The Stalisies killed in that first assault didn’t ascend into essence like the Tanzieth. They robotically hunched over, their bodies convulsing as they mutated. Their hair fell out all at once, disintegrating before it could touch the ground, their skin, now waxy and pale, crawled with blue veins.
“What the fuck?” I asked aloud as I watched them become like the creature that had grabbed me in the Outer Reaches. Being under Traflier’s spell when they died had stopped their essences from ascending; they had been corrupted into monsters. They crawled forward, trying to claw at the Tanzieth nearby. All the remaining eight hundred or so Stalisies took to the sky, and I got my first glimpse of him.
Traflier ascended behind his army and cackled as his puppets flew high into the air around him.
Mortimer re-joined me, “Sorry,” he said then he gave me a kiss on the cheek, and took off towards the army of flying Stalisies. He flew so fast I had no time to try to stop him.
Black lightning soared down on the Tanzieth, the frightened but unharmed screams of the children in my bunker echoed through the air. My bubble still held strong and I willed the trees to twist tighter together. Traflier hit it again with bursts of darkness, but my shield remained. I rose up further towards the flying puppets and caught a glimpse of grace amongst them. I shook my head, trying to push away the doubt.
“NOW!” I called to the Tanzieth.
Every Tanzieth soared into the air, gracefully following me towards the glassy-eyed Stalisies, who still showed no signs of shock.
But Traflier did.
The corner of his mouth pinched and raised as his eyes squinted under his furrowed brow. Mortimer subdued three of the Stalisies with an enchanted rope and was pulling them towards him when Traflier saw him. He smirked then shot towards Mortimer. Latching onto Mortimer's back, Traflier pulled at Mortimer's arms till they were bent behind him.
The Stalisies, once bound by the rope, were freed and Traflier tilted his head. The three of them raised their hand and fired. The black lightning bolts hit Mortimer’s chest and sent golden sparks flying in every direction.
A shriek louder than any I had heard filled my ears. I put my hands over them to shield them from the noise but it only made it louder.
Then I realized, it was me who was shrieking.
Mortimer’s body went limp and he fell from the sky, landing with a thud as his lifeless body hit the ground in an unrecognizable, twisted lump.
As if they had all been hit with Narraneesis dust, every Tanzieth froze mid-attack.
“What are you doing?” I yelled at them. “Move!”
Oh crap, Traflier figured out how to get to them. I thought as I dashed towards the closest Tanzieth. Before I could get to him, I was pushed back, blinded as the Tanzieth all exploded in a brilliant white light. I had only ever seen a light that bright once before.
The light faded and, as the air cleared, I could see that all of the Tanzieth had wings like mine. Green, blue, pink and orange—all the colors of the rainbow fluttered around the sky, their wings buzzing with every fold.
I spotted Traflier, who had moved to hide behind the Stalisies. His expression was priceless. I actually laughed at the dumb, frightened awe fixed on his face. The Tanzieth began swatting Stalisies away with their wings, stunning them into unconsciousness with brilliant bursts of light from their hands. And in a matter of moments, the Stalisies had all been subdued—all, that is, except Traflier and the creatures that still crawled across the dirt bellow.
Traflier seemed to draw on the energy from the Stalisies we had captured, their bodies convulsing as the life left them, but their essences unable to ascend. I flew closer to him. Many Tanzieth followed.
“Stay back,” I called to them, seeing my father and Jax at the front of the pack. “This is my fight.” They might have had the power to take on the Stalisies, but Traflier was stronger, and more importantly, he was all mine.
“Go. Round up those creatures. Try not to kill them, but keep them together and away from the children,” I ordered as I headed for my great-great grandfather.
The Tanzieth obeyed, all but Jax, who hovered a few meters behind me, his blue wings shimmering in the light. I shot towards Traflier, but he dashed to the side and I spun quickly to follow. I sped after him, twisting though the sky. He was fast, but so was I.
