Chapter 44: Promise Fulfilled

Princess Ava

A strange daze gripped me. Everything felt unreal. Events had happened so fast. In the space of a few minutes, Ealaín had perished and my father ... My father was dead. It hurt more than I thought it should. All the hatred, the disgust, I felt for the man dwindled. He was gone. It was hard to loathe him any longer when memories of the gentler man he used to be rose in my mind.

I remembered my time from my childhood when my mother still lived. He was warm then, loving. Something died in him with Mother. What filled him was cold ambition. It drove him to such terrible acts, twisted him long before he became that insectoid thing lying dead down the hill.

I stumbled up to the Altar of Souls. I glanced down at the amulet in my hand. The phylactery quivered in my grip, smeared with Kora’s blood. Her life blended into the ruby’s scarlet hue. I felt the soul of a wicked man held in the matrix of crystal.

I set the amulet on the adamant anvil, the smallest part of the vast machine extending down into the hill beneath our feet. Krab, my divine ancestor, had constructed something amazing beneath my feet. A vast network of conduits focused on this one point.

“Do it,” Sven growled as my family gathered around the altar.

Carsina handed over the hammer.

“End the Las-damned bastard’s existence,” Sven said, such loathing in his voice.

Sven Falk

The hammer in Ava’s hands flared with brilliance. The ground rumbled beneath my feet. Light flickered in the depths of the Altar of Souls. The amulet trembled atop it. It quivered, the light spilling around it, wrapping it up and gripping it. I shook my head. The time had come.

My women all stared at the altar with such wrapped attention. They stood around it, the flashing, flickering, strobing energy dancing through the heart of the altar spilled over them, somehow brighter—realer—than the sunlight falling on their shoulders. It illuminated their faces, made silhouettes of them.

I drank it in. This final moment. For a moment, Ealaín stood with them, her body a wraith conjured from my imagination. She stared at me, nodding her head. She knew what I had to do, her face twisted with pain.

It would be so much easier if she was alive and here to protect my women. But Aingeal had her powers while Nathalie, Greta, and Zanyia would protect Ava and Kora. They had their armor. Their powers. They didn’t need me.

It hurt. I wanted to rip out my heart. I wanted to pluck it still-beating from my breast. I would clutch it in my bloody hand. I wanted to cast out this pain. It would make this so much easier. I made my deal. The phylactery was about to be destroyed. I had to slip away while they all had their focus on the altar.

I gathered the shadows, pulling them around me. I made myself fade, blending in with the dancing umbral on the ground. The darkness wrapped around me. I felt something trembling through me. I seized more of the shadows than I could before. I didn’t make myself fuzzy and hazy, but I vanished. I hid myself so completely I couldn’t even see my flesh.

There was something interacting with my armor. Something ... My sister. I felt a touch of my sister. When she healed me, she had a cut hand. Her blood had mixed with the healing spell and ... She transferred something to me.

A final gift to help me escape.

I was such a coward as I turned around and marched down the hill. This was the easiest way. To disappear from their lives. I wanted to take Zanyia, Ava, Aingeal, Nathalie, Greta, and even Carsina with me, but I didn’t deserve any of them if I could give one of them up.

I wanted to look back one last time—I itched to return to them—but a clean severing of our relationship. They would have each other. They would support each other, and I would find something else. Out there in the world. Far away from Zeutch. They would hate me, but I could handle that. They would be so angry with me. Despise me.

But not as much as I despised myself.

I reached the bottom of the hill. The surviving soldiers had fled, leaving behind their dead. Some of their horses wandered around the grass. I approached one on silent steps. Light burst brilliant behind me, flooding across the plains. The horse neighed, snorting nervously.

I seized a bridle. I mounted the warhorse, shifting on the shadow. I closed my eyes, drew in a deep breath.

“Goodbye, sister dear,” I whispered. “I love you all.”

I heeled my horse and galloped towards my new life.

Princess Ava

The machinery consumed my focus. The entire hill hummed as my soul worked the mechanism, directing the massive forces contained within the hill. It held it, a vast reservoir, a massive battery of power gathered from the world. My awareness flitted around inside the hill, making adjustments here, tweaking something there.

It all made so much sense to me. This was the purpose of the hill, to focus all this energy. It gathered in the altar. It spilled over the gem. I rose my awareness from the machinery. I blinked, staring down at the phylactery. I felt the Biomancer’s soul quivering in it.

He knew what was about to happen.

I frowned and understood how the phylactery worked. It was a magical machine created to be a vessel for a soul, a mystical box. That was all that magic was, manipulating the foundations of the world, the vast energies that were used to forge it, the order Krab laid down when the Gods created it. Some people could just tap into it with training, others with natural abilities.

I studied the phylactery, understanding how it worked so I could destroy it. The gem had a small spigot on it that the soul could reach out of, too small for it to escape, but enough for Kora to manipulate and use against the Paragon in the fight. The craftsmanship was superb. It was designed to last, to store the soul for nearly eternity. The energy built up in it was used so efficiently to keep the soul trapped in here instead of heading to the Astral Realm. My senses slid over it, searching for just the perfect spot and...

I found its weakness; the place where I needed to strike.

I raised the hammer up. It was a focus for the energy brimming in the Altar. It was the match for it. I stared at the amulet, letting the power guide my stroke, and slammed my tool down onto the gem with all my strength.

The hammer crashed into the amulet.

The power surged. The entire energy of the hill expended in a moment.

Light exploded around me.

A brilliance engulfed me as the entire hill groaned. The hammer burst into a spray of molten diamond that spilled across the altar. Mixed in were drops of sizzling blood. The ruby fractured with it, releasing what it trapped. Through the heart of the light shining around me, a vast shadow rose. I shuddered as a vast evil spilled into the world.

The malevolent soul of the Biomancer reached for me. It surged around me. It tried to seize my own soul. It tried to rip at me, pulling at my essence. He screamed at me, raging at me for destroying his rebirth.

For a moment, I felt his dreams of a world remade to his perfection. People changed by beetle-like insects, the things that had distorted my father into that thing lying dead on the hill. I shuddered, gritting my teeth, my hands clenching around the crumbling handle of the hammer. I buffeted him. He had no substance. No power any longer.

He was just an umbral spectral. Just the sputtering remains of a mad man.

Without a vessel to inhabit, souls couldn’t stay in our world. The vast machine of creation sent those souls to the Astral Realm. He couldn’t fight it. He had nowhere to go. He howled his rage as he dissipated like a foul mist before the bright sunlight.

The Altar groaned as its light died.

I gasped, leaning forward, grasping the adamant, panting as I stared down at the shattered remains, diamond mixed with ruby. I shook my head, then looked around at the faces of my family. Kora had such a look of raptured joy on her face, hands clutched to her breasts. She swayed. Zanyia’s arm went around her waist, supporting the woman while a purr rumbled from her throat.

“You did it!” Greta cheered. My bedmaid threw her arms around me, her armored form pressing into my side.

Kora Falk

I swayed in Zanyia’s embrace. I couldn’t believe it was over. I felt so surreal. There was nothing hanging between my tits. I didn’t feel the chain rubbing at the back of my neck. No faceted gem caressed the inner slopes of my breasts. For weeks I had worn it. What felt like an eternity, and it was gone.

I didn’t know what to do. What do I say now. I stumbled away from the purring Zanyia, from my cheering family. The entire world felt shifted, the angle of reality changed so I felt like I stood on a slope, off-balance. I shuddered, reaching the slope of the hill.