Chapter 21

Clem

K eep him alive. Keep him alive. Keep him alive.

Sun’s final command echoed in my mind, but I couldn’t bring myself to move a muscle as the book of shadows dissolved into a black mist that scattered away with the rush of soldiers storming the open gate.

I was empty. Worse than empty. A cavernous tooth-filled pit had opened inside me, sucking away at everything bit by bit. The world itself lost any color, and I gazed at the rest of my lovers washed in muted shades of white, black, and gray, swarming with hopelessness as I clicked.

Even the blackness of Bracken’s blood seemed darker. And if I had more tears to cry, I would wail until I collapsed at the sight of that.

But I had nothing left.

I couldn’t contain the sorrow, anger, and fear within me anymore. And that bastard’s voice was inside my mind, taunting me.

Sacrifice, Clem. Bear her blessing well, Bracken.

I’d have to sacrifice significantly as Tsuki’s emissary. That’s what that nightwing had told me. But I was not honorable like Sun. I could not and would not bear this loss with my head held high. I couldn’t do it. Yet I knew I had to use the spell to sever the tether now.

But that isn’t what Sun told me, I thought. He said to keep him alive. But why? So that Bracken can suffer longer? I can’t do that to him. I just can’t!

But my inaction was having more or less the same effect as he wheezed, his chest fluttering, then going up and down slower and slower still. His face had twisted into something horrifying when Tsuki left him. I didn’t dare imagine where he had gone, at the lip of the hellmouth awaiting endless suffering without a shadow of a doubt.

Where we’d all end up if I didn’t act.

His tether was but a spider’s web, thin and shining, snapping. I had to break it now. I had to, or Sun, Hadi, and Kiar would die!

I reached for it, and Kiar snatched my hand away, his spots and two-toned hair more pronounced in the colorblind dystopia my eyes had glazed over to.

“No. Keep him alive,” Kiar demanded, and I shook my head, clawing at him, trying to wrench my wrist away.

“I must sever the bond! We are running out of time!” I pleaded as he shook his head vigorously.

“We go together or not at all. Just give us enough time to slay him,” Kiar pleaded, and suddenly, pressed his lips to mine.

His desperation leaked into my mouth and tasted much sweeter than the poison welling up inside. And then he was gone, dashing after Sun, hacking and slashing his way through the city guards and the demonic creatures summoned from the hellmouth portal.

I looked after him helplessly, shaking. Why were they leaving me one by one? Why were they all leaving me alone if we were meant to go together?

Sensing my distress at their absence, Hadi kneeled and took me into his arms. His white irises swam in the familiar inky black pool of his eyes, and I could not tell if it was tears or blood streaming down his face now.

“You can do this. Remember, you’re one of us. Tsuki’s emissary. We will fight, and you will defend this bond to the death.”

Hadi folded me into his chest, all four arms trembling, and I squeezed my eyes tight. I did not want to remember the last of Tsuki’s essence flowing through Bracken until she was but a wisp of moonlight.

Moonlight? I looked up and over Hadi’s shoulder and saw the moon sitting in the blue sky, a pale whisp of nothing in the daylight. So dull and exhausted.

Our mother was so very tired and blameless when the whole of Naran cursed her name for something she had never wished for.

I couldn’t bring myself to squeeze Hadi back as he released me, and I fluttered weakly to Bracken’s side. And he, too, left, charging into battle while I rested my head on my dying master’s chest.

I wished the tears would return if only to wash away the bloodstains. The tether was so weak now, each of us dying bit by bit. I reached for Bracken’s strand, not to snap it, but hold it firm, and my hands passed through it.

Like a ghost.

I closed my eyes and focused. This time, I grabbed onto it and held it.

Bracken jerked, his eyes fluttering open, and he looked at me with fear. Fear a batbeast should never have. Fear my master should never have. Especially, not toward me.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered because what else could I say? All I had left to do was prolong the inevitable.

But then, he reached for me weakly, trying, gurgling curses. And though he couldn’t say it, I read his lips slowly.

You… cannot… die… no… there… I… I will…

Another splattering mist of blood, but I received his message. Wherever the hellmouth led, he wanted to protect me from it. He wanted me to sever the bond. He wanted to protect us, even now.

Suddenly, my mood took a seismic shift that seemed to shake the earth with it. Bitterness morphed into rage and then fury, and my whole body burned, blood red, like an avenging god.

