by JK Cooper
What is the ‘fractured’? she asked Eira.
Five rivers, five races. Five that once were whole.
Several lines of symbols on the page illuminated. She moved her finger to them and read.
The Sköllaer, as shepherds of the Five, shall find an One who mends the broken, a Restorer born of dichotomy who rises in the summer of her youth; robed in the garments of Ascension by petition, she shall cause the rivers to be confluent, not as five among one, but the birth of a new river. And this river shall shape the world in the image of those who follow her.
The ground roiled below Shelby, and she felt jolts of energy. As the coldness deepened, she shivered, and the chaos of battle around her became muted.
As the magic of the earth, light, and air was the first to fracture, so shall it first be gathered.
The magic of earth, light, and air . . . of earth. The pulsing in the ground. The energy . . . Shelby reached out to the veins of the world—the ley lines—and plunged her mind into them. A torrent of power flooded into her and she knew this shouldn’t be possible; it wasn’t her domain as a Lycan.
It is the domain of the Summer Omega, Eira said. Ascend, Thyra.
Tapping this power—the magic of the Druid and Bandruí—made her vision shake at the edges. She startled at a sudden realization. This wasn’t the first time she had done this.
Odessa. Nicholas. She had drawn on the ley lines then and not known it, amplifying her projections. That’s why I passed out. That, she realized, was how her projections could kill.
More text from the Isluxua illuminated itself. The first piece of the fractured shall blaze into life through fires of wrath by ascent.
She heard something. A voice she knew.
“Shelby.”
Her dad. The Hunter. My protector. She turned to face him, and he backed away from her, shock on his face. And beside him, she saw her mother, the same as she had seen when Lucas kidnapped her.
A Restorer, Shelby thought, born of dichotomy. Born . . . of contrast, of opposites . . . of a Hunter . . . and a wolf.
You are wrong, Eira, Shelby said to her wolf. I do not need to rise and become Thyra. She could not be the Restorer. Shelby let the Isluxua fall to the ground. Thyra needed to rise in me.
The pulsing of the ley lines—that fractured piece of magic trapped in them from eons ago that Druids had been given stewardship over—spread down Shelby’s arms through her veins like lava.
“. . . shall blaze into life through fires of wrath. . .” Shelby screamed something primal as lightning split the sky. The wind howled a discordant cry.
Bryanne was yelling something barely audible above the storm and din of battle. “I consent! I consent!”
“. . . through fires of wrath by ascent . . .”
In Shelby’s right hand formed a scythe from golden light, and in her left, stalks of wheat. She gripped the cold wood of the scythe’s handle—the snath—and deep red veins sprawled out along the arced blade. In the center of the blade, a glowing white symbol of a tree limb that bowed parallel to the curve of the blade along with two intertwining vines wrapping around it appeared.
The symbol of the Druid and Bandruí, Eira said.
Even the grain of the snath felt ancient in Shelby’s grip.
“. . . one who mends the broken, a Restorer . . .”
Shelby Brooks unlocked the first key of Ascension, restoring the first piece of that which was fractured eternities ago.
Two Lycans charged her, running lightly across the ground with lethality in their wake. They snarled viciously. She eyed them coolly, waited for them to come closer, then spun 180º down to a knee. The scythe flashed through the air in a wide arc as she whirled. It sliced through the advancing wolves cleanly, and their bodies glowed with red lesions before disintegrating to embers, blown back by the gales emanating from Shelby. The rain snuffed them out to mere ashes.
More attacked her. She let loose the stalks of wheat, and by the stem of the snath, whirled the scythe in a blur of speed, as if it had become a bladed windmill. She took one wolf as it leaped for her, another as it tried to flank her, and a third with an uppercut thrust, the blade splitting it from sternum to snout. Each turned to embers, floating in the air for only seconds before becoming ash.
Mareus felt the first key unlock and took back control from Viersin. He shifted to human and found the silhouette of his reincarnated mother wielding a scythe with red veins against his pack. They burned when she struck them, the magic of the Druids boiling blood and tissue.
He smiled. Now, Athena. Rise. He felt his daughter’s response.
