An intense pressure gripped her mind and a sea of power flowed around her. She opened herself to it.
The tip of the dark moon broke over the ocean where the sun’s light had died. Its rays ran across the water and fell upon her. The energy of the moon felt like silk running over her body. She breathed in its light, feeling its coolness fill her lungs and her whole being. Every cell in her body tingled with life and power. Her pulse quickened and she closed her eyes as the Flow moved through her in waves stronger than ever before.
As the moon rose higher, so did the power of the Flow. What, at first, was a trickle, soon became a great river of energy, and she flowed with it, rushing forwards, a torrent of unstoppable power. At first, she tried to control it and immediately knew she could not, and should not, not tonight. Instead, she and the power would move as one. Tonight she was a vessel to be filled with the power of the dark moon and of Zanufey Herself.
She let the Flow take her. She was drifting and expanding, her being stretching out to become one with the moon, vast and powerful, rising above a still and expectant world—her awesome blue light spilling over the Goddess’s Sacred Isle. Karshur’s dagger grew warm against her thigh.
‘Greetings, sister,’ the Wykirys’ voices whispered around her moments after she felt their presence. She opened her eyes and saw them moving beneath the surface of the ocean.
‘Keteth sleeps. We will take you to him. In the ocean, the power of the dark moon is strongest, for Zanufey is also the Goddess of Water,’ they said.
She wondered at that. Did the Wykiry revere Zanufey above all other guises of the goddess? She mused that they must. She took a step forwards and cool water lapped her feet. Whilst it wasn’t cold now, it would be out there in the open ocean.
‘Warmth,’ she whispered in the Flow and imagined herself cocooned in warm water as Freydel had taught her to do.
The Flow wrapped itself around her willingly. She walked a few feet into the sea, now it was like stepping into a warm bath. She stopped. Freydel had not taught her the spell to breathe underwater.
‘Wait, I cannot breathe easily if I come with you, I don’t know how to form the magic.’ Tinkling laughter echoed around her.
‘In our presence, you will. How else do you think we brought you to Celene before?’ they said.
She nodded but felt uneasy as she waded out. Soon she was floating, and though she felt calm in their presence, she was nervous about putting her head under the water. The Wykiry circled around her dancing and jumping. Their shimmering bodies, all metallic blues and greens and purples, shone in the blue moonlight.
‘Do not worry, Child of the Raven, this night is yours. And we, and the whole world, have waited for eons for it to come.’
She swallowed, silently praying to Zanufey that they were right. They closed around her and she held onto their long dexterous fins—not slippery, but warm and smooth. A memory of purple lights swirling in the darkness came to her.
‘Thank you for saving me those times in the past,’ she said.
They dived down and she shrieked. She immediately struggled and panicked as her head went under.
‘Breathe, relax,’ they said, but it was easier said than done.
They gave her a moment as she calmed herself. She wondered how hard it would be to use the Flow to help her breathe, but she could not think straight to do it. Finally, she opened her mouth and air rushed in rather than water. She laughed aloud and spluttered bubbles.
Their laughter came from all around her, and then they were moving fast. She couldn’t see at first because the rushing salt water stung her eyes. She imagined the Flow creating some kind of protection around her eyes, and willed it to do her bidding.
‘Eye shield,’ she said aloud. It came out in bubbles and sounded distorted, but instantly she felt a space clear in front of her eyes. She blinked away the remaining salty tears and stared in wonder at the swimming Wykiry. They moved so fast she could barely make them out. There were at least twenty of them, and she was in their midst, moving as one with them, her grey robes streaming behind her like their long fins.
She tried to forget the task ahead and focussed instead upon the incredible experience of swimming with the Wykiry. It felt more like a dance of movement than actual swimming. She flowed through the water with them and began to feel as if she had become one of them. She couldn’t help but wonder if they would ever return to the beings they once were before the Ancients cursed them.
Her thoughts soon turned to Keteth. But now she was filled with the power of the dark moon, the mortal confrontation no longer terrified her as much. She shivered in nervous excitement and longed to use the power that moved through her. She dared to believe she could not fail.
