Chapter 67 Chapter Sixty-Seven - Jartre
Piercing, glowing, purple eyes fill my mind as a wave of energy hits me more powerfully than a thousand bolts of lightning, shocking me into consciousness. My eyes fly open, and I bolt up in bed, my heart pounding and chest heaving. I can taste the malice in the air; thick and suffocating like being buried alive.
He’s free…
I don’t know how he’s free, but I can feel it like an electric charge running through me; a charge filled with every dark thought and emotion I once possessed. Somehow Azadou has been freed from his cage. Nothing good will come of this. I have to put a stop to him.
I look down at Gabriella’s flushed face, my heart choking in conflict. I don’t know what completing our bond has done to her, and I know she needs me more than ever. I can’t abandon her…but I can’t just stay here knowing my own evil is roaming free.
I reach out, gently stroking Gabriella’s cheek, the once pleasurable burn from contact with her skin now a far more intense soothing and almost erotic blaze against my fingertips. I take a breath, adjusting to the overwhelming sensation as I lean down and place a gentle kiss on her forehead.
“Gabriella? Starlight, can you hear me?” I gently call to her.
“Hmm?” she quietly mumbles, a tired croak rumbling in her throat. I let out a sigh of relief, freeing my muscles from their tense cage. It’s not much, but it’s a response, and a response is a good sign!
“Gabriella…I know you need me, and I want and need to stay by you…but something has happened…and I have to go,” I say remorsefully, guilt lancing through me like a celestial blood-tipped spear.
“What’s happened?” she weakly asks, her voice barely above a whisper and her eyes remaining closed. I can feel how exhausting just speaking is for her, but she’s trying her hardest.
I swallow the bile making its way up my throat. “Azadou is free, my love.”
She forces her glacial-mint eyes open, meeting and searching mine. I feel her panic, her worry, her anxiety…yet a strange sense of apprehension I can’t quite explain. She takes in a deep breath and reaches out squeezing my hand, and I’m surprised by how much more able I am to feel the force of her squeeze.
“Don’t feel guilty. You have to go. You’d be stupid to stay here.”
“But I know you need me,” I argue, waging an internal war with myself. I’ve never felt so torn in my whole fucking life. How can I choose between my duty and my love?
“I will be fine,” she promises. “Just go and handle this.” She reaches up, holding her hand to my cheek, her eyes looking through me as deep trepidation moves through her. “I love you, Jartre. Please know that.”
My brows furrow in confusion at the tone of her voice. “I love you too, Gabriella. I could never doubt your love.”
She gives me a weak smile, “Then go and promise me you won’t do anything stupid.”
“I’ll do my best.”
I cup her face in my hands, placing my lips on hers in a tender kiss. Her lips linger on mine, and I can feel her reluctance to let me go, but she fights herself and frees her lips from mine, and I suddenly have a horrible sense of foreboding come over me.
“Be safe.”
I snap my fingers, getting myself fully dressed and transport myself to Azadou’s – now former – resting place.
“You took your time,” sarcastically announces a familiar apathetic voice.
I spin around, shocked to find Merlos, Morrtemis and even fucking Oshmin, all standing side by side, while Ezillus is knelt down, their hand on the ground as they appear to conjure a layer of water across the wide open field behind them…a field I quickly realise is heavily occupied. My eyes widen in disbelief when I see an army consisting of irshiusts, partially shifted mutolupus’, nagata, sanguidae, and based on the armour and magic emanating off them, sirna. I can’t see them, but I can even sense the presence of makkares nearby…a lot of them.
“What the fuck is going on?” I snap in accusation.
A burst of magic erupts across the field, and we can hear the sound of chanting in the distance. We all look up at the same time as the largest, opalescent barrier begins to form a giant dome overhead. I see Orenda and Ayawamat circling overhead, their blue and gold wings shining brightly in the light of the sun when the dome barrier seals itself, locking them out. They each fly at the barrier, only to be repelled back as their squawks resound around us.
“What’s going on?!” Ayawamat calls out to me.
“We can’t get through!” Orenda adds.
I look back at the others, rage building inside me with such ferocity that I feel the electricity building in my eyes. “One of you better give me a fucking explanation.”
“So much for an animai tempering that anger of yours,” Morrtemis mocks.
“I left my animai in dire need to come here, only to find an entire army has been assembled. I demand answers!” I snap.
“Would it kill you every now and then to just ask nicely?” Morrtemis sighs.
Oshmin snorts, “Jartre wouldn’t know manners if they struck him down with lightning.”
“Now is really not the time for arguing,” Ezillus groans, rubbing their temples.
“I say let them, at least something interesting is finally taking place,” Merlos huffs.
I open my mouth to give them all a piece of my mind when Zarseti appears in front of me, casting a blanket of calm over everyone, but her usual calm exterior is instead an emotionless poker face, which immediately has me pushed further to the edge than I was before.
“This is all your doing,” I accuse her.
“We like to view this as a team effort,” Morrtemis perks up.
“You can’t have assembled an army this fucking fast, not unless you knew it was going to happen.” My eyes never leave Zarseti, daring her to deny it.
