The Goblin's Heir

Chapter Sixty: Merciful Death

With a tug at their limbs, I pulled Cerise and the doctor free of the darkness' hold. They staggered into the path I'd cleared behind me, blinking stupidly, stunned as if blinded by a flash of sudden light.

"What is this?" Hughes asked,  one hand still grasping the spearhead, the other clutched around the barrel of the rifle as if it offered some sort of comfort to him just to touch the ruined thing. He looked around at the blackness we waded through those great walls of black at either side of and above us.

"This is Bran's power," I answered. Bran's. Not The End's. I knew the feel of both creature's magic, knew the stench that clung to the snake and the cold that came with the boy's. "He can call upon the dark, night, shadow. Capture and hold you. The dark, however, is a fickle thing. It'll obey any master that can command it."

"I don't understand. You're human. We don't have magic, so how are you?" He asked.

"This dark comes from a land of fear. It feeds on it. The trick is to starve it, to have a will greater than your fear." I tilted my head at the confusion and terror on the man's face. This was, by far, the most emotion I'd seen in his gruff features. "You can do that, can't you? An old soldier, like you? You crossed the bridge of corpses better than I did, and you've agreed to kill a god for us. You've been surprisingly brave until now. Are you afraid of the dark, Hughes?"

"Not the dark..." He swallowed, his brown hair twisting about his head with a gust of wind. "What's hiding in it." His dark blue eyes, the color of deep ocean where the sun's light grew weak, moved past me, into the depths of the dark ahead of us. He could feel it then. That tingle at the back of his neck, the rising of every hair on his body. The feeling that death was near, that it lay ahead of us, waiting. 

"I can clear our way, but you must let go of your fear if you are to do what we came here for, both of you."

Cerise took a deep breath and the darkness seemed to seep away from her. "I'm okay now. I-I'm good." She said. 

I frowned at the tendrils of dark reaching toward her. It didn't move away as far as I would have liked, she was still too easily within reach, so in danger of being sucked in again. "Are you sure?" I asked. "You're a she-goblin and a goblin prince's bride. The darkness is our friend. Don't let it bully you."

"I am trying." She took another deep breath through her teeth. "I'm afraid I don't find it as easy as you do."

"I didn't always. I just learned that there were greater things to fear than the dark unknown."  I looked at Hughes again. He was shaking now, though every muscle with tense with his attempt to still them, to maintain control of his fear. "Your daughter is waiting for you. You have to do this if you want to save her. You volunteered."

"I know." He hissed at me. "I know that...but...I know this feeling....I've felt it before. So many times...I know what's waiting for us and I...I don't know if I can do it...I..." He lifted the spearhead, holding it out to me.

"I told you, you offer our greatest chance of success. It's best that the strike comes from a hand he doesn't expect."

"You said he fears you. I don't know how that can be or why but I do not doubt it."

"The boy fears me. I killed his mother and tried to kill him twice before now. I was the boogeyman in his nightmares." I laughed. "Can you imagine that? A faerie god-child afraid of a little human girl with a thirst for power? The End, however, is another matter. He and I have a sort of agreement. One I fear might come into play should I make the strike myself." I said, trying to ignore Cerise's questioning look. 

 We passed an Unseelie soldier, stuck in the darkness mid-leap as he had attempted to take flight. His wings had only just begun to spread out. His eyes and mouth were both wide open. Whether it was in a roar of anger or scream of fright I could scarcely tell.