Page 77 of The Unseelie War
The trees lunged simultaneously, their gaping maws snapping shut on empty air as his web sliced through their trunks at precisely calculated angles. They toppled in perfect synchronization, their massive forms crashing to the forest floor in a symphony of destruction.
Serrik stepped over their remains without a glance, already focused on the next obstacle. A swarm of gangly, corpselike birds descended from the canopy—things with too many wings and beaks full of rotting, sharp teeth.
“Enough.” His response was the same. Threads spread out in a perfect spiral, catching the creatures mid-flight and pulling them apart with surgical precision. Feathers and less identifiable pieces rained down around him as he continued forward. “Is this all?” he asked the darkness, his voice carrying no challenge, only exhaustion. “Is this the best you can offer, brother?”
As if in answer, the forest around him began to change. The trees grew taller, their branches intertwining overhead to block out what little light filtered down from above. The ground became soft and yielding, trying to trap his spider legs in its sinking embrace. Poisonous spores filled the air, and things that were not quite insectsbegan to emerge from cracks in the bark—creatures with shells and mandibles that sparked with electric fury.
Serrik met it all with the same empty calm. His threads became a whirlwind of golden death, carving paths through swarms of attacking creatures, slicing through grasping vines, and anchoring him to solid surfaces when the ground tried to swallow him whole. He did not care if he exhausted himself.
A massive spider-thing dropped from the canopy above—a crude mockery of his own form, all chittering mandibles and poison-dripping stingers. It was easily three times his size, its multiple eyes glowing with malevolent hunger. Serrik looked up at it with something approaching relief.
“Finally,” he breathed, and launched himself upward.
The battle was brief and brutal. The creature was powerful but predictable, relying on brute force and venom where Serrik employed precision and geometry. His threads wrapped around its legs, finding the joints where chitin met flesh, and contracted. The false spider crashed to the ground in segments, its death throes shaking the trees around them.
Serrik landed among the pieces, his breathing steady despite the exertion. In the distance, he could see the faint glow of moonlight—the heart of the Maze, where Valroy's tree waited. The sight filled him not with determination or hope, but with a bone-deep weariness.
Soon, this would be over. Soon, he would face the tree that served as the source of Valroy's life, and in destroying it, he would almost certainly destroy himself. The mathematics were simple enough—he was powerful, but he was also alone, and the tree would be defended by more than just a hungry forest.
He thought of Ava, probably facing her own impossible battle at that very moment. He thought of the look in her eyes when she had promised to love him no matter what he became. He thought of the bracelet he had woven for her, and wondered if she would rememberits meaning when the memories of his voice and face had long since faded.
The forest continued its assault as he pressed forward, but it felt almost perfunctory now, as if the Maze itself could sense his indifference to his own survival.
Serrik cut through it all, each movement bringing him closer to his goal. He felt no fear, no doubt, no hope—only the cold certainty that this was where his story ended. And perhaps that was for the best. Perhaps some stories were never meant to have happy endings. Perhaps some creatures were too broken, too stained by violence and loss, to deserve redemption.
The glow ahead grew brighter, and Serrik prepared himself for the final act of his long, violent existence.
Valroy would die at his hand.
And in turn, his death would follow.
At least, he thought with grim satisfaction, it would be an ending worthy of the nightmare he had always been.
The sword felltoward Ava like a piece of the night sky breaking away. She threw her arm up instinctively, knowing it was useless, knowing that flesh and bone could never stop such a blade?—
The bracelet Serrik had given her erupted into life.
Golden threads burst from the woven band around her wrist like the birth of a star, expanding outward in geometric patterns that were impossible to make sense of. They formed a perfect dome around her in the space of a heartbeat, each strand humming with power that made the air itself sing like flicking the edge of a crystal wineglass. When Valroy's sword met that barrier, the sword didn't just stop—the bladeshattered.
The sword, that was made from silver and who-knows-what-kind-of-magic simply came apart, reduced to fragments that scattered across the grass at their feet like broken glass. The hilt inValroy's hand crumbled to ash, leaving him staring at his empty palm with something that might have been surprise.
For a moment, there was perfect silence.
Then Valroy began to laugh.
“How delightfullytouching.The spider's final gift to his beloved. A pretty bauble to keep you safe for a few moments longer.” His blue eyes gleamed as he studied the dome of threads surrounding her, pacing back and forth like a caged tiger. “But do you truly think that will stop me, little Weaver? Do you think a few golden strings can hold backdestruction itself?”
The dome was already beginning to flicker, the threads growing thinner as whatever power Serrik had woven into them slowly exhausted itself. Ava probably only had minutes.
But minutes might be enough.
“Now, Abigail!” she shouted, her voice echoing strangely within the protective barrier.
The Seelie Queen didn't need to be told twice. The red flowers that had been slowly advancing across the battlefield suddenly exploded into frenzied growth, their petals opening to reveal thorns the size of daggers and centers that pulsed with hungry light. The Gle'Golun responded to her will like hungry dogs unclipped from their leashes, surging toward Valroy in waves of crimson death.
Valroy spun away from Ava's protective dome, his attention suddenly divided between the advancing flowers and the woman who commanded them. “Yes, my love!” he called out to Abigail, his voice carrying delight even as he backed away from a cluster of blooms that snapped at him with jaws lined with thorn-teeth. “You fight me with true intention!”
Abigail didn't respond. Her face was a mask of perfect concentration as she guided her flowers in their deadly dance, creating a perimeter around Ava's position while simultaneously driving Valroy back. Where the Gle'Golun touched the ground, the earth itself seemed to come alive, roots and vines erupting to entangle any of Valroy's forces that came too close.
