Reality was fractured around me. Light and sound, shape and distance were all muddled together in swirling chaos. Lightning flashed, bursting with unnamable colors. Rocks and columns of stone floated around me, and I was lying on a chunk of Earth that was floating unanchored through the turmoil.
I was still so numb, so cold.
But I could remember what I’d seen. My child.
Our child.
There was an awful sound, like the screaming of a thousand voices in agony. A shadow loomed above me, tendrils writhing. Barely managing to turn my head, I beheld the God, massive and grotesque. Its clawed hand was clutching something, and I saw limp wings, pale skin webbed with black veins.
“Callum…” My arm was so heavy I couldn’t even lift it off the ground. The God’s jaw gaped open, and the screaming grew louder.
It was going to consume him, and I couldn’t even lift my head. I couldn’t call his name.
Inches away from my hand, a tree root was sticking out of the mud. In this chaotic place, it stood out to me as one of the last beacons of reality, and my fingers inched toward it until I grasped it weakly. It felt warm in my hand, and my vision flashed, fluctuating rapidly between pandemonium and the real world.
The Old Man said the trees were always listening. If that were true, even here, even now — perhaps they would hear me.
“Help me,” I whispered. My fingers tightened around the little root; its wood rough against my palm. My weapon was gone, but I’d seen Raelynn leave another blade behind, buried in the God’s flesh. If I could only reach it. If I only had the strength to get up, to get to Callum…
“Help me,” I snarled, pouring every last shred of magic I could into my demand. “Lend me the forest’s strength. Help me destroy this thing. Help me, before it’s too late. Please. Please, if you can hear me.”
It may have been only my imagination, but the root grew warmer in my hand.
Everything shattered. Stone, rock, and water crashed around me, the swirling colors vanishing as the cavern rematerialized. The God roared, Its massive body slumping over for a moment as if caught off guard by Its own weight. Callum dropped from Its grip and lay limply where he fell; eyes closed, limbs sprawled across the muddy ground.
“What is this?” The God roared, Its tentacles writhing.
Roots were sprouting from the ground around It, growing up and around Its body. It tore at them, swiping them away like strings as It looked around in confusion.
Then Its eyes fell on me.
“The witch lives?!” It snarled. “You were cast beyond the Veil, you fucking bitch! How did you —”
More roots were sprouting around me, and around the God too, thicker than the last ones. They gave me a handhold to climb to my feet as the warmth seeped back into my body, and I stood facing the God as It kept ripping at the roots coiling around It.
An inferno was growing in my chest. My vision was drenched in red. I needed weapons. Claws and fangs. I needed a body that could move with speed, that could leap and bound. I could feel my muscles swelling, tendons elongating, teeth growing as the forest fed me its strength.
I had no idea what I would become. It didn’t truly matter. All the magic I could gather into myself, I did. I swelled with it, my own strength threatening to overwhelm me.
“Do you really think calling the fucking fairies will help you?” The God roared. Thick roots, as large as Its own tentacles, were coiling around Its body, bursting from the ground, the walls. Holding It in place. “They will bow to me like all the rest! Your forests will rot, witch, and your world will choke in its own decay!”
“No,” I said softly. My teeth were too long and sharp to close my own mouth. When I looked at my hands, I had sunk sharp claws into the root I still gripped. I had made myself into a weapon, and felt nothing but bloodlust. “You think you can destroy without consequences. You would lay waste even to the very beings you need to survive. You’re only alive because of the power you’ve stolen! Demons, humans. Countless lives. You are no God. All you’re capable of is destruction. But I…” I lifted my hands, flames billowing from my palms. “I can create. I can destroy. I am far more a God than you will ever be.”
The God lunged toward me, but I was quick. The wind flew through my hair as I sprinted, my claws ripping into the soil. I put myself between Callum and the God, hunched over him like an animal as the God descended.
“Your power is mine!” Rocks were shaken loose from the ceiling with the force of the God’s voice. “You are weak! WEAK! A shame upon your own bloodline, bastard child!”
“Liar.” Callum’s voice was a mere whisper below me. “It’s a liar, Everly.”
He was alive. He was still alive, and I — I laughed. I laughed with the force of the joy overtaking me, the sheer euphoria, as power and hope collided inside me. From between my sharp teeth poured fire, swelling into a storm that swirled around the cavern.
The cave roof suddenly gave way, mud, rock, and pouring rain streaming down, but my fire allowed none of it to touch me. More roots burst from the soil, thick and coiling as they wrapped around the God, constricting and piercing into Its flesh.
As the God roared, tearing at the roots, I dragged Callum out of the way. He was so heavy; my muscles trembled violently as I used all my strength to move him. Only magic kept me standing. Alarming pain pulsed through my chest, my shattered ribs aching.
I just had to stay on my feet. I feared that if I allowed myself to falter for even a moment, I would collapse and not get up again.
