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Up close, I could see the serpent was a creature both immaterial and corporeal, made of muscle and magic. Oil-coated iron embossed the scales that covered its neck and head. Long spires reached out in a circular direction to form what looked like a crown. Impaled fish and vegetation hung off of its crested back like a mane. And the eyes, they were the same color as Ione’s. They looked down on me, gave me that cold, turbulent stare, and for a moment I swore that the High Mer lived somewhere inside that monster.
The serpent looked at me for only a second and then lunged for the castle.
The creature’s body moved over us, splitting wave after wave, in a never-ending whip of its tail until the serpent finally reached the Shadowfader’s air fleet. Feathers and blood and bone began flying in all directions, the serpent thrashing in and out of the melee, picking up bodies and shredding them with one toss of her head. It roared a second time, a frenzying power that wentunchecked. There was no regard for the innocents who were tangled up with the enemy, the beast just kept killing.My feet grew cold, even against the hot sand.
Abdiel.
I looked toward Owen, whose attention was already towards the castle and the battle that had ensnared his friend. Time’s magic flared inside his eyes, he looked frantically towards Kalen. The parts of him that weren’t being held up by Owen were floating with the waves of the sea. He was so weak, he couldn’t even hold himself up against the tide any longer. Owen understood this too, and was fighting against the desire to drop Kalen into the water and go back to get Abdiel. When the Astralite finally looked up at me, it was clear what he wanted me to do.
I should make my way to that boat and never look back, I thought.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave Abdiel. He was something to me before, in the life I was forced out of and had now returned. I felt it. Something more than just a warrior to spar with–to break. Because of the vision, I couldn’t be sure of anything other than my sword in his body as I tortured him, and yet, he had come to save me. To save Kalen. There wassomethingthere.
A wave of exhaustion hit me, catching me by the ankles as I tried to stand from the sand. Since I’d come home–and I truly felt now, how much this place and these people were home to me–I’d been trying to pick apart every vision and every piece of information to tell me what I was supposed to do. Do I trust Kalen? Do I trust Gabriel and his Astralites? What should and shouldn’t I say? And in the melee that surrounded me, at that moment, all I wanted was to do what feltright.
Lifting his head, Kalen looked weakly between Owen and me, reading our silent words to each other. Whether he used the Light to search my mind, or whether it was obvious by the lookon my face what I was about to do, Kalen mustered up enough energy to scream through the wind that tore around us. “Don’t you dare!”
“Owen, go!” I yelled back, rising fully from the beach. Trying to force out a tone similar to the one I’d used with the Astralites earlier in our rooms, I said to him, “Take Kalen to the ship.”
He nodded, following my demand immediately, looking relieved. Kalen fought against the warrior but Owen and the ocean were too strong. They gripped him. Then his Light flew out to me, wrapping around my heart and tugging, tugging, tugging. In silence, Kalen begged,Don’t do this. Don’t leave.
“I will find you,” I said and turned from him quickly before I could change my mind. As the Light pulled away, I silently added,I promise.
The blade of my dagger sang as it ripped free from its sheath, and some part of me sang back, screaming that I was made for this. I sprinted towards a black mass, hordes of Shadowfaders that had moved in around the base of the palace moats. Abdiel was in there somewhere, he had to be. It hadn’t been more than a few minutes since he’d run from our sides to fight, and I was going to find him, alive. I had to find him alive.
Shoving myself into the front lines, it didn’t take long before I clashed with a demon. In broad daylight, the Faders were even more appalling than they had been in my memory. Two of them descended on me, sharpened teeth curved into a sneer while skilled arms slashed in the direction of all my vital organs. I ducked under the arm of the first demon which had swung for my throat, plunging my dagger into the top of his groin, tearing his muscle to the bone down his thigh until I was sure I’d hit the right vein to bleed him dry. Turning just as he fell, I stuck my blade into the heart of his friend. We were face to face, and this time, when red eyes dulled, I felt all the more alive for it.
