Dance of Death

Dance of Death
  My heart thrashed against my ribs like it wanted to burst through them.
  “What did you say?” I croaked out with a hoarse voice, barely lifting my head from the gravel, soaking up my blood. The pain from the knife was still dragging down my nerves.
  Becca cocked her head as her eyebrows rose in confusion as she stared at Vorare. “Why the sudden change of mind?“
  Vorare hummed as he glided closer. “I want the Primordial Alpha,” he repeated with an air of finality.
  A thunder cracked hard enough to shake dust from the rooftops.
  “Why?” I gasped desperately. Why would he want Ethan? I wouldn't allow it!
  My arms trembled as I attempted to push myself up. However, my palms slipped on the gravel. Despite the pain of it, I could barely feel anything but the heat of panic burning in my chest.
  Vorare’s dark orbs for eyes eerily moved from me to Ethan, who managed to pull himself up despite Becca's power forcing him down. His pupils fluttered from amber to green, and his stance was staggered. Whatever Becca did to him was tearing away his strength. Tyler and Khalid had fallen cold from it.
  “He is the one,” Vorare's creepy pitch rolled out of his mouth, “The one strong enough to end my existence.”
  Becca’s smile flattened. “Surely the lupomancer can do a better job at—”
  Vorare cut her off harshly with a growl that mimicked that of a beast, “She feels wrong. Her power is too distorted. I cannot use her.”
  “I feel wrong?” I gritted out.
  Vorare’s head tilted toward me with eerie precision. “You are too many things, unbelonging to both sides. Your existence might be special, but having two wills means never being strong enough for either and therefore not sufficient for me.”
  “All this pointless babbling about unbelonging coming from a cursed entity is not as exciting as you're making it out to be,” Becca scoffed with an irritated tone. She was obviously bemused by the sudden turn of events. “If you're not strong enough to kill her, I will.”
  She raised her hand and began to pull energy from her fingers toward me, but Vorare turned without warning and lashed one of his tendrils at her.
  It struck her mid-chest, splitting her skin in two with an ugly gash that burned black. Becca cried out before her body crumpled across the concrete with a dull crunch, and blood poured from her sides.
  “Always the weak questioning the will of the mighty,” Vorare turned away from Becca, leaving her to be an afterthought.
  Becca writhed before staying morbidly still. It was probably a first for me, the hope that she had not died on me. “You're sickening!”
  Ethan finally found his footing again as he rose. He was seemingly free from Becca's influence. Cracking the ground under his boots, he sped through the space between me and Vorare.
  “Harlyn,” Ethan called out. I could hear his composure waning, “Can you move?”
  “Barely,” I revealed, desperately calling forth any form of strength I had left, but I couldn't muster any. It was, as Lorcan said, the knife took a lot out of me.
  Vorare's demeanor shifted with Ethan's proximity. I could tell from the way the pressure seemed to swallow the air. “Whatever plans you may be making to run won't do you any good, Primordial,” he uttered, “You are mine to end, you are an end to mine.”
  Ethan growled, taking a protective stance over my body. I could only see the back of his head, but with our bond, his anxiety was pushing through to mine. “If it's an end you desire, an end you shall get.”
  “Shall we begin, then,” Vorare replied with a grin. “A dance of death!“
  In the blink of an eye, he launched forward enthusiastically. His arms contorted into sharp blades that appeared like tree bark. They made me uneasy.
  Ethan slammed Vorare mid-air, leaving their bodies to violently collide. The sound pushed the street with a whirlwind of sheer impact.
  I lifted myself up again. My back ached painfully, and breathing as I rose proved difficult, the more I tried. I gritted through it regardless because I couldn’t let Ethan fight that thing alone.
  He was dangerous, dangerously excited to meet Ethan, and for some reason, Ethan was terribly anxious.
  They crashed into a delivery van. The vehicle crumpled under the weight of them both, but in seconds, they're both dashing away and leaping at each other.
  Between their strikes, Ethan shouted, “If you want to die so badly, why don't you do it alone?”
  Vorare kept mute despite the bursts of bone and black tar, yet Ethan persisted in pushing back. His muscles pulsed, his wounds healed as they formed, and he showed no sign of relenting.
  Ethan was fighting impeccably, but for how long could he do that?
  In the push and shove of their spar, Ethan suddenly went still as Vorare managed to push his sharpened bark-textured hand into Ethan's left shoulder.
  Ethan staggered back as he held his arm. A fresh wave of dread hit me as a realization settled. Ethan wasn't healing the wound.
  “Ethan!“ I cried out.
  “Surely you recognize what this is now,” Vorare lifted his hands to show them, and it was then that I picked up on the uncanny similarity to a silver tree bark.
  “Silver maple tree,” Ethan gritted out with a glare.
  The words chilled everything inside me.“What?”
  Silver maple tree. The only known thing to kill a primordial, according to the lectures I'd received from Khalid. There were barely any pieces left cause it was burned down, but unfortunately, there was enough to still be used by Melbringers to kill primordials.
  Primordials like my birth father.
  How exactly was Vorare embodying such a weapon in his arms?
  “You can thank the daughters of Gaia for this. They left me quite a weapon to consume. One might say the fates are working in my favor. They led me to this,” he sharpened his arms, “and they led me to you, a true Alpha.“