“Shei’tani,” he whispered. He lifted a hand to shield his eyes as her incandescent form rose up into the air.
“YOU WILL DIE FOR WHAT YOU’VE DONE!”
Her voice was a crack of thunder. The Solarus’s crystal chandeliers shivered a delicate cry of warning a bare instant before the ground shifted violently. Glowing with angry green Earth, soil erupted into the room and a giant fissure opened up in the marbled Solarus floor. Shrieking, several Elden warriors tumbled to their deaths. Massive chunks of plaster, glass, and stone rained down from the dome and ceiling, crushing indiscriminately.
Lightning seared the air. Through the shattered roof, Rain glimpsed roiling black clouds, marbled with blue, white, and red lines of power. In mere seconds, Ellysetta had summoned a raging tempest in the sky. Violent fists of wind tossed grown men likematchsticks, flinging bodies through the air. Torrential rain poured down, vaporizing into mist as it touched the fiery aura surrounding Ellysetta.
A barrage of barbedsel’dorarrows darkened the sky. The Eld soldiers had recovered from the shock that momentarily gripped them all.
“Don’t harm her, you fools! The master wants her alive!” The shout came from the Mage battling Bel and the remaining members of Ellysetta’s quintet. He sent a blast of blue-white Mage Fire to intercept the arrows. The Mage Fire consumed over half the arrows, but the rest continued on their deadly course.
Rain flung a shield around Ellysetta, but the protective bubble collapsed inward as soon as it formed, absorbed into Ellysetta’s glowing aura.
She swept one arm forward, and a fiery five-fold weave of magic shot from her fingertips. The arrows disintegrated instantly. Another five-fold weave seared the air, this one aimed directly at the Mage standing beside the Well of Souls.
“Ellysetta!Nei!” Rain flung out his own weave to weaken and misdirect hers, but his magic fell away from hers like tinder curling back from the heat of a blaze. He could only watch in horror as Ellysetta’s weave sliced through the air with lethal accuracy.
The blazing shaft incinerated the Primage’s shields as if they were paper. In slow motion, Rain saw the large, charred black hole appear in the Mage’s chest as the five-fold weave burned through him, saw the look of disbelief on the Mage’s face as he realized his prey had slain him, then saw the man’s flesh bulge outward as Ellysetta’s magic ignited the concentration of power held within the Mage’s body. Rain barely managed to shield his eyes before the Mage exploded in a violent blast of light, heat, and vaporized flesh.
Rain waited for the agony, waited for Ellysetta to shriek in horror and pain as the death she had just caused claimed her own life and then his.
The pain never came, nor did its corresponding deadly price.
The Mage’s final scream still echoed amid the din of battle as more tendrils of Fire shot out from Ellysetta’s fingertips and scorched through Elden warriors. Bodies flamed like kindling. The Elden warriors who had rushed in with such triumph scattered in fear and confusion, screaming as tongues of Fire and a hail of red Fey’cha rained down on them, decimating their numbers in seconds.
Dozens fell before Rain heard the remaining Primage cry, “Retreat!” The Eld invaders fled back into the black chasm that had spawned them, leaving half their number dead and dying in the ruins of the Grand Cathedral’s Solarus.
Ellysetta’s hand shot out. The red-robed Sulimage leapt for the Well just as a sizzling bolt of power incinerated the spot where he’d been standing. The remaining Primage wasn’t so lucky. Rain shattered his shields and cleaved him in two with one savage blow. Demons howled and swept out of the Well, circling and consuming the Mage in seconds. Shredded blue Mage robes and the jeweled sash that had circled his waist fell in a small heap to the floor.
Gaelen smashed a fist of five-fold power into theselkahrcrystal holding the Well open. The crystal shattered, and the doorway to the Well of Souls collapsed.
«Ellysetta, shei’tani.»Rain turned back to her and reached out with all his senses, crooning her name on every pathway, including that fragile thread of communion she’d forged between their souls and the even more astonishing thread over which he’d not shared fellowship with another Fey since the Mage Wars.«Kem’reisa.»
Primitive, driving Rage still throbbed within her, hissing, hungry for blood and death. At his call, her head turned. Her eyes seared him, and an answering fury rose hot in his veins. His own eyes went fire-bright and a low growl rumbled deep in his throat as the tairen strained for dominance within him. He held her gaze, a match of power to power, will to will, mate to mate.
«They hurt us. They slew our mother-kin.»Her voice was a vibrant, multi-ply thread, the voice of Ellysetta... and something more. Those whirling sunburst eyes turned to regard the brutalized remains of Lauriana Baristani, and her Rage flared higher. «They must die.»
«Aiyah,»he vowed.«And they will. They will flee from us like prey on the Plains of Corunn. This I promise you. But not yet, kem’reisa. First we must save the tairen and the Fey.»Her attention shifted back to him, and he forced his own anger to calm. He held out his arms.«Come back to me, Ellysetta. The pride needs you, and so do I.»He spun compulsion and need on every path they now shared.
At first, he wasn’t sure his call had pierced the veil of bloodlust, but then he felt her Rage shift. The furious, whirling radiance of her eyes dimmed slightly, and he felt the gentle part of her soul swim slowly back to the surface.
“Rain.” This time her voice was all Ellysetta, shocked and shattered. “Oh, Rain.” The blaze of light surrounding her winked out, and her body plummeted from its great airborne height towards the torn, jagged tumble of marble, earth, and stone below.
He leapt forward, magic flying instinctively from his fingers in a rapid weave of Air that slowed her descent and cushioned her fall. She hovered above the ground, embraced by Air until he reached her and snatched her to his chest. Her skin was warm to the touch, the pulse at her neck rapid but slowing, and even now she glowed with a visible brightness.
Ellysetta’s vast magic had at last been unleashed and in that moment the facade of mortality that had hidden her all her life was ripped away, revealing the stately Fey queen she was born to be. The familiar lines of her face were still there, but they seemed purer now, breathtaking. Even the endearing freckles that had sprinkled her skin were burned away, leaving silky, pale Fey perfection.
She was still Ellysetta, but the shy mortal girl was gone. In herplace stood a dazzling Feyshei’dalinwith eyes that blazed with astonishing power.
The remaining warriors of her quintet gathered round, mouths gaping, Fey stoicism lost in stunned amazement and breathless wonder. Nowhere in the Fading Lands was there a woman who shone so bright. Nor ever had been... except possibly the legendary Fellana.
For beneath Ellysetta’s long auburn lashes, in a face that now gleamed with the luminescent beauty of the Fey, a tairen’s eyes looked out where once mortal eyes had been. Shining prisms of opalescent green with no hint of white, they glowed with latent magic.
“Rain,” Bel breathed. “Gods’ blessings, Rain, is she...?”
“Tairen Soul,” Rain confirmed. “The first born since I came into the world twelve hundred years ago. The first female Tairen Soul ever recorded.”
In Eld, locked away in the dark stone confines of his cell, bloody and weakened from the punishing wounds he’d earned for aiding his daughter, Shannisorran v’En Celay gave a weary smile of triumph. His mind reached out across a familiar path, instinctively sharing the vision.«Can you see her, Elfeya?»
