Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight

Darcy swiped at me with an enormous paw, her claws slamming into my air shield so hard that I was forced to absorb the blow and let her move me rather than shatter it. I was flung across the room, the air I was wielding wrapping me in a vortex of my own design and setting me on my feet behind the throne.

“Darcy,” I barked, like I was scolding a naughty pet. “You know me, you hairy asshole.”

Darcy roared, whirling on me and charging again, forcing me to retreat around the throne, keeping the enormous stone-built chair between us.

“I don’t think insulting her is helping,” Orion called unhelpfully from his position in the cage where he was still chained to the wall by the shadows, and I flipped him off as I darted away from my beast-sister’s attack.

I lifted myself on a gust of air, rising above Darcy as she launched herself at me again, swiping her lethally sharp claws like a cat trying to bat a fluffy little toy – a cat set on murder, its tasty reward for catching me.

I was forced to shoot away from her again, hurling myself across the space with my air magic to gain some room.

I threw earth magic towards her as I landed behind her, vines growing with incredible speed all around her, binding her tightly while she roared in fury and snapped her jaws in an attempt to bite them off.

“Look at me,” I demanded, running into her line of sight, my heart pounding as something in the wild creature’s gaze shifted. I could have sworn my other half was looking back at me from within those beastly eyes.

But the moment I relaxed my guard, the beast fell apart, becoming nothing but shadow and causing my vines to slacken and fall to the stone floor uselessly as she escaped them.

I cursed as the smoke swept towards me, throwing a hand up and casting air at it to blow her away from me.

The shadows roiled furiously as they fought my air magic, and I grunted with the effort of holding them off, planting my feet and pushing more energy into keeping her dark power at bay.

“Tory, behind you!” Orion shouted and I looked over my shoulder a heartbeat too late as a tendril of shadow shot towards me.

The power of the strike was far greater than it should have been, my shield cracking from the impact and my knees buckling, sending me staggering forward while I focused on maintaining it.

Another strike hit me from the front, then the side, above, below, lashes of shadows whipping at me with tremendous force from all around while working to find a weakness in my defences.

I gritted my teeth as I threw all of my power into the shield, the bubble of air magic starting to glow red and gold as my fire poured into it too, the roars of the invisible Shadow Beast echoing off of the walls.

“Here!” Orion yelled from the other side of the throne room, banging an empty food bowl against the bars to try and draw her attention away. “Come for me!”

The Shadow Beast threw ribbons of darkness at him too, and my heart leapt into my throat as I saw certain death spearing for him. He had no magic, no way of moving, and no chance at all against the savagery of that blow.

“Stop!” I roared, my own shield falling away to nothing as I threw everything I had across the room towards that piercing slice of darkness.

My shield blinked into position around Orion less than a second before the shadows collided with it, the force of the blow resounding through me to my core as I held her off. I couldn’t let her hurt him. Couldn’t let her face the fate that I’d been dealt with Darius stolen from me. I wouldn’t allow her to lose the man destined to be hers after all they’d survived to get to this point.

The Shadow Beast materialised in front of me, and my heart stalled as I stared up at it. It was twice as large as a Werewolf, its black fur thick and ears pointed, its face resembling a bear’s.

“Darcy,” I spoke calmly, my arms wide before me. “You can control this. I know you can. You’ve always been the strong one, the one who could deal with anything in your own calm and indestructible way. I know you can-”

She came at me so fast that I acted on instinct alone, drawing my sword with a rattling rasp of metal, swinging it high to catch the sharp curves of her claws a bare moment before she could chop my fucking head off with them.

“Fuck you,” I snapped, the sound of those razor-sharp claws grinding down the length of my blade, setting my teeth on edge.

Darcy bellowed and swiped at me again, forcing me to leap over her other paw before kicking the back of it and striking her hard enough to sting.

“Stop it,” I snarled, wrenching my blade aside and knocking her hooked claws from it before whirling away from the snap of her jaws. “This is like the time I borrowed that little black dress you’d been planning to wear to the school dance and got it all oily down at the bike shop. You tried to bite my head off then too – though not as literally. Do I need to sneak you into the movies to see an overrated chick flick this time too? Or-”

She came at me so fast that I was almost cut to ribbons by her claws before I dove aside, tumbling into a roll before straightening again with my sword raised defensively. I wouldn’t strike her. Not once. But I wasn’t inclined to let her eat me alive either.

“She’s lost to it, Tory,” Orion called from the cage, but I ignored him. This was between me and her. No matter how far either of us had ever fallen before, there had never once been a time when the other couldn’t drag us back to ourselves.

She was it for me and I was for it for her. That one, immovable thing. That tether to the here and now.

