Folks Of Fury (#1; Tales Of Elysia [COMPLETED])

twenty-two.

I jolted up with the motherfucker of migraines, by the cawing calls of Tromos and Apelpi.
I'd gone unconscious from the erratic clash of my magic against the spell holding me captive.
Time seemed to have droned on too slowly and I grimaced with an aching back.
I summoned Angurvadal and struck at the invisible field of the spell.
Each strike clanked off, humming through the walls as I slashed and jabbed the ancient magical sword trying to break free.
But no matter how many times I struck with anger and frustration, which was countless by now, I was thrown back by the buildup recoiling power.
Angurvadal fell from my grip as I collapsed to my knees again, out of breath and defeated. Margot had worked this magic too tight and too good for me to find an escape out of.
My mind rattled with every sane and insane conclusion it could through the bubble of betrayal and anger the entire situation caused me.
My ravens cawed even louder and flew from the branches stretching through the doors. I watched as the spell pushed them back from getting closer.
Margot had definitely pushed the limits of her witchcraft to create a spell strong enough to hold me.
They were ricocheted off the edges of the spell holding me, Apelpi fluttered to my left and cawed in frustration eyeing me with impatient bronze eyes.
I hear you, girl. I'm going to get out of here somehow and gut that son of a bitch Ezra Khan.
An idea formed in my head as I watched my ravens fly around the confines of the enchantment.
I sat lotus style at the spot I figured was the centre and whistled both Apelpi and Tromos down from midair, he perched down in front of me and waited as I delved deep into my subconscious.
The birds' flighty subconscious were easy to penetrate, more because they have been devoted to me for years.
Telepathy would be difficult to maintain while I'm still trapped and considering the distance.
But scrying would be much easier since I had a primal connection to my ravens...
They took flight with receiving that stray thought.
I relaxed my mind and emotions, letting my anger for Ezra slip down to the depths. Such banal emotions could easily loosen my hold on my ravens.
I opened my eyes and it wasn't the bedroom I could see but the forest through the converging sights of Tromos and Apelpi.
I didn't have to know which direction Ezra would be meeting his father, my ravens were already expert in tracking my boyfriend speedily. Besides he had let it slip where he was going.
Hopefully whatever the Agnate had schemed to capture the Lord Rite wouldn't have already been carried out. I had to have a chance to help Lisette.
I recognized the terrain to belong to the Shifter clans. Their territory was the border leading to New Orleans and it made sense that they would be the Lord Rite's next target for his ritual.
Up in the air I caught sight of the five Shifters being used as bait, a gasp of surprise and worry left me as I recognized Toby.
Because I was just in time to see the sudden blanket of heavy darkness gathering overhead.
The shadows flared and stretched from their forms, my ravens cawed with unsettlement so I directed them to land on a high enough bough to be kept out of sight.
"He's here." Toby said to his fellow Shifters.
Why would he risk himself like this... so he knew about this plan of the Agnate as well?
Did it mean that both Ezra and my best friend felt that they couldn't trust me with Agnate matters?
I could feel the unsettling nature of Lord Rite's presence jolt through Tromos and Apelpi, it sent an acidic reflex in my gut.
All around, nature was warring with itself with such stench of death and dark magic.
He was draped in the shadows that had been drawn from trees and animals, now diseased with death, an unseen wind flapping the folds as he walked leisurely towards the Shifters.
"Isn't this fortuitous, a perfect number for my next sacrifice just here for the taking? One would think this was some pitiful attempt to ambush me." He remarked at the five Shifters who now circled him.
I rolled my eyes. Any villain worth his evil would see this for what it was.
"You won't find these sacrifices so easy to take, monsieur." I veered Tromos' eyes down to the speaker and gaped at the sudden appearance of Aunt Hetta.
The rest of the Shifters seemed to shimmer in a haze and the next second they became my mother, her sisters and a pale haired Simone Sinclair.
A hood enchantment. Clever. Lord Rite cocked his head at the truth of the situation.
"Redwood witches and the Lady of Rose. This is a pleasant surprise, I'd think you'd had enough trouble this past weeks."
"I think you'd be the last of our troubles." Aunt Uliana retorted
"Well it's a little too late, ma chérie." The ground began to quake and I knew he was about to call the ley lines.
My ravens cawed and fluttered their wings as a rushing wind blew through the twilight morning. I wanted to warn them all of the impending unearthly force.
Then from the darkness of the night, listening and watching carefully through avian senses, all the while remaining hidden from recognition.
Any of my aunts or mother could recognize my ravens and guess my shadow reconnaissance.
