Page 133 of Witchlight
Merik knew right away that this was bad. One Paladin was already too much for him. Two would be unstoppable.Who is it?he asked.What does she mean by sister?
Another Exalted One,Kullen answered, and for the first time, fear bled across their bond.It must be Rakel, the Paladin of—
Merik didn’t hear what came next. He didn’t need to, for a new voice crawled deep into his viscera. It was made of shipwrecks and decay. Of dead fish and endless tides—and of a hot, craggy shoreline where Merik had spent his childhood.
Water,he knew right away.This monster has mastery over water.
Merik turned, flipping his winds until he found this new Paladin. She hefted her body like a crocodile onto the river’s shore, unmissable. Unmistakable. Where Itosha had been stretched by time and cruelty, this creature had been compressed into a pulp of gray limbs and bloat.
And she dragged a person behind her. Unmoving and unknown. Yet asMerik watched, as he once more changed his trajectory to try to save them, the figuredidmove. And suddenly she wasnotunknown. Suddenly, she was terrifyingly familiar: his sister. Half-drowned, but rising.
And now grabbing at something long and sharp on the shore. She stabbed it into the Paladin, who screamed with a voice that spewed into the sky.
The Paladin retaliated. With waters so vast, so violent, there would be no escaping them.
No,Merik thought—and at that same instant, Itosha, still squalling behind him, shrieked the same thing in her ancient tongue:“NO.”The word rattled through her winds, her rains, creating a thunder all its own.“NO.”
Merik snapped toward her, expecting a fresh attack. Except it was not athimthat Itosha directed this ire. A new creature scorched the skies toward the river—massive, winged, and the color of moss and soil.
A mountain bat,Merik knew because Kullen knew.
But the bat was not alone. There was a person on its back, her eyes glowing. Her hands smoking—and her mouth too, as if she were cooking alive.
In that moment, Merik recalled what Safi had told him about the Cahr Awen, about how only she and the Threadwitch Iseult could heal the Air Well.
Now that Threadwitch was right here.
Itosha shrieked. She writhed, her pale hair flinging out like barbed whips. Her winds flailed in uncontrolled directions. She no longer cared about the little hound. She no longer seemed to sense that Merik was there at all.
Thank you,Merik thought at Iseult, and in that moment, he knew there really could be no accounting in the way he’d always done.One for the sake of many. Many for the sake of one.Life was life, and it was always worth preserving.
Hye,Kullen agreed, and with his magic to fuel Merik ever onward, Merik aimed for his sister.
The pain that consumed Iseult was different from the pain she’d felt with Leopold. This was the pain of hurricanes colliding. Of monsoons building and blizzards crashing down. She felt as timeless as the sky and as ephemeral as a cloud.
Itosha. That was the name she thought this Exalted One wore, and shewas the creature who’d crawled from the Air Well. She was the power Ragnor had tried to keep Iseult and Safi from awakening.
Like Leopold, Itosha wanted to lose Iseult. Unlike Leopold, the Exalted One’s thrashing was far more deadly. Leopold hadn’t intended to hurt Iseult; he’d only needed her to release him.
Itosha, meanwhile, aimed to destroy. She attacked with winds, with lightning, with hot rains and frozen gales. Water shredded Iseult’s clothes until there was no fabric left. Until it was skin that cooked. Then her muscles and sinew.
The lightning, meanwhile, was content to simplyeradicatewith each new crackling charge. Iseult became the heat, the light, the explosion of sound all around her.Crack. Consume. Crack. Eradicate.
Distantly, she knew that Blueberry did his best to evade each attack. But he flew on wings, while Itosha flew on raw, undiluted power taken from every Airwitch in the land.
And as much as Iseulttriedto sink into herself—to finish this fight she had started with whatever Weaverwitchery she still had left—Itosha wouldn’t let her. Because with every slash of Itosha’s magic, Iseult also felt the slashing of her Threads. Of her emotions, more raw and undiluted than even her magic was.
The Exalted One was furious and hungry, and above all, she wasafraid. She had spent so many years drowning—now it would all end? Like this? With a wretched body she didn’t recognize and pain, pain, pain?
Iseultknewshe had to drag these Threads to her teeth and sever, sever, twist and sever, but how could she do so when she was so locked into an Exalted One who wasn’t ready to die?
Shock waves beat into Iseult’s elbows. Her ribs. Her organs. She saw nothing but the Threads. She heard nothing but the crackling core of a Paladin made of storms.I thought you would be stronger,Corlant had said to Iseult when she’d tried to do this to him. When the dark current at the heart of his Void magic had defeated her.But there is still time for you to become the dark-giver you were meant to be. The shadow-ender the Witchlands needs.
Everyone had a different idea of what those titles meant. Of what Iseult—and Safi too—were supposed to do.
And now you have your own idea,she thought.Now it is time to finish this. You are not your mind. You are not your body. They are merely tools so you may fight onward.
Iseult opened her mouth. She chomped down.