Why could we not have it all? Why should we have to forfeit a soul? We had been asked the impossible and met every challenge, and we would not die like this. There had to be something I could do.

I have to protect them!

No sooner did I think it, then Bracken finally succumbed to his injuries. I felt it, just like the first time he had died, his soul slipping from his body, the tendril in my hand slipping through my fingers. It affected me this time, making me feel instantly weak. Moments from my own demise.

“Help!” I shouted, looking up just as our invading army and the one defending the city met in a brutal wave that just… stopped.

Frozen. No, that wasn’t it. They had slowed.

Time had slowed.

Someone or something was granting me more time, but it wasn’t enough! I didn’t need time, I needed power!

“More,” I demanded, my eyes cast to the sky, to the wispy moon and bright sun, and shouted, “You will give me more!”

More power! I needed more power, and I could not take another drop from Tsuki’s heavenly springs. Not a speck of power could be gathered from the dust of their son’s earthly body. So, there was only one other eternal source, an immortal being to turn to, released from his chains, reunited with his wife through the stones Sun held.

“Give me more!” I screamed.

And he did just that.

A surge of mana flowed into me, pinpricks of light shooting through the air towards me, holding the tethered souls of hundreds of thousands in and around the capital that erupted into a pillar of red light.

I screamed. This portal was different, more powerful, as if we’d been swallowed up into something much, much worse than the hellmouth Bracken had closed and consumed on our behalf.

“Sun God Taiyo!” I shouted as the mana pierced the sky, swirling, opening. My whole body jerked in primordial terror as I looked upon his eye , his flaming eye that held the sun and the universe within it.

I screamed, shutting my own eyes as they burned. But I didn’t care. I kept shouting through the pain.

“You are a god, and we, your mediums! You will seek vengeance. You will make a bridge,” I said and was met with silence as more waves moved in slow motion, charging, my eyes stinging as I forced myself to open them and didn’t shut them again. “If not for your human creations, for us nocs, for your wife, for your son, before this world is swallowed whole! Save us! Give me the power to save them!”

Nothing. He did not respond.

I slumped, damned. But Hadi had not been punished for calling our mother a bitch, so I felt good calling upon and demanding salvation from our father. If anything, I was just ignored.

Why would Taiyo help us nocs? We were the reason his people had long suffered and his wife had been driven to madness.

“I failed,” I whispered. A moment later, a piercing pain shot through my chest.

This was it! Like the ticking of a mighty clock, life was slipping away. I threw myself over Bracken and clutched my dying hearts.

This was it! We are going to–

“Ah fuck. Next time, ask that bastard for mercy, not power. If only you knew what he flung me through. My whole body feels ravaged, Clem.”

Huh?

My eyes flew open, fixing on Bracken, who watched me with sharp eyes.

“Ahhhhhhh!” my scream of terror pitched louder, harder, and then burst into squeals of utter delight as I looked upon him.

“Master Bracken?”

“In the flesh. Next time I go through something like that, I’m staying dead. No more second chances, Clem, you hear me?” he said snarkily, his face radiant, and his wing!

Oh my. The black bile had crystalized, a wound on his shoulder scarring. His new wing was made of sheer black crystals, glittering, with the souls of tiny demons scratching and bursting inside, creating thin flaming lines of magma sealed within.

It was grotesquely glorious, utterly miraculous. My manic laughter filled the air as Bracken let me go to avoid a flaming boulder that had been shot from the battle. But he couldn’t dodge it all the way. It slammed into his side and did…

“Nothing,” I gasped as he snatched it, leaped into the air, spun, and hurled it back down to the earth, cackling all the while.

I studied him in confusion and saw it. Ripples, like time itself, had created a shield around us, and we were outside of it now. Tendrils of Taiyo’s magic filled every inch of the air. I didn’t know if that meant we’d die after the time capsule lapsed or if we’d have many, many days of nursing injuries. Either way, Taiyo had done his best.

Everyone had. All of us five, all the humans fighting with us, and all the weakened Gods. And now the rest was left to us, nocs and humans, fighting side by side.

I ascended, stronger, climbing higher than any mothian ever had. I was sure of this. And I met Bracken in the sky as we embraced and kissed, the world bursting with color again, overflowing with shades I had never seen before that couldn’t possibly be real but were.

And all of Naran seemed to stretch below us, an endless symphony of creation I had helped to protect.