Then a disturbance gave both Lord Rite and my spies a surprise as a burst of frenzied growls and wild beasts coming from somewhere nearby.
What in the world? I thought. But I shouldn't have been surprised in seeing a dozen Houns came rushing out of the woods.
Anthropomorphic shadows danced wildly on the forage, furry beasts of dangerous feral hunger and rage larger than horses.
The rodents and game probably slumbering awoke as if sensing the increasing number of insatiable predators in their midst.
The boisterous roars and growling seemed to be coming from the same direction as the unknown tremor of the forest.
Curious despite my present vantage point, I warily urged Tromos and Apelpi a couple branches ahead toward the noise.
Before I could see anything, however, I heard heavy paws tramping noisily through the trees, accompanied by a rumbling growl that was growing louder and more inescapable by the second.
The first to attack and tear off a chunk of flesh from Lord Rite, was a gigantic pitch black Hound built a few tonnes more than the others.
Even through my out-of-body experience of the scene, I knew this wasn't Ezra. There was a lot more unchecked lethality and dominance in this Hound.
Slowly he began to make a partial Change back, rising on hind legs and straightening his shoulders as fur slid back underneath untarnished deep brown skin corded with heavy muscles.
Eleazar Khan looked as though he had just run a marathon through a field of thorny rose bushes (perhaps he had), but his eyes still glowed with feral glee and rapacity.
They should save their predatory zeal for Lord Rite, I thought, not appalled by the man's desire to show off his strength.
Cold hazel eyes regarded the serial killer before him with open and gray contempt. Eleazar flexed his dark claws at him and growled.
"You have a choice; surrender to the justice of the Agnate or die."
Lord Rite had been cradling the arm which Eleazar had chewed off but flashed his most resentful and defiant smirk.
"Then death it is, Knight."
Eleazar growled in response and leaped forward, taking the full Change in midair, the rest of the Legion roared and stampeded after their leader.
But Lord Rite raised his good hand into the air, the five digits hummed with dark power before he slammed it down into the ground.
There was a retching sound, tearing upward from below the ground. Quaking the earth in cracks that elongated from where Lord Rite's hand had hit and onward.
Aunt Hetta joined hands with her fellow witches before they began their incantations, their magic welling up and saturating the air.
But by the sudden drop in the temperature that brought vagrant sounds through the forest, I knew those shadow beasts had been summoned by their master.
They shattered through the ground, leaping with their usual incredible speed and dexterity at the Legion and the witches.
Eleazar slashed his paws down at one, killing it instantly but three more blocked him off from Lord Rite. The Legion grounded to a halt as they sought to finish this new combatant.
Hetta's spell emblazoned iridescent pentagrams underneath the witches, the sigils of protection and connective magic burned a fierce blue.
Lord Rite had already started for the women, but three Hounds had cut themselves from their Legion and lunged for him. Deadly virility as they circled him.
"You have taken from us, Lord Rite." Hetta St. Ours crooned as if to a child as she waved her hand and sent conjured black spikes at him.
He couldn't defend both sides, but he tried deflecting the incoming missiles just as he faced the Hounds. But his magic seemed neutered against Hetta's spikes.
They pierced through his leather and armour, making a pincushion of his torso.
Lord Rite had only an instant to recover from the shocking realization of his failed magic as well as his wounds.
But the spikes dug deeper into his skin and extracted more blood than expected, a Hound threw his clenched fist into his chest with the force of a wrecking ball, driving the maniacal murderer through what was left of the crumbling ground.
He fell a few feet through the cracked crevice of the ground, he yelled out a curse that plummeted his body back into the air. His momentum sent him spinning into the cloudless night.
He heard a bloodcurdled snarl and looked up in stunned amazement to see another tawny brown Hound staring down at him with his unearthly black eyes.
Whoa! I thought, flabbergasted at the speed of a Legion trained Hound. How the devil did he get down here so quickly?
He hurriedly called his sword in a flare of pitch mists and quickly twisted to slash forward at the giant wolf beast baring fangs at him.
He landed a few feet from the opposite direction of the witches and the still fighting Hounds, severed limbs from the airborne Hound dropped in a shower of blood.
Lord Rite scrambled to his feet but once again found another Hound standing directly in front of him.
This time it was the Knight of the Agnate.
Eleazar's speed was astounding even by Fey standards. Easily matching up with his consecutive attacks of his swords and delivering sure hits.
As the Lord Rite crashed and broke through the trunk of a tree from a hit against his face, I saw from his expression that he suddenly felt something he hadn’t experienced; fear.
