Page 25 of Up from the Earth (Equinox Seasons Duet #1)
Twenty-Four
There Is No Wrath Like That Which Comes From An Injured Heart.
S creaming howled— bellowed —out from the tear. I sat mounted on my stag, the entire throng of these betrayed beings looking down on the horrific scene at the seat of Father Paine’s throne. He sat there, his body hanging lazily across the seat as he watched over his “kingdom” of agony.
It made me sick. His blasphemous self lounging about as if he had no care or concern in the world. Paine was a tumor, and he was eating away at my home.
Clearly, I had arrived here not a moment too soon. The infection seeped from this wound torn by a malicious hand, the spreading cancer creeping nearly the distance of the unending horizon. It wormed up the cliff face where we stood, almost touching the hooves of my stag.
“He has done so much in such a short time.” The mouse tucked beneath my hair and sitting atop my shoulder exuded nervous energy.
“Time is different here.” I clenched my jaw, roaming my stare over the hideous sight below for one singular thing. “Time is malleable if you know how to bend it.”
They must be here. Please. Don’t be gone. You can’t be. I know that was your magic.
A massive, shuddering pull came from the tear, and through the dusty, red tinged air floated souls, stolen from their resting places beyond her to feed the bottomless hunger of the Pit, or Father Paine. For certainly, they were one and the same now.
Heat and the rank stench of decay and burning metal consumed the air, making my eyes water. I had to find them. Ending the priest was one thing, but I could not leave this fight without my Beast King. They had to be down there, and I only hoped that they would have enough strength to return home, to me, to our son.
“Mistress,” I looked to the small boy who’d come with us, victim of the worst of Father Paine’s earthly deeds, “there.”
Following where he pointed, I saw it. Amongst the chaotic pile of skulls and broken vertebrae, some still clinging to crushed rib bones, was The King. They were chained to the mound, thick, rusted manacles clapped around their wrists and neck. I could sense their weakened state, clinging to their essence with every bit of energy they had left. It was a wonder they had managed to feel my return at all.
Oh, Gods. No…Beastie.
And as I studied them, searching their form for any sign that they might be too close to that depthless abyss, I noted the smeared blood beneath the cuffs. The near-black liquid oozed out of them slowly, and where they had always been a lithe figure, they now appeared gaunt, so much so that they could scarcely move more than an inch.
Hang on. I will free you. I will…I will end this, my King.
Snickering laughter tore through the air as my insides felt shredded by worry. I flicked my attention to the priest. He slipped up behind The King and threaded his fingers through their skull. My King hollered out, the agony lighting up the dark sky with red lightning. He was doing something vulgar and wrong, something that affected the very core of The King’s being.
And in that moment I could see that the priest had changed, too.
His grotesque arrangement was unaltered, if slightly more disturbing, his wide jaw dripping with black ichor as that tongue—now possessing a gaping hole in the center—licked over his teeth. But that was not it.
No, what had really changed about him was that he seemed larger, more imposing. He’d collected strength from the souls he’d destroyed, apparently able to feed on their trapped energy like a parasite, as well as take strength from the rightful ruler of this realm. I could sense the deep-seated hatred and arrogance within him expanding as wide as the desecrated land.
When he at last yanked his hands free, my King collapsed forward, their arms giving out as they tried to cushion their fall. The priest licked their fingers, swirling that mangled tongue around them, and my stomach roiled, nausea reaching up the back of my throat.
What is he doing?
While the cracked expanse of this section of the World of Below had never been warm or as connected to the natural cycle as the mortal plane, it had never been this. Now, just a few feet from where I stood were the evils of the Pit blanketing over a space that was never meant for it.
“We need to stop him. If this continues, the entirety of the World of Below will be plunged into darkness, made a place of pure suffering and harm. I will not have that.”
“You must find a way to sever his connection to the Pit. It is feeding him; each corrupted end gives him strength. The Pit needs him to maintain this invasion; without him, it will lose its anchor.”
