Page 96 of Of Sockets Of Stitches
“Champions, gather.”
I felt them obey behind me, though whether they obeyed me or ancient power was any queen’s guess.
They formed a circle around the marquis, each touching a hand or blob to him. The sobs of the marchioness were lost as flame, so evil in essence, raced toward us with impossible speed.
Champions threw out their shield, and they did so with savage shrieks. This was not their first time fighting this foe.
The same could be said for this black fire, for the flames behaved as they had never done, forming a battering ram in the sky.
The ram drew back, then swung heavily to hammer on the shield of champions, and they cried out, spinning backward through the air.
My own heart pounded, and I shook myself from the enormity of our doom to dive into the stitch connecting leg to torso.
I had formed a habit of linking each stitch and injured vein or artery to the mother who would fight the battle.
Adalina.
I understood this mother well. She was the most accepting of all mothers, and perhaps that was why I had first shackled King No Change’s chains with her stitch. She had died in death. Then been granted life in death again.
And now.
A lump drew high in my throat. “Adalina, dearest and kindest mother, I had hoped your battle would be easier. Your trials have been great. To only have returned to life in death…”
Her smile was gracious and warm. She was freshly baked bread with honey, and morning sunshine through a dusty window. “Daughter, I was well aware of the terms of my return. I do this willingly as I have done all else. I have no regrets in life nor death, for I loved so much harder for knowing my time to do so was shorter. Each day I have felt grateful for the kind words and deeds and smiles that I could put into the world. Mine has been a brief life, but a full one. My death has been spent in the great company of my ancestors. There is so much to be thankful for, including this battle to keep our fiftieth daughter safe along with all living creatures. And in a vibrant new world. I fight willingly. I fight with everything I have, and every dream and hope in my heart.” She was in my mind, but she leaned closer. “And that is something this villain does not have.Thatis why mothers and daughters shall win.”
Her wisdom could only overwhelm a queen, and I staggered with the emotion as the thick and neat stitch unraveled from my thigh.
The stitch’s transformation was fierce, much as Adalina’s love, and where the first battling mother had taken a snake-like form, and where Richalle had become a giant wielding a shield, Iwas not too surprised to see that Adalina remained exactly herself.
She floated forward to where the battering ram was starting another swing. Great cracks had formed in my champions’ shield, a concerning prospect indeed, for this sickness was capable of strategy, and that did not bode well for the battles that remained.
Adalina stood in the path of the battering ram, outside the shield, and as it contacted her, she did not try to stop the ram. She simply hugged the end, and allowed the ram to carry her forward.
I listened to the shrieks and bellows of my monsters as they dropped their shield to assist Adalina’s attack, if that was what her action could be called.
Adalina rested her head against the battering ram, stroking it. I watched her smiling lips move as she spoke to the blackness.
And our nemesis weakened as a flame covered by a blanket, the fire burning in the sky weakened and snuffed out in areas.
My champions hooked and dragged escaping tendrils of sooty smoke and black embers toward Adalina.
The battering ram swung back, and then the mother stopped the blackness in its tracks. Calmly and kindly. This mother was everything that humans struggled to be through their slavery to convention. This mother was the exact antidote to ruin.
Adalina turned to look back at my champions. Smiling, she extended a hand. For any other mother, perhaps Marchioness Take could not have found the strength to go. But this mother’s intention was undeniable, and so the Takes went, hand in hand.
They walked with Adalina into the last of the flames.
And then they, and the last of the black fire, were gone.
Champions toppled through the air, and I swept them up in a net of my power while waiting with bated breath.
I scanned the skies for her, for my princess. “Where are you?”
Monsters needed her.
I tuned out my power and mind to focus entirely on my eyes, fleecing the skies of the world for signs of her.
A streak of moonshine! “There,” I shouted.
