The Mythos Trials

Chapter Nineteen, Part Two

"Forgive me, Iris...I've failed..."

"Reeves?" A chill passed down the length of Iris's body, burning in the pit of her stomach like a poison. She didn't recognize the sound of her own voice, high and trembling. When no answer came out loud, she tried to tap into their mental link. "Reeves, come in. Please, hear me..."

No answer. Already, she could feel the connection fading fast, the threads that held it together snapping one by one. Iris was about to try again when an unearthly wailing filled the air, stopping her and her opponents mid-attack.

Iris whirled around, her fears confirmed when the shadows—the greater majority of the fighting force serving under her—vanished like smoke. Black and grey wisps billowed into the air, thick and cloying, the stench of sulfur and burning wood nearly choking her.

"No...this can't be happening," she choked, arms falling limply at her sides. "Reeves...he couldn't... We were so close. So close." The tears began to fall, unbidden. Iris felt their warmth upon her cheeks, and with them, the anguish forced its way up her throat.

Reeves...my beloved. He's...

"Lady Iris, watch out!" Misa's voice pierced through the veil of misery, forcing her to snap her head up. No sooner had she done so than Misa's body collided with hers, knocking her to the ground as a beam of golden light sliced through the spot she'd just been occupying.

Without her katana—the weapon lost during the Spectrum's fall—Misa had had to revert to hand-to-hand combat throughout the entire ordeal; her dark, incandescent skin riddled with gashes from where the enemies' weapons and magical attacks had hit her.

Iris scarcely noticed, her gaze flickering to take in the rest of the carnage surrounding her.

What had seemed a sure win had become wholesale slaughter. Clash after clash, Set's forces had driven both the renegades and the Regulations Force ops back. Iris, for her part, had dealt a fair bit of damage on her own, though never doing more than incapacitating even the greenest of operatives. Every time she went to deliver the final blow, Pan or Mars got in her way, blocking or countering with an attack of their own while those serving under them dragged the injured to safety.

Palermo lay in ruins around her, the market nearly unrecognizable amid the rubble. Smoke curled up from the wreckage of several apartment buildings, recently brought down by the renegade factions themselves in an attempt to put some distance between Set's forces and their own. Less than half of what they'd started with remained, but even this could do nothing to bring Iris out of her haze.

Reeves was dead. Gone forever. And everything they'd both worked so hard to achieve... It's meaningless without you by my side. The sob stuck in her throat. After waiting fifty years for his release, and after everything they had faced together since, it still surprised her just how much his death affected her.

"Lady Iris, please," Misa's voice was a hissed whisper in her ear as she dragged Iris to her feet. "It's no longer safe here. Lord Set has sounded the retreat. We need to go."

It was only now that Iris could hear the catch in the other's voice, glancing back at her in startled realization. Tears, thick and bubbling, poured from Misa's eyes, slipping out of her scarred right eye faster than her left. Banded lips trembled, half between sorrow and anger, blood welling on her lower lip where one of her fangs hand nicked it.

There was movement to their left, a flurry of scarlet and black energy materializing into the form of Lucas. "Lady Iris," he panted, dropping to one knee, "I regret to inform you—"

"I know," she snapped.

Lucas looked at her, scarlet eyes wide as he took in the destruction around them. As his gaze flitted about, there was no mistaking the realization darkening his expression; the lack of Reeves' shadows had been noted.