Freedom, that was why she was here, that was the reason for her existence. She was here to set the souls of the enslaved free, and to set Keteth free. She felt so alive and wild and full of unstoppable power. They descended deeper into the ocean where it became gloomy and murky. Heaviness and foreboding pressed around her.
Finally, they stopped and hung motionless in the silence. She did not like it here at all. In the stillness, she became aware of voices singing a song; a sad poignant sound of hopelessness and loss. Though she didn’t understand the words, a lump formed in her throat at the sound, her soul quivered with the sorrow of it. The Wykiry began to move in quick nervous motions as if anxious to be gone from here.
‘The voices of the Lost Ones sing at the edge of the Shadowlands, Keteth’s domain,’ the Wykiry said. ‘They herald your coming as they weep for the dead. Be strong Child of the Raven. Even though we cannot go where you will go, we will be as close to you as we can, ready and waiting for you.
‘This powerful night you will be able to breathe without us, but it will not last long after Zanufey’s moon sets.’
‘Thank you, friends,’ was all she could think to say. She desperately wanted them to stay. Being alone here in the gloom, in an alien hostile world was more frightening than facing Keteth. She hoped the moon would stay long in the sky. The Wykiry left, departing silently, silvery lights disappearing into the gloom.
She glanced upwards. The blue light of the moon was just visible, reaching even here, though it was faint. It gave her comfort and strength, and she focused on drawing its power down to her.
She reached for the Flow, and it came to her as easy as breathing. This power felt as if it belonged to her, and she knew what to do with it instinctively. As one with the moon, she closed her eyes and for a moment saw as the divine might see. The stars, the suns, the planets and their moons, spun around her, the dark moon, the centre of the universe. Her focus narrowed from infinity to the finite task before her.
‘Keteth!’ she cried, and released a burst of the Flow to carry her command. The energy of her cry echoed far as she released the Flow. There was no noise from her magic, but it seemed the ocean shook as indigo energy flooded from her, a great wave moving outwards in all directions whilst she remained in the centre. Her challenge was sent to the White Beast, and this time she would not run, this time she was the hunter.
For a brief moment, she wondered if the Maphraxies and their dreaded Dromoorai would feel her challenge, her use of the Flow. She didn’t care. Tonight, when the moon was full, she would not hide, she could not. Tonight all things bent to her will. To believe otherwise was to doubt, and to doubt, she knew, was to fail. Let the Maphraxies know of her existence, let them hear her challenge. Tonight would only be the first of many.
Deep within his shadowy world, still smouldering from the fury of losing the Raven Queen, Keteth felt the old magic assault him in great blows. With a roar, he moved towards the source of the call, then hesitated—she had never challenged him before.
He would destroy her rather than allow Baelthrom to have her, for she was the key to the Night Goddess, she was the Raven Queen, the Night Goddess incarnate. Without her power, he could never overcome the Immortal Lord. Tonight, great power would become his. He grinned,
accepted her challenge and surged through the ocean.
Chapter 39
Battling The Beast
ISSA felt Keteth long before she saw him. That familiar skin-crawling corrupt magic that exuded from him, and the maddening whispering voices. He was a being riddled with corruption from a lifetime built on hatred and revenge.
She steeled her heart and reached for the anger within her; for Ma and all those that had died, for her destroyed home, for the countless beings he imprisoned. She let Karshur’s vengeance touch her. Keteth had had his time, and now his reign of terror was coming to an end.
‘You!’ he cried, his words boomed in the depths somewhere far below her. Incredulous laughter echoed around her. ‘You come for me? Oh no, my pretty pet, it is I that come for you. So long have I waited, so long have I hunted you. You cannot hide from me, you cannot run from me here. I know who you are more than they do. The Dragon Lord cannot help you, but I can.’ Insane giggles echoed around her.
