Page 106 of Seized to Sacrifice
We have to—
All at once, he felt the Beast rushing into him.
His skin turned black and where the tentacle was embedded in his flesh, his scales grew and severed it. Stronger now, Thorne pushed himself from the wall as the Liathmor retreated to lick its wounds for a moment.
Pulling the piece of tentacle from his back, he cast the still-wriggling thing away and his claws grew long. He attacked, putting out the Liathmor’s eyes. They’d grow back quickly. But it would give him time to get to the others. It reared back in pain and Thorne ran, vaguely realizing that his thoughts were melding together into one entity. The Beast was no longer separate.
He burst into the room to find Nyx and Rye fighting another of the tentacled beasts. Elle was behind them, holding her arm. Blood poured from an open wound and she looked at him, the fear and desperation in her eyes making his blood run cold.
His Brothers were covered in cuts and lacerations. They were losing. Thorne leapt onto the beast’s back, drawing a razor-sharp claw across its throat.
‘Open a portal!’ he screamed as it grabbed him and pulled him off, throwing him into the adjacent wall.
As he said it, a breach opened, and he saw Elle and the two others jump through. He grinned at the Liathmor as he jumped to his feet and ran across the room, dodging the beast as it tried to catch him. Thorne dived through the portal, landing on the hard floor in the Light Realm, panting hard. His scales receded.
‘I’ve shielded us,’ he said. ‘The Liathmor will guess where we’ve gone, but they won’t be able to follow us.’
* * *
Elle
Elle sat up,wincing at the pain in her arm as she looked around. They were back in their room at the Great Library once more. Luckily it was more or less intact, though most of their possessions had been thrown to the floor during the quake they’d witnessed. The others’ wounds were rapidly healing, and she was glad as some of them had been quite deep from that thing’s sharp barbs.
Before she knew what was happening, Rye had pulled her to her feet, and she felt a warmth spread over her from her shoulder to her wrist. She looked up at him in wonder. He was healing her.
‘Thank you,’ she breathed.
‘How did we get out of there?’ Thorne asked.
‘I think it was made to open when needed,’ Nyx said. ‘When you screamed for it, it appeared.’
Rye turned away and swore, running a hand through his hair. ‘Well, that was a waste of fucking time.’ He glared at her, and she drew herself up.
‘Actually, it wasn’t,’ Thorne said. ‘My battle with the Liathmor had an unexpected result.’ He grinned. ‘The Beast and I are no longer separate.’
Nyx laughed, clapping his Brother on the back, and then pulling him in for a hug. ‘I’m pleased for you, Brother,’ he said with feeling.
Elle hugged him as well. ‘I’m glad too,’ she said quietly, seeing a happiness in Thorne’s eyes that hadn’t been there before.
Warmth filled her heart and she thought about what Gaila had told her.
‘Something else happened there as well. I spoke with Gaila, or at least a version of her that she’d left for me to find.’
The men stared.
‘Where is she?’
‘What did she say?’
Elle inwardly grimaced. She had to tell them the truth.
‘I … She told me doesn’t exist anymore, that her final act was sending me here to live and to defeat Ceres.’
Nyx looked at the floor, his expression unreadable.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, feeling a hollowness spreading through her. She hadn’t expected their mourning of Gaila, she realized, though she should have. They loved her.
Nyx approached. ‘I think we all knew as soon as we met you that the goddess herself could be no more.’ He gave her and the others a sad smile and both Rye and Thorne nodded in agreement. ‘But you’re all the pieces of her that we loved the most, Elle. You are her still in the ways that matter to us.’
