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Chapter Five Void Moons

Chapter Five Void Moons

Elloren Guryev

Shadow wasteland

I level my branch at the advancing V’yexwraith demon and incoming Shadow army as Yvan raises his palms, both of us drawing

on the power of the Zhilaan Forest via the spark of our child in my womb.

By land and air, the distant army surges toward us in a huge gray tide, their thunderous chorus of snarls and shrieks building

as they near, while our horde readies the fire Yvan has blazed out to them.

The V’yexwraith grows even taller than the clouds, its slender legs taking form. It booms forward, each step rattling the

earth, then sets its many-eyed gaze on me with a terrible focus, my heart striking into a wilder rhythm. New eyes are bubbling

to life on the demon’s upper face, the Shadow Wand gripped in its long-fingered hand, the Wand’s Void tree pulsing into my

mind with disastrously burgeoning power.

Arm draped protectively over my womb, I thrust my branch forward at the same time that Yvan deploys power from his glowing

palms.

Bolts of multihued flame blast from both Yvan’s palms and my branch at the same moment that Naga and my horde mates blaze

chromatic fire at the V’yexwraith, while the demon thrusts the Shadow Wand straight up into the air.

A pulse of translucent gray power bursts from the Wand’s tip and snaps outward to form a translucent Shadow orb shield around

the demon’s torso.

Our fiery attack collides with the V’yexwraith’s protective orb and splits into unfocused chaos, swirling around the demon’s

shielding in a chromatic, spark-spitting tempest before our magic grays and the Shadow Wand begins to siphon it up.

The image of my kindred raven, Errilith, flashes through my mind. The world seems to pulse Dark as a spell whispers through my mind, through my very bones, the whispers soon joined by leafy-utterances of complementary spells sent out by the Zhilaan, the path forward crystallizing.

“Form another wall of Wyvernfire between the V’yexwraith and its forces!” I cry out to Yvan and our horde, galvanized.

“The demon will just consume it!” Ariel hisses as the V’yexwraith siphons up the last of our grayed fire into the Wand and

the Shadow army roars closer.

“Just do it !” I cry.

Yvan and I exchange an urgent glance before he and my horde blast another Wyvernfire stormwall into being, cutting the incoming

army from sight even as their oceanic roar builds.

The V’yexwraith lets out an earsplitting shriek, and I blast a dark purple line of earth magic toward the huge creature, my

vines whipping around the V’yexwraith’s unshielded lower legs. Sounding out the Zhilaan Forest’s force-amplifying spell, I

yank my branch back, hard .

The V’yexwraith arches its head back, screeching as it falls, its cavernous slash of a mouth gaping open with fury. Another

mouth telescopes out of its maw, then another, all of the mouths gnashing sharp gray together with enough force to split the

sky.

The demon’s towering body slams onto the Shadow-smoking earth with a ground-shaking BOOM , and I tether it there with thick purple vines.

Narrowing its multiple eyes at me, the demon swerves the Shadow Wand’s point toward my horde’s wall of Wyvernfire and blasts

siphoning fog toward it, just as I lift my branch and grit out Errilith’s spell and pull on the power of Natural Death .

A line of Deathkin deflection runes flash into existence inside the wall of Wyvernfire, their suspended forms rippling with

midnight Darkness that turns the flames black, the shield-wall’s upper edge enlarging high into the sky.

The V’yexwraith’s vaporous gray magic hits our runic wall, flashes to black then streams back toward the demon in a midnight

tide, blasting its orb shield into Dark mist.

The V’yexwraith snarls out its fury and swipes the Wand toward us.

Before we can stage a counterattack, a rippling, gray half orb of Void power bursts from the V’yexwraith’s Shadow Wand and

surges outward to monstrous size.

The pulse of power slams into us with bone-jarring force, the breath punched from my lungs as my feet leave the ground and we’re all hurled into the air once more, my branch torn from my hand.

My back hits the ground, and I hug my abdomen, desperate to keep my baby safe.

