by Ana Calin
Nazarean meows at my feet, reminding me that I should follow in Xerxes’ tracks. I pick him up, feeling safer and somehow saner with him at my chest, and hurry after Xerxes towards the chapel.
The chapel itself seems to react differently to this new version of Xerxes, as if it recognizes his energy, and it welcomes it. As the creatures crawl back into their graves, Xerxes advances towards the chapel. But despite his new-found strength, the gash in his shoulder doesn’t heal. On the contrary, it starts to bleed again, the blood dark and thick as tar.
His shadows extend to Nazarean and me, enveloping us both like veils of shadow, protecting us. I lean to the side watching the chapel rise like a mausoleum in front of us. The entrance is barred, and the tips of the chapel’s gothic windows pierce the sky like spears.
But as he walks up the cracked steps covered in moss, the bars bend of their own accord. It takes me a few moments to understand they are giving in to Xerxes’ dark power, recognizing it as something of its own. I hold Nazarean closer. I need to keep him safe, this place has already taken a toll on him, and I won’t risk losing him.
Once inside the chapel, Xerxes turns to me.
Power and darkness mingle in his purple eyes that seem the eyes of death itself with the dark shadows around them.
“This is a sacred place, where all the worlds converge,” Xerxes says, his voice deep and vibrant like that of a god speaking from the bowels of the Underworld. “But unlike other such places, cosmic chaos is also connected to it.” His eyes move down to Nazarean. “Nazarean agreed to help us and track down the energy of the Firestone, but I think we should reconsider that. The energy here.” He looks up to the vaulted ceiling that’s so high I don’t see where it ends, it just fades in the darkness above us. “It’s different from what I expected. Samael is close. Too close.”
Nazarean leaps from my arms and heads to something that looks like a well in the center of the mausoleum, surrounded by high pillars. He jumps on the edge. The well echoes back every sound, even that of Nazarean’s breath, and it’s an echo that makes my hair stand on end. It sounds...alive.
“Something’s in there,” I whisper. Xerxes nods, eyes fixed on Nazarean. He approaches, and leans in over the well.
“The Firestone,” I breathe. “It’s in there as well. I can feel its energy. The same energy that I felt coming from you the first time we met.”
“Don’t get any closer,” Xerxes warns. “Only I should get in there, alone.”
“No,” I react, scurrying over to him despite his protest. “If the Firestone is in this well, it won’t just be sitting around waiting for you to take it.”
Nazarean meows, trying to keep it low so that the echo won’t respond, but the well reflects the sound back to us. I can only hope whatever is down there doesn’t understand Nazarean like I do.
“There’s a circle of evil around the stone,” I translate for Xerxes. “Same as the dead. It’s—”
Xerxes inhales sharply, his eyes closed, his face over the well. He opens his eyes, hissing.
“Wraiths of chaos. Like the ones who hid the stone in the first place.”
“Wraiths,” I breathe. “But you’ve dealt with the likes of them before, haven’t you?”
“Yes, but Apophis learned from that experience.” He peers inside the well. I take a step closer in an effort to keep him back, as if there were any universe in which he’d need my help. “I sense a ring around the Firestone through which cosmic chaos brings in new Wraiths. There could be a whole army of them and then some.”
Nazearean walks along the edge to Xerxes.
“Nazarean senses great dark power underneath the ring, too. Like it can draw on infinite amounts of it.”
Xerxes keeps peering into the well, while anguish wrings around my heart. If he doesn’t get to the Firestone there’s no way he can rebuild his core, and if he goes in there after it, he might not stand a chance against those creatures.
“There’s no way we can do this,” I whisper, my heart sinking, grief engulfing me like a dark sea. “We came all this way for nothing. Everything we did, it was for nothing.” There are tears in the back of my throat. I look at Xerxes, the man I fell in love with. Yes, I’m in love with him, unconditionally, and I’m done denying it. In the face of despair the experience is sharp and undeniable.
