Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight

Pain that cut so fiercely, I felt the salt of it seeping into the wounds that lay within the fabric of my darn soul.

Grief so poisonous, that my body was likely to give out from the toxic depths of it which burned me to my very core.

Agony so wild, it seared the scales from my behind and flayed me upon a writhing eel of doom.

And rage so furious that I felt the horns of hell jabbing into my bosom out of the dark.

The bells of war tolled in my veins with every pump of my furious heart, and the scorch of wildfire raged through my nether regions like an inferno burning tirelessly on, never to be sated by anything but death. Death to the Dragoon who had stolen so much from us in this true and gallant war. Death to the soulless shadow wench who had spilled into our world like a plague of decay from whence she should have stayed. Death to the army of cretinous, bark-skinned lombardos who stomped across valley and glen, fighting the bad fight. And death to the heinous hag who had stolen my dear Angelica into the nevermore.

I would rain my vengeance down upon them all in the name of everything that had been taken from me, and what I might still lose.

Let my life be the price if that was what it took to reset the balance. The scales had been unduly tipped, the heavens in disarray. This was not what the Monks of Mallakin had spoken of in their sacred scrolls. Nay, they had hailed the stars as just and fair, claiming they kept an equilibrium of good and evil, of right and wrong.

But where was the justice in this? Where was the hand of fate and honour? Why had the heavens abandoned us when all we sought was a world where true and gallant Fae could live in harmony, ruled over by the bounteous and most elegant reign of my true queens?

A cry burst from my cracked and bleeding lips as some rapscallion once again fought to heal me, and I batted my arms like flailing wollyhoppers in an attempt to get them gone.

“Wolfsbane!” I gasped, my throat a roar and bloodied thing that cast my normally lyrical voice across a field of glass on its way between my parted jaw.

A pause, a lull in their ministrations while yet more agony tumbled through my body, biting into me with the sickly promise of my demise from the poison of the beast which had tried to tear me asunder.

My lady. My sweet and genteel lady, now nothing but a tufty haired beast of shadow, blinded by the darkest of powers and turned against her own truest friend by a cruel and horrorsome twist of destiny. Where was she now? My Darcy gal? Galloping through brush and brindle on a mission of isolation to save her soul?

Run fast with the wind beneath your clawsome paws, my hungry beast lady. Find your nirvana and the end to this most woe-filled curse.

A true and eternal agony sliced deep within me, my back arching against the hard surface I lay upon, my eyes scrunched shut from the world, keeping it out while I refused to face it. I may have been in untold pain, but I knew the weight of grief awaiting me beyond this poisonous torture would be far worse than any physical boon to bear. I thought of my angelic Angelica and that nasty narghoul Mildred who had slain her in her prime. Oh, what a cruel, undeserving fate. I would smite that blaggard of a Dragoon the moment I had my chance.

A hand grasped my jaw and I thrashed like a hairy beluga stranded on the shore, the sun scorching my blubbery behind and pebbles digging into my rumpus while I flipped and flopped.

But the hand did not release me, the grip tight and unrelenting until I was forced to part my lips and the sweet, wholly lethal taste of the plant I needed for my entire magical existence swept over my tongue.

I munched down on the aconite leaves like the hungriest caterpillar ever to have been born beneath the light of an uncaring sky. I munched like a pot-bellied pig at a trough, my belly never full, always wanting. I munched like a munch-maker whose only purpose in this accursed world was to chomp and chomp and chomp.

Then I swallowed. More leaves brushed my lips and I snaffed those rascals down too. And more. More still.

I scoffed them all, rousing the beast within, the dormant creature who had been howling three beauteous notes in unison at the very bottom of my empty, grieving soul.

The shift came upon me fast, my enormous, brindle, three headed canine Order form emerging from my skin. The shift made my breast plate ping from my bountiful begonias so hard that the healer who had been working on me cried out as one pointed nip-tip caught him in the eye and knocked him upon his buttocks.

I flipped over, my shifted form too large to fit on the stone table they had laid me upon, and my four paws making the rocky floor shudder as I landed on them.

I lifted my three heads in a mournful howl which echoed off of the stone walls surrounding us, grief and hurt colliding within me even as the power of my Order form finally began to fix what had been working to destroy me.

A Cerberus held the most lethal of toxins in our fangs, one bite enough to end any manner of monster, and our blood ran thick with the power it took to resist such poison too.

My stomach cramped and spasmed, my spine arching and another howl echoing on as the three voices of my three heads all wove a song of grieving so beautifully that I could feel my heart cracking in two.