Darcy spun to face me once more, her teeth bared as she prowled towards me, nothing but a need for carnage shining in the shadowy depths of those soulless eyes. But she was there. I knew it. And she would never hurt me.

I swallowed thickly and lowered my sword, sheathing it while I held eye contact with her and raising my chin as I moved my hand away from the hilt.

Not a scrap of magic shone around me or blossomed in my blood, ready to be put to use.

There was nothing at all between us but the truth of who we were. Gemini twins. One and the same.

The Shadow Beast stepped closer, padding towards me so slowly that I could count the thrashing beats of my heart between each step.

“Just you and me, Darcy,” I said in offering, taking my own step closer as my pulse began to slow, our gazes locked.

Orion was shouting out in warning to me, but I ignored him. She was in there and she would never hurt me. She was in there and she would come back to me.

Darcy paused mere inches from me, the heat of her breath washing over my face as her lips curled back in a snarl that revealed every sharp tooth in that terrifying mouth.

For a brief, all too foolish second, I wondered if it was an attempt at a smile. But in the next blink, she was on me, a scream tearing from my throat as I was thrown to the ground, claws slashing across my chest and cutting into my neck followed by the hot splatter of my blood across the flagstones.

I tried to fight back, my hands sinking into soft fur as I kicked and struggled beneath her enormous weight, those claws cutting so deep that I was almost blinded by the pain of it.

Power surged through my blood, and I called on it to save me, my Phoenix singing mournfully as its power blossomed in my core, but the piercing cut of her teeth ripping into my shoulder silenced all of it.

The shadows were driven into me and I screamed, lashes of that darkness I had worked so hard to banish from my memory delving deep into my chest and latching onto the essence of my magic.

My power tore its way out of me and the Shadow Beast devoured it. Earth, fire, air, water, all of it shredding its way from my soul and into the jaws of that terrible beast which had taken control of my sister so completely.

I was a fucking idiot for thinking she would be able to fight it. Now that I felt the raw power of the thing, I knew there was no stopping something so immeasurable. I could sense Lavinia’s control, the unending power of the shadows feeding this curse and making it unstoppable.

My Phoenix cried out as that was stolen from me too, shadows carving their way through each and every part of me. All of it was ripped away like it had never even been.

The weight of that terrible power sucked everything from me, and I stopped fighting back, my vision blurring through either the loss of my magic or of so much blood.

My fingers scrambled dumbly for my pocket and the sharp tigers eye crystal I had there, its colour a mixture of brown stripes, and the power I’d imbued it with before setting out on this mission humming inside it. My own magic coiled around the power of the crystal, accentuating its innate gifts of protection, power, and determination so that I could draw on them now, the laguz rune etched into its side, for life energy.

I had already come close enough to death to know that I didn’t like the scent of it, and despite the love I knew awaited me beyond the Veil, I wasn’t going to relinquish my hold on life any time soon. Darcy needed me, so this was where I would stay.

Orion was shouting at Darcy to stop, to remember herself before it was too late, but I was almost certain it was already far too late for any of this to be undone.

My fingers finally located the sharp little crystal, and I summoned the last of my strength before driving it into my side, piercing the skin and pushing it into the wound with a grunt of pain, the magic within it practically burning as it met with my blood, joining its own power to mine.

“Vivere,” I choked out, the ether stirring the air around me as I called on it in this last, desperate plea for my pathetic life. There was a cost to wielding it, and I gave it what it wanted, surrendering memories of heartache from my childhood for the magic to feast on. But it wasn’t death I was fighting against. It was what my end would mean for the girl trapped inside the creature who was trying to claim it. She couldn’t bear that weight. I wouldn’t allow it.

My vision blurred again, and I wasn’t sure if I’d done enough to save my sorry soul as my limbs fell limp, my head turning towards the throne where my father had once sat and commanded such horrors, all because of Lionel Acrux.

Horror sliced through me, my numb fingers finding the strength to reach for my throat while the Shadow Beast’s teeth drove deeper into my shoulder, seeking out the very last of my magic to devour.

The ruby necklace Darius had given me was still warm against my skin like always. The sensation of his callused hand pressing over mine almost overwhelmed me as I gripped the blood red stone, the feeling of his eyes on me, of him waiting for me just a few steps away enough to make a sob catch in my throat.

I could have sworn the warmth of Dragon fire seeped into my veins from the ruby pendant, like Darius was trying to lend me his strength too. But it was no good. I had nothing left. And as the Shadow Beast crushed my flesh in its powerful jaws, a padded foot pressing down on my chest, claws sinking deeper into my skin, I lost my grip on the world, my sister, and everything else, then I fell away into the void.