“What’s the matter, Malachite?” said Reeve. “Why haven’t the Senshi come alongside your Dreaded Dead?”
The darkness that flowed freely from Mal was stomach-churning. It was acidic. Unpleasant at best. Then Reeve’s words struck her.
Why haven’t the Senshi come?
The mile-long Portal Reeve had opened remained stretched across the valley, and from it filed the entire rank of Senshi Warriors. With their weapons pumped full of siphoned Aterna Magic, they immediately began destroying the undead creatures.
They were not under Shadow’s control.
The Morconis gave another shriek, drawing Maeve’s attention back to it as Spitfire raced towards it. Her eyes traveled up, but Mal no longer sat atop the great beast.
Her eyes snapped to Reeve, but it was too late.
Mal Obscured, appearing out of thin air, before her. Her heart sank. His body slammed into hers, knocking her sideways off Spitfire. Before they hit the ground, he Obscured them both.
The sound of battle vanished, replaced by complete silence aside from the chilling wind and the sound of soft moving water. The entire backside of her body hit cold, wet ground. She tried to turn, flip herself over, but Mal’s frame above her locked her in place. His hand pressed against her throat, holding, not choking. Half-frozen, half-freezing water from the Black Deep pushed and pulled at her head, soaking her hair. She continued to squirm beneath him.
“Stop,” he ordered, his voice colder than the ice clinging to her hair.
He was on the verge of breaking completely.
She fell still beneath his hold and allowed herself to look at him. His eyes, the whites, were a faded red. His skin was thin, exposing all the spots of deep purple muscle and blood vessels. His sharp cheekbones were hollowed further, getting dangerously close to starvation territory. His hair was oiled, dirty in a way he would never have allowed it to be.
Are you alright?Reeve voiced across her mind.
“You don’t look so good, Mal,” she whimpered, her voice filled with regret, not boastfulness, despite that such a thing meant breaking him from Shadow might be easier in this state.
She shivered, pushing down on the realization that it wasn’t just the frozen ground that chilled her. His fingers were like ice against her throat. He stared down at her. Just stared.
Maeve,said Reeve.
“Strange,” she whispered. “I can hardly feel your Dread Magic at all. Guess we both lost it, huh?”
Maeve,Reeve’s voice snapped, dripping with fear at her lack of response.
“Why am I here, Mal?” she asked. “Why did you show me where the attack would be?”
His expression shifted at her words, like he debated between crushing her throat and bursting into tears.
“I don’t know,” he said at last, completely at war with himself.
“Let down your walls,” she urged gently. “I want to see something.”
Mal’s fingers constricted fractionally, and his lips tightened, but her breathing hitched as he dropped his mental shields completely.
She remembered her teaching, drawing on the lessons she’d vicariously studied through Shadow’s memory, and reached for the shackles that dug deep into his mind. The sharp chains of indestructible steel seeped out of his mind and into his nervous system. They clung to him like disease, and his body was far from immune. Each chain heldmore potency than the Enslavement Curse that had been on Zimsy, and Mal was covered in them.
At his center, his core, was his remaining Dread Magic, fluttering like the last of a flame desperate not to be extinguished.
Breaking Mal free. . . suddenly seemed impossible.
She pulled from his mind, letting her body sink fully into the frozen ground beneath her.
“Gods,” she breathed, more to herself than him, “how am I going to do this? I don’t stand a chance when she has taken so much of you—”
Her words were cut short by a flash of white light flooding her vision. The memory, Shadow’s memory, appeared in an instant.
Judyth, as she was, then, stood with her long white hair gripped tightly in the hands of a masked individual. The memory was blurry and jumpy, but there were many masked men who appeared to be soldiers, part of a military of sorts. They wore deep emerald uniforms with a serpent crest on their breast pockets.
