Page 40 of The Withering Wood

The metal sliced through several gems, and they shattered into a dozen inert fragments. Remnant ooze that coated the outside dissolved and sizzled into the snow, the power trapped within evanescing into the air.

Before he could counter, Cerise kicked Vraethik in the chest with her good leg. He stumbled but did not fall, summoning fetid green into his palms. She bombarded him with blows, Beloved’s shaft smacking against his hands, blades barely missing his half-dead flesh. He grimaced with each blooming bruise, Cerise blinded with purpose, knowing if she kept pushing forward, if she simply kept swinging, he’d eventually weaken enough for her to land a killing blow.

Stony determination spread over his decrepit features. He ducked beneath her next swing, lunging with necromantic empowered hands outstretched. She sidestepped, flinging one arm away with Beloved, but she missed his other palm.

It slammed against her lower gut, the putrid power burning through her clothes.

She screamed, falling to one knee, the wretched burn of necrotizing skin seeping into her body. With one hand braced on Beloved to remain kneeling, the other pressed to her putrefying gut, she felt the necrosis eat through her skin. Once it got through her muscles and into her organs, she’d be dead.

Vraethik loomed over her, gazing down at her with disgust, nose crinkled, scraggly beard and rags drifting in the light breeze. “You were even more foolish than the prince to think you could defeat me.”

Cerise ground her teeth, forcing herself to look up at the dwarf. “No, you were the fool. I am no stranger to pain. Something as minor as this will not stop me.”

She lunged, driving Beloved’s dagger point into Vraethik’s chest, his thick dwarven rib bones catching the blade. He stumbled backward, and she used the momentum to drive him to the ground and pull herself to her feet, pressing Beloved harder against his bones. He collided to the ground with a gasp, blood spurting from his mouth.

Twisting the blade, trying to free it from Vraethik so she could stab and slice into him again and again, the necromancer squirmed and begged through the burbling liquid in his mouth. “Wait! Wait! If you let me go, I’ll heal you. I’ll bring anyone you want back from the dead. You’re a templar, right? Surely you know some who deserve to walk the earth again.”

“That magic’s impossible.” Cerise paused, no longer wrenching the blade but pressing her weight down on Beloved, keeping him pinned.

“No, no it isn’t,” Vraethik prattled, eyes widening with hope and desperation. “That was our deal, see, mine and Azkanix. I was half dead when he came to me, the mountains having crushed me and my people. But he promised if I became his prophet and returned him to this plane when the Celestials cast him down, he’d revive them all. So I did it. He stitched my wounds closed and I took his soul. Learned the only way of resurrection through him. If you help me, if you let my people return, I’ll bring back anyone you want. Please. Please. I promise.”

Cerise stared down at this pathetic creature. He truly was half dead, then. Azkanix had stopped his body from fully decaying, granting him the power to mobilize dead flesh. Even worse was that Vraethik believed Azkanix would help him. Would bring his people back from the dead, as pure as they had been in life. He wouldn’t. All he ever wanted was a plane of the undead, those whose sinews he could control and force to storm the Celestial Kingdom.

She yanked Beloved from his chest, blood droplets splattering over his clothes and surrounding snow. Relief washed over his face, and he pressed a hand to his wound, trying to kill the destroyed skin and stitch it closed.

“There’s no one I want to return. I only wish for those who are dead to remain dead. To find peace in the afterlife. Those who I love are still alive, and I intend to keep them that way.”

She lifted Beloved high over her head, the stretch of dying skin along her gut searing.

Vraethik snickered. “Your petty blades can’t kill me, not with Azkanix’s spirit infused with mine. Only Celestials can touch me.”

“Lucky for me, or unlucky for you, then, that this is no ordinary weapon,” Cerise replied, smirk stretching her lips. “It’s Zyrdriel blessed.”

Vraethik’s mouth popped open with horror and he tried scrambling back, but Cerise already dropped Beloved, one of the axes shearing through his wrist.

He screamed, staring at the dismembered hand. He lifted his other palm, summoning his magic in a futile attempt to reattach it, but Cerise swung Beloved once again, cleaving off his other fist. She hacked and hacked and hacked, chopping his arms into tiny pieces until nothing more than bleeding stumps dangled from his shoulders. Light green wisps flowed from his body and the gored fragments of his arm, trying to put him back together. But Zyrdriel’s blessing froze the flow of power, preventing his necrotic healing.

“Please,” he whispered, blood staining his yellow teeth and splattering on his ratty beard. “Please—My people—No one will remember if⁠—”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that if I were you. I’m certain your people will be remembered. It’s you who won’t be.”

Cerise plunged Beloved straight down into his chest with all her weight, burying the dagger so deep it kissed the cold ground, the twin axe blades cleaving through his bones. She sawed Beloved back and forth, back and forth, shearing through his rib cage. Even when the light left his eyes, fog no longer puffing from his breath—and what she assumed to be Azkanix’s spirit—a dark purple-black fog flecked with bright green left his body, she continued sawing until his torso split in two, organs spilling onto the snow in hot, viscous heaps.

Once Beloved was freed from his corpse, Cerise panted, catching her breath. Her body remembered her pain, gut burning as the necrotic curse still ate away at her skin, left leg wobbling with the weight of crumbling mountains.

Yet she couldn’t collapse now. She had a prince to save and an Ix-God to kill.

She hadn’t realized how far into the plains the battle with Vraethik took her. Halfway between the rib’s necrotic pool and the cursed wood, she grimaced with each step back, leaning heavily on Beloved to keep herself upright. The sky darkened in the east, a deep violet overtaking the pale lavender as night swallowed day.

In the distance, the imposing, limping form of Oberon approached, clutching an arm.

He swept sweat-slicked hair out of his face, the frigid air crystallizing the moisture on his hair and beard. Nicks, cuts, and minor punctures decorated his body, leaving a trail of bloody footprints. A wince crumpled his face as he saw her and tried to smile, stretching a small tear on his cheek.

Stopping a few inches from her face, his warm breath mingling with her own, he brushed a large, bloody hand through Cerise’s hair, tucking it behind her ear and assessing her face and body. His gaze caught her hand pressed on the ruined leather and dying skin.

“Are you injured badly?”

“We can worry about me later. This isn’t over.” She flicked her focus to the heart, its growing chambers thumping unholy blood, a horrid drumbeat in her ears. “The lichboar is dead, I assume.”