I kicked out with my boot, sending it into their chin. It worked enough for me to break out of their grasp, but then another hand grasped for me. And another. I noticed the familiar golden hair of the Hunter who’d not long been dead. But she was moving this time, fuelled by a dark magic, her eyes overcome with black shadow.
Possessed. Bahmet had possessed the dead to kill me.
Countless hands grabbed at my ankles and legs, pulling me down as though I was attached to rocks. A sudden resistance stopped the downward pull, as familiar hands grasped at my shirt, tangled in the material and pulled against the dead’s embrace. I glanced up to see Arwyn, struggling for control, kicking at the water as he attempted to pull me back to the surface.
His attempts to save me were futile. The more he fought, the more dead came to their aid.
In the end, they dragged us both down.
I tried to push Arwyn away, but he refused me. He quickly realised that fighting was useless, so he calmed down, tightened his grasp on me. Our eyes met. Fear in mine, horror in his. And then he nodded, accepting a fate that neither one of us wanted.
My body screamed with the need for air. It was becoming harder to ignore it, as if the instinctual need to suck air into my lungs would soon take over. I thought I could reach out to the old magic, to clear a path in the water or blast the dead away from me. But we had run out of time.
I opened my mouth just as a sudden weightless feeling overtook me.
We began to fall through a space of air, thumping back onto hard, dry sand. My fall was softened by the countless dead bodies that landed before me.
Bones cracked, but thank theGoddessnone of them were mine.
I looked up to a floating body of water, a lake suspended in the air, in time to see Arwyn slip out of the boundary and fall. I threw my body to the side just before his mass of muscle slammed into me, crushing me in the process.
We both lay atop a mound of dead, panting for breath. A clapping sound caught my attention, coming from the side. My head lulled in the direction to find Tomin and Verena,surrounded by a mass of Hunters, each one as drenched as the other.
Tomin was the one slow clapping, his figure distorted from my sideways view. I pushed myself up, fingers digging into dead flesh of the bodies beneath me, as I tried to stand. Arwyn was quicker, rushing to put himself before me, fists balled and ready to fight.
“One step closer, Father, and I will kill you without you needing to ask me.”
Tomin laughed, his clapping hands finally calming and resting at his sides. “Oh, my boy. I have no intention of harming a single hair on either of your heads, although I can’t say the same for those standing behind me.”
I took them all in, at least twenty people including Tomin who still survived.
“Come and try, see how far it gets you,” Arwyn said.
“Clever trial, wasn’t it?” Tomin gestured to the floating body of water above him. “The Drowning, playing on one of the oldest witch trials that were used to determine which accused was truly possessed by the devil. To float would confirm you as a witch, and you would be killed. To drown would prove your innocence, and put you back into the loving arms of God. And it would seem, considering you both made it out, that God still favours you. Such a shame we cannot say the same for those you’ve left behind.”
“Tomin!” Verena shouted, holding something up for him to see. It was a sand timer, large enough to rest on one hand. Even from a distance I could see that the top chamber was almost out of sand as it poured into the bottom. “The trial is almost over… what about?—”
“Quiet, Verena,” Tomin cut her off with his sudden anger. “This is God’s will. Be grateful you were not left floating like the rest of them.”
Romy and Kai.
Glass shattered as Verena dropped the timer, a fury passing over her face which Tomin didn’t witness. But I did. It was powerful and familiar, an expression I’d not long ago seen on someone else’s face.
“Arwyn,” I said, command poisoning my tone. “I have to do something.”
He looked slightly behind him, just enough to show me he was listening. “Wedo.”
I jolted my head in the direction of Tomin and his army. “Think you can hold them off?”
Arwyn gave one sharp nod.
I’d used Bahmet’s power, and saved myself… just as I intended. Arwyn too, because he was prepared to drown with me. But time was running out for Romy and Kai who’d been left to wait until they ran out of air.
I wasn’t prepared to leave them to fail this trial.
Hunters ran forwards, Arwyn moving to meet them.
I connected back to Bahmet’s dark power, and the dead bodies beneath me began to move. I hoped more were left in the water above us, enough to drag Romy and Kai down here. But as the dead around me began to rise to Tomin’s evident horror, a roaring song broke ahead of me.
