“Gone.” Cassian came up to her other side. “Alke is searching for him now.”
It was a relief to hear that they wouldn’t have to deal with him amidst the calamity that brewed before them.
“I removed his illusions with a spell. It appears that the monsters you fought were real beasts, just disguised as Acacius’s sick things,” Finnian explained. “What the base creature was underneath, who fucking knows. There seems to be a witch involved, though.” A smirk lifted one side of his mouth as he looked out at the agitating carnage.
Soren hadn’t been working alone. The revelation filled her stomach with nausea.
She watched as meteors were spit out from the contained apotheosis of Chaos. They crashed and craters split into the soil. Chunks of rock and trees collided with the sides of the cliff. Daemons ascended the rocky edges and hurled themselves at the barrier.
Marina swallowed down the dread welling up in her chest. “And Acacius?”
Cassian pointed to their left, atop the highest peak. “Over there.”
Through the deadly landscape of Olethros was the birth of the foaming tide. He floated above the bluff, arms extended, in a constant scream. Midnight-blue power gushed from his mouth and gave fuel to the anarchy around him.
The path to him was barricaded by a churning mass that bled from a tear behind him—Daemons and Heralds and a perpetual spin of debris.
I bring my Chaos with me everywhere I go. It is in my nature to disrupt the quiet.
The back of her nose stung, remembering his words.
She flexed her jaw.
I will bring him back.
No matter what it took.
“Are you ready, Night Goddess? I can see you’re still adjusting, but we’re out of time.” Cassian adjusted his cufflinks, preparing.
Marina pushed her shoulders back and stretched her stiff neck. “Plan?”
“I will drop you both inside the storm raging around Acacius, and you two stop this madness.” Finnian eyed the spell surging from his hand. “I stay here and keep shit from hitting the fan on amuchlarger scale. Ronin helps to keep the spell going, and Naia and Theon protect Ash.”
Cassian slipped off the watch from his wrist and stuffed it in the front of Finnian’s pocket. “Hold that for me, would you, love?”
Finnian rolled his eyes, grinning.
Cassian peered up at the pandemonium. “His Chaos is tethered to his?—”
“Emotions,” Marina finished. She shook out her hands to rid the tingling from her fingertips. “I know. He told me.”
Cassian made a face, impressed. “I’ll help carve the way. When you make it to him, be prepared. He is not in his right mind at the moment.”
Marina took one final breath before exchanging a look with Cassian. “Let’s go.”
Finnian snapped his free hand, and a runic sigil appeared under them, circling their feet in a glowing language unknown to Marina. She could see a similar pattern appearing inside the contained cataclysm, right at its edge.
Finnian faintly strained at using more power. “This is as far as I can get you.” He shot out his index finger toward the connected glyph and Marina’s world flipped into itself, leveling out amidst the maelstrom.
The change was instantaneous. Zephyrs of arctic wind thrashed her hair around while dust peppered her vision. She couldn’t hear her own thoughts against the clamoring, screeching, rasping that pressed down on her ears from every angle.
The legion of Olethros turned toward the two intruders.
Cassian thrusted his arms out, and the pack of Daemons speeding toward him lost their footing and crashed into the snow. The beasts convulsed and screeched out shrill cries. Through the white, Marina could see their skin shrinking and blackening from their bones like rot.
A group of nearby Heralds joined hands and chanted a foreign hymn.
Cassian’s vision locked onto them as bursts of invisible force began pelting him from the deathly mass. He swerved, but a transparent orb of Ruin caught his palm and breached it from his wrist.