The pouncing of Skotha’s thunderous charge rang through the ground.
Enough of this game!
Mareus spun, backhanding him with twice the power he had used against Elias. But Skotha caught the blow, its terrible momentum impaling his hand on Skotha’s fangs. Two thousand pounds per square inch of bladed pressure clenched down on his hand. Mareus screamed.
Bryanne Desmond gave her consent to the Goddess as Shelby unlocked the first key. It was Bryanne’s right to bestow permission as a shepherd of the first key. The symbols of her race appeared in Shelby’s hands, the scythe and stalks of wheat. Oh Goddess, I pray I have chosen correctly.
Something tugged on her awareness. The ley lines jittered with turbulence, as if convulsing. Ice stabbed her. She turned, searching for Athena on the other side of the creek bed. There, in the midst of a dozen circling wolves, she stood naked and bleeding from several wounds. Steam rose from the bullet holes, and she saw silver rounds being expelled from those wounds, then sealing.
Athena’s eyes were locked onto Shelby, but her mind . . . her mind was in the veins of magic.
She’s syphoning the power. How?
Bubba PK’d his silver ball bearings, now covered with carnage, toward the Lycan that bore down on Trish. His attack was too late and too weak. The bearings hit the wolf but did little damage. Trish, completely ensconced in her weaving of spells beside Chelsea, Amanda, and Sean, never knew what hit her. She was gone before Bubba could cry a warning. But of course, he was too exhausted to scream. Chelsea turned to the wolf who had just killed Trish, wove her hands, and the wolf’s eyes went wide. Without another thought, Chelsea pivoted away, moving on to other targets. Bubba saw the wolf roll onto its side, flopping wildly with spasming limbs before finally going still.
Suffocated. Better than starving to death.
Bubba’s joints ached. He saw his ribs through his skin and wondered if he had even consumed his sinews and cartilage to keep fighting. His head spun, wondering what he had just been thinking about as he fainted.
Now, Athena, her father said through the pack link. Rise.
Athena did rise, her wounds smarting like nothing else, but she focused through the pain. She shifted to human and pushed the rounds from her body. Even as they exited, the silver stung. Many of the Advent pack flocked to her and circled in a ring of protection.
Across the creek bed, Shelby spun a Druid’s scythe. The first key had been unlocked. Athena’s moment had arrived. She reached out with her Omega influence, finding the bond that Shelby used to link herself to the ley lines. Instead of attacking the bond this time, she latched onto it, becoming a parasite. She then drew on the ley lines through Shelby, pooling the power within her; for she was also an Omega, the first and only born to the Prime of the Lycan race.
There is power in the First of a kind. Born of an Immortal Wolf of Alsvoira and a human woman of Earth, she was also a dichotomy.
As the power of the first restored piece of the fractured welled within her, Athena began to glow. Fire raced down her arms, to the tips of her fingers.
Now I only need consent.
Bryanne dodged the first clawed swipe but not the second. The Lycan raked its punishment down her back, tearing her leather jacket and skin. Bryanne cried out and sprawled face first into the mud, dropping her sidearm. She’d had the shot lined up on Athena’s head, slowing down the world again a
s she focused, but she hadn’t watched her flank. Snarls erupted as another werewolf lunged into her attacker and throated it with a swiftness that appeared nonchalant.
Gennesaret, Bryanne thought, recognizing the coat of the wolf who had saved her years ago, and now again. I guess I owe you twice over. She struggled to catch her breath, but the wound at her back stung every time her lungs expanded.
Gennesaret nodded to her before chasing after the next Advent wolf. Bryanne searched on the ground for her weapon, but the muddy terrain must have swallowed it. The rain turned cold now, giving her chills as it hit the nape of her neck; but the warmth dripping down the small of her back worried her. She patted the creek bed, searching on her knees for the pistol when she froze. On the opposite shoreline, a figure approached the luminescent Athena, one she knew intimately. The outline of her figure, the cadence of her walk.
No, they told me you were dead.
But they hadn’t. Not really.
“Ava!”
The circling wolves parted for Bryanne’s Bandruí sister as she approached Athena. She paused long enough to look at Bryanne.
