Chapter 40

CHAPTER40

Lore watched everything happen as if it was in slow motion. The elves appeared beyond her sight. She should have seen them. She should have expected that Margaret would have another plan if something had gone wrong.

And Lore was very wrong.

Margaret had expected her to be weak and essentially useless. She hadn’t expected Lore’s power to not only have strengthened through magic but also through the very people of Umbra. She’d clearly shown up with an army that Margaret did not want to fight. Or at the very least, was larger than expected.

And then she saw the flames. She saw the acid.

How could Lore forget what had happened the last time that acid had rained down upon them? It was the first time that Abraxas had attempted to save her. The first time that he’d looked down at her with eyes filled with a promise. A promise that she knew he would never break.

One she knew he wouldn’t break even now, when the threat of his death was upon them.

Her magic could hold the acid. She caught it in midair, twisting her hands as she tried to figure out where the largest grouping of elves were set. If she could put the acid right back on them, then she would take care of two problems at once. The anger in her burned. She wanted them to feel what they would cast upon another so carelessly. She wanted the elves to hurt, as they wanted to hurt others.

How dare they? How dare they even think to harm the people that were hers? She would destroy them, bit by bit, until they knew what it felt like for their flesh to rot from their bones.

Until she heard the sound.

The whispering.

The desire to take the blades from another and to use it upon the previous owner. Whispers that spoke of how powerful she would be if she would only take them and use them and run their sharp edges along soft flesh. It would be so easy now, they whispered, if only she would take them.

Grimdags. She swallowed hard and looked down to see that Margaret held two in her hands. Where had she gotten them? How had she gotten grimdags?

A flash of cold nerves poured over her body. Had the Ashen Deep betrayed them? Surely not. Draven wanted to be with her daughter, and no elf would go against blood like that. The Matriarch wouldn’t... couldn’t...

It was enough of a distraction. Lore flinched back, curving her body away from Margaret’s first strike. And her spell... slipped. It just fell out of her hands as though she had been holding onto the tiniest of threads and once it was gone, she couldn’t lunge forward for it.

Screaming out her anger, knowing that she had just cost Abraxas more pain and torment, she instead twisted for Margaret. She let her anger take control. Lore moved like a being made of light. She twisted and curved, grabbing at flesh and uncaring of what danger lay in the blades that Margaret wielded with deft hands. It didn’t matter.

The woman would die. She would weep upon Lore’s blades and then Lore would laugh as her blood ran out.

The power inside her turned into something dark. It ached inside her and screamed with a thousand years of women being beaten back and told they were not good enough. it didn’t matter that her grandmothers had been elves; they had still suffered at the hands of everyone who touched them. Centuries and centuries of labor and torment and fighting tooth and nail to be something.

No more.

She would be the end of this cycle and that started with proving to Margaret that she was more than just a half elf. More than a goddess. She was Lorelei of Silverfell, and all would fall before her blade.

The rage screamed out of her and suddenly her hands were locked around Margaret’s wrists. The grimdags whispered for her to use them, but she couldn’t risk touching them when she knew just how dangerous that was. How much she wanted them in her hands and how she would fly through the battlefield letting them feast.

“Yes,” they whispered in her mind. “Feast.”

And if they were hungry, then she knew one who should not be able to return to the elves’ sacred hunting grounds. Margaret would not go to see her ancestors. She would stay here for the rest of eternity.

Lore snapped Margaret’s wrists and drew the woman closer. Whispering in her ear, “Thank you for giving me all this power, Margaret. I will take it, and I will use it, to make sure that this kingdom becomes exactly what you fear. Humans and magical creatures, all living in harmony. And no one, I mean no one, will remember who you were.”

“All the elves will remember,” Margaret wheezed. “The creatures who fight with me now they will remember. They will know the message that I have spread. I have made myself immortal, no matter what you do now.”

“You don’t understand.” Lore drew back to stare into the elf’s dark eyes. “You made me a goddess, Margaret. And I will wipe all memory of you from their minds. They will not even know you existed.”