In the gloom his monstrous body moved, wiggling through the water like a snake slithering towards its prey. His desire smothered her like syrup, and his presence repulsed her. Black eyes captured her in his gaze.
‘Your time is at an end Keteth,’ she said calmly as she gathered the Flow. ‘I have come to release you. There was a time when you could have been forgiven, redeemed even, but not now. Baelthrom’s powers lie beyond Maioria, you can never hope to fight him. Instead, you betray your own people and the planet that gave you life. You are nothing more than the Immortal Lord’s puppet.’
Laughter was his reply and anger bloomed within her. Stoking that anger into fury, she slipped Karshur from its sheath. It was hot, its hatred a living force. Keteth saw it and ceased his laughter, black eyes flickered between her and the dagger, the game had shifted.
‘Is that the best you have?’ Keteth snarled. ‘Did you yourself not curse death when she stole the ones you love away from you? Do you remember how it feels to know death can never be beaten?’
She frowned despite herself, he spoke words of truth. A pang of uncertainty dampened her anger.
‘Ahhh, you don’t even know who or what you are,’ he laughed. Emboldened by her hesitation he moved closer. ‘I could show you who you are. There is a way, a path beyond death where one can exist free of it. It’s not Baelthrom’s cursed immortality, but something much more. Zanufey herself is afraid.’
She tried to control her emotions but doubt crept into her heart. “His tricks are many,” the fairy’s words reminded her. In the ocean she heard the voices of the dead singing, begging for their release, and the dagger burst into white light. She stilled her emotions and hardened her heart.
‘Recognise the dagger do you, Keteth?’ she said in a cold voice as she quietly pooled the Flow within her, becoming a reservoir of power. ‘Forged by an elf long ago to serve as your slayer. I come here today for the thousands you have slaughtered and enslaved. Your time is over Keteth. I am the voice of vengeance and its deliverer.’
She forced the Flow from her. White-hot destructive fire exploded into him, taking him by surprise. He screamed in pain as the heat torched his flesh, but in a blink, as easily as she had done, he returned the white flames. His speed caught her completely off-guard. It was then that she realised she fought an ancient monster, and she had no experience at all.
She raised her hand and extinguished the flames, but could not stop the force of the blow. Down she plunged before she could form a shield. She let the fury consume her—the heat of her rage surprised her as she shut all else out.
He assaulted her mind. It felt like a hundred needles driving into her skull. She gripped her head thinking it would tear apart, tasted the blood that came from her nose and mouth. She found where he gripped her. Tiny magical hooks embedded deep within her skull. She pulled on the Flow and blasted him and his hooks out of her mind.
He came at her again with fire, but The Flow moved to do her bidding at the speed of thought, far faster than anything she had practised in Freydel’s study, and his flames never reached her.
Everything he threw at her she threw back. Red lightning and blue flickered between them as she fought for greater control of the Flow. Any other night, without the magic of the dark moon, she knew she would not have stood a chance against the Master Wizard.
The sea boiled with heat, then froze with ice under her attack. Then Keteth formed a wall that, no matter what she tried, she could not seem penetrate. Without pause, she sent wave after wave of destructive magic at the wall; fire, ice, and rock, thundered against it.
A crack appeared, then another. With a cry of triumph, she watched it shatter. But as it fell a hundred black tendrils flooded out and engulfed her. She couldn’t see anything, a plague of tiny black worms with razor teeth snapped into her flesh. The pain was agony. She struggled to think and command the Flow. Fire… worms… The worms burst into fire, but as soon as they were gone, another hundred came. Again she sent the flames but still more came until the sea was thick with them.
The black worms were too many to hold back. They sunk fangs into her exposed arms and legs, and where they bit it felt like fire. She screamed, the pain made her more furious. Her struggles were useless as they drew themselves together to bind her hands and feet. They tore at her hand, trying to make her release Karshur, but the dagger forced her to grip it tightly.
She thrashed and cried out, the sea was turning red with her blood, but she could not release the dagger. Gritting her teeth she tried to think through the pain, but the worms were joining one another and becoming bigger stronger worms tightening around her in a crushing embrace.
