by Kat Bastion
However, the noteworthy gathering hadn’t collectively distorted time-space to see if they could best the worst of the angels. The sorcerers had come together to test a newcomer’s mettle.
Low intonation began from one of the druids. Tall and bony of form, he lifted his metal staff into the air. Lightning bolted from the ground through the staff and illuminated the dense fog into glittering brilliance. The lightshow ended abruptly when he stabbed the bottom of his staff onto the ground.
Another druid, across the circle from the first, joined with a lower tone, his incantation slower, deeper, pulsing with rhythm. He raised the immobilized snake which he gripped behind the head. The creature elongated to twice its length and snapped gleaming black fangs up at a wild sky churned blood red. Its ruby eyes flashed into the fog, highlighting a gothic landscape.
Druid after druid contributed their own distinctive toning. And the gathering of ancient powers roused the core elements of matter. Their vibrations altered the substances around them, transforming solid to liquid to gas to pure energy and back again. Once-solid objects within the eerie layered realm pulsed and floated between their various forms, as if awakened and stretched to their possibilities, brainless matter becoming near sentient. All brought to bear by druids whose power magnified as a collective, comprised of individuals who toned at a precise volume and octave to wield the vibrations of sound as their tool.
Tools make effective weapons, he thought as the ground beneath their feet—still solid—began to shake and heave.
Skorpius flexed then tightened his fingers around the hilt of his sword. And he punched a large amount of his magick outward and down. An angelfire-sourced energy field would protect them. For a time.
“How’s it feel now?” he ground out. Because every last molecule vibrated danger to him.
“Unusual,” Brigid murmured under her breath.
No time for riddles. “Unusual how?”
“Foreign. And friend. Their magick. And…mine.”
“You feel the druids’ magick as your own?”
“Aye. In a manner.”
“What else?” Familiarity didn’t mean safe. Nor did it mean the druids condoned a foreigner having access to what they deemed as theirs. Territory wars were fought fiercely in all realms, in every time.
A low whimper escaped her throat. “Pricks of pain.”
Skorpius tensed, then glanced over his shoulder at her. “Where?”
“Into my center. My chest. My…heart.”
“Okay.” They could work with that. The druids were attacking her, but through a back door. Their toning to effect what her outer senses perceived, which was all she’d ever known till then? Pure distraction.
“Focus your attention inward, on your heart. And all the infinite dark space within. Make the dark space warm. Bright. Think of the most beautiful summer day you’ve ever had, bathed in sunlight, running through wildflowers.” How he imagined Brigid happy. Free. They didn’t have time to explore a quantum physics lesson; basic images on the fly would have to suffice.
The only reply Brigid gave was in her slowed breathing.
“Are you there?”
“Aye.”
Fissures in the earth cracked open beginning at the perimeter of his protective energy field, then splintered outward, widening, deepening. White steam and colored gases slow-spiraled upward in thickening streams. A putrid stench permeated the air.
We shouldn’t be able to smell that. Not if his magick served as an impermeable barrier. “Burst that feeling out, Brigid. Toward the dark nothing-space beyond us.” Strengthen our shield. Before those egotistical ancients shatter it.
But Brigid had already sensed the urgent need. A calming warmth radiated from behind before he’d completed the instruction. And a fresh sweet scent cleansed the air flowing into his lungs.
“Good. You’ve found it.” Without needing further details, she’d solidified her heart’s center, bulletproofing the source of her energy from the druids. And she’d protected both of them.
“Aye,” she breathed out.
“Good. Keep hold of that feeling. Enhance it. Imagine the best you have ever felt, the strongest emotion, the happiest.”
His impromptu coaching would have to work miracles.
Because Brigid hadn’t had any time to exercise and learn the limits of her new ability; she’d only be able to harness and wield at a static level for so long. And even with Skorpius’s heritage, and the unique magick cocktail that flowed through his veins due to his fall from grace, his energy would only protect them so far.
And it was her rare magick the druids had come for.
Further golden peace suffused Skorpius’s being, warm and radiant. Brigid’s pure good energy cascaded through him, then surged anew, outward toward the perimeter of his protective field, then fanning beyond.
The fractures in the earth continued to deepen as the druids continued their intonation. All twelve voices intertwined together, weaving individual threads of power into one incomparable supernatural force. And the magnitude of the concentrated energy electrified everything, in the glade and beyond.
Between the gassy fissures, large swells of earth began to bulge up. One, two, three, then several more, blooming in quick succession. With a deafening crack, an enormous slab of granite shot out from the first and largest bulge. Another crack, and a second tore free from its erupting mound. A third boomed its launch, shaking the ground outside of their protective field before hovering overhead with its forerunners.
But that last eruption quaked a tremor into their sphere of protection, its punching force vibrating up through their feet.
“They grow stronger,” Brigid murmured. Her unconcerned tone bordered on serene.
Adrenaline fired hot through his veins.
The paradox of their evolving relationship made Skorpius smile grimly and shake his head. In the midst of a pending apocalypse, they no longer appeared to be apprentice and master.
More like monk goddess and mongrel angel.