“I warned them, they prepared, and here we are,” she states calmly.
“And you didn’t think to tell me?!” I snarl at her.
“Knowing you, I doubt you’d listen,” Oshmin snidely mutters.
“What the fuck did you just say?” I challenge, taking a step towards him.
“Enough!” Zarseti exclaims. “I will gladly explain myself to you later, but now is not the time.” Her eyes glance behind me, but I don’t need to turn around to know what she’s looking at. I can feel it…Him. I feel the malice creeping upon us like a slow-moving gas. It’s so heavy in the air it’s cancelling out the calm Zarseti is projecting. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that malice beats out serenity every time.
I slowly turn around, a cold chill creeping down my spine as the tree line in front of us is bathed in complete darkness, but within the darkness, I see the eyes. Glowing purple eyes all massed together, slowly progressing forward. There have to be tens of thousands of them if not more. I suck in a deep breath when slowly stepping out from the blanket of darkness, is a face I haven’t seen in thirty-thousand years and yet it feels like only yesterday. His eyes are glowing a deeper, brighter purple than all the eyes around him, and his thin black beard and goatee match his shoulder-length hair, both as pitch-black as the darkness he’s shrouded in, to the point I can’t tell where the shadows end, and his hair begins. His 7’9 muscular frame, steps entirely out from the shadows and into the light as his army of eyti hang back, patiently awaiting their master’s command.
“This is quite the family reunion. Just how long has it been?” his deep base of a voice calls out with ease as he looks over each of us with contempt, but his eyes quickly fix themselves on me. It’s like staring the worst of yourself in the face.
“It’s been thirty thousand years, Azadou,” Zarseti announces with a gentle voice.
His expression remains impassive, but I see the hint of shock in his electric eyes as he quickly glances to her, then back to me.
“If it isn’t my creator. Or father. Or is it brother? I was never quite able to figure that out. Of course, I was locked away before I got the chance,” he says harshly, his eyes darkening as he looks at us all, that contempt now growing in his eyes like a raging storm.
“My father, my brother, my father, my brother. He’s my father and my brother!” Morrtemis cries dramatically, slapping each side of her face absurdly until Oshmin smacks her up the back of the head. “Ow!” she yelps, glaring back at him.
“Don’t tell me this is my welcome back party,” Azadou says mockingly.
“More like a going away party, because I’m about to make sure you go right back where you came from,” I say in a menacing voice.
He laughs a maniacal laugh, that I hate to admit sends chills down my spine. “You of all people know I can’t go back exactly where I came from, now can I?” he mocks darkly.
I clench my hands into fists, a surge of white, hot energy surrounding them.
“Jartre…” Ezillus warns. “Don’t take the bait.”
“He can’t help himself. He forgets, I know him better than anyone. The God of Destruction can’t resist his nature,” he continues to taunt.
“I’ll show you destruction,” I threaten.
“It doesn’t have to be like this,” Zarseti urges, stepping in front and acting as the voice of reason, as pointless though it is. “You know you can’t kill Jartre without killing yourself, so what good would war bring?”
“I didn’t start this war,” he growls viciously before composing himself. “But if one of us is going to come out victorious then it’s going to be me,” he says with a smug smile.
“He certainly has your ego,” Oshmin mutters, earning a glare from me. He just can’t seem to stop with the snide asides.
“You’ve done too much damage, Azadou. We can’t let it continue, and if it means stopping you, we’re prepared to fight you,” chimes Ezillus, sounding more serious than I’ve heard them in a long time.
“Well then. Let’s get started shall we?” Azadou encourages with a malevolent smile. He raises his hands and claps them in front of him, the force sounding like a bolt of lightning.
Instantly every eyti behind him storms upon the field like a dark mass threatening to devour those in its path. Zarseti clasps my wrist as I raise my hand to strike them down.
“Leave the eyti to the others while we handle Azadou. They can handle it,” she assures me.
I look behind everyone and realise Zarseti’s not wrong. As the shadows charge upon their prey with a speed I’ve never seen from them, they’re met with unexpected resistance. A golden light emanates from the nagata as they attack the eyti head-on, hissing and using their tails to whip them out of their path. Fully shifted nagata slither along the wet earth, wrapping themselves around the forms of their enemy to restrict and halt them in their path. Every partially shifted mutolupus growls, charging on mass and catching the eyti with ease, ducking, weaving and fighting them back. The sanguidae’s eyes glow brightly as they descend on the eyti like it’s dinner time, snarling as they ravenously attack their prey. Though it does no damage, it does slow them down.
As a large group of eyti swarm around one mutolupus, several streams of water wrap around them, lifting them into the air before sending them hurtling into the ground. I look to see the armoured and non-armoured sirna, their eyes glowing with a ring of cobalt blue as they command the water to do their bidding. Now I understand why Ezillus flooded the field. They were giving the sirna a weapon they could use…but since when does sirna magic work on eyti?
I turn back to confront Azadou just as he claps his hands together once more, a charge of purple electricity emitting from his hands and blasting out like a shockwave, hitting us and throwing us back like a nuclear blast.