The dagger pulsed with rage, its desire for Keteth was quite aside from her own will, and she felt it begin to work its own magic now faced with the true purpose of its existence. It angled downward and sliced away the worms binding her wrists. Keteth screamed as if his own body had been cut. Using the dagger she reached down and sliced the worms binding her legs. They fell away and disintegrated as if they had never been.
Fatigue gnawed at her and she bled from a thousand tiny wounds, but she did could not hesitate and wait for his next assault. She formed a great silver shard of ice and hurled it at him. But he was quick, and to her horror his body fragmented around the deadly shard, only to reform once more when it had passed.
Her flames surrounded him, searing his re-formed flesh, but only briefly, and he laughed as he extinguished them easily. On and on she fought, ceaseless waves of destructive magic, anything she could think of she tried, partly to keep him away from her and partly trying to destroy him. But her foe was quick and experienced, and very clever. For each of her attacks it seemed he could evade and attack at the same time. The fatigue grew.
She was not stronger than Keteth, this she painfully knew, she was woefully inexperienced in every way, but tonight on this night of the full blue moon of the Night Goddess, surely she had a chance.
In a change of tactic, he ignored her wall of flame, and lunged through it towards her, a hurtling white mass of muscle. Caught off-guard, she dived down to avoid the brunt of the blow. She did not get far enough away. There came a sickening crunch before the pain tore up her spine and she was sent spinning.
Dazed, she grappled with the dagger, trying to stab at him with blows strengthened by magic, but each strike was knocked away by one of his many lashing tentacles. Black eyes loomed before her and in them she saw the souls of the dead looking back at her. She tore her eyes away. He sunk his teeth into her shoulder. Her screams were gurgles as his poison flooded her veins, every cell recoiling in revulsion. Her blood was dark red swirls before her eyes as she fought a desperate battle for consciousness.
She was playing his game, and down here in his domain he was winning, he always did. She closed her eyes and behind her lids the faces of the dead within Karshur haunted her; their hands reaching up to her through the bars of their prison, all clamouring for release.
She cried at them to stop, longing to help them, wishin
g they would help her, but madness clawed at her, fragmented her thoughts, and the poison stilled her will. Unable to move, Keteth dragged her down into the darkness of his lair.
The darkness cleared. She was no longer in water but chained to the grey wall of a cell. The air was so thin and putrid it made her gasp. Her arms and legs were covered in blood, and though her wounds were not deep, they stung painfully. She drew her knees to her chest and shivered. Her robe was in shreds that barely covered her, the feeling of vulnerability made her sick to the stomach.
In front of her appeared a tall figure in a long grey cloak, and a hunch that bent him over on one side. Keteth’s laugh came from the cloaked figure, and his body shook with mirth. She glimpsed his hideous face partially covered by a hood. Thin red lips pulled back over pointed black teeth. His flesh as a man was the same as when he was a monster, slick white and lumpy.
Behind him was a small window, though there was no view, it seemed as if it was just painted on the wall. Something was scratching on the outside as if trying to get in, but Keteth did not notice, he was transfixed by her, his prey.
‘Powerful aren’t we,’ he chuckled, ‘but maybe not so powerful now, I think.’ Suddenly he was towering over her without moving. He murmured a word and the poison in her body moved towards him, flowing out of her wounds in long tendrils of black ribbons as if being drawn out by a magnet. The feeling was of needles being driven into her wounds and she screamed. Her stomach heaved and she retched as the poison left her, taking with it yet more of her strength. She slumped in exhaustion when it was done.
He reached a bone-thin hand towards her. She cringed away and clung to the wall. Deathly cold fingers grasped her throat, draining her warmth, and she hung there spent in his grasp. Here, in his domain, she had no power. The dagger was gone, as was her ring and the bracelet Ely had given to her. She had been stripped of everything. There was no way out, there was no escape.
Night Goddess (The Goddess Prophecies Book 1) Page 39