I almost had him when he shot down towards the fields below. I tucked my wings in tight so that I could use gravity to pull me down towards him, and when I reached within arms’ length, I grabbed his ankle and swung him to the side, flipping him to face me before I shot a white energy ball at his head.
It didn’t make his head explode, it didn’t even burn him.
Fuck. I quickly followed it with three more, their force sending him the final few feet into the dirt bellow. I came towards him and he reached out and grabbed me. We thrashed and rolled, both of us sending bursts of energy towards the other. It ached where the black bolts skimmed past my body, deflected by my white light, but I was otherwise unharmed.
Finally I kicked him off of me and flew back into the sky but he rocketed after me. Slamming into my back and grabbing hold of my wings, we began our repeated downward tumble.
“You don’t have enough power to kill me, little girl,” he spat as we plummeted.
“I have more power than you know.”
“Even when you had the help of the angel, you still had nothing. Look how easily I destroyed him, and you’re next.”
“Shut up and die.” I blasted a flash of white lightning directly at his chest, but to no avail, it created a gaping hole in the robe he wore but his flesh shimmered unharmed beneath it. We hit the ground and continued to wrestle, our blasts wrapping around us, cocooning us in a black-and-white streaked field.
One of my blasts skimmed past his ear and, as he tilted his head, I caught sight of something under his collar. It was a small marking, similar to the one the Dazerarthro wore. Not embedded in flesh, but ingeniously sewn onto the fabric itself. He had marked his clothes with some kind of cast.
Why didn’t I think of that?
I grabbed at the collar and yanked. The seam spilt and came away quickly. Traflier broke away and disappeared through the wall of the cocoon. I closed my hand around the scrap and followed him into the sky.
“You don’t get it, Desmoree,” he bellowed from up high. “You simply don’t have what it takes.”
“I will kill you,” I called back.
“That is precisely my point. You are nothing like me, so no matter what help you think you have on your side, you will fail.”
“You got one thing right,” I said as I came level with him, both of us floating above the sea of colored wings. “I am nothing like you.”
I smiled cheekily. Holding out my hand, I unfurled my fingers to reveal the scrap of collar. He looked, wide-eyed, at the neck of his shirt and began to back away. I could feel him trying to pull energy from the Stalisies below. He was even reaching out to the landscape, pulling on the energy of every living thing.
I expanded my bubble that lay over the children until it covered every Stalisies, Tanzieth and creature. I encased every tree and flower, every blade of grass.
He was alone.
“You can’t kill me,” he heckled.
“Wanna bet?”
Traflier glanced above us. I didn’t see Jax still hovering there, but Traflier had.
“Jax is different,” I called after him, “You know you can’t drain him, you tried, remember?”
Traflier took off, shooting up like an arrow.
“JAX!”
Traflier fired. No heckling, no snide remarks, he just fired. The black spark shot straight through Jax and into the air behind him. The blue energy that buzzed around him began to fade. His green whirlpools darkened. Jax began to fall.
A second later, I was clawing at Traflier. Firing my light at him.
He snickered at me. “Even without my shield, you still don’t have enough power to kill me.”
; I looked at Jax, falling lifeless to the ground below—the rainbow-colored ground. He’s right, I would need all the Tanzieths magic to match his power, but I can’t do it, I can’t take away what they’ve only just got back.
Traflier spun in my hands, turning himself into a black cyclone, slipping from my fingers. He shot to the bubble below, and it wavered.
“Soon, Desmoree,” he said from within his twister. “Soon you will all become those wretched creatures and then my power will be great enough to take from humans. So many of them, the power I will have will be unstoppable. Your angels won’t even stand a chance.”
I won’t become him. I won’t steal their power, there has to be another way.
He laughed, and I began firing directly at him. The black cyclone absorbed my shots, my light was unable to penetrate his field of darkness.
Traflier hovered above the shield I had encased the fey in and I watched him begin to rise. The sea of colored wings pushed him higher, my bubble keeping them safe but forcing him upward.
“I won’t do it! I can’t take back what he stole. I won’t be like him.” I said to the fey all looking at me through the yellow tint of my barrier.