As if responding to some subliminal signal, they surged toward each other simultaneously, Eleazar ripping through a vengeful roar as his powerful limbs pounded forward.
Order collided with chaos as the Elder Hound and the mass murderer fueled by the vilest magic smashed together with stupendous force, sending seismic vibrations throughout the forest.
They traded colossal blows, hammering each other like warring gods. Claws and fangs against sword and magic; blood spraying, armor denting in sparks.
The earth-shaking jolts brought every other conflict to a halt. All around the terrain of vegetation; Hounds, witches and shadow beasts never stopped fighting as the epic clash commanded them to give it their all.
Lord Rite, embroiled in his determination to finish his ritual, slashed at the Elder with his gleaming broad sword.
And in turn, Eleazar snarled at his enemy through clenched white fangs. He had decades of experience in battlefields both as an Agnate as a decorated soldier with three tours under his belt.
If there was an Agnate dispatched to subdue the criminal of so many murders, it was Ezra's father. His name was legendary even before he had taken the Elder title.
Two powerful Elders though one had been retired, had brought their formidable powers to bear against him. Of course he should be afraid.
But also who knew how many centuries of battle experience, Lord Rite had. Whoever he truly was, he had to know much of what he was doing to have evaded us this far.
In a stealthy move, he caught Eleazar by surprise by dropping down and swiping his legs out from under him.
It took only a split second, and the next thing the night black Hound knew, he was flat on his back with Lord Rite descending from above with his deadly sword.
A Hound intercepted in a blur of deep violet fur zipping forward and slapped a large paw against his face so hard there was a chilling crack of bone.
Lord Rite straightened from where he had been thrown by the hit and he glared vicious acid green eyes at the Hound who had saved the Knight.
There was no mistaking who it was. I knew that turbulent savagery anywhere, the velvety shine of his fur on his goliath form.
Ezra.
Suddenly lightning flashed, forking and arcing through the sky even when there was no storm in sight. The feathers of my ravens frayed in both excitement and dread.
But I watched the streaking bolt of gelid blue current blast when the Lord Rite had crumpled, scattering the ground in flecks of dust and charred wood.
Aunt Tereze glowered at the figure of the villain who had merely escaped her bolt of lightning, her eyes sparking with just as much lethality.
A new expression wove onto his face now, a  declination to let his fear undo him.
"No tainted souls will make me yield!" He resolved, girding himself for the battle to come.
He faced off against my mother and aunts now beneath the now cascading rain. "My blood is pure. My will is supreme!"
They circled each other menacingly, searching for an opening, silver blade of his sword glowing and poised to strike.
Three pairs of honey brown eyes, holding a ring of bright gold in them, contrasted sharply with the villain's roiling black orbs.
Aunt Uliana stepped forward with her sisters moving to her sides, facing the east and west, billowing multicolored kattan as she raised her hand.
Calling her weapons into the fray, a tornado of thorns erupted from beyond the woods and rained down in an endless volley.
Lord Rite began to stave off each and every spike with remarkable dexterous skill with his sword.
But more and more were sent, volleys of untold agonies thundering down upon from above. The air tenses again, ozone prickling with saturating energy and then a clap of thunder.
Blue lightning struck again, bolts were striking all around Lord Rite, but he didn’t alter his course, didn’t even hunch down in the multitude of unconquerable powers of the St. Ours sisters.
He called a second sword to his other hand and continued, occasionally deflect a forked bolt with one of his swords and the storm of thorns with the other.
But I saw him tiring. I had never seen such expulsion of magic before. I knew my family descended from powerful witches but this degree of nature and elemental magic was beyond anything I'd witnessed.
But then the frustration and anger from Lord Rite became evident. He spun and brought a cyclone of black mists and shadows to himself, weaving a funnel which blasted off the thorn tornadoes and spread to engulf the sky, nullifying the gathering energies.
Then he blasted it towards the Fury witches, its force and magnitude splitting the ground like third degree seismic explosion.
Sophie, my mother thrust out a hand, her face a mask of bitter rage that I had never seen before. And from her palm a detonation of fiery sunlight surged. Even I gasped at the sight of this.
It was the same. I watched the beam of searing sunshine dispel the darkness like the dawn of the morning sun.
"You have taken from us, Lord Rite." My mother declared in a hiss, keeping her hand out in a steady stream of blazing hot sunlight.
"You thought you could have your way with Redwood without resistance." Aunt Tereze glowered as she raised her hand to cleared sky for her bolts.
Though facing the woods, Aunt Uliana summoned back her tornadoes of thorns. "We will send you to the Ether as foolish and insane so all those lost souls will look and laugh at the madman who thought he could challenge the Fury sisters."
