Page 62 of Tethered Thrones
Bracken jerked, his eyes fluttering open, and he looked at me with fear. Fear a batbeast should never have. Fear my master shouldneverhave. Especially, not toward me.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered because what else could I say? All I had left to do was prolong the inevitable.
But then, he reached for me weakly, trying, gurgling curses. And though he couldn’t say it, I read his lips slowly.
You… cannot… die… no… there… I… I will…
Another splattering mist of blood, but I received his message. Wherever the hellmouth led, he wanted to protect me from it. He wanted me to sever the bond. He wanted to protect us, even now.
Suddenly, my mood took a seismic shift that seemed to shake the earth with it. Bitterness morphed into rage and then fury, and my whole body burned, blood red, like an avenging god.
Why could we not have it all? Why should we have to forfeit a soul? We had been asked the impossible and met every challenge, and we would not die like this. There had to be something I could do.
I have to protect them!
No sooner did I think it, then Bracken finally succumbed to his injuries. I felt it, just like the first time he had died, his soul slipping from his body, the tendril in my hand slipping through my fingers. It affected me this time, making me feel instantly weak. Moments from my own demise.
“Help!” I shouted, looking up just as our invading army and the one defending the city met in a brutal wave that just… stopped.
Frozen. No, that wasn’t it. They had slowed.
Time had slowed.
Someone or something was granting me more time, but it wasn’t enough! I didn’t need time, I needed power!
“More,” I demanded, my eyes cast to the sky, to the wispy moon and bright sun, and shouted, “You will give me more!”
More power! I needed more power, and I could not take another drop from Tsuki’s heavenly springs. Not a speck of power could be gathered from the dust of their son’s earthly body. So, there was only one other eternal source, an immortalbeing to turn to, released from his chains, reunited with his wife through the stones Sun held.
“Give me more!” I screamed.
And he did just that.
A surge of mana flowed into me, pinpricks of light shooting through the air towards me, holding the tethered souls of hundreds of thousands in and around the capital that erupted into a pillar of red light.
I screamed. This portal was different, more powerful, as if we’d been swallowed up into something much, much worse than the hellmouth Bracken had closed and consumed on our behalf.
“Sun God Taiyo!” I shouted as the mana pierced the sky, swirling, opening. My whole body jerked in primordial terror as I looked upon hiseye, hisflamingeye that held the sun and the universe within it.
I screamed, shutting my own eyes as they burned. But I didn’t care. I kept shouting through the pain.
“You are a god, and we, your mediums! You will seek vengeance. You will make a bridge,” I said and was met with silence as more waves moved in slow motion, charging, my eyes stinging as I forced myself to open them and didn’t shut them again. “If not for your human creations, for us nocs, for your wife, for your son, before this world is swallowed whole! Save us! Give me the power to save them!”
Nothing. He did not respond.
I slumped, damned. But Hadi had not been punished for calling our mother a bitch, so I felt good calling upon and demanding salvation from our father. If anything, I was just ignored.
Why would Taiyo help us nocs? We were the reason his people had long suffered and his wife had been driven to madness.
“I failed,” I whispered. A moment later, a piercing pain shot through my chest.
This was it!Like the ticking of a mighty clock, life was slipping away. I threw myself over Bracken and clutched my dying hearts.
This was it! We are going to–
“Ah fuck. Next time, ask that bastard for mercy, not power. If only you knew what he flung me through. My whole body feels ravaged, Clem.”
Huh?