My father flew to the front of the swarm. “You don’t have a choice,” he called out, taking a place beside Marcus.
“You can’t steal what is freely given,” Marcus added, as the Tanzieth all began chanting.
Traflier spun out of his twister, his eyes wide and fierce. He shot at them, his lightning bouncing off my bubble of protection. I raised up another, separate from the rest of the fey to shield myself just as the first bolt struck. Traflier exploded towards me, he thrashed and clawed at the bubble around me, then returned to attacking the Tanzieth as they continued to chant. The shield over them vibrated and contorted where he struck, my power beginning to fade.
“You can’t do this!” I called down to the Tanzieth, all still chanting in unison. Their words unknown to me, but I felt what they were doing: they were giving me their power, transferring their magic. I pleaded with my father, “Don’t let them do this. There has to be another way.”
Mortimer appeared translucent before me.
“How?” I asked, squinting to try to see him clearly.
“I am an angel, Desmoree,” he said, looking down at the Tanzieth.
“Please, stop them, they can’t give up their power, they only just got it back,” I begged.
He shook his head slightly as his sad eyes fell to the Tanzieth below. “This is the only way, I’m really am very sorry Desmoree,” he said and faded away like dust in the breeze.
The Tanzieth energy swelled into a marbled ball of light then compressed repeatedly, folding in on itself until it was a golden yellow ball hovering above them, rainbow bolts firing within it. The ball hovered for a moment, then as all the Tanzieth began to descend, it rose, passing easily through my protective shield. It hovered in front of me for a moment before entering my chest and throwing me free of my own yellow sphere.
Traflier stopped clawing at it and took off across the sky, away from Baldea.
Ignited by power, I flew after him, reaching him easily. I took hold of the collar of his shirt and brought him close. “You will know what you have done before you die,” I spat as I pulled at his energy. I could feel it writhe against me, filthy and dark. I called to it as he clawed at me to let go.
The strength and power given to me by the Tanzieth allowed me to draw on his dark power, to coax it out of him. It didn’t want to leave him, but finally, the energy began to draw into me.
I pulled on it slowly, and as I did, his skin shriveled, cracked, and sunk against his bones. He let out a disturbing moan and his face distorted, became gaunt and his eyes protruded, ready to fall out of their sockets. Within a few moments, there was little life or magic left in him. It was all in me now.
I pulled at the last threads.
“Goodbye,” I whispered as I watched his head fall backwards and his body become limp. I pulled the last drop out of him, and let his body fall towards the ground, scattering into ash just as the roses once had.
The energy swam in me—dark, stolen. It writhed against my own magic-it didn’t belong to me-it didn’t want to stay.
I flew above where the creatures had been contained and pushed out the energy Traflier had stolen from them, willing it back into them. It streamed from me like a waterfall of energy. I hoped that it would help them to ascend into essence.
They convulsed, wailed at the sky, and then began to change. Their skin brightened, hair returned and before my eyes, they changed back into their original Fey forms.
All of the Stalisies began to weep. I saw glimpses of their memories of what they had done as Traflier's’ puppets as they returned to them.
“Mortimer!” I called as I began to descend to the Fey below. He appeared faint again but visible at my side, drifting down with me. “How do I give it back?”
“The Tanzieth magic cannot be returned. What they have given cannot be undone.”
“It has to be; I can’t keep it.”
“They gave it freely, that kind of gift cannot be undone Desmoree.”
“You’re wrong. They gave it to me, I want to give it back to them and I will find a way.”
He raised his brow tilting his head a little to one side before drifting away into the light.
When I reached the ground, I rushed to Jax, who lay still on the grass by the children’s bunker-a few parents tried to pry the branches away to get to their kids. I wriggled my fingers in the direction of the twisted trees, willing the trunks to unravel to allow the children to find their parents, and plonked down onto the wet ground in front of Jax. I took his hand in mine, but his fingers were cold against my skin.
