In order to save the world from eternal night, Red must find a way to unlock the dormant power of the Sun Goddess running through her veins without killing herself and everyone she loves.
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Gretchen dug into the soil as if she was seizing its nutrients with both hands, head snapping back in ecstasy as power coursed through her veins, surging up her jugular, vaulting through her veins like lightning! Every drop of energy she spent on the spell was replenished in an instant, but why stop there? She had only dipped her toes into a lake of power, and there was so, so much more to spare.
Please!
A scream from years past rang in her head, and the witch's eyes snapped open. She recoiled from the unspoken spell, wincing at the blackened tips of her fingers.
Once rich and loamy, the soil was now dry and crumbling in her hands, along with everything else within a twelve foot radius. The trees were blackened, skeletal husks, and the animals who'd lived in them littered the ground at her feet, all the moisture sucked out of their bodies.
Her eyes watered —partially from the stench of burning hair — as she surveyed the damage. All their little days had come to a violent end, and for what? The hillside had collapsed without warning and Gretchen had strained to keep it up, fearing that Sebastian might be caught underneath it. She'd sensed pinpricks of life beneath all that rock, but the lycan's aura had always been elusive, as if he wasn't truly of this world.
Some of the pinpricks made it out, dispersing across the terrain. The rest were snuffed out when the agony of leeching life from the land had become too much. Gretchen retched as every death — every last, miserable thought — caught up with her all at once. Bile mixed with dirt as she hunched over, shuddering like the last dying leaf on the tree branch overhead.
"Is it safe?" Rana called out, still swinging from said branch with Eddy under one arm. The iron gauntlets she wore had interrupted the conduit of power, sparing her from the pull that had drained everything else.
Gretchen was incapable of speaking. Everything about her existence had turned sour in an instant; the sweat drenching her clothes, the taste in her mouth, the turn of her stomach. She could only shake and stare at the petrified squirrel two yards ahead, a contorted testament to the agony of its final moments.
Gretchen heard a thud, but didn't process what it meant until a hand came down on her shoulder.
"Are you mad?" she exclaimed, pulling away from the foolish wyvern. "I could kill you!"
"You could try," Rana said wryly, dropping Eddy, who started nosing at the corpses. Not even she wanted to eat them; she must have sensed that there were no nutrients to be gained, that everything good had already been sucked out.
She dropped off the gauntlets next. They hit the ground like boulders, making dents in the earth.
Gretchen snatched them at once, feeling the weight of the iron upon her soul. She was so, so tired of carrying this burden, but the price of letting go was too high. The evidence of it was all around her.
