Warrior of the Moon

41

Will was lucky that Rune had snuck around and freed Nahla from her chains. He would have been on the ground himself if Nahla had not been there to lob a piece of marble into the temple of the Fae magician who had been a moment from casting a curse his way. He could not move, could not think straight. All he could look at was Serena as Celestine, glowing in her triumph, pulled her dark blade out of the queen.

He could hear the sound of the blood dropping from the tip of the blade onto the floor, followed by the blood from Serena's own mouth. Followed by Serena herself.

He screamed her name through the haze, and he saw Nahla spin around and quickly do the same. The nymph ran for Serena, but Will still could not seem to move. It could not have happened, but the queen was not moving. There was blood on the floor, and she was not moving.

It was when Celestine laughed gleefully and sent a dark wave of magic toward Nahla that he finally blinked his way back into reality. Nahla cringed against the magic and Will sent out a wave of his own to meet it, block as much of it as he could. Nahla shouted out in pain, but whatever it had done to her had not been enough to stop her from continuing on toward the queen, until she was kneeling at her side.

Will noticed then that Iliss had disappeared from behind the platform. Likely due to those powers of hers, even though she had said she was loyal to Tarin and Serena. She had turned on them when it had become clear that her mother was going to win this, and then she had run away from the danger anyway. Perhaps Celestine had signaled for her to go now that the blood had been shed.

He growled aloud with fury, intense enough to get him to make what was likely a fatal decision. He launched an arrow at Celestine when she made to knock Nahla off the platform, aimed for her head.

Without even turning, she lifted a blade just as the arrow would have hit her, deflecting it so that it fell uselessly onto the marble below. She smiled and turned to face her new opponent as Will ran at her, though he had no idea what his plan was. Knowing that Tarin had descended from her, he imagined that she could fight like a viper against any normal opponent, which Will, admittedly, was, at least in comparison to Serena, as the heavens' chosen queen. That was not even considering the whole I-can-vanish-whenever-you-are-close-to-hitting-me thing she could do.

Still, he ran for her.

She stepped off the platform to meet him, and the moment she swung at him with her swords, he knew that he was outmatched.

His sword might as well have been a twig compared to her two dark swords. Sparks flew as blade met blade, over and over again, Will struggling just to keep himself from being sliced in half, which he could just tell that those swords would be capable of doing with just one swipe. They were not steel; they were something far worse than simple forged metal, and he assumed they could do far worse than just physical damage if he let them touch him.

Nahla remained over Serena, and now Rune was there too. He could not hear what they were saying to her, but he thought he saw, in one quick glance that way, Serena's eyes open. He seized on that belief, that she was alive, that if he could only win this fight, he might be able to help her stay that way--

In his distracted state, Celestine managed to break through his guard, and he screamed at the searing agony that erupted in his side.

She raised her arm to strike him again, the blow that would be the end of him, when she had to spin to avoid a dagger, shining moon-white as it flew just inches past her. Will knew that it had been the Leviathar knife, and cursed under his breath.

Celestine scowled and just jerked her chin sharply to the side. There was a blast of magic from somewhere behind Will, and then the sound of a crack: a crack so loud that he knew there were only moments before more of the castle caved in on itself. He only hoped that Dallin would get out from under the marble before it came down.