“Gaelen.” She started to open her eyes and turn to him. He’d absorbed the pain of thedahl’reisen’s death.
“Nei. I’m fine.Teska,find the next. Quickly.”
Ellysetta’s efforts were working. The invisibility weaves were failing, and now the Fey weren’t the only ones dying.
Rain found what hope he could in that and clung to it desperately. His breath came in ragged gasps. Fey’cha flew like lightning from his fingertips, and scores of Eld fell to his blades. Each death was a bitter, searing draft of darkness, another heavy weight slung around his neck until he could scarce move beneath the weight.
Still, he fought grimly. Ellysetta’s life was at stake. If he didn’t fight, the Eld would take her. There was no choice but to fight. His blades flew and came back with each choked mutter of his return word, to be plucked from their sheaths and sent flying again. His vision went red and blurry as pain battered him and the Rage crowded the edges of his control.
Mage Fire roared towards the Fey. He flung a five-fold weave in its path, and the two magics exploded with concussive force. He heard the Eld scream, “The Tairen Soul! Kill the Tairen Soul! Bring him down now!”
Sel’dorarrows flew towards him. Savage blasts of Air and Fire knocked down and incinerated many, but his body shuddered and fire seared his veins as the longer, more damaging spears pierced his armor and his flesh. He roared and yanked the missiles free. His hand shot up, but the magic he called didn’t come. Too muchsel’dor: burning, twisting acid eating at his flesh as the Rage consumed his brain. He roared again. A bloody red haze covered his vision. There was nothing in his mind now except the need to kill, to slaughter, to destroy.
Screaming a wordless battle cry, he plunged into the midst of the Eld,meichain one hand, red Fey’cha in the other, slashing, gutting, stabbing, rending. Blood bathed him in hot, red death, and he howled with triumph and savage joy.
“Got him!” Tajik cried. “I think that’s the last one.” The invisibility weaves were down, the enemy now in full view.
“Beylah sallan,” Ellysetta wept. She slammed her shields back into place while the warriors around her respun the protective twenty-five-fold weaves. With a ragged moan, Gaelen released her. He managed to add a thread of Azrahn to her shield weaves before he staggered a short distance away, doubled over, and began to vomit helplessly in the blood-soaked grass.
“Gaelen.” She started to go to him. He’d suffered far worse than she. He’d taken the brunt of thedahl’reisenpain into himself, using his soul’s connection with hers to shield her.
“Ellysetta.” Bel grabbed her shoulder with sharp urgency. “Gaelen will be fine. You need to call Rain. Call to him now.”
She turned, and her heart froze. Rain stood in the middle of an Eld horde, separated from the main force of the Fey, soaked in blood from head to toe, his face a mask of gore. His teeth bared in a snarl of savage, mindless Rage while his blades hacked and slashed without mercy or surcease. An Eld soldier, little more than a boy, fell to his knees before him, clearly pleading for his life. Rain’s sword swung and the boy’s head flew from his shoulders.
“Rain.” Ellysetta gasped in horror. “Oh, dear gods, Rain.” Then her eyes caught sight of the three Primages gathered behind him, of the growing ball of Mage Fire gathering above their hands. Horror turned to terror, and she screamed a warning: “Rain! Look out! Fey!Ti’Feyreisen! Ti’Feyreisen!”
The Mages prepared to launch their Fire.
A sudden streak of light zipped across Ellysetta’s vision. The Mage Fire winked out as the three Primages clutched the blazing arrows embedded in their chests. Their bodies shuddered and began to glow, as if lit from within by the light of the Great Sun. Shrieking, they burst into flames.
More streaks of light flew across the night sky, and more Eld wailed as they lit up like candleshades and burst into flames.
“What is that?”
“Not what. Who.” Bel’s grim expression lightened with the first signs of genuine hope, and he pointed to a line of warriors who had appeared in the distance, surrounded by a faint golden glow. “The Elves have come.”
With their invisibility weaves gone and the sun-bright arrows of the Elves dispatching Primages and Eld soldiers at a swift rate, the Eld fled in full retreat. Azrahn weaves opened portals to the Well of Souls, and those lucky enough to be near one as it opened ran for the relative safety of the Well. The rest of the enemy force died beneath Fey and Elvish firepower.
Even before the enemy was gone, Ellysetta was racing across the field towards Rain. She summoned her full strength ofshei’dalin’s love, gathering as much power as her body could hold and more, spinning it in weaves of peace and love that she flung towards Rain.
«Shei’tan!» The first slight touch of his mad, ravaged mind made her weep. There was nothing of her beloved Rain left, nothing of his gentle Fey heart, his guilt and grief, nothing of the Fey who wanted to be better than he was. There was only Rage, a savage bloodlust, a driving need to kill and destroy.
Tears trembled on her lashes and spilled down her cheeks.Nei, she wouldn’t accept that. She couldn’t. «Rain, shei’tan, ku’ruvelei. Come back to me, beloved.» Along every thread of their bond she called to him, spinning love and peace and compulsion.
For once, at least, the savage sentience in her own soul was quiet, and though she didn’t know why, she was grateful for the small reprieve. She’d reached Rain’s side.“Shei’tan.”
He spun to face her, blades clutched in his hands and raised in threat. Droplets of the wet blood drenching his steel flew off as he whirled, and splattered across her face and neck.
She flinched but stood her ground. “Rain. It’s me. Ellysetta. The battle is over,shei’tan. We are safe. The enemy is gone. Sheath your blades,shei’tan, and come back to me.”
There wasn’t an inch of skin or a fingerspan of his steel that wasn’t drenched in blood and gore. His hair hung wet, thick with blood. The fierce blaze of his lavender eyes was filled with tairen power and unfocused Rage.
This was the savage side of his tairen that he’d tried so hard never to show her. The side that had no mercy. The side that could kill without remorse. The wildness that lived in every tairen. The same wildness that lived in the tairen part of her.
It frightened her, but she stepped closer to him, her hands outstretched. “Las, beloved.Las.” She sang to him across the threads of their bond, spinning weaves of love and warmth. “Come back to me now. I need you, and so do the Fey.” She spun images of the Fading Lands, the tairen kitlings, Amarynth blooming in Dharsa, the pair of them locked in an embrace, everything they stood to lose if they lost the war with Eld.
Gradually, the wild whirl of his eyes began to slow and his breathing grew deeper, less ragged. She reached for his hands, gently pried the blades from his grip and dropped them to the ground at their feet. She raised his bloody hand to her face and pressed it against her cheek, then laid her own against his.