The constellation of my kind was no doubt burning brightly somewhere in the skies above me as I called on the gifts of my Order, fighting against the shadow rot which was festering in my bones.

I began to shudder with violence untold, and though there were voices speaking around me, I had no ears to hear them.

My howling song ended, and I slumped to my belly, panting heavily while my body worked to do what it knew how to through nothing other than instinct.

For vast hours, I lay there in my grief, while the magic that had been born to me healed that which should have killed me.

Why was I being spared such a fate when so many courageous and noble Fae had lost their lives on that field of bloodshed and carnage?

A shuddering breath huffed from my lungs, and I emerged from the pit of slumber which had yawned with wide jaws in anticipation of my demise.

Not today, you nefarious wraith. I shall not yield to you this day.

I cracked open an eye, finding myself in a stone room, the walls a brackish sandy colour, painted with effigies from the Fae of old. The air here was stale, though the decorations told of a once beautiful room, perhaps a temple to the stars or something of the sort. I wasn’t certain.

I had wind-tossed memories of being hauled through dark tunnels carved away into the depths of the earth, then up and out of the ground, across field and through forest, over rivers and between dales. The retreating rebels had made a desperate dash for freedom indeed, unable to do more than press what healing magic they could spare into the worst of the injured, while abandoning the dead as they ran ever on.

Escape was all that had fuelled them, retreat and the urgent, desperate need to be able to fight another day.

I had fallen in and out of consciousness, vaguely aware of time and distance passing through the agony of the poison tearing through my veins, while those able to had worked to hide our passage.

I could only assume that whatever they had done had worked now that I found myself in this place of cold stone, that the rebels had found some small salvation and a place to rest a while in their retreat. They had finally been gifted the time needed to try and heal me, and I assumed that meant others in desperate need of healing were getting treatment too, but what of the battle? What of my queens and all we had fought for?

Low groans made me lift one of my three canine heads and I opened the rest of my eyes too, the room coming into clearer focus through the three sets of eyes I now trained on it, my outer heads turning to take it all in.

Star signs were marked upon the sand-coloured walls in faded paint, tarot images too, with swirling script notating the bottom of each, spelling out either a poem or a long-forgotten prophecy. This place was old, forgotten, a relic of a time passed.

My central head turned towards the door beyond the stone table I had lain upon, my blood coating it, drying and as tacky as the spittle of a wasp.

I inhaled deeply, scenting death and decay on the air, too many bodies packed tight into a small space.

I rose to my feet.

The spike of pain that lanced through me at the movement was no little thing, but I pushed aside any inclination to rest further as another groan met with all six of my sensitive ears.

I recognised Xavier’s voice. My gallant gelding, crying out in agony so pure it cut me to my core.

I was moving on silent paws before the thought fully emerged, the memory of that sweet, horsey fellow cut down and bleeding on the battlefield searing into my mind as I hurried to the aid of my dear stepbrother.

The doorway did not allow for the enormity of my Cerberus form, so I shifted, a gasp of pain parting my lips like a drop of dew sliding from a mulberry bush before I forced my shaking Fae legs on.

A dusty corridor beckoned me along it, faint light peering in through glassless windows, their thin openings meant to allow blasts of magic out while the thick walls helped keep any returning fire at bay. Old indeed was this place.

Naked as the dawn, I staggered closer to those pain-filled groans, a hand braced against the smooth stone as I went, the orange glow of firelight beckoning me closer.

I fell completely still as I reached that gaping doorway, my eyes tracing over the dying man who lay on yet another stone table there, three rebels using healing magic on him over and over again while both Tyler and Sofia watched on, tears glistening on their cheeks.

Another pain-tinged groan escaped sweet Xavier’s mouth, but he wasn’t awake, his eyes closed as his body began to relent under the threat of those obsidian shadows.

“By the might of the heavens above, sky have mercy,” I murmured, my voice catching on a bout of hysterical sobs which would do no Fae any favours.

“You’re up,” Sofia gasped in surprise as she took me in. “They said your Order gifts were healing you, but they thought it would take days-”

“There is no time for lollygagging,” I snapped, swiping the back of my hand across my face to remove tears and snot. This was no moment for falling apart like a dandelion clock on a windy morn.

I strode into the room, my begonias bouncing even as another bout of unspeakable pain ripped through me from the inside out. But I ignored it. Ignored everything aside from the sweet, carrot-loving colt who needed my aid.

“Someone needs to find a Basilisk,” I commanded.