“I’m sorry,” Ava mouthed, and Bryanne saw the regret in her eyes.
“What . . . what are you doing?” Bryanne cried. “Ava, don’t!”
Ava turned away from her then stared up into the torrential rain. “I consent!”
Bryanne found her gun.
Shelby had Ascended, reforging the first piece of the ancient magic that had once been whole. She swung her scythe, whistling in the night as it split rain drops and found targets. The weapon seemed to intuit danger, almost reacting on its own. Another swift slash sent an Advent wolf into a scalding rage as its body floated away in glowing bits of orange and red. Still connected to the ley lines, she felt a throbbing course into her as she wielded the Druid weapon. This scythe was not a mere tool for harvesting in the fields; no, this instrument had been weaponized, the metal honed to an edge on both the under and topside of the crescent blade.
Then, she saw Athena radiating a dark glow. Her eyes burned a violent scarlet color, and Shelby realized what was happening.
I don’t understand how, she said to Eira.
She felt her wolf’s bewilderment. It . . . shouldn’t be possible.
A woman, unseen in the battle until now, came to Athena’s side. “I consent,” she screamed to the dark sky.
Athena Ascended. Into her right hand materialized a double-bladed scythe with a snath of knotted and marbled black. Three stalks of wheat appeared in her left, but she dismissed them immediately and brought the scythe up to inspect it. It was shorter than the one Shelby wielded, but with an opposite pointing blade at each of the snath. The blades themselves were crescents but ribbed across the topside. She smiled with devious anticipation.
“Thank you, Ava. You’ve proven most cooperative.”
“Your father said he would release my daughter from his pack. He said this was all I had to do.”
Athena smiled with feigned sympathy at Ava. “It is.” With an abrupt upward thrust, she drove the point of one of the blades under Ava’s sternum and into her heart. Ava’s mouth opened wide, but no scream came. The lesions did, however, burning white and blue instead of red, opening up from deep within. Her body was no more than ashes in moments.
Athena locked her eyes on Shelby.
Skotha tasted the blood of Mareus’s snared hand wash over his tongue. Mareus grunted, sneering as he tried to free his limb. He slashed at Skotha with his half-shifted free hand and tore Skotha’s dark coat, just behind his ear, but Skotha would not yield.
It is your right, Daeglan, he said to Kale. Claim it.
Kale accepted, and took back control, feeling the twinge of sadness of his Immortal Wolf as he relinquished his powerful body back to his human. Immediately, Kale sensed the world around him again: the rain on his coat, the mud beneath his paws, the pulsing wound on the side of his neck, the taste of blood and flesh in his mouth.
This is the hand that killed my father.
Kale growled and wrenched and tore, until bone gave way. Mareus wailed as he shifted to his wolf and sprinted across the creek bed that now trickled with flowing muddy streams. Kale thought he saw tinges of red in those rivulets. He spat the bloodied chunk of ruined flesh from his mouth. When the lightning flashed next, he saw the outline of a body lying in mud.
His father.
Shelby saw Sophie Chandler fall to a threesome of Advent wolves. Paul, her husband, was there a second later, but Shelby felt the pain. She sent forth comfort and healing to Sophie, not just for her physical wounds, but for the loss of Sadie from the pack. Paul nursed her up with her snout, but her stance was shaky as she rose.
Kale had gone to his father’s body, howling his grief. She still could not feel their bond, and the flailing tendrils of it in her heart had fallen quiet. How she yearned for him, his intermingled presence and spirit with her own; but that melding was cold and gone. I still love him. So much.
Gennesaret panted as another Advent wolf died at her paws, then laid down beside it as it turned human, and howled. Karina Kenzie. Tommy shifted and ran to his sister, hugging her body to his. Genn did not attack. Her heart felt like it might shatter, and for all of Shelby’s projected comfort, she felt like Genn’s heart only held together by the thinnest of threads.
“Shel,” her dad said. He had hesitation on his face. Fear.
He’s afraid of me? What had she become that even her dad feared her?
“Shel, we have to go,” he said.
