Althea

Althea

The silence that gripped the land was pristine, almost reverent. A caravan swung by to pick them up and take them to the lower plateau of the Grove, where everyone was congregating.

Ruhkaal forced his trembling legs to lift his weight, his gaze shifted toward the center of the clearing. Standing perfectly still in the dew-kissed grass was a woman about the same height as Isorai, maybe  a little shoulder. She wore the tattered, elegant robes, her silver hair caught the first rays of the morning sun. She turned and Ruhkaal’s breath hitched in his throat.

She looked just like Isorai with a few changes.

It couldn’t be...

Xaruh let out a low, disbelieving sound, a name tore from his throat with the weight of decades of grief.

"Althea..."

The woman turned sharply at the sound. Her eyes, wide and glassy with profound shock, locked onto the massive, soot-stained forms of him and Xaruh. She looked down at her own hands, tracing the lines of her palms as if she couldn't quite believe she was occupying a physical form, before looking back up at them.

“Hi, Ruh’.”

Xaruh didn't hesitate. Leaving Ruhkaal’s side, the stepped forward, shuffling to her. He stumbled across the grass, his eyes entirely fixed on the her.

They paused just inches apart, a lifetime of duty, war, and unspoken tragedy hanging in the narrow space between them. Althea’s lips parted, a breathless sob escaping her. Then, the distance evaporated.

Xaruh pulled her into his arms with a fierce, desperate hunger, wrapping his arms around her as if she might dissolve into mist if he loosened his grip. They clashed together, kissing desperately, their tears mingling as they clung to one another.

Ruhkaal watched them, but the sight brought him no comfort. The mate-bond in his chest was a dead, hollow wire. It wasn't snapping with pain. It was terrifyingly quiet, vibrating with the faint, rhythmic pulse of a dying ember.

"Kaal," Ruhkaal said, his voice breaking as he tried to shift his  weight. "Kaal, get up. Help me. We have to find Isorai."

Kaal nudged him with a heavy, sympathetic look, but before the injured man could move, a blur of motion streaked across the dawn sky.

A woman came flying toward them at a dizzying speed. She didn't bear the standard regalia of the Southern Council, but as she landed with a sharp crack of displaced air, Ruhkaal recognized the fierce, ageless intensity in her face. Her eyes were deep, striking, and luminous, eyes exactly like Rangiora.

Were they related?

Without a word of explanation, she lunged at Ruhkaal, her hands locking like iron vices around this hand.         .

"Get up, Fire-Bringer!" she commanded, her voice cutting through the morning air like a whip. With an unnatural, wind-fueled strength, she threw herself backward, dragging him off the ground and launching them both into the air. "We don't have time! We have to find Isorai now!"

Ruhkaal didn't fight her, letting her take him up on an updraft to soar into the canopy of the Great Tree.

Below, people were hugging and throwing their arms around people. Hundreds of witches and random shifters were emerging from the hollows of the trees and the hidden sanctuaries. They were wandering into the light, wide-eyed, reaching out to touch one another, weeping and shouting in recognition as they realized that Isorai had succeeded.

But the woman dragging Ruhkaal didn't slow down to greet anyone. She guided him straight toward the center of the city that rested in the hollow of the Great Tree.

They soared past the lower branches, ascending into the emerald world of the upper canopy where the light filtered through the thick foliage in dusty, golden beams. High above the juncture  of the lower limbs. She aimed for the the upper most branches where the massive primary limbs split from the main trunk. The hollowed basin served as the valeey for what lookled like the city.

The wind-witch dropped him, and Ruhkaal crashed heavily onto the wide wooden basing, his talons sliding on the smooth bark. He scrambled forward to stand. His heart hammering a frantic, terrifying rhythm against his ribs.

There, in the center of the hollow, in what looked ilke a town square lay Isorai.

She looked like a bird that had been shot out of the air, her body resting in a broken, unnatural heap. Her armor was completely ruined, the fine plates cracked, buckled, and crumbling into metallic dust.

Deep, jagged fractures ran along her chest piece, and dark, sluggish blood seeped from beneath the metal, pooling in the grooves of the Great Tree’s bark.

"Isorai," Ruhkaal choked out, as he dropped to his knees beside her.

His hands hovered over her shattered body, trembling violently, terrified that touching her might break whatever fragile thread was keeping her tethered to life.

There was no tug through the bond, some part of him knew he still had time. He shouldn’t worry, but seeing her was something else.

She was still breathing, but barely. Her chest rose in shallow, hitching gasps, a faint, rhythmic whistle of air clicking in her throat. Her face was entirely bloodless, her skin cold as the underworld river she had escaped, and her eyes were tightly shut against the morning light.

The ritual had ended the bulk of the Wretch Choir threat, but it had broken her along with it.

"Don't just stare at her, you fool!" the wind-witch snarled, her voice cracking with desperation as she knelt on the other side of Isorai’s shattered form. "Her core is completely empty. She’s a dry well. Refill her with your elemental fire or she won't survive the next minute!"

Ruhkaal didn't hesitate, though he knew he, too, was running on empty. He reached out, his trembling hands placing themselves gently over Isorai’s fractured chest piece, right where the crumbling armor was flaking away into metallic ash. She looked a little damp, too. Her clothes clung to her, and she smelled like the underworld again.

Closing his eyes, he dug deep into the very bedrock of his being. The ritual had nearly hollowed him out, but for Isorai, he found a hidden reservoir of liquid heat and opened the floodgates.

A brilliant, molten gold light erupted from his palms, sinking directly through her torn clothes and into her bloodied skin, but it wasn't like before. The magic didn't just slide into her. It felt like pouring water into a bottomless abyss. The sheer vacuum of her emptiness created a violent, gravitational pull.

Ruhkaal gasped as the mate-bond violently snapped taut, vibrating so intensely it felt like a physical wire wrapping around his brain, relaying every ache and pain and the last moment of terror she’d felt while falling.

The world around him faded as his consciousness was violently sucked downward, dragged straight into the dark labyrinth of Isorai’s mind.

He flew past the giant tree and all the dried rivers and plunged deeper, following the stream of his own fire to see where it went until he suddenly materialized in a vast theater of her psyche.