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Griff
“Get the portal open!” I yelled before turning to swipe out at another wave of cultists. The bastards just didn’t stop coming.
Finally, the hiss of the portal opening sounded, and a minuscule amount of tension left me.
More and more hooded figures came towards us as we tried to keep them back from the portal room and give Tessa and Kai a chance to escape.
When I glanced over my shoulder and saw them still standing there, I shouted, “Take Tessa and go. Now!”
Fury danced across Tessa’s features as she said, “I'm not going anywhere without you. We all go, or none of us do.”
You'll have to take her against her will,Dresden’s voice rang inside my head, which meant he was projecting to all of us except Tessa, if her lack of reaction was anything to go by. I knew if I was in Kai’s place, I’d be hesitant, but if they stayed, it would just give the cultists something to fight toward.
We could only hold them back for so long, so the best thing we could do was take away their reason to fight. Hopefully, that would be enough.
Niall’s voice sounded in my head a moment later as I slashed out at a cultist, catching them in their ribs and having to forcibly dislodge my sword.Don't let her get captured by these people. Her death won't be quick. And she will suffer greatly. It will make Hyperborea and what happened look like a vacation.
His words soured my stomach. Tessa had been through enough, dammit. Why wouldn’t these people just leave her alone?
A shout drew my attention back to Tessa, and I saw that Kai had her up and over his shoulder before he started walking toward the portal.
“Kai! Put me down! I’m not leaving without them!” she screamed the words in his ear, yet he barely even flinched. The words turned unintelligible as she started hitting his back with her fists and raging against him.
My attention was split and only momentarily brought back to the fight when the bite of metal in my skin drew my attention. It wasn’t for long, though, since another shout had me looking back at Tessa just in time to see Kai hesitate to take the last step.
His head turned, and I knew he was reassessing the situation one last time. War cries sounded from the pathway in front of us. I looked back to see a whole new wave of cultists had made their way toward us.
I turned to yell at Kai and tell him to go, but he was already moving. Tessa’s tear-streaked face disappeared with a look of betrayal as she reached for me, then the two of them were gone.
The green leaves and loamy scent faded as the portal closed, and I returned my attention fully to the battle in front of me now that I knew Tessa was safe, or at least safer than she was in El Dorado.
Agartha was the only realm she hadn't been to yet, and I had to hope that out of the other three, this was the one that wouldn't try to kill her.
They were the most peaceful of us, but then I would have thought the same of Atlantis or Hyperborea. Look how wrong I was there.
A sword swung at my head, and I blasted fire in the guy's face, burning him to a crisp.
Another look over my shoulder, just to double check, confirmed that she was truly gone, along with my heart.
Could we have made an effort to get through it? Absolutely, but then, who would have stopped these cult assholes from going after her as well? No, it was better that we stayed here and let her make a secure getaway.
"She's gone! You can't get to her anymore. Why don't you all just move on?" Finn screamed at the guy he was fighting.
"You're all traitors to the realms and deserve to burn for helping her," the guy in front of me growled as he stepped over the charred remains of one of the other cultists.
Great. They were pissed that we got her out, so now they were going to take it out on us. A quick sword to the gut shut him up. Sometimes people got so caught up in their ideology and spouting their revenge or whatever they forgot to actually fight.
Thankfully, none of us were like that. We could fight and communicate at the same time. It was one of the things we prided ourselves on as origin realm warriors.
Tessa was the only thing that distracted us from the fight; she was in Agartha now.
Dres,I thought intentionally, trying not to scream at him in my head and get him hurt.Can you let everyone know to get behind me? I'm going to create a wall of fire and put these bastards out of their misery.
Slowly over the course of a few minutes, I inched forwards while the others fell back. It was getting harder to move, and soon, if we weren't careful, we'd be walled in by bodies. Personally, I didn’t like the idea of creating a tomb for myself out of the dead, though, I supposed, we could always portal to another realm if the others had the activators on them as well.
I thrust my sword through the neck of the man attacking me and kicked him off it as I pulled it back. It was almost safe for me to let my magic out. I just had to wait a little longer.
