It was only now that I remembered why I loved to dance so much. My body was an instrument and my magick a song. As one would thrash a bow across the strings of a violin, my arms and legs moved, channeling magick like notes, building a melody of heartache and devastation. The snow that had fallen peacefully was awoken from the ground to storm again. Storm forme.
The world was bathed in starlight and moonshine. A glittering monochrome vessel of life, death, and souls. I didn’t fight the rage of power that whispered through my thoughts and burned through my blood. Ilistenedto Lightsdeath and joined with it.
When my dance stopped, I turned around, staring up at a huge wolf made of pure starlight towering over me. Its massive form shimmered with an otherworldly glow that spilled over the ground in waves of silver and violet. The wolf’s head rose above the treetops, its glowing silver eyes twin to mine, awaiting command. The forest was hushed, every creature silent, as if the world itself dared not break the spell. I stood, small beneath the wolf’s starlit shadow, but charge of the colossal creature was mine.
“Astraea…”
I found the voice that whispered my name and found a shadowless vampire with black and white hair who peeled herself from the ground, staring at me with horror I delighted in. As I approached her, she staggered back, not looking at me but at the giant, looming beast that followed. Reacting to everything I did. The beast wasme.
For some reason I faltered. Stopping before reaching the shadowless, I contemplated her for a moment.
A loud roar rattled the night sky. The wolf and I looked up, seeing a stroke of darkness cut across the constellations. An impulse to drown that soaring shadow in starlight itched my skin.
So I left the insignificant vampire and headed toward the heart of the chaos where the darkness was headed.
The wolf passed through the trees without harming the precious nature. Breaking through the tree line, we came to an opening with snow as red as it was white.
Vampires, celestials, even some fae fought and fell. I couldn’t see bodies anymore, only souls in varying degrees of brightness, and I wanted to cancel out the darkest ones: those that had become nearly black, so there would be no redeeming them now.
The vicious battle started to cease as, one by one, friend and foe acknowledged the face of their reaping.
So many dark souls.
The wolf… attacked.
I followed as the souls scattered, trying to outrun their fate. The first dark soul to be reaped struck my chest like a brand and I cried, folding into myself with the pain until it faded. I barely got the chance to recover before another speared me. Then another. I took long, gasping breaths.
This was my purpose.
So I straightened and kept going.
The wolf continued to tear through the darkest first.
Another ear-piercing roar made me recoil, and I spun to eliminate the creature before it could distract me again.
Until I came face to face with the blackest soul on the entire field.
The longer I stared, the more I saw a true face forming through the shadows.
He was so devastatingly beautiful that it stirred a conflict within me, forcing me to fight the instinct to kill him. He just stood there, staring wide-eyed, assessing me and the wolf, which had stopped its slaughter to face this being too.
“Astraea.” His voice… the magick and aura that hummed from him felt like a dark duet with the song that weaved through me now.
I shook my head to expel the distraction. Something changed on his alluring face that turned awe and concern into fear and calculation.
He amended, “Lightsdeath.”
That name flared inside me, and I smiled to it.
The wolf of starlight growled behind me, within me; it was priming to devour this soul it could hardly stand to be near.
He seemed to know death was coming for him, and despite all his darkness, he didn’t have the power to contend with it. Not anymore. I thought maybe he once had, but something had changed in him. I became fascinated, and it seemed a waste to end him so soon.
“I’m right here,” he said, as if those words could soothe the storm coming for him.
I advanced slowly, but he didn’t retreat. The closer I got, the more I became entranced by the swirling dark mass within him. Something about him pulled me closer, made me search his soul deeper, as if to find… a light.
It was so small and precious, like a star deep in a depthless sky. It wasn’t smothered; it was protected.