Rachel Bingham lay naked on the far shoreline of the creek bed, face down, unmoving. Shelby’s heart singed with regret. Joe Mckinney also lay dead. She heard Chelsea crying behind her and knew that Trish had been killed. Gunfire still rang out in deafening bursts, making Shelby flinch suddenly at the absolute annihilation around her.
Not far from her rested the Isluxua, its thick leather cover scored and muddied. Bryanne recovered it, but she was also in great pain, blood dripping down her pants from a wound at her back, mingling with the rain. She looked at Grant, then to Shelby, and shook her head. Shelby thought she knew her meaning. They could not hold much longer. Across the creek bed, Mareus, in his wolf, limped over to his daughter who now wielded a double-bladed scythe, and stared wickedly at Shelby. Mareus howled a deep tone and dozens of howls in the distance answered him. More Advent wolves.
Grant was right. They had to retreat.
“Dad?” Shelby said. “Why do I always end up naked in these fights?”
Her dad chuckled, just once. She saw in his eyes that he wasn’t sure they would make it. He gave her a sad smile.
Then, Dakota rushed Athena. Shelby snapped her head toward him, feeling his rage, but also his nobility.
Dakota! No!
It is my honor as pack elder, he said through the pack link. Not a yell. No hint of anxiety. Just the calm tenor she had come to know and love from him. You will cleanse the world with tears of mercy, Ascendant One. I know this of you.
Dakota sprang for Athena. See the world anew, Shelby. Save them.
Athena swiped her scythe through Dakota’s throat. His body crumbled to embers.
Shelby’s tears flowed live rivers, and as they struck the earth, she slashed the ground with her scythe. A seam opened in the wet soil, extending left and right, spreading wider until it became a chasm.
To me!
Kale. The Call of an Alpha, the First Alpha of the Prime Pack of Alsvoira. He had shifted and was carrying his father’s body and Jonas Abbot’s over his shoulders, his muscles flexing with effort as he ran, but his face was stoic. The pack responded, following him away from the conflict as the chasm grew wider, separating the bulk of the two packs.
Ackerman, limping badly, ran along Kale’s side. Chenoa howled her goodbye to her ancestor, then sprinted after Kale. Gennesaret, still in her wolf, glanced at Shelby, then followed her son. Sean and Chelsea wove wards in the air, and the lip of the chasm gleamed with a silver sheen. Athena, on the
far edge of the chasm, dared to touch the altered soil, and recoiled.
Not just an illusion, Shelby said to Eira.
The silver-charged soil spread further from the edges in both directions, and both packs withdrew from it.
Bryanne held the Isluxua as she hobbled over to Grant.
“Time to go, kiddo,” Grant said. He had an unconscious, frail-looking Bubba across his shoulders. Chelsea, Sean, Amanda and Mayor Gittrick backed away from the fray, their arms crossed facing outward, ready to weave more spells if needed. The Hunters laid down suppressive fire as they retreated.
It was time to go. Shelby shifted to her wolf and the scythe vanished as she released her hold on the ley lines. She ran after her Alpha.
Mareus shifted back to human from his wolf next to his daughter. He held his ruined hand against his naked body, not responding to the throbbing pain.
Athena’s scythe dematerialized as Kale’s pack ran away on the other side of the chasm that had once been a creek bed. The rain lightened to a drizzle.
“Look at them, Father,” Athena said. “They have their tails between their legs.” She took his mangled hand in hers. Mareus allowed the action, though it stung something fierce. Only his index finger and thumb remained, and little more than a nub of his middle finger.
“What have they done to you, Father?” She kissed his hand, then sent forth healing to close the open wounds.
“It does not matter, daughter,” he said. “You wielded the power of the first key. You have succeeded in solidifying the Advent. It is time to activate all our assets throughout the world. It is time, Athena, to make their cities burn.”
“Which race is next?”
Mareus thought of the page in the Isluxua with the five symbols, one for each key of Ascension. The tree limb in the shape of a scythe, the symbol of the Druid, had been awakened. Four remained. A serpent wrapped in fire. A bow and arrow. A pair of wings with a sword between them. And the side profile of a werewolf’s head wearing a helm.