My hand came up, slapping him away. The xhoth moved as one, inching inward as if to swarm me. The Kraal hissed like anxious serpents.
“Pathetic,” I snarled. “To think you have so much control when you’ve never had control at all.”
He reached out again to touch me and I stepped back, keeping the distance between us.
“Don’t touch me,” I said, my voice coming out in a sharp and layered cadence that sent tiny ripples through the puddles of water around the room.
Against my chest, concealed under my shirt, I could feel Gus’s silentium shudder over my sternum and blinked at the strange sensation.
Akareth paused, his fingers curling back in toward his palm mere inches from my face. I peered up at him and then my eyes darted to a subtly stunned Lyla. I recalled that town square where she was standing over me, forcing me to shift when I did not want to. She’d stolen my free will. She’d stolen the very dominion I had over my own body with one, powerful word laced with tones I could not resist.
I lifted my hand to my chest and pinched the little bronze pendant through the fabric of my blouse.
“A mother,” I whispered, the word trembling against my tongue. “Sisters. A lover. You stripped them from me — carved them out — just to mount me upon your altar of vanity. I am nothing but a corpse stuffed with straw.”
This time, I stepped toward him. My foot slid across the wet stone, a small sound swallowed by the vastness between us. I wanted to turn away, but his gravity held me fast.
“My soul,” I breathed. “My heart. You have drowned them in your filth. You claim to be real, yet you wear no true form. You claim I am yours, yet you cannot bind me. You are a lie draped inflesh. A god made of echoes and rot. I cannot destroy you… but you have remade me, all the same.”
“A swift realization that will make my time with you much less interesting.”
“There will be no time.” I stopped, planting myself in the center of the room.
Fear, doubt, regret. Everything drained from me, leaving nothing behind to protect. Vidar’s words echoed back at me.This will ruin you. Use it. Your rage is your greatest strength.I stole a glance at Lyla, a reckless hope flaring against the cold logic of reason, that somehow she might see herself in me, see the truth we shared. She narrowed her eyes, her jaw ticking like she wanted to say something.
“You do not know me at all,” I said, staring deep into her pointed gaze, my tone as stripped bare as my heart. My eyes darted to Akareth again. “You’ve robbed me of what I loved most, thinking love was what made me strong. Love made me weak.” My nose twitched, the shadows claiming my eyes as I snarled, “I have only my hate to drive me now.”
Lyla inched backward, her head canting slightly to one side at the sound of my words. The chamber fell still, every heartbeat quieted by my own feral rhythm.
“Say it,” Lyla whispered, her eyes fixed on me.
I did not have to ask what she meant, nor did I have to wonder why she said it. It was all clear to me then. I looked up at Akareth and I felt… everything. My love. My loss. My dread, fury, and pain. It returned with a cold vengeance. I let it pool inside my chest like hot tar, and I let it consume my thoughts.
“Only a god can destroy a god,” I murmured. “Destroy yourself, then.”
He recoiled at those whispered words. His fingers trembled, moving again like they were barely attached to him. His head snapped to one side with a crack. His cloak billowed in non-existent wind, tentacles undulating beneath the fabric as if chokedand needing air. My hands were in fists, my nails biting into my palms until the scent of my blood permeated the air. Akareth reached for me again, his motion swift. His large hand clamped around my neck, chilled like ice.
I could hear my heartbeat thrumming in my ears as he squeezed and I cared nothing for what might happen next. I had one last thing to say before my life was forfeit. One last thing to tell him and all my pain and hate yearned to be let loose into the world upon those words.
“Destroy yourself,” I commanded, my necklace buzzing against my chest.
The water quaked violently around us. The Kraal began to shriek and tremble and the xhoth, too stupid to understand, took up their spears. Akareth’s head snapped again to one side, his mask rippling and reshaping into something even more grotesque. Something out of a nightmare not even he could have created. His skin melted like wax over a flame, peeling from black bone the same shade as the basalt that made the walls around us. All the rows of unnatural teeth formed a gruesome jeer on his malformed skull. His eyes grew, the blackness bleeding out like vapor from deep sockets. His hand quivered and tightened around my throat until my eyes felt like they were going to be forced from my head.
The world started to fade around me, but his grip only tightened, lifting my body off the floor until the toes of my boots barely skimmed the stone beneath me.Finally, I thought.Finally, he was ending it and I could be free of him. Free of all of it.
But fate had other plans.
The unmistakable sheen of a bronze blade swept across my vision, descending from above and slicing clean through Akareth’s arm, releasing me from his grasp. I fell to the floor and instantly righted myself, regaining my breath. My world was spinning. The sound of weapons clashing together and water sloshing filled my ears behind the ringing. My skull was on fire from the inside as I returned to myself.
Beside me, Lyla appeared, my cutlass in her hand. She looked down at me, eyes wide with mild shock, and dropped my blade by my side. I hesitated to take it when my attention was yet again torn from her to the tall mass of darkness undulating in front of us.
A dozen tentacles rushed out from beneath Akareth’s cloak, coiling and writhing around him like dying eels exiled to a hot shore. The Kraal screamed like a choir of banshees at the sight of it. Like a pack of starved wolves, they clamored over each other to get to the black mass that once had some semblance of a form, dragging their heavy tails behind them like dead limbs. I watched with empty pleasure as the tentacles began to rear up, wrapping their thick lengths around Akareth’s skeletal form and burying him in dark flesh. One after another, they cocooned him… and squeezed. A deafening cry thundered through the chamber, urging the Kraal to scream louder, their shrill voices cloaked in grief and panic.
I dropped to my knees, watching tar-like ooze seep from between the fleshy appendages followed by shards of black bones. The room flooded with a worsening foul stench. One I knew too well. Sulfur and rot, just like those cursed islands where it all began. Like the black beach where I first set eyes on a young boy in a cage.
That day came back to me like it had only just happened. Every detail assaulted me from the moment I saw Vidar to the moment I freed him and felt the sting of his blade upon my cheek. That pain set in motion so many horrid and wonderful things. It razed me… and it freed me.
Even as I watched the last shreds of Akareth’s unsightly aspect turn to melted shadows, I could not enjoy what should have been a victory for he’d already robbed me of everything. Like he’d robbed Reyna. Like he’d robbed Lyla. There was nothing left of me to free and as the tentacles ripped open, tearing asunder a large ribcage filled with decayed organs, I could not find a lick of joy.