Yvan growls and quickly rights himself, then leaps between me and the demon.

I lunge for my branch and grab it just as the V’yexwraith thrusts the Shadow Wand toward Yvan and deploys another half orb

of gray magic at the same moment Yvan and the rest of my horde blast huge bolts of chromatic lightning at the demon.

My horde’s lightning slams into the demon’s half orb, which rapidly crackles away to dark gray smoke. The smoke drifts to

the ground and darkens to steel, snakelike portions of veiny gray power darting out toward Yvan, our horde and me, frightfully

fast.

I let out a protesting cry as one of the steel-hued segments collides with my foot and slithers around my ankle, morphing

into a smoking bracelet. The taste of poisonous tin coats the back of my tongue, and I sense my power, along with Yvan’s and

my horde’s, being drawn into the Shadowed earth and toward the parasitical V’yexwraith. Fear snaps through my blood as I’m

filled with the line-stretching sense of the V’yexwraith rerouting the bulk of our power’s flow to itself , our magic graying as it’s absorbed.

Yvan thrusts his palms toward the unshielded demon once more, while I force myself to my feet, my alarm compounding as I sense

most of Yvan’s power doubling back from his palms and being yanked down into the earth and toward the V’yexwraith before he

can release it.

Teeth gritted, I futilely attempt to deploy a Zhilaan spell, horror surging as I find my magic’s flow also rerouted toward

the demon.

Yvan shoots me an urgent look over his shoulder, the fire in his eyes guttering. “Can you access your power, Elloren?”

“Only a trace,” I shout back, struggling to stave off burgeoning dread. “The V’yexwraith has rerouted our magic’s flow!”

The V’yexwraith gnashes its teeth as it takes a parasitical hit of our power, its stretched-out form enlarging even more.

It snaps free of my graying bindings, and Yvan protectively backs up toward me as the demon rises to new, impossible heights,

far larger than III.

The Void tree punches harder into my mind, and a clearer sense of the Shadow tree’s size and scope overtake me, triggering

a gut-clenching alarm.

Yvan fans out his wings to shield me as my growling horde readies tooth and claw.

The V’yexwraith lets out a sky-shattering cry that has me recoiling as it lashes the Shadow Wand toward the heavens.

Glowing metallic gray spheres blast into being throughout the entire expanse of visible sky, suspended high above us like

hundreds upon hundreds of Shadow moons. The metallic tang of sorcery overtakes the air, Yvan’s and my power, along with the

power of our horde mates, now swooping upward as it’s siphoned toward the sky.

The V’yexwraith hisses, fanged smiles forming on all its mouths, spite glinting in its multiple eyes as it narrows them all

on me. The image of the Void tree assaults my vision once more in a painful pulse, and I freeze, a stifling fright gripping

hold. As I’m filled with the awful realization that the V’yexwraith is fully sentient and purposefully making a mockery of

the East’s sacred Xishlon moons by conjuring these Shadow orbs, just like Vogel did on Xishlon.

A lethal mockery.

There’s Fae-killing iron power in these orbs. I can sense it. And it’s not natural iron. It’s some type of Void iron, its

leaching force on our elemental power increasing, like the pull of hundreds of magnets.

Explosive Shadowfire forming in the moons’ cores.

“Those spheres,” I rasp out to Yvan, “they’re Shadow-iron explosives. Your iron-protective rune isn’t strong enough to survive

them!”

Heightened horror slashes through us both as it hits me that the Void iron in these moons has the power to take out not only

part-Lasair-Fae Yvan, but our part-Lasair unborn child. Along with every one of our incoming Fae allies, save the Mage-Dryad’kin–our

Keltish heritage conferring iron-resistance. But the rest of us will be destroyed by the moons’ explosive power, which feels

strong enough to destroy even the strongest foliage-amplified weapons and shielding, our stormwall of Deathkin-warded Wyvernfire

beginning to gray.

Vogel’s army is about to descend on us along with the Shadow Wand demon before the moons fall.