I search for alternative solutions in my mind. I could keep replenishing his tanks the way I did the first time, couldn’t I? He’d just be way too dependent on me, and it will never be the same as with the Firestone, but I would always be at his side. If I have to sacrifice my entire life and hide in caves with him, living in a realm that resembles Hell itself, then I’ll do it. It would be a prison to me, but I’d be with him.
“I could withstand their attacks long enough to take the Firestone,” he says, interrupting my frenetic thoughts. “There’s a chance that I’ll make it out of there alive, but it’s a long shot.”
“Xerxes, there’s an inexhaustible source of Wraiths down there.”
“Yes. I’ll have to withstand their attacks long enough to take the Firestone, then I’ll have to be faster than them to get out. Then we destroy this.” He looks at the well, touching it as if to assess its stability or what it’s made of. We can both sense its protective magic. “This stone is imbued with powerful magic that can keep the Wraiths down. As soon as I’m out of there, we have to destroy it, and the opening will seal itself.” A shadow falls over his eyes. “If I don’t make it out though, and you hear their wails too close, you have to destroy the well with me still inside.”
“What, no!”
“Cerys.” He takes my face in his big warm hands. He looks deep into my eyes, and I swear I can see my future in his, my heart jolting. “Remember, this is a portal that binds all realms, including cosmic chaos, which is why it’s more dangerous than all the others. The best we can do for the realms is to shut it down, which is what we should do, no matter what.”
I understand what he’s saying and why, and I understand that we must do it. I’m all for protecting the realms in the form they are now, but I’m not ready to let him go. My fingers splay over his iron chest as I push myself into him.
“I’m not ready to lose you, Xerxes.” My eyes fill with tears, and his sparkle in a way that makes him look alive again.
“Cerys,” he whispers, putting his big hands on my waist, holding me close, the heat of his body enwrapping me. “I know I said I would never change my ways, and that we shouldn’t be together, but after what happened today I... I don’t think I’ll be able to live without you. If this endeavor tonight doesn’t kill me, your absence will. I’ve come to realize there’s no going back to who I was before I met you.”
My heart beats wildly in my throat as I listen to him.
“Will you become my wife, Cerys?” He leans his face closer to mine, his scent of amber and wood seeping through my skin and becoming master of my senses. “I swear I’ll fight my own nature for you. I might not become a good guy overnight, but I will never stop trying, never stop improving, I promise.”
“Yes,” I answer, truthful to the core. My reasonable mind has shut down completely, and now all I can do is feel. “I will marry you, Xerxes.” I place my hands over his on the sides of my face, rising on my toes to invite him for a kiss.
He presses his hot mouth on mine, and I moan at the taste of him. We open our mouths against each other, kissing deeply. I wish we could stay like this forever, but Xerxes rips himself away from me, staring at me with eyes of fire.
“For us. And for our wedding night.”
With that, he turns to the well, and punches the side of it. The stone cracks, fissures spreading like broken rays all over the wall. It all happens so quickly that I’m in shock. Xerxes turns to me one last time, as if he draws strength from looking at me, and then plunges into the well.
“No,” I scream and run after him, but I stop before I touch the edge. It looks like a push would be enough for it to fall apart, chunks of it cras
hing into the abyss, and making it impossible for Xerxes to return.
Nazarean leaps softly on my shoulder, rubbing his wet nose gently against my cheek. His love brings tears to my eyes.
“No, Nazarean.” My voice cracks over the words. “There’s nothing we can do for him now.”
CHAPTER VII
Xerxes
I fall for a long time, the shadows emanating from my body curving over the air, enabling me to sail on it like a bird. I race along the stone sides of the well until the stone turns into rock. I’m deep into the Earth’s crust now, the air turning warm and dry the deeper I go, until it becomes hot and sooty. A human or even a parahuman wouldn’t be able to take the air and the pressure down here.
