Page 138 of Witchlight
Her hair slapped against her face. Cuts she hadn’t known were there stretched wider as Merik’s winds slashed and fought. More, more. An untouched well that must come from deep inside him…
The Well,Vivia thought, and she remembered what the monster had said in the waves:Ah, the little hound I used to watch over. It is time to take back everything we gave you.
Merik had grown up swimming in the Origin Well of Nihar.
Vivia had grown up in her underground lake—a place where she’d only ever felt safe. Watched over. And long after Jana had left this world, the lake and its foxfire spokes had been there.
Yes,a gentle voice whispered.I am so very far from you, Little Fox. But I can still give you what you need. I never forgot why I was made. You need only ask, and it will be there.
“Who…?” Vivia choked out. “How can a… a lake be inside in my head?”
Because I am a lake no longer,the voice answered.I used to be known as Midne before I became the Void Well. I used to serve and protect, and I vow that right now, I will do so again.
At those words—incomprehensible as they were—Vivia felt her waters return. Nottheselethal rapids of the Amonra, butherwaters. Unbound by droplets and limestone, by tributaries or mountains.
She felt as she was returned home.
And Vivia took that power. No rage, no hate, no love, no past. Just power, letting her reconnect to the waters that frenzied around her—but that now she could control again.
Vivia lifted one leg, stepping forward, pushing herself, pushing the waters. A second step became a third. One foot after the other into the waters that this beast had tried to take from her.
And beside her, Merik walked too. Their steps matched. One. Two.Fight. Push.Three. Four.No regrets.Five. Six.Keep moving.His winds never faltered.
Until suddenly, their magics grew bigger. As if leashes had been shorn.As if dams had been broken. More powerslammedinto Vivia, and she could do nothing but redirect it outward. Launch more river, more wave at the beast who fought with tide, with ice, with steam, with pain.
Vivia and Merik were in the middle of the river now, the waters cleared around them. Wet silt sucking them down as they pushed, stepped, fought. No regrets,stillmoving.
The monster roared, her massive form briefly faltering in the face of these two Nihars.
That was when the iron launched in. A hundred blades from battles long ago stabbed deep. Punctured hard. And when Vivia turned, she found Vaness was only paces away.Herempress.HerIronwitch, and with fury scored across her beautiful face and violence in her dark eyes.
“I,” Vaness screamed as she staggered to Vivia’s side, “am Empress of the Flame Children! I am the Chosen Daughter of the Fire Well. I am the Most Worshipped in Marstok and the Destroyer of Kendura Pass. You willnotclaim me today.”
Hye,Vivia thought.And you are the woman I love.She’d never been more certain. Never felt more pride and power and hope. All this time, Vaness had been trying to teach Vivia how to not simply trade her little fox mask for the mask of a bear, but how toknowthat being the fox was enough. Because Vivia was enough and she always had been. It was in her blood, in her heritage, and above all, in the truth that she washere,still fighting, when almost all others would have given up.
So Vivia Nihar joined the chorus. “I am the Chosen Daughter of the Void Well. I am the rightful Queen of Nubrevna and the destroyer of the Dalmotti navy. AndIam the Little Fox you cannot drown.”
Over and over, Vivia bellowed these words at the face of the bloated monster that couldnothave her. She might be made of pure magic, pure water, but she still was no match for three rulers with entire kingdoms that they would die to defend.
As if he thought the same, Merik joined in the war cries too: “I am the Leader of Last Holdout. The son of Jana and the Prince of Nubrevna. I fight for one and I fight for many.You cannot claim us.”
And with one final push—no regrets, keep moving—the monster in the waters shrieked terror, pain, defeat.
Then she fled. A calico who had learned some rats were not worth fighting.
Merik felt everything change when the one called Rakel finally fled. It wasn’t just that the magic around him shifted—or that the monster’s attacks were gone and this wrecked shore was left in quaking silence.
It wasn’t just that Merik’s own winds had returned, either, or that a new spring had filled him halfway into the battle.
And it wasn’tjustthat everything in the world had fallen silent. No more storms, no more Itosha, no more battle…
It was that the power inside Merik had shifted. Where his own winds were trickling into existence once more, the ones that belonged to Kullen were now fading.
No,Merik thought as he dragged himself away from his sister and the Empress of Marstok. Away from the countless questions he wasn’t ready to contend with.It’s not the magic of Kullen that’s fading. It is Kullen himself.
“Where are you?” The words climbed from Merik’s throat, coarse as rusted knives. “Kullen, where are you?”
Kullen didn’t answer.
