He grumbled in his native tongue as word traveled through the group of fighters. We gathered in a tight semi-circle at hisdirection and the weight of many expectant gazes seared into my back.I can’t mess this up. I won’t.
When he raised his arms, shimmering magic in shades of sapphire and gray spread from his feet, flowing around us. It moved like mist, getting under the layers of my clothes to chill my skin. I clutched Phaeron’s hand as the Void closed in around us. He’d done this before, walked the endless nothing for what could’ve been an eternity, and come out on the other side okay.
It was over in the time it took to blink twice. We went from a bloodied beachside to the remains of the audience chamber where Myuna sat upon the dais, towering over us in her glowing white splendor. When we’d first came here before the Crown Coven, I’d thought it was beautiful, with the artful display of the seven affinities of witch magic. It’d been built to impress all seeking an audience with the highest coven in North America.
The battle and resulting occupation by a ravenous goddess had wrecked it. Auric had dropped us in the middle of the long path that led to the dais. Instead of a placid pool with splashing sculptures to our left, there was a crater littered with shattered cement debris. Dried blood stains turned much of the sides brown.
To our right, the carefully cultivated soil with its verdant display of flowers and herbs was turned over, finger-shaped furrows marking where huge hands had combed all living matter free of its home. The domed roof overhead had long lost all of its glass, with the metal frames hanging and looking like they could fall at any moment.
Myuna wasn’t the only one here. A dozen figures stood below the dais, their heads jolting up as she noticed our sudden appearance. Her shocked gaze moved unerringly to Phaeron and me standing hand in hand and she opened her mouth to scream. Though Braza quickly plugged my ears with shadows, everyone else covered their ears to block out some of the unholy sound.
“You stand before Myuna the White, the reaper of worlds!”she shrieked. Her voice shook me to my core, resonant with power, madness, and countless souls crying out through her cavernous open mouth.“Throw down your weapons and prostrate yourself for my mercy, or face the end!”
Despite Geo’s steadiness grounding me, I still felt my heart thumping hard against my ribcage as I stepped forward, raising Flame until its tip pointed at her heart. “Myuna!” I shouted. After the deafening force of her, my voice felt like it was emerging through water. “I, Cressida Rollins Darkmore, challenge you to a duel!”
The mist of the Void seeped under my feet, spreading in freezing eddies toward the dais. My arm trembled as Myuna observed me with a sneer. I only had to keep her occupied for a few minutes, long enough for Auric to do what he needed to. Strains of laughter danced in and out of my ears.
Braza flared her power, wrapping me in shadows of black and purple when Myuna eased off the dais, standing to her full height. “It isyou. No matter how much I tried to twist fate, this moment has arrived all the same.” She reached toward the sky, harnessing a beam of light and holding it, shimmering and pulsing, in her hand. “It seems I must destroy you myself to be free of this wretched prophecy. I will fight you, she who would mate the son of night. And to keep all of these friends of yours busy, they will fight my followers.”
Each of the men and women behind her had flares of cold white light in their eyes. Most dashed past Myuna at a full run, weapons lifting. One, a near-naked man, rippled with a shifter’s transformation and expanded rapidly with a roar. Crimson scales coated his elongated neck and ridges grew over his back. He spread leathery wings and blasted a superheated wave of flame directly at me.
Myuna smirked, firelight flickering over her milky eyes. “Oops,” she said. I felt her attempt at being playful in the headache that rushed through me when I became shadows and reemerged a few yards to the side.
We hadn’t come here to fight fair, so I wouldn’t expect Myuna to either. It was in her very best interests that I get “accidentally” turned to ash. I raised the crystal shield, shouting, “Let’s see if you have better aim than him!”
For a moment, her gaze was unfocused. Sounds of battle raged around us and I waited tensely for what she’d do next.Just keep her attention. Don’t let her any closer to souls she could consume.