Horror blossomed on Margaret’s face, and Lore felt only the slightest twinge of guilt as she buried both the grimdags in the other elf’s heart. The daggers shrieked with pleasure at being used to kill the one who wielded them.

Margaret’s eyes turned pale and colorless, her body withering before Lore’s sight. And she let the body sag, then kicked it away from her with a heave that threw her into the ranks of elves that ran toward her.

But Lore didn’t care about them. They wouldn’t touch her if she didn’t want them to. Until she turned and saw Abraxas.

Her heart. Her soul. Her reason for being.

All the acid dripping off his body slid onto the ground below and turned the grass black. His breathing was labored, massive sides heaving as his wings flexed over his head, struggling to get himself upright so that he could crawl to her side. Even now, even with holes ripped in his sides and acid steaming out of his wounds, he still wanted to save her. He wanted to be with her.

Tears pricked in her eyes and that anger boiled. She would kill them all for this. Damn the world, needing more elves. Damn all the creatures who dared to stand against her. She would not see him like this.

Lore could feel his soul parting from his body. She felt the moment when it tore away from his physical form and started off toward whatever end dragons had. She screamed out her rage in a single word.

“No!”

And then she reached out her hand and stopped it.

Horror had no place in an action like this. She twisted her fingers and then slammed the soul back into his body. She forced it to remain trapped in that prison of flesh and pain.

His ribs stood out with each breath, the white bone gleaming in the sunlight that suddenly illuminated them.

The power inside her flexed, stretched, and it spread darkness through her veins. It let her know that vengeance could be hers. She could destroy and maim and murder if she wished. But she didn’t wish, because she knew this man right here would be saddened to know what she had done.

But this was not the right end to their story. This was not the end she would ever suffer again, and she refused to let him die. Not like this.

So she touched her hand to his nose, pressed her lips against his warm scales that shuddered now with pain.

“I will heal you,” she whispered. “I will put you back together and you will be perfect again. In every way. Neither of us will have to suffer like this ever again. We’re going home, Abraxas, and I’m sorry, but I can’t let you go anywhere else without me.”

She’d killed the woman who had started all this, and yet it was not enough. It would never be enough to know that Margaret was rotting in the ground somewhere with her soul in twin grimdags that would sink into the earth with her. It wasn’t enough to know that her torture would forever be stuck in the dirt with her.

Lore wanted more. She wanted screams and blood on her hands and as she raced back to the battlefield, she gave herself permission to seek out that terrible end for all those who dared attack her.

And there were many.

She ran her dwarven blade through anyone who tried to stop her in the castle. The first two she split in half, right down the centers of their body and they parted to allow her to step right through the remains of what they once were.

Four elves ran toward her with twin witches that stood behind them, whispering spells that were supposed to hurt her. Lore merely laughed, the sound dark and disappointed as she drove them into the wall and then ripped out their hearts.

The witches were more of an annoyance, but she would fight them in the same way they wanted to fight her. Lore used her magic and fused them to the stone wall, allowing them to feel their bodies being crushed by the castle they so staunchly defended. The women screamed, but Lore did not stop to free them for pity. They would not have freed her.

She walked out onto the courtyard to see that Margaret had not been lying about the size of her army. They had twice the amount of elves than expected. And now Lore’s army was split in two. Fighting those who were still in the courtyard and those who were outside the castle walls. They were pinned down, just as Margaret likely wanted them to be.

Algor fought like a whirlwind. He never stopped moving, those hammers flying all around him so quickly they had turned into a blur. But the newer elves were more fresh. One of them fired an arrow, and she didn’t see it in time. It struck the dwarven king directly in the eye and Lore felt that anger surge again.

She grabbed his soul too, slamming it back into his body and making him stay like that. It was wrong, but it didn’t matter. Not right now.