Another boom, and another granite megalith catapulted loose to hover in the air. Then a fifth. And a sixth. Tension crackled through the atmosphere as Brigid’s fresh and bright magick sparked against the druids’ ancient and dark.
Clods of dirt and chunks of roots rained down from the sky from the massive floating rocks. Half of the shed material vanished as it dematerialized in a wash of magick, reappeared as a strange skeletal image, then vanished again.
The granite slabs themselves vibrated at such a high frequency, the stones had also become ghostly ephemeral images—part within the layered artificial plane and part fighting to return to their singular dimension.
“And you?” Skorpius fought to ground himself with his own inner peace, while still firing up his magick, readying for the fight of their lives.
Brigid exhaled, long and slow. “Stronger yet.”
Good. Instinct screamed they would need every ounce of her secret brew.
In answer to his unspoken wish, Brigid’s golden magick rippled outward in new dimension, not merely warm, but a tingling heat. Not only bright, but filled with healing essence.
But Skorpius knew Brigid would only flare at her hottest for a brief period. She remained a novice and those druids knew it, or they’d never have aligned themselves in such a risky manner. They’d flocked together and combined efforts because of the great energy beacon she’d become: nascent magick with the heady promise of a moldable—susceptible—greater power.
The giant slab of granite nearest them cracked again, snapping fully into solid form. Then the behemoth hurtled toward them, angled directly toward Brigid—at lightning speed.
In smooth reply, all her golden magick tightened in together, then detonated outward. Her energy wave crashed over the forward end of the rock—freezing the slab a scant few inches from her face—then shattered into a shower of platinum energy-snow that blanketed its entire surface. An instant later, the slab disintegrated into white-gold dust that sparkled br
ightly, then winked out of existence.
Heavy breathing marked Brigid’s exertion.
Skorpius fired up his magick around them, to give her time to recover.
“Nay,” she breathed as a furnace of heat blazed from behind again. Wherever Brigid mined her resources from, they kept pouring forth, delivering everything she needed. “’Tis my fight.”
“That it is.” Without doubt. And she had held her own. From the first testing punch.
But it mattered little where Brigid found her reserves. Or how she tapped them.
Those druids were masters. The best of the best.
And they hadn’t achieved that zenith without millennia of experience.
In comparison, Brigid crawled and cooed, a fragile babe before ancients.
They had learned. Had strategized. Had already determined what any given opponent would do in one set of circumstances. Then tested alternate hypotheses in the next.
Toss a giant granite slab at her? And Brigid, in natural reaction, attacked the slab.
They’d try something else next. Trial any number of other theories. Until they exhausted her. Then they’d strike a final and unrecoverable blow.
How wars had been waged. And won. Over eons.
However, no one had ever faced a goddess of her magnitude.
Because none had existed.
Until Brigid.
Skorpius’s thoughts flashed to her extraordinary evolution in the glade, with the beasts.
“If you’ve got any more tricks up your sleeve, now would be the time to wow them.”
The smooth centering core within Brigid remained steady. But her magick continued to gather, growing in intensity. The warmth of its energy bathed him, from back to front, a soothing caress to someone unaware of its potential power.
And what would Brigid do with that immense power? That all depended on her character.
The dual tethers stretched equally taut. The one to protect her vibrated, hot and insistent. The other—time’s mandate—vacillated, searing and fluid one moment, icing into rigidity the next.
The remaining floating slabs suddenly shifted in unison, angling up forty-five degrees while orienting toward her. A legion of stone threatened to entomb Brigid far below ground with tons of force and speed.
The undeterred pilots of those projectiles stared anonymously from beneath dark hoods. Their eerie toning gained a greater depth, voices doubling, tripling, into layers of echoes. Robed arms raised their varied staffs toward the sky as one, then struck the ground again.
A soundless, motionless second passed.
Massive energy pulsed into the nothingness.
Three distinct waves from different epicenters—the druids’, Skorpius’s, and Brigid’s—exploded outward in a blinding flash of light.
Beyond their multidimensional glade, clear blue sky over all of Scotland—in every time and realm—echoed with the boom.
The earth trembled from westward ocean to eastward sea, from northern islands into bottomland England.
Naked silence followed.
Utter blackness blinded.
Eventually awareness trickled in, one slogging muted second after another. A rapid pulse thrummed through his veins. Shortened breaths rasped over his eardrums. Bright sunlight warmed his bare skin.
Skorpius opened his eyes, surprised to find himself…still standing.
He blinked and spun a quarter turn.
Brigid glanced at him. She stood, strong and beautiful, beside him.
And they both tracked heightened attention toward the semicircle of druids.
Not one robed figure remained standing. Or conscious. The powerful sorcerers lay prone, unmoving, and fanned out, like toppled bowling pins.
The massive granite slabs? Had shot end-first into the ground surrounding the fallen druids. Residual magick crackled a high voltage between the stones. Imprisoned by their own weapons.
Brigid shook her head, bewildered by the aftermath of her unleashed power. “I doona know…”
“I know.” The event wasn’t identical to the incident with the beasts in the glade, but it bore similar hallmarks. Somehow, she’d disarmed the combined power of the druids. Instead of defeating the stones, she’d conquered their masters.
