Page 22 of Up from the Earth (Equinox Seasons Duet #1)

Twenty-One

Rise To The Occasion. Seek Out Your Villain & Face Him.

T he air smelled like rotting meat—the too sweet, too sharp scent cutting through my awareness as if I’d stepped into a fresh burial ground.

As I blinked my eyes open, I only wished that the sight that followed would have been half as bad as the smell.

Bodies littered the ground, the tear behind a massive throne of corpses pulsing with vile energy that seeped through with each second. Limbs and shredded torsos decorated the area around the priest’s feet, a tribute paid to a creature that desired only torment and viscera.

My stomach lurched, threatening to send yellow bile scattering across the vacant faces that watched me from beneath my boots. Stringy protrusions shot up from the dry earth, their slick angles cropping up through the cracks like weeds. A burning effigy wove itself from their lengths, creating a symbol I could recognize easily—if never seen in this context.

“He has defiled his own sigil. Why would he do such a thing?”

The Queen stood beside me, taking my hand as we roamed our stare over the hellish landscape before us. It had been so altered from its original state, the infection of that realm beyond the tear growing stronger.

“He is a defamation, a blasphemy. Paine can only be what animates him, and that I believe is a literal interpretation of his name.”

Pain .

It was undeniable—the reversed cross, bisected with split bones and decorated with tongues nailed to the surface—a visceral piece of evidence. Trepidation snaked beneath my skin, a voice that begged me to flee, to turn back and never look upon this place again.

But as the heat licked at my skin, I drew the long blade I had been gifted from its sheath at my hip and squared my shoulders.

“And I thought you might never come…” Appearing from a bridge that reached from within the depths of that tormented plane to where we stood on this one was Father Paine, his wretched form only worse for the time we’d not seen him. “... Witch .”

The crescendoing cry of thousands of souls filtered out as he hovered closer to the hill where I held the line with The Beast King. Screams of merciless suffering and malignant delight echoed through the still air on this side, bringing with them a hot knife-like wind that slashed through my cheeks.

Souls that did not belong to the punished realm begged for release, innocence swept into the priest’s hell so that he might feast on their miserable agony.

“But where are my manners? Allow me to truly welcome you to my kingdom.” Paine raised his hands, the ground shaking as it erupted with gargantuan chains where the spindles of vine-like growth had been. “A kingdom, you’ll see, of retribution and punishment of my decree.”

Smoke choked the air, making me cough as The Queen stepped in front of me, holding their cloak of shadow over my form to block the poisonous gas. The natural world felt eons away, replaced by these clouds of smelting iron and pilfered minerals. Industrial and sweltering, noxious and set only in shades of molten red and charred black, the work of the priest had corrupted any tie the World of Below had to the forest here.

“Stop this! You are mad!” I cried out, my throat raw and burning. “This is not for you. You must go back!”

As fast as a blink, Father Paine whooshed through the air, hovering before me in a fog of black smoke. “I will go nowhere! Your kind thinks they can take from me what is mine? What I demand?! Bah!”

His hand snaked forward, gripping the upper edge of my breast plate, his skin corroding the metal where it touched it.

“It is you—you and your king —who will flee into the abyss with your fucking tails between your legs.” That hideous tongue licked over his teeth, a slow trail that pulled a crimson thread of saliva along with it. “Unless you’re more interested in doing what your kind does best?”

Pulling myself back as I took hold of his wrist and pushed against his hold, I set my jaw, glaring. “Which is?”

“Why, taking your punishment on your back—or in any number of other positions I might demand. After all, you are all just whores. Women, witches, the corrupted plague of mortals who think they know better than God, than me . Fucked to death with a hellish poker stabbed through your holes would serve you all right. The slop of your intestine on the ground would be a fucking glorious sound.”

Quickly, as quickly as I could muster, I plunged the blade up through the bottom of the priest’s jaw, the point coming through his tongue where it stuck, the fleshy meat writhing in his mouth like a skewered worm.

Paine’s hollers melted into the air in a sloping screech, a sound that was initially too high-pitched for my ears to comprehend but then blisteringly loud. I shrank back, and warmth immediately dripped down divots near my jaw.

Ringing was everywhere, and at once, I was flung backward, launched through the arm by a wild strike delivered to my chest. I landed in a heap, my ribs aching as the world around me blurred. Thankfully, the armor took a heavy bit of the damage, if the blow had left the center dented and pressing into my sternum. I shook my head, searching the field in front of me for The Queen.

Shit .

At the edge of the hill, The Queen held her ground against the priest, but her attacks did nothing. The dark wave of energy emitted from her only served to hold him back, allowing me the moment to collect myself. It was a small boon, but one that I would take. I needed to refocus. I needed to find another point of attack on the deformed monstrosity’s body.

Groping across the blistered earth, I padded for my sword, that damned unfamiliar weapon that felt clunky and enormous in my hands. It wasn’t there.

Snapping my attention back to the fight, I could see it lodged in the monster’s jaw, a toothpick stuck in his mandible and seeming to cause him no issues. Dammit . I hauled myself off the ground, wheezing as the dent in my armor restricted my breathing. I couldn’t keep it on, and my time of cover was quickly flying away. Even The Beast King couldn’t last forever against whatever Father Paine had become.

“I’m coming,” I whispered, reaching over my shoulder for the buckle that secured the breastplate on my left. “I’m coming.”

Unfastening it, I went to the one on the right, and then my protection dropped to the ground with a thud. The dirt beneath it cracked farther, heat wafting up from some distant place past the black. I could breathe, and did so—sucking in a lungful that burned as much as it replenished—but I was vulnerable now.

“Mistress.”