Callum grasped for me, his grip surprisingly strong even though he could barely open his eyes. He tried to speak, but the words were too quiet to hear.
I had to move. I had to keep the God’s attention away from him.
I kissed him before I fled, sprinting to the opposite side of the cavern. Tentacles whipped after me, smashing rock and cracking the cavern walls. I leapt over roots and clambered over boulders, moving with unnatural speed.
“This world is mine! MINE!” The God’s scream nearly burst my eardrums. A tentacle slammed down in front of me, blocking my path. Water rushed toward me, sloshing over my shoes and swiftly rising toward my knees.
This was it. I couldn’t run anymore.
The God loomed over me. Pain pierced through my head, but I grit my teeth and faced the beast. It leaned down, laughter reverberating as It bared Its monstrous teeth at me.
“I will relish your eternal suffering, witch,” It said. “You should have stayed beyond the Veil. You should have hidden in the darkness forever. Instead, you have run straight back into the arms of your fate: to be mine.”
“I was never yours!” The words poured out with my fire, and I sprinted forward. I leapt upon one of the God’s tentacles, my claws allowing me to grip as I scrambled up the slimy surface. I cast billows of flame toward the God’s face, and It thrashed, nearly throwing me off.
“Fate does not command me,” I snarled. The trees’ twisting roots were holding the God captive; It could barely move now. “I will not spend my life hiding in fear!”
There, jutting from the God’s flesh, was the knife Raelynn had stabbed into It. The blade called to me, twisted threads of light tangled around it. I scrambled toward the knife, claws rending into the God’s flesh to prevent myself from plummeting to the rocks below.
“All those souls you’ve stolen will be set free to rest! And you —” I seized the handle of the knife, gripping it with all my strength as the God fought, Its limbs swiping at me furiously. “— you will rot away and be forgotten!”
When I channeled my fire into the blade, the weapon latched onto it as if it was a living, ravenous thing. It drew my magic in like a funnel, so fast and intense that my head swam. But I kept holding on, I held my concentration even when waves of dizziness made my vision sway.
Lightning crackled around me as the God made a wretched, agonized sound. Its flesh split open, revealing a river of fire burning within. My claws receded, my teeth shrinking, my body returning to normal as all my power was poured into burning the God from the inside out.
There was a deep, ear-shattering boom. The force of it was so great I was flung to the ground and tumbled across the stone. The God was dissolving into ash, Its charred remains melting into the mud. It gave an awful, gurgling cry as Its body slumped down, water sloshing around Its writhing limbs.
Far above, around the edges of the cavern’s gaping ceiling, Eld beasts yipped and cried as they flung themselves down in panic, the massive amounts of magic making them crazed. They were reduced to nothing but worms and bones before they even struck the ground.
The great tentacles lay still, flames crackling across their surface. All that remained of the God was ruined flesh, quivering and twitching. It blackened as my fire kept burning, even as the rain poured down from above.
Weakly, I crawled back to Callum’s side and lay beside him, facing him. His eyes were closed, but when I laid my hand against his face, his skin was warm. Too weak to speak, I lay there in silence, drenched by the rain, still and cold beneath the gray night sky.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed. Minutes or hours. Days or an eternity.
Time had changed, or my perception of it had.
Soft footsteps made me open my eyes. Over Callum’s shoulder stood the Old Man, a horse skull covering his face, red flowers blooming from his walking stick. He walked around us, and everywhere his bare feet touched, grass and flowers rapidly grew.
He walked behind me, toward the God, and said, “Scars will remain, but even the deepest wounds will heal, Lady Witch. Thank you. The fae will not forget.”
When I managed to turn over, he was gone.
Plant life was growing around Callum and I. Grass, flowers, moss and lichens. Sapling trees shot up from the dirt, reaching eagerly toward the sky. The God’s body was rapidly rotting, mushrooms overtaking and consuming It. I watched it all, grasping Callum’s limp hand, a weak smile on my face despite the rain.
Slowly, Callum stirred. He drew closer, his arms coming around me as he buried his face against me. Neither of us spoke; holding each other said everything we needed to.
Softly, he said, “You came back. I hoped…I remembered what you told me…”
He opened his eyes, and I gazed into the void. I guided his hand lower, laying his palm over my stomach.
“Do you feel it?” I whispered. As he looked at me and smiled, the expression was both full of pain and full of bliss.
“Our future.” His voice was tight with the sweetest heartache as he crawled to his knees, helping me stand. As he knelt, I used his shoulders to balance, and he kissed my stomach before he laid his cheek against me. “Our eternity, darling. Our peace.” He chuckled softly. “Or our new terror.”
I laughed with him. My hands tangled in his hair as I clutched his head against me.
“The war is over, my love,” I said. “It’s finally over.”