The Lord Rite hollered in exasperation and drove his swords into the earth.
"Oh don't bother. We are not in a dimension where your ley lines can save you, monsieur." Aunt Hetta explained and finally a look of shock and despair came over him.
My mother and her sisters then cried a single word in perfect unison and rhythm.
"Řeģuļ!" All three Fury witches bellowed to the heavens, their individual bodies flowing with the ethereal energies of their magic.
The last thing I saw before their unleashed power struck me out of my ravens' subconscious, was the senile grin plastered over Lord Rite's grim face. Even when it was clear he had lost.

I waited in the room, more anxious and tired. I didn't bother trying to reconnect with my ravens, that unimaginable triad magic would prevent it.
I didn't even know if my ravens had survived that cataclysm. I only prayed they did.
It was a couple hours after dawn when Ezra returned, though clothes were untouched he looked like he had been to war. Which he had been.
He walked into our room; smeared with ash and dried blood, his approach was guarded and gaze when they landed on where I was confined behind- leery.
We watched each other for what seemed like forever, trying to gauge the other's intention and thoughts.
I rose from the floor and asked laconically. "Are you hurt?"
Ezra nictiated, dark eyes furrowing with confusion. "Nothing I can't heal from." He replied and walked to where he had hung the doll.
"Get me out of here. You succeeded in keeping me out of your business." I tried to keep my irritation out of my voice, following his motility with the doll.
He looked away from the doll to the marks my trials and failures had burned into the floors and back to my face.
"But you tried though."
I shrugged, "Did you expect me not to? And just so you know, I wanted to go not for some selfish reasons of pushing off your father or stealing Lord Rite to the Fey Court."
Ezra cocked his head to the side, curious yet not reluctant to destroy the hoodoo doll. "Why then?"
"If he dies, any chance of helping Lisette dies with him. Somehow they are bound... I wanted to sever that link because I'm the only one who can."
He frowned. "Are you saying that you want to save one of the siblings who have hated you since you were born? After you just put a brother in the ground for that same reason?"
I walked closer but stopping where the spell held me back.
"You asked if I trust you, I do. You're one of five people I can say who have my trust. Lisette is another, the only one in my family who can boast that."
And Ezra took a deep sigh and with one hand broke the doll and the enchantment was broken  and the air of freedom rushed at me.
I went to him and touched his face from where they were now downcast. I raised his chin so I could look him in the eye.
"I'm sorry, Senoy. Tell me you understand why I did this." His words pleaded as much as his eyes. He looked scared of what my reaction would be.
I was still angry as fuck. He had asked the sister who had a bitter grudge against me to help contain me. He had gone to his former betrothed for help.
I brought my forehead to his, staring with a substantive calm anger. "I understand. Doesn't mean I forgive you just yet."
I stepped away from him before he could get in contact with me. I grabbed my jacket and went for the sliding doors on the other side of the room.
Ezra looked harried as he stumbled forward. "Where are you going?" He implored, a mix of care and dread brimming in his eyes.
"I won't be back till I feel safe again in this house. I left the Manor because they had used their witchcraft to imprison me. I thought I had escaped their hateful magic by coming here."
"Senoy, please don't leave me. I need you." He bounded forward to stop me.
"I'm not leaving you, just this house and the Agnate lands. Only for a little while." I responded, not liking the panicked tone of his voice.
"No, if you leave... we're finished."
Those words stunned me utterly. What? I paused to take a good look at him, surprised at his audacious ultimatum.
As if he's supposed to be in that position to strong arm me into doing what pleased him.
"You don't mean that." I retorted, waiting for his rebuke of his own callous threat. I waited for reason to clear through his frenzied head.
What the hell happened after that explosion?
But Ezra took a steady deep breath and calmed his distraught face to a calm seriousness. He nodded, "Yes I do."
My breath caught and it felt like my heart had just been turned into lead and sank to the depths of my guts.
I shut my eyes hard, staving off the stinging tears that threatened to spill. I breathed and muttered, daring a step closer to him.
Two orbs of misty dark hazel eyes were unmoving from my face. He was serious.
"Ezra... d-don't..." the plea choked at my throat before it could escape.
"You're the one who wants to leave me. I made a mistake and I'm sorry; this wasn't even as bad as all you've done."
This was some Hound dominance bullshit that always pissed me off. "Oh, we're comparing bad deeds done, huh? Well fuck you, Ezra."
I cursed loudly before yanking aside the doors and in a bright flare, shifted into a hawk and flew away.