethren were blown out of the way, their light wavering as they were catapulted through the hall. Most were thrown into the walls or ceiling, passing through living bodies on their way without so much as leaving a trace. They remained wherever they encountered something inanimate and solid, their inner fire flickering periodically. Some were less fortunate though and collided with one another. Strange, interchanging colours appeared wherever that happened and a keening sound, that made me grind my teeth, echoed through the hall. Massive explosions of silvery light and blue sparks followed an instant after, turning the hall into a triggered minefield.

Raging winds tore at my wings and I couldn’t see through the glare while my ears rung from the mighty thunderclaps that reverberated all around me. Surges of energies battered against my skin and even though they couldn’t harm me, I still felt their ravaging hunger, the desire to consume and devour as much as could be reach before they dispersed into nothingness. This wasn’t some spell, it were the death throes of partly animated, transcendent energy, fuelled by all the hatred and pain it had been born from. It wouldn’t distinguish between friend or foe, whatever it touched would burn unless it was strong enough to withstand the onslaught. Hot and cold shudders raced along my spine and my tails tremble with anxiety, again I had a decision to make.

I couldn’t be everywhere at once and I had to choose whom I was going to protect. In all honesty, it wasn’t much of a choice and my reaction was mainly due to my guilty conscience that I was going to abandon my own flesh and blood without a second thought, but there wasn’t much to be done about it. If I had to decide who’d walk out of here, I was willing to sacrifice us all to make sure Ahri would be safe. A small part of me wondered if this kind of obsession was healthy in any way but that seemed like a problem for another, less perilous time.

I allowed the faint flickering of energy that always connected our tattoos to guide me and materialised beside her. I immediately slung my wings and tails around her, carelessly catching hers between our bodies while the first wave of power rolled over us. I heard pillars bursting, Viyara’s roar and a quickly drowned out order in the dwarven tongue before everything vanished behind the curtain of my wings, the thundering of transcendent shockwaves and the choking smell of ozone. We tumbled through the air, I couldn’t control our fall since I needed all of my wings to keep us safe, and when I encountered something cold and unyielding, I felt the bones in my hip break witch a crunching noise before we hit the ground. A deafening silence followed.