Snarling, she turned to see Hyperion fighting with a group of elves who fired arrows through his wings. The pain rocked through her just at the same moment that Nyx screamed. The acid balls had found her children.

Draven’s answering scream was one of complete and utter anguish. She knew that pain. It rained down upon her and Lore couldn’t think, she couldn’t fight, she couldn’t get through it.

And all the while, her power bubbled through her.

Zephyr hissed out a breath as a sword ran through his belly and an elf snarled, “Now they will have no king.”

Beauty laid out on the ground, her eyes staring up at the sky as she prayed for death. It would not be swift, with her guts hanging out of her belly like that.

They were losing. All the elves, all the people she loved, everyone was dying and Lore stood above them on the castle walls like an avenging goddess who had wanted them all to die.

But she did not want them to die.

And Lore realized at that moment, they didn’t have to. It wouldn’t be difficult to hold them all in their bodies while she worked, and that was the moment she realized how infinite her power really was.

She wasn’t just able to move the moon in the sky or call upon the land to help her. She could stop death itself. The power surged inside her, whispering of a dark throne and a dark goddess who would rule this land with the iron fist it needed. These people were corrupt. She could not trust them to run this kingdom on their own. If she even tried, they would fail and she would be here again, watching those she loved die and die and...

Die.

Pulling herself out of the darkness, Lore reached her arms over her head and she called out for the moon. “Goddess, guide me.”

And she felt it. The moon whispering to her of a thousand years of knowledge, of goddesses who had walked this earth and knew that their power came not only from the moon. Didn’t she remember?

She was not the Lady of Moonlight.

She was the Lady of Starlight.

Lore felt her chest expand as she started down the stairs to the courtyard. Her voice deepened in a low hum as she called upon all the empty soldiers they had created. Animating them with the dark magic that Lindon had whispered in her ear. These toy soldiers would fight for her. They would destroy all those who stood against her people, not just Lore, but those who fought on her side. They would leave those who ran, but they would follow them until Lore knew what to do with their insidious ranks.

And as she walked, she pulled off her armor. Her warriors froze all around her, staring at the goddess who dropped metal armor on the ground as she strode past them. First her boots so her feet could sink into the earth. Then her leg guards so she could move easier. Her chest plate thudded onto the ground so she could summon with her heart.

Lore removed her helm last, shaking out her sweaty long hair and licking her lips. A few of her own people had rushed toward her, their swords raised as if to protect their goddess, but they did not need to do that any longer.

Lore touched them and their entire bodies shivered. “You have fought long enough,” she said. “You have proven yourselves brave and worthy. Now, I will end this.”

Those who fought in Margaret’s army ran from her. She had no idea what they saw, only that she was glowing. She paused by Algor’s head and ripped the arrow out of his eye. “Thank you, my friend.”

And so she strode out onto the battlefield, barefoot and weaponless, other than the bloodied arrow she held in her hand. Margaret’s forces fought against her people who had streamed outside with Lore, renewed by the sight of their goddess and those who had dug themselves out of the ground.

Lore glared up at the sky, and then to the battlefield. “This is your last chance.” Her voice snaked through the air, whispering in the ears of all those who were still alive. “Run now.”

A few did. But not enough.

The elves would be few indeed, but they would know suffering when she was done.

Lore lifted her arms and pulled the moon in front of the sun. Her goddess would watch as she ripped down the very stars from the sky and used them to defeat those who fought against her.

Balls of fire and flame, bright white and burning, rained down from the sky. She kept shields over those who fought with her, ensuring there were still some people alive to talk of what their goddess had summoned. And they all stood, watching in awe as Margaret’s armies burned.

Her stars rained down. They blasted the earth into great hollows, cooling into molten glass as they pooled and sucked in any elf or creature that tried to run from them.

Screams filled the air. Cries for mercy, but Lore had none of that left. She had given them so many chances, and now they would find nothing less than vengeance in her eyes.

“Death,” she whispered. “For all those who stood against me.”

And Lore stood there, unmoving, as she watched the world burn.