Page 69 of The Coven of Ruin
The statues of the Mothers were now unveiled. Trista had only ever seen images of them in old tomes. Usually, it was the same picture with their foreheads pressed together, leaving little room for identifying features. The pale marble was given life by the watery green light refracted upon them. They gazed into the pool as if witnessing the witches’ journeys. They were magnificent and haunting in their otherworldliness.
She walked to the pool’s edge, and the next mage stepped up to help her in. Taking the slippers off, she handed them to him, knowing he would give them back on the other side. Just as the witch before her raised her arms, she stepped in. The pool was warm, and the liquid was thick with iridescent shine from all the dresses before her. Two steps. The water caressed her bare calves as if they were shores that called to it. The gown began to fragment as the ends touched the water. Another step. It gathered just above her knees now. The material meant to be left in the water weighed down and separated around her. Two steps. Her thighs were bare beneath the glimmering swirls.
A worry of whether she still had something covering her left as quickly as it had come as she looked up. Wetness streaked from the Mothers’ eyes that held no irises but gazed so deeply into her she felt broken open. Her fingertips brushed their marble gowns.
And that’s when the screaming started.
Chapter XXIX
Deathcries,distantanddespairing. She knew those screams, the ones forced out with last breaths. Metallic and heavy, the scent of blood clung to the air. Trista couldn’t see anything, but all her other senses were overwhelming.
“Protect the Mothers!” A gruff shout came from somewhere in front of her. The mage sounded desperate.
“He will kill us all.” A calm, feminine voice drifted by.
“Leave us.” Another witch’s voice ordered, assertive and smoky.
Other commands came from all around her. “Barricade this door. Guard it with your life.”
“Get the Mothers to the Ovver Passage,” a witch delegated.
“It’s much too late for that, brave ones.”
The scene materialized slowly, like crystals once fractured reforming into a whole. Glancing around, Trista recognized the throne room. It was brighter, the wood and stone not as dark as it was in the present. There were only two long tables that the guards were attempting to move to bar the door. Their efforts were fruitless. As she looked to the main entryway, a younger version of Ares appeared. His face was expressionless. Blood-soaked, and his dual blades shimmering with red—he was the image of Death.
This is where he killed the Mothers.
The guards took notice of him at the same time, regrouping. They were already battered as if they had fought to get to the hall. He let them organize, immovable except for his eyes stalking their movements. Shields and spears formed in the front, swords in the back. There were too few of them. Caught unawares, others had yet to respond to the call for aid. Or Ares had already slain them.
The heat of magic swept through the chamber, powerful and pervasive. These fighters would have wielded their deadly and limitless magic as a weapon, their steel only an augmentation to it.
“Let us not die in vain, Mothers,” a younger mage cried out—a plea for the Mothers to flee, to try and escape.
Trista looked for them to find them on the dais. Only the two Mothers stood there. They held hands, fingers interlocked. Draped in elegant red cloth, sheer and flowing, they were like wraiths ready to ignite.
“Ares, God of War, the Champion of Olympus. And its Executioner, it would seem,” called out the dark-haired Mother, dozens of gray braids framing her heart-shaped face. Neither fear nor arrogance laced her tone. She spoke like they were old friends meeting again under regrettable circumstances.
“Emella,” his voice flowed through the guards’ magic, echoing like a war drum. “Where is she?” Emotionless.
Trista didn’t recognize him. Something rippled off him that made her skin crawl. This was not the same Ares who had saved her at The Arena, nor was he the god who had admired her freckles. Here he was merciless. Cold. A god who wielded death ruthlessly. This was The God of War.The Witchbane.
“Brother,” Irisi spoke now, her hand stretching out to him as if she called for him to take it, though he still had not moved. Drenched with sadness, her voice seemed too soft to be heard. “I forgive you. You know not what you will set into motion this day.”
The vision faded as Irisi’s arm dropped. The magic in the hall swelled, steel hit steel, and the warriors made their last stand.
Drifting away from the memory, she was again blind, so Trista listened. At first, it was just the pounding of her heart.
And then…
“You are only with one witchling?” The voice was vibrant and feminine. Irisi.
“Yes, only one.”
“And what will be her purpose?”
The flash of piercing white light faded until Trista could see her surroundings. She was in a room full of soft cushions and billowing tapestries. Sunlight streamed through open windows. A witch, her stomach rounded in the late stages of pregnancy, lounged upon large pillows in the only darkened part of the room. Trista couldn’t make out the witch’s features as if she had commanded the shadows themselves to shade her. Mother Irisi, her hair braided and wrapped around her head, and appearing younger than she had in the hall, watched her with genuine concern.
The witch rubbed her stomach lovingly. Her arm was marked with weaving designs etched into the skin. “She is the seed of vengeance, The End Mother. The World-Render. But first,” her fingers tapped over the sheer material of her dress as the child moved within, “she is but a witchling with no purpose but tobe.”