As if sensing my thoughts, the V’yexwraith lets out an explosive shriek and lunges toward me.

In a blur, Yvan takes to the air, soaring toward the demon at the same moment that Naga, Raz’zor, Ariel, and the rest of my

horde launch themselves toward the V’yexwraith.

“No!” I cry out, fear streaking through me, clear that, sapped of their power, Yvan and my horde mates are no match for this Shadow

creature.

The V’yexwraith opens its great maws and lets out a reverberating battle cry, powerful enough to shake the heavens. It thrusts

the Shadow Wand forward, and multiple Shadow trees burst from it, their spear-like canopies knifing toward Yvan and me and

my attacking horde mates.

Yvan dodges impalement via sheer speed as he arcs through the air and punches away the tree hurtling toward me. Shadow trees

collide with my horde mates, and my heart constricts as they’re slammed to the ground, their wings and limbs impaled, the

insect-like trees pinning them to Shadowed earth while the V’yexwraith continues to siphon our power into the Void moons above.

Naga, Raz’zor, and the others let out furious snarls, as Ariel falls to a heap to my right, screaming with rage, the edges

of her wings pinioned. The V’yexwraith deploys another tree toward Yvan that he shifts away from, but the tree’s glancing

blow to his side hurls him a great distance sideways.

Outrage bolts through me, and I lift my branch, teeth gritted, tensing every line to the breaking point to wrest back my power,

the moons’ pull on my magic too cursedly strong for me to send even a trace of magic through my branch.

Seeming to sense my frustrated will to fight, the V’yexwraith’s huge head swivels toward me. I stumble backward, hugging my

abdomen, as the demon stalks toward me, teeth bared, and raises the Shadow Wand.

“Elloren!” Yvan snarls desperately as he soars toward me from too far away, and panic tears through me, our child and I about to meet

our ends.

Ariel suddenly rips herself away from the impaling branches in a spray of blood. Letting out an unearthly growl, she launches

herself toward the V’yexwraith, and her form explodes .

Astonishment lances through me as Ariel’s body enlarges, her wings expanding as she morphs into a huge, black dragon .

The V’yexwraith rears back and Ariel blasts into the sky, slamming into the demon’s chest with such force that the V’yexwraith

drops the Shadow Wand and falls thunderously to the ground.

Seizing my chance, I dash toward the Wand, but Yvan is there in an instant, grabbing hold of it first.

The V’yexwraith lets out a bloodcurdling scream that’s quickly taken up by the army beyond our shielding as Ariel slashes claws at the demon’s chest in a vicious blur, the V’yexwraith’s long arms straining toward the Shadow Wand as if a limb has been torn from its body and flown away.

Yvan soars toward me, Shadow Wand in hand, his flight pattern suddenly chaotic, his prismatic eyes flashing a glowing gray.

He hurls the Shadow Wand to the ground, as if ridding himself of something that was burning through his hands, and careens

to the earth.

The Wand falls to the gray-misted land at my feet just before Yvan lands.

“Don’t touch it!” Yvan cries as I move to take the evil Wand in hand and the V’yexwraith growls and thrusts Ariel’s dragon

form away.

The demon leaps up and barrels toward the Wand with a shriek that seems to split the heavens from every direction. Yvan takes

flight once more just as Ariel bolts back into the sky and soars toward the incoming demon, the two of them battling it back

with brute force.

Desperate to keep hold of the Shadow Wand, I tear off the leafy hem of my tunic, and drop to one knee before the evil tool.

I throw the ripped hem over it and take it into my non-III-marked hand at the same moment I’m hit by an incoming wall of elemental

power so strong that it rattles my teeth, all of it blasting toward me from high in the eastern sky.

I whip my gaze east just as a Vu Trin portal splits the sky and our Dryad’khin army soars out of it on wings and eagle- and

Wyvernback, flying in like an incoming tide under the ceiling of iron Void moons.

Void moons about to rain down Shadow-iron explosives on us all.

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