The word was small, spoken in my head in a voice no bigger than a thimble. I scanned the battle zone around me. There was nothing up at the distant edge of the hill, nothing behind me in the grayed-out landscape that stretched for eternity.

And then I felt it.

Something tugged at the hem of my dress, and I looked down. My eyes flared wide, pooling with tears as my jaw dropped.

“Cern?”

The small rabbit leaned back onto his hind legs, blinking his dark eyes up at me. “I am here. Tell me what I can do.”

“Oh, Gods,” I knelt at his feet, reaching out to stroke my fingers across the silky fur of his back, “I don’t know. I can’t get near him. I have no weapon or protection now that my plate has been damaged. I can’t feel the earth, Cern. It’s so far away, and I…I need it back.”

I’d never been very confident in this endeavor, and whatever little shred of it I’d had was failing.

“I am of nature, Mistress. Connect to me. Call up what you need.”

It seemed ridiculous. He was a rabbit, a tiny little bunny against the forces of a profound evil that even The Beast King couldn’t affect. But what the hell did I have to lose?

Taking him in my arms, I pulled him against my chest, connecting to that heartbeat that we both shared. He was of nature, and wasn’t I? Had I forgotten that in all this chaos? I wasn’t simply Cerridwen. I was everything that I’d been through, everything I’d learned. The power of instinct and devotion and wisdom rang in my bones like the first bird calls of spring.

I need you, Cern. I need you to be strong with me. We can let him destroy…everything.

A rush of wind lifted us through the air, taking us several feet above the ground. I was tossed up, and the warmth of new growth extending from beneath the soil gripped and bolstered me. Cern levitated there before me, emanating a nearly blinding glow. I held up my hand to shield my eyes, peering through my fingers.

And he changed.

Cern elongated, expanded, and evolved. At once, he was a massive creature of emboldened sinew and smooth gray hair. Crawling through the air toward him, I climbed aboard his back, mounting my unorthodox steed. He shook his head as I settled over his back, the connection between us resonating through my blood.

I could sense it. That bit of earth, of air and water and fire. I could channel them—with the help of my familiar.

“This is hardly what I expected.” Cern’s long legs carried him through the volcanic sky toward Father Paine. “But I shall fight with you to the end, Mistress.”

“She can’t keep that barrier up, Cern. Be ready for the shockwave.”

As if on cue, it faltered, my Queen knocked down to her knees as the shimmering darkness was shattered into fragments of the afterlife. Father Paine reached forward with a spindly arm, his fingers too long for his body, as large and larger than his torso. The clawed appendages seized hold of her hair, coiling the unending length of her braid around his fist before throwing her from the hill.

“No!”

Digging my heels into Cern’s sides, I urged him onward, a direct rush for the priest. I held out my hands, channeling that wild essence I felt between us. A vine shot forward from my arm, wrapped around the lower half and lancing straight through the air to Paine’s head. The tip twisted on itself to form a crude point, resembling my blade. It drove into his temple, knocking him backward as he floated.

Blood dripped down the side of his face, putrid and coagulated, the color of spoiled excretions. But then a spike from below rocketed up toward us, and Cern had to bank hard to the right, nearly flinging me off into the pits below. I clung to his fur, knowing it had to ache where I yanked on his skin, but I held my place.

“Get me down there.”

Without hesitation, Cern maneuvered through the weeds that sprang through the ground, chain and iron facsimiles of the natural order. We weaved in and out until we hovered in the space in front of Father Paine. My back was to the uncorrupted horizon while the priest’s pit of hell swelled behind the tear he’d created.

“You will not touch them again.” I sent daggers through my stare into the abomination.

“Oh, ho, ho. The little bitch found a horse to ride into battle.” He slowly withdrew my blade, his tongue flapping in his mouth as he did so. “Oh, wait. That’s a fucking rabbit. And I touch whatever I want.”

The sword zoomed across the sky toward me as Father Paine hurled it from his short distance away. I flung up a shield of wind, but as it flew end over end, the point settled in the gust wall, digging in, refusing to back down. It persisted, and my strength was faltering, too much used to merely keep Cern and me aloft.

“It’s going to penetrate.” My heart sank a second from the moment my magic snapped apart. “Duck!”

Time felt as though it froze. I could hear someone screaming from fathoms below me as the air whizzed by my face. Cern dove down with everything he had, turning his body in mid-air so that he existed between me and the sharp end of the incoming blade. We moved quicker and quicker, my being humming with the desperate need to get out of range.

The earth rushed toward us, its deteriorated features growing in clarity as the two of us hurled closer to another end. Hitting the craggy stone would serve us no better than being run through with a sword. Though, Cern might be able to roll at the last moment, saving us from the worst damage.

“Cerridwen!”

I knew that voice, the call of my Queen, and I peered over Cern’s side to see her reaching out from me from a writing hole of blackened arms that clung to her.

Thwump .

Momentum veered us from our course, and it sent Cern flying at a perpendicular angle that ended as we collided with something hard. Suddenly, he was lying on top of me. I put my hands to his side, feeling the growing wet and warm that oozed between my fingers. Shoving did nothing but cause me to scream, the pain in my stomach a searing tear as I tried to push him off.

Only then did I look down.

The hilt of the sword protruded from his chest, and I knew at once that it had gone straight through him…and into me. I couldn’t sense his heartbeat, mine slowing. The world blurred, my fingers growing cold, and my head too heavy to hold up. Everything was quiet, and where once there was tremendous pain, it all just melted away. I could feel…nothing.

Horror appeared above me, a tongue dangling from a skinless mouth. “So much for the reign of the spring queen. When you change, when my pit eats you up and seeps into your bones, you can help me tear the flesh from your beloved Beast King.”

It was all cold and dark, and then it was all simply gone .