“The last Basilisk in Solaria was killed six years ago,” replied a man I neither knew nor cared to find out more about as he withdrew his hand from Xavier’s side. “And there is nothing else that can save him. I’m afraid it’s-”

I slapped him clean around the chops with a spray of water cast into the shape of a fish, snarling at him with the ferocity of what I was. A hell beast intent on a fate which I refused to turn from. Xavier Acrux would not die here on this table, the bleeding wounds from his missing wings and gauntness of his face the only things left of him beyond this moment.

“Then find him some Basilisk antivenom that was bottled before such a death,” I snarled. “Go and ask the Oscuras for it, if you don’t already know, that is where you need look. They hold all manner of treasures in their possession, and will no doubt be able to find you this.”

“Geraldine?” Sofia asked, a touch of hope in her watery gaze as she looked to me like I might just have the answer to this riddle. My poor, pale, Pegasus pal looked so anguished over her dear Dom, that I knew her love for Xavier Acrux ran as deep as the ocean gullies of Galgadon.

“If you wish to do more than wet the weeds with your tears sweet Sofia, please go and help that fellow search. I will do all I can to aid my dear brother until you return with what he requires.”

I shifted before she could respond, dropping my central head low and releasing a canine whine before I lapped at the shadow-cursed wound which had torn Xavier Acrux to shreds. There was power in the saliva of a Cerberus. Power against poisons and toxins, though not so much as a Basilisk possessed. But I would get him through the time it took to find the cure he so desperately required.

Sofia and Tyler hurried from the room at a galloping gait, their need to save their sweet stallion filling them with purpose as they tore away in search of the cure he so desperately required. I dropped onto my haunches, my body sagging with my own pain as I fought the damning poison of the shadows from within my own blood, but I ignored such irksome nonsense in favour of helping my kin, my sweet stepbrother.

The night wore on while I lay with Xavier, tirelessly lending him what aid I could through my gifts, and though he didn’t wake, his brow softened, and his moans of pain lessened. All three sets of my ears remained locked on the solid beat of his heart, and as it steadied a little, I found some semblance of strength, of belief.

He would survive this. I would make it so, no matter the path the stars had tried to lay out for him.

A great clamour of noise interrupted my silent vigil, and I raised my heads with a ferocious snarl, making the three huge men in the doorway pause as they beheld me.

“It’s okay, carina,” Dante Oscura murmured, raising a hand clad in gold rings as a symbol of peace between us. He was a bulked-up beast of a Dragon Shifter with his dark hair dishevelled and the olive tone of his Faetalian ancestry still laced with blood. It saddened me to find his youthful, handsome face drawn with anguish by the woes of battle. “I’ve brought what you need.”

“Let them pass, Geraldine,” Sofia begged, and I caught sight of her blonde head hidden behind the wall of muscular males who had entered.

There was no room for them to approach Xavier while I remained in Cerberus form, so I shifted, my eyes as glassy as a ghoul’s mirror as I stepped aside for the tattooed man and the Lion Shifter to pass me.

“Here,” Sofia added in a soft voice, holding out a green cloak which I donned with little fanfare to hide my voluptuous nudity.

“You have the antivenom?” I inquired, fatigue lining every one of my words.

“We do,” the man coated in Disney tattoos growled, a grim set to his features as he looked upon poor Xavier. His brown hair was tied into a knot upon the crest of his head, and he licked his lips as he moved closer to my stepbrother, almost as if he could taste the pain in the air.

I opened my mouth to say more but a great cry went up from beyond the confines of the walls which held us, my heart leaping in reverent hope as I caught a single sentence between the clamouring which was enough to ignite that most desperately needed of things in me: hope.

“The queen returns!”

I was running from the room which held dear Xavier before I could hear any more, hurrying down more ancient corridors and cold stone passages in the hunt for a way out of here to where the shouts only grew louder.

I whirled around a corner just in time to see a large Minotaur woman in shifted form pull open a heavy wooden door, and I sprinted for the sight of the stars revealed beyond it.

“My lady!” I cried as I was met with a crowd, the direction they were all surging towards making it clear where one of my queens now stood.

I barked a warning to make them all move, many of them falling back beneath my fierceness like lily livers on a May morn, but still too many barrelled into my way, blocking me from her.

I threw my hands up, my magic now blooming thanks to all the aconite I had devoured, and I knocked a path through the centre of the crowd with a blast of water which I regretted not one bit.

I sprinted through that gap, my cloak billowing wide and revealing my naked body to any who cared to turn an eye my way, but I didn’t have time to care for such things as my gaze fell on a bloody, battle warn warrior where she stood at the top of the hill ahead of me.

