Page 28 of Bound By the Beast Man
DIANA
I see him, a magnificent, wounded lion, holding the line against a tide of darkness. He is bleeding from a dozen different wounds, his movements growing slower, but he does not yield. He is buying me time.
Time I must not waste.
The power I summoned, the raw, golden light that saved him from a killing blow, still thrums in my veins, a wild and terrifying river of energy. But a wild river cannot build a dam. I need control. I need a weapon.
My mind races, desperately searching through the fragmented memories of my long imprisonment. I sift through the years of hearing their hissing voices, their endless, hypnotic chanting as they maintained the spell on my coffin.
The runes they carved into the glass, the words they spoke to bind my life force—they are all there, burned into my memory. A desperate, brilliant idea takes hold. The very magic they used to cage me can be used to trap them.
The lock can be reforged into a key, and the key into a weapon.
I close my eyes, shutting out the chaos of the battle. I focus inward, calling on every scrap of magical knowledge I unknowingly absorbed.
The words of their binding chant come to my lips, but I twist them, reversing their meaning, turning a spell of containment into a spell of petrification. I feel the power answer my call, the golden light of my own life force weaving together with the dark, ancient structure of their magic.
My hands move on their own, tracing glowing, complex patterns in the air.
A vortex of energy builds around me, and I feel both terrified of its immensity and fiercely, savagely powerful.
I open my eyes. Corvak is on one knee now, a deep gash on his ribs weeping blood onto the snow. The Purna are closing in, their faces alight with cruel, triumphant smiles.
They are about to overwhelm him. I have only one chance. I pull all of the power I have gathered into my chest, a burning, incandescent sun of my own making.
With a raw scream that is a mixture of all my pain, my grief, and my rage, I unleash it.
The spell does not fly from my hands as a simple blast. It erupts outward as a net of golden, runic light.
It moves with impossible speed, ignoring Corvak completely, and slams into the two witches who are closest to him.
They shriek, a sound of pure agony and utter disbelief that is cut short with a horrifying, grinding crack.
Their beautiful, graceful forms contort and twist, their limbs locking at unnatural angles.
Their luminous skin hardens and thickens, the color draining away to be replaced by a sickly, mottled stone-grey. They are frozen in place, their faces eternal masks of their final moment of terror. The spell has worked.
They are no longer living things. They are grotesque statues, a horrifying monument to their own evil. The remaining Purna, including the silver-haired leader, stop dead in their tracks, their mouths agape, their attacks forgotten.
They stare, first at their fallen sisters, and then at me. Their expressions are no longer of arrogant cruelty, but of pure, unadulterated shock and fear.
The silver-haired leader looks at me, and I see fear in her cold, violet eyes. She recognizes her own magic, twisted and turned back against her with a power she does not understand.
I am no longer their specimen, no longer their stolen prize. I am an unknown, a monster of their own creation that has just bared its teeth.
“This is not over, half-breed,” she hisses, her voice dripping with a venom that is now laced with that fear.
She makes a sharp gesture, and she and the remaining Purna retreat, their forms dissolving back into the writhing, unnatural shadows from which they came. The clearing falls silent.
The oppressive magic dissipates, and the night is once again just a quiet, snow-filled wood. The only sounds are the soft crackle of our dying fire and Corvak’s harsh, ragged breathing. We are alive. We are alone.
The moment the last of them vanishes, the immense power that has been flooding through me is gone.
The magical backlash hits me, a violent, ripping sensation, my very soul is being torn from my body. All of my strength, all of my energy, is ripped away in an instant. The world tilts violently on its axis.
My vision swims with a dizzying kaleidoscope of black spots. My knees buckle, no longer able to support my own weight. I am falling.
Strong arms catch me before I hit the ground. Corvak is there, wounded and bleeding, but holding me. I collapse into his embrace, the familiar, safe scent of him filling my senses, a grounding anchor in my spinning world.
His solid form is the last thing I register. My final thought before the darkness claims me is not one of fear, but of a single, soaring, triumphant realization.
We survived. Together.