“I got it!” I heard Roe announce. She ran as fast as she could in her orange crystal armor, intercepting the dragon shifter’s head. As he inhaled to breathe another gout of fire, she nailed his jaw in an uppercut and Myuna stirred, baring her teeth like the dragon did.
She took a step toward me and I retreated, facing her back to the rest of the group. I would soon be pinned between the dais and the far wall, but my breath was beginning to mist with each exhale. The Void was so close, I could practically taste the madness and its taunting words, hanging just out of the range of hearing.
Myuna flipped the ray of light around her arm, its point now forming a spear that jabbed at my face. Braza’s power blew away from my body when I leaned to the side, feeling the sear of intense light so close to my skin. When I whipped a set of sharp shadow tendrils toward the goddess’s exposed arm, they dissipated into nothing moments from contact. Braza cursed in my head.“Her power is a counter to mine. Try using Flame.”
I flowed into the first form of a fighting style that’d barely seen the light of Earth. When Myuna jabbed for my heart, Ideflected her light and shoved with my shield, following through with Flame to cut a jagged line into her forearm.
To my horror, her skin gaped open in bloodless, hanging chunks, as if she were made of paper mache. I caught a glimpse of her hollow black insides before the rip closed on its own, the skin flowing back together in moments. There was no sign I’d hurt her at all, not even a grunt of pain.
“Do you see now what it is to face a goddess?” Though she’d pitched her voice to whisper, it still boomed over me. She grabbed her spear in both hands and drove it downward toward my skull. With the sear of light so intense, I barely gathered enough shadows to move sideways and reappear a few feet from the impact of her impossible weapon.
She checked the momentum and swung to the side, hitting me against the shoulder. My robe took some of the blow, but I felt the white-hot agony as my skin burnt and crisped underneath it. My hold on my men’s powers wavered when I needed them most.
“Keep moving,”Braza urged. There was no way to easily paint a healing rune on myself, given the location of the wound.
I took to the shadows before Myuna could try to skewer me again, regrouping up on the dais. God, it stank up here, like fear, piss, and rot all smeared in a ghastly mix.“We just need to disarm her. That spear is too intense,”I said, hoping she’d get angry when she saw me standing so close to her throne. Her legs had left indents in the tile and metal from sitting there for so long.
In one way, I was in luck. Myuna threw her weapon at me and it disappeared in a burst of sunlight when I ducked aside. I groaned in a mix of agony and dismay when she held her arm toward the sky and a new shaft of light began to form in her palm.
That was it. “Phaeron!” I screamed, unknowing of how he was doing in the fight below. He read my intentions and responded immediately, creating a thick cloud of black shadow to blot out the encroaching sun.
The only light in the chamber now was from Myuna herself, her sickly white radiance doubling in intensity when the sunlight faded from her hand. She clenched her fist with a furious bellow. “If you insist on interfering, then I will have every head in this room in addition to hers,” she announced.
Her body warped, arms stretching out of their sockets first. She became longer, thinner, a towering eldritch horror with sharp talons of light erupting from her fingertips. Black slits opened in her torso, over her arms and legs, and even her forehead and cheeks. Mouths. Countless sucking mouths.
“Oh god, oh shit,” I said under my breath. I lunged forward and dove into the shadows, emerging inches from her grasping hand as it tried to close around the nearest ally—a doctor helping a badly burned guardian witch. They stood back at what they’d thought was a safe distance, before she proved that whatever she was made of, it was stretchy enough for her to reach anywhere in this chamber.
Her hand bounced off my shield, which rang with a discordant note. I looked down in dismay as it vibrated intensely enough to spread a web of cracks through the inside of it. If I was lucky, it could take one more blow before it shattered into crystal confetti.
I felt a shiver wrack my figure. It wassocold all of a sudden, turning my sweat to ice against my skin. Only the burn on my shoulder remained a throbbing, angry patch. Myuna crushed it when her massive fingers curled around my body, her arm whipping back into its socket with a recoil that shook my brain around my skull.