Tasting Darkness

Everything stopped. My entire world stopped as a pain I wished I hadn’t felt time and time again washed through me. It sucked the air from my lungs, and my body stopped fighting. The searing pain coursing through every nerve ending forced me to shift back, leaving me on top of the corpse of the person I had just killed.

Yet it didn’t save him. Only then do I see Kalen’s name on my infinity mark turn grey fading out. He was dead, yet my heart still beat loudly in my chest. I do not know how, for I wished it stopped beating when he did. Yet the agonized scream of my mates made the world silent except for their agony. It was like time stopped when we all did. Turning my head, he lay there, dead, cold, and covered in b***d.

Lying in the dirt as if he wasn’t the center that held us together, we were nothing without Kalen. He was our glue, and time and time again, he held us together and us him, knowing without him, none of us could go on living. Tobias collapsed to his knees. Just giving up. The same feeling coursed through me, and I resigned myself to death. Darius staggers, and I turn my attention to Kalen’s lifeless form sprawled on the grass pooled in his own b***d. Aleera rushed over to him.

Tears streaked her face as she clutched him as if she alone could put him back together. Despite this, it was far too late for anything to be done. Kalen wouldn’t come back this time. His heart had 6 ケ 60 stopped. Yet still, she tried as she beat his chest and shook him before she screamed.

The power hunters even stopped at the sound of her scream, it was guttural and tortured, emitting the dead hollowness she felt inside. Momentarily shocked, they all turned their attention toward her when she realized he was not coming back.

Ryze flies over, drops on her shoulder, and licks her cheek as her shoulders shake with her sobs. His presence jolted her, shocking her with his magic. Her head lifted, and her eyes glowed with her burning rage. I could feel it in every fiber of her being as she jolted the bond, awakening us from our heartbroken stupor, and I saw Darius start fighting with new zeal.

As if her anger alone was enough to push us to keep fighting.

And it was as Tobias got to his feet. Yet I was frozen, dead inside, as I saw her lean down and k!ss Kalen’s l!ps. She whispers something to him before laying his head down on the ground before she stands, and I feel the entire ground ripple with her anger.

As if she was drawing energy from the earth itself. Her frustration, anger, and sadness were bleeding and morphing into something so dark that not even the devil himself could touch it. As she flexed her fingers, the ground quaked and quivered, cracking, and the sky turned dark as if she sucked all the light out of the world and drew it closer. Everyone stopped, and even time appeared to stop under her fury as it too held its breath, waiting for her wrath.

Everyone was stunned and looked from the shaking ground to the darkened skies, only the light wasn’t stolen. Clouds rolled across the sky, swirling and moving. The wind picked up, and the trees bent as the air tunneled above.

Ryze screeches loudly, and the phoenixes, instead of running from the tunneling wind and rain, dive straight into it, and my infinity mark burns, making me clutch it, the pain hotter than anything I had ever felt. Looking up, I see Aleera raise her arms, and a chorus of screeches filled the air, making me cover my ears as it drilled through my skull.

I clench my eyes and grit my teeth, only opening my eyes to see lightning fire engulf Aleera as she screamed. Pain coursed through the bond, but it didn’t burn as hot as her anger. No, that was far hotter as the phoenixes fried her with their magic. The tunneling wind engulfs her and burns her; as the phoenixes sear her with their power.

Each fell from the sky, bursting into flames as they gave their lives and magic to her. Each phoenix that dropped made her burn brighter until light filled the sky, and her screams died out, along with the wind.

Glancing up, most of the birds had fallen and burned once hitting the ground. Aleera staggers and collapses on the ground, panting. When I noticed most of the Power hunters zero in on her, they could feel her energy shift. The entire world would feel the magic coursing through her.

Fear for her courses through me, Darius screams at Tobias to get to her, and I shift, knowing she is now the target. She had too much power, more power than one could harness, yet when she looked up, I stopped in my tracks, my claws biting into the ground as I skidded along it before halting in my tracks and backing up. What the f*ck was she? Yet the power hunters didn’t see what I saw.

I wasn’t even sure of what I was seeing as I stood in front of her. At this moment, she was darkness incarnate.

Aleera wasn’t manipulating darkness. She wasn’t touching darkness.

She became the darkness. Gold tendrils slivered down from her face when she dug her fingers in the ground, the gold streaking out and splitting the earth and making the ground shake with the power of an earthquake.

In a blink, she was standing, and I gasped when I saw her wings spread out on either side, along with her arms.

Wings. Aleera had wings! Something I had not seen on a fae since before the plague, yet they weren’t like any wings I had seen before. White Fae used to have wings, crystalline or white, yet hers were black with gold and red streaking through them.

Aleera, also shocked at her new attachment, gasps before flexing them and blinking, regathering herself before turning her gaze to her victims. And she was running straight at them in the next blink of my eyes. And they were running at her.

They wanted her power, and she wanted their lives. And their lives she took as she manifested magic I had never seen before. Monsters, things of nightmares, crept from the crevices out of the earth as she cast them into the world. She created hell on earth. Hell hounds come up from the pits she created, tearing into the power hunters.

Ghostly figures clawed from the ground and attacked alongside her. Ryze, who was still on her shoulder, jumped off, joining the fight as she hurled magic everywhere as they fell while others ran for their lives. Power hunter ran, opening portals and escaping the massacre.

I could only stare in shocked horror at what she had become. Her magic flowed freely from her fingertips while she used her wings as weapons, sharper than swords and stronger than titanium. They tore through them like hot knives on butter while her magic burned their souls from them.

Darius, undisturbed by what she became, moved to help her along with Tobias.

Aleera, feeling them, turned on them, tossed her hand in Darius’ direction, and he was thrown back. At first, I thought she turned on him when Tobias was thrown back too. Yet as they stood, I realized she recharged them, empowered them, and she did it without even touching them. Yet that momentary distraction cost her.

A blast from her right knocked her sideways, and her body lifted in the air, and she was tossed in the air.

Darius got to his feet, and I was already running toward her as she was launched into the sky. “Aleera!” Tobias and I screamed at the same time Darius killed the figure holding her in their magic, the hot fire engulfing them and melting their flesh from their bones when she hit the ground.

That momentary distraction, I realized it was a ploy as portals opened up everywhere, giving the few left a chance to escape. I rushed to her side and grabbed her only to let her go, her skin burning hot to touch, and she pushed herself off the ground with a g***n and turned, looking for the power hunters. She wanted to kill them.

A sob tore from her l!ps when she realized they had escaped, and the feeling through the bond turned cold.