Some ancient part of me understood that. The women who I’d seen and been knew that. But the solution remained clouded to me. How might I sever his connection? While I was confident that he was still bound to the natural order by virtue of once being a human soul—now an empowered and fiendish one—the method for tugging on that thread eluded me.
But I wasn’t about to do anything from up here.
Thankfully, Father Paine hadn’t seen us yet, still too far up to be readily noticeable, and I might be able to use that to my advantage. Distracted focus could provide the chance for a surprise attack. I knew that if I could get my vines into him, I could sap the power from him just as he had stolen it from my King, allowing the natural cycle to drink him in, bestowing the decay that he should have remained in.
The World of Below wanted him back where he belonged. The earth wanted his soul bound, unable to prey on its children. Destiny still held a path for this foul priest, and if I could get the cruel bastard on it once more, he would be swallowed up by the forces greater than him.
As I watched, Father Paine stepped farther from his throne, shoving back The King and delighting in yanking on their chains in an attack that sent them tumbling back down to the ground. Fury raged in my guts. This abomination had taken my spouse prisoner, tortured them in their own realm, and now sought to rip open the barrier all the more, until there was nothing left.
He will pay for this.
I closed my eyes, feeling that deep well within me and reaching into the ground for my connection. I would not fail this time. I couldn’t. As I gathered my strength, I pulled from the World of Below—my home and charge—a suit of armor constructed from the very minerals and magic of the kingdom. A breastplate, more flexible and built of the stone of mountains as old as time, settled over my chest. The slim coverings for my arms and legs, solidified cloud and fog, their gray color helping me to blend into the background.
The stillness of ice cloaked me, making my steps as silent as death. There was no wind, no crumbling of stone beneath my feet. And beneath the cauldron of my ribs boiled the heart of the world, a burning core that reflected in the blazing heat of my stare.
I was not the birth of spring right now but the retribution of winter, and Father Paine would meet his end this day regardless of the lengths that were demanded of me.
“I need you all to sink into the ground, find your roots there and travel the distance to the priest unseen. I will approach on my own.”
I could sense the stag about to broker an argument, but he stopped himself, instead offering a nod and slipping into the ethereal earth along with the rest of my army of abused souls.
The time was now. I hunkered low, coiling tension in my legs until I burst forward at a dead sprint. I flew across the charred ground, the world a blur around me as I dashed right up to the priest’s back and planted my hands upon him. Vines shot forward from my arms, burrowing into his flesh.
He bellowed, roaring into the silent air, and I craned backward, lifting him from his feet as my magic began to draw his power, a blight against his unnatural existence.
“Fucking whore!” In a wild arch, he reached around for me, his too-long arm allowing his claws to find me and tear me loose. “Can’t you just fucking die like the rest of them!?”
Father Paine held me in his firm grip, his nails extending several inches from his hand. I sneered, reaching up again to force my vines into his temples. But he threw me back, sending me far from the tear and to the base of his throne, which met my back in a loud crack.
“Cerridwen!” The King shouted, or as much of a shout as they could.
I shot my stare to them, the concern and terror there buffeted some by the utter relief it was to see them again. Their dark eyes were ringed with angry red, their scleras bloodshot and tinged with pink. They were hurting. Father Paine had hurt them.
Buuuzzzzz .
Something whizzed through the air, and I pulled my head up just in time to dodge a blow from Father Paine’s robe. Wait, what? Shaking myself, I righted my vision. Had I really seen that? But sure enough, the long length of stained priestly garb slinked back to the man like a snake under his command. It was fiercely pointed at one end, a dagger formed from fabric and dried blood.
“You really should have stayed away, witch. Though, I know I’m going to love killing you again even more than the first time. My, my, how delicious your magic will taste, hmm? And you know, thanks to this dumb, little stunt of yours, I’ll be able to open this tear fully. Your energy is just what I need.”
My stomach dropped as my chest squeezed. I couldn’t fail. I couldn’t allow my true end to be what plummeted the World of Below into the gnawing Pit, lorded over by some fucking priest who liked to rape children, murdering in the name of his God and his pleasure.