I moved in sync with the barrage, like a mad wraith. Mythin white robe swished around me, catching every breeze and splatter of blood as I fought barefoot, armed with only one weapon. Silently I cut through the crowd, cut down demons one after another. I must have looked wild. I felt wild.
I feltgood.
With each Shadowfader that fell, I searched for Abdiel in the aftermath. I’d nearly reached the bank of the moats with no sign of him when the fighting halted. In a second, the crowd split, and screams ran through the air. Ione’s serpent broke through the sky. It was wrestling something, I realized, its body coiling and snapping as if it were trying to skirt an attack. I couldn’t help but laugh when I saw him, Abdiel, dangling in the air with his sword between the beast’s mouth.
The brief flash of joy I felt to find the Astralite alive was quickly subdued by the reality of him hanging there, so high above us. The sand may have been powdery between my toes, but the beach floor was indeed very, very solid. Like he had read my mind, Abdiel looked down at the space below him, his tan face blanching. For just a moment, I could read the fear on his face. Then the warrior used his momentum, swung his legs into the jowls of the beast, and jerked his shoulders, shifting the blade of his sword further into its mouth.
With an unearthly snarl, the serpent dove and crashed down upon us, sending drifts of sand flying in its wake. The body slid through the parted crowd with a hiss, and suddenly I was staring at a waft of black hair only a few paces from me.
The serpent hovered above Abdiel, who lay flat on his back, pushing his blade as it splintered with the pressure of the serpent’s maw. I should have thought more about what I did next, but I wasn’t really thinking anything when I lunged for them, straddling the beast’s snout and grasping its horns as hard as I could. The creature made a whinnying sound, startled when I forced its gaze to mine.
Looking into the High Mer’s eyes, I wedged my dagger into the serpent’s scaled cheek and pulled, carving my blade down the side of its face.
Ione’s serpent reared back, howling in pain before shooting up into the sky and careening back into the Sea, tossing me, hard, to the sand as it went. Just before the monster and its crown dissolved beneath the waves, my dagger glinted against the sun, still lodged in its face.
I stared after it, feeling something like extreme satisfaction when Abdiel grabbed my hand and tugged me forward. I looked at him, expecting to see a disheveled and nearly broken immortal. But Abdiel was grinning from ear to ear. He let out a howl, victorious as we sprinted through the sand. Stupidly, I realized I was grinning, too. Even after all of the men I had killed and the outright treason I’d just committed by banishing the serpent, I was grinning like a blood-thirsty idiot.
We laughed to the edge of the shore. We laughed as we waded through the water to Kalen and Owen, who were pulling up the anchor of our vessel for our escape, and we laughed even harder as our backs hit the deck of the ship.
“Gods, just yank itout, Gwyn!”
I kneeled on the splintered deck of our ship between Kalen’s legs, my hand grasping the arrow that was still protruding out of his thigh. To our right, Owen and Abdiel took turns screaming at me to put the Preserver out of his misery. My fingers wrapped tightly around the arrow shaft of Silverwood, I blew a breath to lose my nerves, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull.
“Can’t you just do it?” I huffed, looking desperately between the two Astralites under the purple haze that surrounded us.
“A little busy,” grunted Owen, who was focused on the port side, using his powers to push us along the cusps of both the physical and the Astral Planes. Abdiel was facing the other way, his back pressed against Owen, their hands thrusting outward to the sky. We moved under a dome only visible to us, overlapping glades of sheer purple light much like the one Abdiel had been using as we had run from the Palace.
“I don’t think I can handle the blood,” I lied, trying my best not to look at the black sludge that was slopping between my fingers. Kalen’s blood. I took a breath, but the brine of the sea air only made the nausea worse.
“You took out a few Sythian households back there, and now you can’t even look at a flesh wound?” Abdiel said, his back still turned from me.
