The jade flames scorching the web around Finnian fizzled out, and he crawled up onto his knees, his form blurring as he sped halfway across the grove.
Cassian stepped back and swerved to bypass Acacius.
“No!” Acacius caught him by the lapel of his suit and yanked him backwards.
The prickle of Acacius’s divine magic rose the hairs on Cassian’s nape as the scenery around them distorted.
A charcoal cloud swallowed them and spat them out. Pale trunks of banded cypress trees surrounded them. Fog drifted up from the bubbling hot spring, its bank mangled with deadly nightshade.
Acacius had teleported them across the realm to the Serpentine Forest.
“She is going to kill him!” Cassian snarled at his brother.
“You have it all wrong?—”
In a quick, harsh motion, Cassian swiped his right arm between him and Acacius. The bare branches of the forest began to bend and spiral together at the order of their master. The trees around the two gods bowed and twisted their limbs around Acacius’s body, swallowing him whole.
As the arboreal prison gripped Acacius, constricting his limbs, he flicked his index finger upwards at the hot spring. It began to cyclone, opening the portal to the High God’s own realm. Liquid magma spit out from the center of the whorl, forming a stream that Acacius pulled towards the trees entrapping his body.
Both brothers locked eyes for a brief moment before Cassian turned to make his escape back to Finnian.
Acacius’s face contorted, and he bellowed out a feral, primordial sound.
Shells of pure ruin bombarded the trees and dirt and left craters in their wake the size of small homes. Branches splintered. Soil flew in clumps towards the sky. It was as if Acacius had called down an invisible air raid on the forest around them.
Cassian winced. The noise of the magical onslaught amplified in his brain like a never-ending ring. A temporary sense of paralysis swept through him. The world spun and his eyes throbbed from the sensation.
True chaos.
Channeling all his energy into his palm, Cassian extended an arm towards Acacius in a clumsy, panicked motion. A translucent, black helix of divine power shot out and hit Acacius in the thigh, soaking through his pants and into his flesh. Blackening, his skin peeled back and decayed, melting the sinew from his bone.
Acacius’s limbs quickly turned from brown to pink to red as the virulent power ate through him.
His brother was immortal, immune to pain in the same sense Cassian was. Yet, even knowing these things, a pang of remorse clenched in Cassian’s chest. Acacius would always be the rosy-cheeked, blathering little brother who used to follow him around in their mortal days.
Cassian wrapped his power around himself and teleported, seeing only the white blur of Acacius’s bare eye socket before landing back at the battleground.
He gritted his teeth and hung on to a singular thought:Get to Finnian.
Cassian’s feet instantly came out from underneath him and his chest hit the ground. Gasping, the air left his lungs.
He lay in the pathway of his garden, in front of ruins covered in ivy, with Acacius’s boot planted firmly in the center of his shoulder blades. His brother looked more corpse than god, but he still had enough power to twist Cassian’s arms around his backside.
“Stop this?—”
Acacius was violently knocked backwards into a bed of rose bushes and vines.
Cassian’s palms touched the ground, and he lifted to his knees.
Nathaira rushed to his side as he spat up a thick splatter of red. “My lord, are you okay?”
In front of him stood Mavros in the path, blocking Acacius.
Cassian’s two unshakeable pillars, always ready to fight with him to the bitter end.
He hoisted himself up to his feet, watching his brother do the same.
Acacius’s flesh bubbled across bone as it healed. He rolled his shoulders, glowering dangerously at Cassian, disregarding Mavros as if he were invisible.