Hauling myself up off the ground, I brushed off the debris that clung to me. A long scrape covered the top of my arm, the skin now exposed in random places and a mean red. Pain hummed through me from leaping to the ground, from colliding with the priest’s false throne, but I would not give it my thoughts.
“You will end here, Paine. This realm does not belong to you. And furthermore,” I threw my arms toward the ground, extending the vines that would wrap around this villain’s neck and choke the life from the weed, “you touched my fucking King.”
I walked forward, pulling power from the core of the earth with each step, silently calling my spirits to rise from beneath and keep him from drawing energy from the tear. Glowing green creatures—fallen brethren of the forest, children stolen from their parents’ embrace, souls taken from their resting place and used to feed this monster—rose from the cracks in the pummeled crust.
“And I’m going to tear you to pieces myself, human .”
The arrogant didn’t feel fear, so Father Paine threw his head back and laughed. But I strode forward, and the woods’ warriors surged up, creating a wall between the priest and his precious powersource.
In a burst of movement, the priest took to the sky, the shockwave forcing me to recoil and shield my eyes from the dagger-sharp pieces of shale and volcanic rock. Glaring up, I reached forward. The earth here was not of the mortal realm, but I was a child of two homes—Darkness and Light, Spring and Winter, The World Above and The World Below.
Pillars of stone erupted from the ground, sporadic but purposeful placements that created a path that rose into the air after the priest. I sprinted up them, leaping from platform to platform as I conjured them from beneath me.
“No! You stupid bitch!” Father Paine’s garbled voice boomed, shaking the clouds, and he hurled his shredded blades of cloth through the air. “Fucking die!”
Vines launched from the pillars, from my arms, and I parried the incoming blows. I was closing the distance. I was nearly to him. I just needed to sink my tendrils into him once more.
“I have died before, false king.” I launched a vine through the air, where it maneuvered through the swirling array of fabric and sliced across the gray flesh of his cheek. “But you cannot kill what can rise up from the earth.”
“Then I will murder the earth itself!”
Father Paine raised his arms into the sky and as he pulled them back down, the thin rails of his bones shaking beneath skin pulled too tight, gargantuan spheres of rock and fire hurtled from the black clouded sky. Too many of them, their size enough to cover this entire area near the gate, rained down, pulled from the depths of the Pit and birthed through the atmosphere to sunder the whole of this realm.
The King. I shot my gaze to where they remained chained to that horrid fucking throne. No!
With everything I had, I forced innumerable vines, branches, and roots from the ground, arching over the scene below as a shroud of protection. The burning rocks crashed into them, and pain and hatred lanced through their woven lattice work into my core.
I would not let them fail, let them char up and die. The spirits I’d risen to fight with me would be destroyed, these meteors of the Pit not the cosmos. My King would be destroyed, and so I screamed until blood tore from my lungs, coating my teeth as it was flung from me onto the stone. I would take the force of all this chaotic annihilation. I would claim it all and hold it within my bones before I saw my family annihilated by this wielder of unnatural desolation.
The booming impacts thundered down, one after the other after the other, until there was silence. My being ached, and the threads of gold running through space and time were now visible to me as I approached that unyielding abyss once more.
And he was there.
“It may have saved them.” Claws wove through my hair, yanking my head up as they burrowed into my mind. “But it did nothing to save you or this fucking useless plane.”
Excruciation, crystal clear and vibrant behind my eyes, was everything. It was all I knew or felt, this reaching, twisting pull of all my thoughts through the serrated edges of Father Paine’s nails. Each pluck of the invisible strands of my mind reverberated through my soul, ripples of agony pulled forward and forefront.
The scrapes earned in the forest as a child. The losses felt both young and old. The broken bones and deathly pressure of my blood pressure dropping, my heart stopping.
It was all there, killing me again.
“Life and death are delivery means for the void, for victories gained in murder and torment. There is no purpose beyond the claiming of power and consumption of those beneath you.”