Ruins lay all around us, some broken while others remained standing, able to house the wounded as they were. I recognised this as an ancient place of worship, though the once revered hillside was now strewn with blood-splattered soldiers. The light of the slowly setting sun gilded our queen in gold and orange, and for a moment I could have sworn an angel stood before her as the light blazed off the burnished bronze colour of her wings.

“Lady Tory!” I yelled, noting the onyx colour of her hair beneath the blood and grime that was matted in it, and she turned cold, empty eyes my way.

Her beauteous face was hollow, gaunt, devoid of that wild glow I had always loved so dearly in her.

The crowd was falling to a hush now, sidling back to make space around her, their backs pressing to the crumbling walls of the ruins the rebels were using for shelter.

I felt it then. A severing of something vital within me. Before my gaze even fell from the utter, broken grief in her green eyes to take in the three huge objects which lay behind her.

Three coffins carved of ice.

“No,” I breathed, begging the stars for it not to be so as my bare feet stumbled over cold, hard ground towards my queen.

Tory said nothing and I knew it wasn’t for lack of wanting to, but more for lack of words which could encompass the awful reality hurtling towards me second by agonising second.

I couldn’t bear to look inside those ice coffins, couldn’t bear to see who she had transported here in their eternal slumber in such a way, couldn’t bear to face the cost of this battle we had lost so brutally.

“Please,” I begged the stars once more, but as my bare toes brushed against the first of the frozen coffins, I was nothing but a slave to fate as my eyes fell to take in the face of the man who lay trapped in death within.

The ice casket encasing my father glistened like the dewberries of Nor, beautiful and ruinous at once. All of it splintered within my vision, fracturing into a thousand flickering Faeflies in my eyes as my tears welled and began to drip down my cheeks like two never-ending rivers.

I blinked a butterfly’s blink, and it all became clear once more, the cold clutch of grief holding onto my heart and squeezing with all the strength of a Dragon’s talon coiled around it.

“I’m sorry, Geraldine,” Tory said, her voice an empty urn.

Beside Daddy, lay the sweet, beautiful Lady Catalina in her crystalised crypt, as exquisite in death as she had been in life. There they rested, quiet, silenced forevermore upon this plane. Beyond them, in his deep and timeless sleep was my Queen Tory’s dear love, her fierce and gallant man brought to the gates of the stars by his monstrous flesh and blood. Her dear Dragoon, Darius.

They had passed beyond the Veil, where no man nor woman could ever tread in life. Gone.

My heart withered, bleeding and forever weeping for them all. My darling Daddy with his courage and his hope, his kind words all lost to the wind, nothing but memories for me to capture like moths to keep in jars, to be treasured and defended always.

I had thought my Mama’s loss would be the end of me. Grief felt like dying, and I had been so sure I’d been following her into oblivion once she had passed on from this world, her fire blown out by the breath of the heavens.

But Daddy had held my hand and been there for me in a way only a parent can. With bravery deeper than all the oceans of the world, and with a tenderness that eased my pain and bathed my aching soul in molten love. I’d had him through the worst time of my life, but now no one was here but me as I stood on the shores of loss once again, with the tide receding and the last of the goodbyes lapping at my feet.

I, Geraldine Gundellifus Gabolia Gundestria Grus, was alone, and I felt as though I was standing upon a spinning compass, directionless, true north abandoning me to the chaos of a circling needle. For where did I go from here?

I moved closer, feet shuffling and hesitant as I shifted so I would be able to look upon his face. It was still, and the claws in my chest released a little at the sight of peace resting lightly on his features. Yes, death it seemed, had been kind, pulling him gently into its arms. He had not fought it, I could see that, and I was glad to discover he had walked willingly into the stars’ embrace. He was unscathed apart from the deep stab wound to his chest that had surely equalled his end.

The beauty that was Catalina mirrored his serenity, a cut to her throat the mark of her own demise, and if I wasn’t mistaken, their hands seemed to extend toward one another’s as if even now they wished to unite, to never be parted. I offered them that wish with ease, standing back to work my magic and allow my water Element to take over as I combined their casket into one entity, their hands sliding over one another’s.

A sharp inhale came at my back, and I turned, a lump as hard as knotweed rising in my throat as I met the gaze of poor, dear Xavier. He was pale faced, still weak from the wounds inflicted upon him, but it seemed as though the Basilisk antivenom had done its job. He would heal in time, though not of this grief. That, I knew, would never die.

“Xavier, I…” Tory started, but words failed her. Failed all of us, truly.