Grace and my father rushed to my side. I picked up his head and laid it on my lap as the tears fell. The sorrow I’d managed to hold back finally escaped my lips. The energy joined it, and the ground itself rumbled in time with my cries. I pushed the energy out in rainbows around me, willing with everything I had to bring him back. To heal him. The energy jolted back and forth with each internal plea I made with the angels who had let Jax die. It did nothing to help him. I stopped pushing the magic and it retreated back inside me. Defeated, I sobbed into my hands.
Then something warm rested on my shoulder, a young boy trying to comfort me. I looked at him through my tears as his gaze went to Jax, then back to me, and then he pointed. I thought at first he was pointing at Jax’s lifeless body, but when I followed his finger, he was not pointing at Jax. He was pointing at a blue light swirling around my stomach.
I tried to draw the magic back with the others, but it wouldn’t recede. Instead, it reached out to Jax, branching out across his body with a thousand tendrils of light. It engulfed him in its blue glow, sitting with him for only a moment before it snaked back inside of me.
“You’re crushing me!” Jax gasped.
“Jax!” I screamed as every zombie movie I’d seen flashed in my mind and I shoved him off my lap leaping to my feet. The growing whispers of the Fey around us began to vibrate in my ears.
“Ow, did you have to drop me?” He said rubbing the back of his head with his hand.
“Jax, you were dead! I tried, but I couldn’t. How?”
His eyes fixed on me and the brilliant green whirlpools swam as if no light had ever left them. “Your’e not the most powerful anymore,” he said, climbing to his feet and brushing off the dirt from his pants.
“You?” My father questioned, standing beside me and taking my arm, only then did I notice I was shaking.
“No, not me. Her.” Jax said as he closed the gap between us and laid a hand on my stomach.
“I’m pregnant?” I questioned as I placed one hand over his on my belly. My father squeezed my arm tighter. “How do you know?” I asked Jax.
“The seers helped her to send me back, they have a message for you.”
“Other than hey Des your knocked up?”
Jax didn’t
laugh, his brow creased and there was a slight quiver to his bottom lip?”
“Well, what is it?” I pressed.
He swallowed glancing briefly to my father and back, “the birth of our daughter will awaken The Coven of Souls and open the gateway. Only by uniting the Fabled with man will you be able to close the mouth of hell.”
“You’re fucking kidding me.”
He didn’t look like he was joking.
Great, another fucking prophecy.
I didn’t know much about pregnancies, but two weeks in, I knew something wasn’t quite right. My stomach had swelled to the size of a basketball and a pale blue mist edged my once all-white wings. Jax wasn’t concerned; he loved how, when he talked, the child within me wriggled and kicked.
“Everything will be fine, Des,” Jax said whilst helping me out of the sofa in my father’s study. “Just wait and see.”
“Don’t say that, you have no way of knowing,” I said, pushing off him to stand.
“Let’s get you a Wagon Wheel.”
“Not fair, you know my weakness. But I have yet to learn yours.” I began to walk towards the door and he grabbed my arm, pulling me back. I laid my hands on his chest and could feel each beat of his heart through my palms.
He put his hands around my waist and pulled me close. “Don’t you know already, it’s you? It always was you.” He kissed me and the world disappeared. No war, no death, no prophecies.
The child within me stirred and I broke our kiss to gaze down at my ever-growing belly.
“Des, you can do this,” Jax said as he put both his hands against either side of my belly and the child moved to press against his hands. “She will be amazing, just like her mother.”
“And the prophecy?” I questioned, laying my hands over his. “What of it?”
“We survived one prophecy already.”
“That was different.”
“Sure, it was against the most powerful Fey in existence. One who called forth a demon and controlled the Stalisies with his magic. Can’t get much different than that.” He pulled his right hand away from my belly and cupped my cheek in his hand. “We will find the fabled and help her achieve the prophecy. Besides, we have a while. I doubt they expect a little baby to do anything except eat and sleep.”
Enchanting the Fey- The Complete Series Page 21