I don’t know for how long I’ve been falling when I see something sparkling in the distance, the most beautiful shade of red that ever existed. I recognize it immediately, because I’ve seen it before—the Firestone, taken from the crown of the Fire Court. I flip and land on my feet, bending my knees to buffer the fall. I’m skilled at landing, so I’m quiet despite my weight and my speed, but it’s been a long fall, and I skid to the side.
When I get up I realize that I landed on the Firestone itself. Buried here in the underground of the magic well, it’s grown roots into the ground and it’s grown from a jewel the size of an apple to one the size of a boulder. I inspect it quietly, standing on what I notice is a ring of dark, humid earth around it. It’s not what the Earth should look like so deep within the mantle, but as I observe, patiently, I notice the soft ripples moving along it.
I slide along the rocky wall, feeling a surge of energy. I’m close to the fire deep within the Earth’s mantle, and I can feel its energy humming. I open my arms and press myself against the hot rock, my veins activating and shining bright.
It seems the Wraiths haven’t sensed my presence yet, or they’re pretending not to. Whispers rise in the air, traveling up the well tunnel. I recognize their whispers as the echo that made Cerys’ skin crawl.
Cerys.
The mere thought of her is enough to raise power inside of me, motivating me. If I get out of this place alive, I will have her all to myself. I will feel her in my arms again. We will have a big wedding, at which she’ll be wearing a piece of this very stone. I’ll have my best jewelers craft it. And her wedding ring, it will have a piece of the Firestone as well, as a symbol for the fact that she was the only woman who ever experienced me vulnerable, and who brought me back to life. The only woman who’s ever mattered to me. She will have power over fire through the stone, and she will be protected even when I’m not by her side.
I look up the well. The top is much too far for me to see anything, it’s obscure. Motivated by the idea of her, I make a plan of how I’m going to get back up there.
It’s a risky one, but it will have to do. Problem is, there’s no way it’ll work without waking up the army of Wraiths swarming underneath my feet, and I’ll need my magic to fight them. But I’ll only have enough fire magic when I’ve integrated the Firestone, which means right now I can only rely on the dark energy from the souls serving Samael, those who crawled out of their graves to take us down. With every soul I’ve devoured I’ve become more powerful in the sense of Hell and death, but it’s too new, and I’m not sure how well I can use it.
Maybe if I’d devoured more of them. I lick my fangs, remembering their taste when I sucked their energy into me. When Cerys unloaded the first soul into me I must have become similar to a lich, dark sorcerers who feed on the souls of the living. Except that I hunger only for spirits from the Underworld, and I become sharply aware of that when the substance under my feet stirs, the waves and ripples stronger as they register my presence. A hunger for them rises inside me.
I’ll be damned. The Wraiths feel like food to me now. The more they move, their whispers turning to hisses and then wails, the sharper my fangs, and my hunger. But the snake’s poison is still flowing through my veins, which weakens me. I might not be able to take them head-on, there’s a good chance they’ll overwhelm me and, for the first time in thousands of years, I’m risk averse.
And that’s all because of my heart. Ever since I’ve stopped denying what I really feel for Cerys, the black cold stone I thought I had for a heart has become hot as lava. Turns out I don’t want to be as much of a daredevil.
I square my shoulders, ready to do this. I have a plan, but I’ll need to focus to make it work. I don’t know how long I have until the poison renders me too weak.
I bend down and push my fingers into the pasty black mass that keeps the Firestone encased in the ground. I still have my physical strength, which nothing can take away from me, not even the poison. The black substance starts taking shapes all around me as I sink my arms into the mass down to my elbows, veins of liquid fire swelling in my neck. I bare my teeth, rivulets of tar crisscrossing my face from the effort.
I finally uproot the stone, feeling its smooth texture on my palms, under the last slippery layer of this viscous material, but as soon as I do, a Wraith forms fully by my side. It’s a creature that seems made of shadow, but I know it’s the cosmic fabric of chaos. It opens its mouth, wailing in my ear. Cosmic wind blows from its open jaws, blowing through my hair.
