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Before she could get any further on her own, secret plans a noise sounded behind her like the crack of cannon fire, so close that it had her ducking to one side, thinking that a tree limb had broken or something. She turned to see. It was so much worse. Both men were suddenly laying on the leaf and moss covered forest floor, completely unconscious. Thankfully she could still see the steady rise and fall of their chests, but before she could take a sigh of relief a thick, black mist began to settle over the area.
It could only mean one thing. Eidolon had known. Somehow, he had known they were coming for them and set a trap, and they had walked right into it.
“No, please. Wake up.” She hissed quietly, trying to get close to the men but as she neared, tendrils of the black smoke shot out like transparent fingers and the closer it got to her she could feel it draining the life force from her body. Hastily, she jumped back, her heart thumping painfully. What was she going to do?
A cackling laughter filled the air, and she knew he was coming. The dark spirit, the nightmare monster that haunted her dreams. He was coming for her. With a harsh curse and tears of frustration and fear filling her violet eyes, she turned and dashed headlong into the forest.
Chapter 20
Hazel ran for as far as she could, running until her lungs burned for air and her throat rasped painfully from gasping and her feet were torn and bloody. But nothing compared to the pain in her heart. It was if it had been ripped from her chest, torn to shreds before her eyes.
For a moment she had thought of turning back to help them, desperate to do anything to save them from whatever Eidolon’s malicious intent would bring them. She had even stopped. Ran back until she had been at the edge of a thicket that provided her with some cover, and she had seen him. Towering like a giant over the men and fear had completely filled her. Terror like she had never known in her entire life.
Desperately, she had tried to draw on her magic, on the power she knew now resided inside her, but she had found nothing. Not even the tiniest spark. Just fear, and more fear, drowning her, crowding out every other thought, annihilating her ability to concentrate. She had pushed and pushed and pushed, trying to reach anything that she might be able to use to save them but had instead found only weakness, and despising herself she had run away like a coward.
Coward. Weak. Nothing. You are nothing. The thoughts had repeated like a skipping record over and over as she had run, forcing her feet to keep moving, firing her anger at her self above all, even more so than Eidolon. Because he had made her realize just how weak she really was.
Hazel tripped on a rotting log, falling to her bruised knees and finally the tears came, choking out in heaving sobs that she couldn’t stop no matter how hard she tried. Because she knew now. They had been telling her the truth her whole life. She wasn’t good enough, she would never be good enough. She was weak, so much less than she should be, and now, her own weakness would cost the lives of the two people she loved.
And somehow it made it that much worse, because as she sat there, her arms wrapped around her knees as desperate sobs racked her body, the realization crystalized in her mind, shattering into a thousand razor sharp shards that cut through her like knifes. She
loved them.
Eidolon laughed again and Jayce couldn’t help the grimace that tugged painfully at the cuts on his cheek despite how hard he tried to keep his bloody and swollen face expressionless. He risked a glance over at Nika, who was the one now enjoying the dark spirit’s special type of attention.
Lashes of dark black fire whipped over his back and shoulders again and again, raising angry red welts, ancient dark symbols embedded in the skin that made the pain so much worse.
He could withstand any amount of pain and torment knowing that Hazel had escaped, and he prayed to all the gods that he knew that she would make it out of the forest and back home safe and alive. He didn’t have the same hopes for himself and Nika, although he would do everything he could to try and save his brother in arms, closer even than a brother.
Jayce glanced over at him again, seeing in his mind a bright violet thread pulsing in his mind, similar he was sure to the one in his own although he couldn’t see it in himself. A rudimentary plan was already forming in is mind, a way to distract Eidolon long enough for Nika to make a run for it.
