Heart of Ash (The Dark Arcane Series: Book 1)

Chapter Forty Six

Streams of ebony shadow burst from her hands, her skin, her mouth. It exploded in every direction, this strange dark power. The force blew her upright, on her feet.

Ashyn looked across the battlefield, tears still wet on her face. If people were attacking her, she never felt it. The black force kept them at bay with a weight that shadows don't possess.

Her eyes locked down on her target. She roared as she thrust her hands out and sent it flying across the Red Jae, towards the archer who had fired the shot.

He tried to scramble away but he was pitifully slow. She saw everything in so much detail, like a double vision snapping into place. The arrow he fired simply soared straight through the mist. He was so much lesser.

She forced her shadows down his throat and ripped through his stomach on its way out. He didn't have time to scream before he died.

She stared at her hands, dirt under her cracked nails and dried blood staining her skin. The black mist came off of her like it was a part of her, but she could feel the life it had. It wanted blood.

She wanted blood.

She sent the black force away again, letting it tear through the ground as it travelled. When she found the nearest soldier, she tested it, tried to snap his neck. The soldier's head collapsed and his body went limp.

Discarding the body she moved to the next one. She'd never felt this fucking powerful.

She saw flint soldiers but her shadow saw only blood to be spilt. When she tried to reign it in, she was surprised at how it fought back. It was angry.

She was angry.

She took in her surroundings, and let her shadows spread across the battlefield, further and further, engulfing everyone in its path. There were shouts of terror and confusion but she didn't hear them. With barely a thought, she retracted the black force back into herself, ripping through their bodies. Of the people who had been surrounded by her shadow, most fell to the ground.

"You're beautiful."

She whipped around to face Mayeve who shook her head in wonder, lips parted.

"Come, child. I have much to teach you." She offered a hand, strong and sure even in the wind. Her golden hair danced around her face.

Ashyn only saw weakness.

Her shadows surged towards the ex-queen with murderous intent. Ashyn smiled in anticipation. But even when it reached mere inches from her face, Mayeve did not move, did not flinch. She slowly raised her hand, palm up, from which golden light immediately emanated.

Ashyn grunted as her midnight power rebounded off the light. Growling, she sent it after her again and again, a cocoon of shadow around the brightness. But every time, Mayeve's warm light was there. While Ashyn's darkness thrashed and writhed, her light cut through in smooth arcs and careful aim, revealing a lifetime of mastery.

"Don't be foolish, child," her voice carried on the wind. "You have no chance in defeating me. Come with me now, and I will show you how to be a world destroyer. I will show you how to unmake everything. You could be the downfall of empires, child."

She tunnelled her shadow soldiers underground, the earth flying high, leaving a small ravine in its place.

"Fine. But I warned you." Mayeve's lip curled.

And then her whole being was light. She strode forwards, unaffected by Ashyn's hell given powers, even as they rammed into her so hard it sent reverberations that shook the trees.

That kind of power...

Ashyn had seen witches channel their vaetterre before in the Ka l'asterei, she'd seen Meredith deafen people at will and others grow plants in barren land. But nothing compared to this.

This was nothing less than the might and excellence of an admiral.

The witch who controlled the storm sent lightening raining down on Ashyn. The sparks had her hairs raising rod straight. She barely avoided the first strike, and the second hit several feet away.

Noticing the grimace on the witch's face, she realised powering the storm must take a huge amount of effort.

She retracted her forces from Mayeve and sent them after the other witch. When her shadows tried to tear through her, it was like taking a knife to stone.

So, naturally, she made herself into an axe.

Her forces dragged the witch up into the dark grey sky of her making, and then slammed her down into the ground. Over and over. A cat playing with a mouse.

She felt Mayeve's light pierce through behind her, and she held up a hand to rebuild her defensive wall, stance widening and face glowering.

She finally tossed the storm witch into the sky where the lightening claimed her.

When she searched for Tre she couldn't find her but increasing pressure from the burning light forced her to turn her attention to Mayeve. It had begun to burn holes through her shield of blackness.

Fury burned in Ashyn like a star. She welcomed it, encouraged it. Every emotion she'd bottled up since her family's death, her hatred, her guilt, her agony, she recalled it all. Her sense of duty as deathstalker. Her joy at finding Ender, and the desperation of losing him. The outrage at the emperor and his system that destroyed her life.

Hell, she had anger to spare.

She stared down the ex-queen, with eyes of knives. Her voice did not sound her own. It trembled with power, "I don't need you to teach me anything. I'm a world destroyer in my own right. Death looks the other way when I walk."

The words were not her own. She knew, somehow, that she was accessing vaetterre and the might of the ancestors.

She blasted her shadow army at Mayeve's slight figure with the force of a thousand stars. Where the black mist touched the ground, it left the grass deadened, singed with ash. The leaves in nearby trees dried up and curled in.

She was chaos incarnate.

A ravaging cataclysm barely trapped in human skin.

And she would wreck havoc.

Another surge of black went up against the ex-queen's wall of gold. It frizzed and sparked with the growing pressure.

Her brother lay motionless on this battlefield. He took that damned arrow to save her. Tears still ran down her face. Hurt poisoned her broken heart.

Inch by inch, she pushed the wall in on itself.

Mayeve gasped and reinforced her barrier threefold, her purposeful steps faltering.

"Give up," Ashyn crooned softly. "Give in."

"You will destroy yourself before I'll ever get the chance to," Mayeve whispered, disappointment flashing across her face.

Light flared in a huge eruption, reaching each horizon, like an artist slashing a shining line of white across a canvas.

Blinded, Ashyn looked away, eyes clenched and an arm thrown across her face. Her shadows paused.

When she turned back, the three witches were gone, the army retreating, leaving the devastation in their wake.