Page 41 of The Withering Wood

“Yes,” he answered, a concerned frown pulling at his mouth.

He fell into step beside her, leading her to where the beast lay in a pool of its foul blood. A breeze rustled through Threxilon’s bristles, its tongue dangling out of its mouth between the yellow, cracked tusks. Fragments of the splintered absorber protruded from the corpse, gleaming with the lichboar’s absorbed, hellish magic, the gleaming orange and green of the beast now within the relic. Its skin, dull and dead, decayed before her eyes, flaking away into the air and disintegrating into its own blood, destroying the pieces of absorber with it, until nothing was left but a melted patch of earth.

Satisfied the creature was good and truly gone, she returned her attention to Azkanix’s forming organ. She’d hoped the cessation of Vraethik’s magic feeding it would be enough to stop its growth, yet it still pulsed.

Of course it was a foolish hope. Nothing could ever be so simple.

“How do we stop it?” Oberon asked, staring at the black, pumping mass.

She cast her gaze around them, assessing their few resources. She twisted Beloved in her grasp, heart sinking. “With the power of other Celestials. We’re in luck, since we have two with us.”

Though with what she had planned, she didn’t feel so blessed.

He quirked a brow in question and she said, “Thanks to Vraethik’s jabbering mouth, we know Mirvadel’s blessing truly does run through your veins. And Beloved”—she swallowed another lump in her throat, “—is Zyrdriel blessed.”

Catching on, his eyes searched her face. “Cerise, are you sure you want to do this?”

“There’s no other way. Now let’s get it over with before I can think about it too much.”

He nodded and wrapped his bloodied hands over Beloved’s shaft, murmuring a prayer to Mirvadel, begging the Celestial of Blessings and Good Fortune to let Cerise’s strike land true. As the prince doused Beloved with his Celestial’s blessing, Cerise leaned on Beloved one last time. Fists clenched against the familiar wood, the etch and wear of it as recognizable as the lines on her own palms. How long it had been with her. When she first enlisted into Zyrdriel’s Order and it was a simple, blessed great axe. How many undead they’d slain together, how many nights it was her only companion, her only promise of safety. How it even remained with her after her injury, accommodating modifications to become a staff and dagger. Something to lean on. They’d changed much, together. Besides Eirwen, it was her oldest companion.

Now, it’d be her savior one more time.

Hopefully.

Oberon stepped away and Cerise walked back a few steps, leaning on Beloved while she could. Sending one more prayer to Zyrdriel, she hefted Beloved and ran, hurling it with every last bit of strength at the Lich God’s hateful heart.

Beloved soared, the green necrotic pool below and violet purple sky above reflecting on its blades. It pierced Azkanix’s heart, slicing into the organ until Beloved disappeared. Black ooze gushed from the wound, falling to the pool beneath the rib in thick, pus-like globs.

A gurgling pulse pumped through each heart chamber, slow and struggling.

Then, rays of Celestial power—Mirvadel’s dawn-pink and Zyrdriel’s icy-blue—split through the seam where Beloved cut. Divine light illuminated the heart from within. The organ bulged and writhed, fighting against its demise.

A familiar, ear-shattering splintering sound ruptured the air.

The weight of Celestial power, the fight of magic within that dying heart, cracked Azkanix’s rib.

“Get back!” Oberon screamed, thrusting his arms beneath Cerise’s shoulders and pulling them both away from the collapsing bone.

Cerise let herself be dragged backward, transfixed.

The rib fractured at the curve. As the crack deepened, the war within Azkanix’s heart raged, pulses of power thumping within like lightning. With one more bulging beat, the heart stretched as wide as it could, tissues thinning until Mirvadel and Zyrdriel’s power split through it.

The heart deflated like pulped fruit.

The fissured rib fully broke, dangling pieces of bone and heart collapsing into the wretched magic at the rib’s base.

A high-pitched shriek, like breaking glass, ripped through the air and Cerise slammed her hands over her ears as Azkanix’s own power devoured his heart.

The ground rumbled beneath her, the Celestial destruction ripping through layers of dirt. The entire, momentous rib crumbled, crashing into the newly created void in the world, disappearing from the skyline as if it never existed.

The earth took a few more shuddering breaths, steadying itself.

Then all went silent.

Cerise dropped her hands, ears ringing in the sudden, oppressive quiet.

Oberon, one arm still supporting Cerise, guided them back to the blight’s edge.