The tears continued to run along my cheeks in steady streams and I let them fall as they wished to, knowing keeping them inside was akin to jabbering with a deadly danzerdile of the northern rivers. Holding grief within only made it boil, bubble and spit until it burned its way out, so it was better to let it flow free and face it head on. Pain was meant to be felt, just as all emotions were. And as my Daddypops always said, “We must feel the bad as deeply as the sea, for then we are able to feel the joy as high as the moon.”

“Xavier, I am so gravely sorry for your loss. Your mother was a star descended from the sky, come to shine upon us, she was so cherished by us all, by me, by my father. Her mark at The Burrows will never be forgotten, and I have been as privileged as the pilgrims of the Yunetide to know her. As for Darius-” I choked on the name, a desperate sob escaping me and climbing into a wail.

Xavier broke before me, a house one moment, a ruin the next. He staggered towards his brother’s frozen tomb, rearing over it and crying quietly against the ice.

“It’s my fault,” he croaked. “He drew our father away from me. I should have killed that bastard before this could have happened.”

Tory shook her head, looking like she wanted to say something to contradict the blame he was casting down upon himself, but instead her head hung and her gaze moved back to the coffins. She was steel, hard and cold and unmovable in her grief. It had destroyed her, this loss. I could see that, see the way it had carved something vital from her soul and left her barren without it, unable to so much as feel the wind on her cheeks as the pain in her took precedent over all.

I flung myself at the boy who had been made a man before my eyes within The Burrows, this Acrux who had been forced to hide his Order, who had lived in a house of fear and distress while his mother was kept in servitude to the monster of the manor. I wrapped my arms around him, and he turned into me, burying his face against my shoulder, while our grief spilled out, unravelling like twine before knitting itself into a bond of devastation that created a true kinship between us.

“I don’t want to go on without them. I don’t want to be here with them gone,” he sobbed, the muscles of his arms crushing the wind out of me, but I let it fly away to the breeze. I could go without breath for a dear friend, a brother born of our parents’ love for one another, and now our shared hurt in our family members’ passing too.

“It feels like that now, indeed, sweet Pegasus,” I whispered, reaching a hand up to brush my fingers through his dark hair. “It may even feel worse for a time, but this pain we must bear, because there are others left here who love us to the sun and beyond, others who need us to keep moving forward towards the hills of hope.”

“I don’t want to,” he growled stubbornly. “I don’t want to let go. I want to turn back time. I want to kill my father, I want to fucking kill him!”

He yanked free of my arms, fire igniting in one hand, while sharpened icicles grew on the other. His breathing was heavy and furious, his shoulders rigid before he cast away the magic and doubled over, the agony taking him once more.

I moved to sit upon the ground with him, my own heart cleaved apart by the macabre scythe of death. Tory was silent, unmoving iron as she stood in the wake of all this death, as if her body was frozen by the hand of time.

I reached a hand towards her in offering, but she didn’t even seem to notice it, unable to fall here with us, something cracked apart and bleeding so deeply within her that tears were useless now. I knew better than to push her, so I simply tightened my grip on the brother I had claimed for my own.

Silence descended on the three of us and Xavier tucked his knees to his chest, his face buried in them while I started to hum the tune played at my mother’s funeral. Shaylin’s Lullaby. A song of goodbyes and morrows yet to come. It was sad and soothing at once, a paradox of hope and sorrow, the two meeting within the rhythm like two ladybirds upon a falling leaf.

“Take my hand and find me here. I live in the wind and grass, my dear. So when you need me, call my name. You’ll feel me close within the rain. For I, for I, for I, will wait beyond the Veil for you. But please, my love, don’t wait for me. My time is done, my seeds are sown. So live a life of joy and love, and I’ll be watching up above. The greatest show has just begun, my seat is taken, my song is sung. I’ll smile with every smile you take, I’ll laugh with you when times are great. So live for me, and live for you. I’ll see you in the star’s lagoon…I’ll see you in the star’s lagoon.”

My hand had found Xavier’s somewhere during the song and as the final words slipped from my tongue, my tears dried against my cheeks and we sat there, the silence a relief. For no more needed to be said. The chimes of the Gorgon clock were tolling, but this pain would be chiselled away into a treasure eventually. One we could place gently within a casket in our chests, to take out and cry over whenever we needed. But for now, our grief was a roughened stone with edges that made us bleed inside. It was bleak, it was agony, it was the cruel and unforgiving way of death.

I raised my eyes to Tory, noting the blood dripping slowly from some wound on her hand as she watched us.

Broken.

My queen, my lady, my dear friend had been broken by all she had now survived, and as I looked into that darkness in her eyes, I had the terrifying feeling that there was nothing on this earth that could ever fix her again.