Warmth dripped from my nose, my eyes and ears. Fever boiled my brain as my body shook, and I could do nothing but experience my death a second time, the slow-motion progression severing the golden thread of my existence from reality.
“You think your fucking king matters? You think you matter?” Fingers roamed through my skull, my pillars of stone dropping from the sky as I lost the ability to wield them. “Power. Power is all that matters, and I will have all of it, from every last being in the entire goddamn universe.”
A blow landed across my cheek, knocking my face to the side. The skin above my eye tore, leaking blood down my face.
“Your king.” Another. “Your son.” Another. “You. I will see it all ground up like chum in my belly. The Pit will have its rule, and I will be its shepherd and master.”
Memories I’d locked away rushed to the surface. The tears on my mother’s face as she told me of my father’s death, killed by…witch hunters. Not a car crash. Betty was taken from us all, killed by one we trusted—Cerberus’s blood leaking onto my legs.
I sobbed, screaming for nothing as there was none to save me. The end tunneled all the closer, my thoughts jumbled and flickering.
Cerberus…
And then I was there in my mind, seeing the forest where I’d carried him through months that progressed as seconds. I’d carried him. I’d given birth to him in the soft grass and circle where I felt most at home. My son.
That pain had been…it had nearly claimed me. But it had made me as well. It belonged to me, and the priest would not use it.
“What are you doing, witch? You think some fucking nonsense about your doomed child will—”
I opened my eyes, searing light bathing Father Paine. “You want my suffering? My agony and death? Take it. Take this.”
Focusing on the enormity of sensation that gripped my body when I delivered Cerberus, I somehow pushed up onto my feet. I didn’t force the knife-sharp digits from my mind but through them sent it all to the priest.
“Feel what I have been through.” My drowning, my creation of the steel. “Take what I have used to shape myself and hold it inside your festering soul.”
Cries dripped from the priest’s mouth, blood and teeth falling to the ground as his split mouth stretched further. And the pain was mine again, but shared, gifted to one who so needed the reminder of its purpose. The pillar beneath us rumbled, and I conjured my vines, sending them into the priest’s mouth and eyes and head.
“Now, friends,” I called down to the children of the earth and below, “pull this mortal back down.”
Tendrils of green flew through the air, some climbing the sides of the pillar, until they wrapped around Father’s Paines manifested form, circling him in a web that trapped him in place. I sank my tendrils in deeper, sucking away the life he’d stolen, returning the spirits he’d kidnapped from the cycle.
“You do not belong here, Paine. You are not welcome. Go back to your Pit.”
Flesh melted from the bones he’d stolen from their graves, sloughing off him in chunks. Sinew and blood evaporated, turning to nothing but dust as the life this monster had taken from others was retrieved, sent back where it belonged. His robes burst into flames, gone in a whoosh of smoke that left nothing but a charred skeleton.
Releasing my hold, the remains clattered to the ground. Immediately, the earth here began to creep around his ribcage and skull. He would join the void, his matter made fuel for the realm. My pillar lowered to the ground as the choking clouds above dispersed. Lightning dissolved from the sky, the cracks in the crust’s surface sealing over with thick moss.
“Cerridwen!” Turning over my shoulder, my King rushed across the field toward me, crashing against my chest as they fell to their knees and held on to me— so tight .
I curled myself over their form, tears bleeding from my face in verdant trails of green and red that dripped into their hair. My body shook, my heart beating too hard against the swell of everything that had happened.
“I’m here. I’m here.” I held onto my Beast King, clinging to them just as much as they did to me. “I’m never leaving you. Never again.”
Tipping my head so that I might rest my cheek on their head, I spied the skeleton of the priest, nearly eaten whole by nature. Flowers—yellow and pink—bloomed through the empty gaps in his ribcage. Ferns coiled around the matte white bones as moss blurred the edges of where he ended and the earth began.
Life through death.
And I held onto my King, never ever letting go.