“But are they…”
“Dead?” Skorpius probed a scan of magick over the group as a whole. Faint pulses. Shallow breaths. “No. But not down for long.”
It amazed Skorpius that they were down at all. Lights out.
All the druids.
Sudden realization struck him. He walked closer to the assembled group. Examined the faces now exposed by fallen hoods.
“Not all the druids,” Skorpius murmured. Countless had existed over the ages. The contingent who’d come after Brigid were unparalleled sorcerers.
However, one masterful druid remained conspicuously absent.
Skorpius’s eyes narrowed with suspicion.
“Brigid? What do you feel? Does anything seem out of place to you?”
Because with all the residual magick from sources far and wide, Skorpius failed to distinguish among them. There hadn’t ever been any need for subtleties regarding his missions. An angel guarding time didn’t need the particulars of any magick that threatened the timeline, he only needed to eliminate it.
And angelkind distinguished only two kinds of magick: angelfire and everything else.
Brigid? Uniquely harbored both.
In fact, her special brew of extraordinary power, muted by their own shield of protection, echoed in faint vibrations through him. The heady cocktail buzzed through his system, jolting his cells into rapid excitation. And further advanced the repairs she’d made, by several levels.
“Aye. ’Tis somethin’… other.” Brigid’s gaze swept the outer perimeter of the fallen druids, scanned over the half-sunken slabs, then out into the shadows of the forest beyond. She squinted as she drew in a steadying breath. “Watchin’ from afar.”
Of course. For the universe existed in balance. Materialize a never-before-seen goddess? Match with an inaugural assembly of druid-puppets—with a greater master pulling their strings. “Describe the ‘other.’”
“Cold. Metallic. Boilin’ with anger.” Brigid glanced at him. “And somethin’… else.”
No need to detect on Brigid’s level to finish discerning the ‘else.’
Skorpius already knew.
Which meant the whole thing, from the very beginning, had been about her and him.
Lips firming, Skorpius cast a grim expression her way. “Envy.”
Chapter 16
Skorpius stared down at her, his blue-green eyes swirlin’ with magick, expression grave.
Then an unidentified urgency spiked her pulse.
The druids’ ancient power still hummed through the false glade, growin’ in strength.
But a new vibration rumbled through her internal magick. They had mere seconds before a greater threat manifested into the strange layered space.
Skorpius narrowed his eyes. “That angry ‘other’ stalks us. We need to leave. Now.” Those glossy black feathers ruffled on his archin’ wings, and he extended his hand toward her.
“Nay.” Brigid shook her head and instead offered her hand out toward him. “’Tis my path. I’ll be leadin’ the way.” Through the cold, dark nothingness behind time. Back whence we’ve come.
Surprise widened his eyes and arched his dark brows. “That didn’t go well last time.”
“Aye.” Remorseful for what she’d caused, Brigid scanned his now-whole wings, the muscular strength of his body, and, with the aid of her magick, beneath his skin, to the fierce beat of his heart. She dropped her chin in a slow nod, satisfied that he’d endure an attempt with her leadin’ them through. “But ’twill be different now.”
Amusement sparked in his eyes. “Because…”
“We’ve no time to linger.” Brigid grabbed his hand. “Let me prove my skill.”
He clasped tight to her hold with a solid squeeze. �
�As you wish, goddess. Lead the way.”
On a hard exhale and with a sudden burst of magick, Brigid vanished them away from the odd layered space.
The bitter-cold black nothin’ness scoured at the edge of her awareness. But with an idea of how to navigate its endless storm of fury, she dinna allow the darkness to overwhelm her.
Instead of bein’ passive, Brigid concentrated her energy with a singular crisp thought and arrowed through the void, nimble of purpose, focused toward her target. She visualized their sunny glade. Where Skorpius had earlier crashed while protectin’ her. When she’d discovered her additional ability to heal.
An instant later, they appeared there, feet alightin’ into a gentle trot over solid ground. Returned hale and whole into her own time and place.
Och! The urgent vibrational warnin’ dinna cease. The one who hunts us attempts to follow.
Upon her next heartbeat, she erected a glistenin’ sphere of magick high above and all around them. And as she did so, she imagined the shield as a whole bubble of soap, extendin’ it down and through the earth below, leavin’ no chance for penetration from outside forces. Once complete, she energized a further layer onto the first, another more powerful coatin’ of magick. Then she coated another greater shield, upon the initial two. Again and again, she layered more sophisticated coatin’s, until she grew certain no “other” could detect the two of them within.
Skorpius whistled, eyes widenin’ again as he scanned around, surveyin’ her work. “Nice.”
Breaths comin’ fast and short from the incredible exertion of erectin’ such a magnificent shield, Brigid tightened her grip on Skorpius’s hand and glanced up to add one final important coat. Upon the inside layer, she brushed a darker cloakin’, the same cave-like shadow she’d crafted to heal him, to strengthen his different sort of magick.
However, the moment her shadowed layer completed, allowin’ the altered solar energy to radiate through to Skorpius, an electric spark sizzled up into her hand from the hot palm of his.
That intimate male pulse of power spun tendrils of thrillin’ heat into unmentionable places.