Any human or even parahuman would crawl away, knees pulled up, losing their minds just from hearing these creatures, let alone seeing them. But I turn my head to it and hiss back, fangs bared, my eyes filled with tar and fire. The Wraith floats backwards, and all the others stop for a moment. None of them makes a single sound. Of course, they’re surprised to see the power of fire and that of Death radiating from me, but they smell the poison too. And that’s when they decide to attack again.
They fly over to me, the first Wraith opening its mouth to bite my head off and let it roll into the blackness in its mouth. But my fangs are fully sharpened. With my hands busy dragging the Firestone from under the dark paste, I rely on my fangs to take the Wraith’s soul.
When it’s close enough I move my head to the side quickly, and stick my fangs into its throat. I suppose one could say the Wraith impales itself onto my canines, its essence flooding my mouth. My eyes blaze full of fire at the taste, it’s absolutely divine.
I know I should keep working on pulling out the Firestone, but I can’t bring myself to stop taking in the delicious sap of the Wraith. When its shadowy form dissipates in the air and I lick my lips, its essence still flowing down my chin, I can sense the others’ awe. They don’t have features that can express their feelings, and yet one can read their awe better than in any human face. I grin.
“Delicioussss.”
But even though I turned out to be a dangerous predator to them, they’re still many, and once I’ve gotten the Firestone out, there will be even more. An infinite source bubbles under the Firestone.
More Wraiths attack, but they all soon turn into thin air after I’ve drunk their essence. Still, they keep coming. The more I take, the more vicious their attacks, but I can’t afford to lose this battle. Cerys is waiting for me up there, ready to give herself to me. I apply more strength, and finally free the Firestone from its roots.
All right, it’s now or never.
I look up towards the top of the well, going over my plan one last time. I can’t fly back up to the surface, but the Wraiths can, and I think I know how to get them to do it. I push the Firestone into the air with a lot of strength. It flies up high, so high that in a matter of seconds all that’s left of it is a red little ball. With the Wraiths’ attention trained on it, I bend my knees for momentum and push myself up like a rocket.
The air whips past me as I shoot high, but I start to lose momentum, and I have to ram my claws into the rocky wall to keep from plummeting back down. My claws dig into it, the weight of my body dragging me down, but I stop myself by fixing my booted feet into the wall. It stops the fall. I throw myself upward, basically leaping up the wall, going faster and faster until I almost reach the Firestone.
That’s when one of t
he Wraiths catches up with me, wrapping itself like a whip around my ankle and tearing me down. I do the first thing that I can—I ram my claws into the Firestone itself. And yet I acknowledge the terrible truth—I’m not going to make it.
I can already see the opening of the well, Cerys’ terrified face in the middle of the circle, surrounded by light, her braided ponytail hanging into the well like the hair of Rapunzel.
At least I will die with my eyes on her. More Wraiths wrap around my legs, crawling up my waist and then up my upper body like lashes of cosmic chaos. This is a lost battle. No, a lost war. My plan had been to get on top of the Firestone, and the Wraiths would have chased it to the surface without even realizing that they were carrying the both of us.
It was a long shot, but I’d put all of my bets on it. Now I’m tearing down the Firestone along with me, into the embrace of cosmic chaos.
The King of Fire dies here.
I embrace my fate, my eyes hanging on the only woman I ever loved—for that is the truth. I love her. Even now, as I’m being dragged down the Well of Doom to my death, I realize just how much, and how magnificent this feeling truly is.
But just as I accept my death, I see Cerys climbing onto the wall that I had cracked before I jumped in.
She wants to die with me.
“Cerys, no!”
But my cry can do nothing to save her. She flies down, her hair fluttering as she speeds down the well, her arms outstretched.
If she lands on the Firestone, the impact is going to shatter her bones and rip her flesh, she won’t survive it. We’re still close to the opening even though we’re descending, but still the Firestone is too far for a parahuman to survive such a fall. I let out a war cry, my muscles tensing to the maximum as I make one last effort to pull myself up the Firestone. I land on its surface in time to catch her in my arms.