The door groaned open, heaving against steady wind. Pyrrha emerged onto a broad stone terrace jutting from the cathedral, its waist-high parapets flanking the entrance and curving inward to meet at the furthest point opposite the doors, lending the courtyard an arched shape. Over the walls, the Irish countryside sprawled green and gold shot through with veins of crystal blue, resplendent as any landscape could be, and above it all was a flawless sky deep with tranquil hues the eye could admire for hours.
The beauty was lost on Pyrrha, whose gaze was fixed on the two figures ahead that were already facing her in anticipation. Stood across the terrace were Aradia and Twyford Furnival.
The chill wind whistled against the silence as Pyrrha advanced past two wide and bare stone pedestals to the center of the courtyard with her wand held at her side; the clicking behind her denoted Wasila, Daisy and Hati close behind. They stopped when she did, and for a moment, nothing.
Furnival looked as Pyrrha remembered him from what few brief meetings they'd had in her father's company; he was older, more grey, but his well-groomed beard ever contrasted with the thinned hair that wreathed his head and stirred wispily in the breeze. He took a few tentative steps forward—Aradia tensed—and he squinted through his gold monocle at Pyrrha; the optic nearly fell loose when his eyes widened in recognition.
"This is yer 'dangerous individual?' Young Pyrrha Clay, a grown woman! Whatever are ya doin'—good lord!" Furnival's stare was ensnared by the scar. "My dear girl, yer face—what's happened t'ya?"
Wasila stepped forward and placed a hand on Pyrrha's shoulder briefly; she wanted the chance to steer the confrontation. Aradia looked on with the barest hint of surprise directed at Pyrrha's company.
"Sounds like Aradia's kept you quite in the dark, sir," Wasila said. "Please make your way over to us, if you would, and we'll see to it you're kept safe from this intruder."
"You are the intruders here," Aradia declared, red-flecked eyes glinting. "Depart now, or be cast wandless from the walls; I leave it to you, one final time."
"Now hold yer bleedin' horses, woman!" Furnival said. "Ent havin' nobody thrown from me terrace—not 'specially John Clay's little tyke!"
"That child exists no longer," Aradia snapped. "She's become a danger to everything around her—you must heed me. Stand back."
"Who's dangerous?" Wasila said. "You're the one making threats, even attempts on our lives, while we've only come seeking Mr. Furnival's peerless historical acumen to assist in combating a grave threat. Did Aradia tell you that, Mr. Furnival?"
"The Morrigan . . . aye, she did," Furnival said, sounding as though he were containing perverse excitement. "The Nightmare Queen, alive—alive and free, no bloody less!"
"For the one who unleashed her upon us, you need look no further," Aradia spat, flicking her wrist at Pyrrha.
"It was a mistake," Pyrrha said before Wasila could speak. "I can't take it back. All I can do is what I'm doing now; searching for answers, that I might finish what I started."
"There's no call for this hostility, Aradia," Wasila added. "We want the same thing."
"You've put our confederates to death!" Aradia said, voice trembling with outrage that rattled the air. "Hundreds of muggles! Exposed us to scrutiny! There is every call for the erasure of your stain on all that we were!"
"Murdered . . . ?" Furnival trailed off, looking horrified, disbelieving. "No, surely not—?"
"Pyrrha murdered no one," Wasila said, her tone somehow making the idea seem ridiculous. "The fire came of Morrigan, and the colleagues you regard so dearly were killed in self-defense while carrying out your own instructions. Pyrrha and I made every attempt at reason, but their fear of you won out."
"Well, there!" Furnival seized onto the explanation with relief. "That young fella, Byron? Didn't he say much the same—reasonable, he said, too rational to be all fire and vengeance, like ya claim! So let's everyone just calm down an' talk this out, right? Whatever the bloody backward-gallopin' fuck this is!"
Aradia ignored the man, dark eyes fixed on Pyrrha. "You're not so skilled a deceiver as Wasila, so tell me yourself; did you try to spare them, truly? With all in your power?"
"I did," Pyrrha said. It was the simple truth.
"She fought Eilith into submission and extracted a Vow," Wasila added. "Set to expire with Morrigan. This, when killing her outright carried infinitely less risk. Contact the woman yourself if you doubt me."
Aradia conjured a hand mirror and spoke softly into it as it hovered before her, low enough for her to keep watch over the rim; her murky eyes swept over each of them in turn. Hati growled low in his chest at Pyrrha's side, fur bristling. It was one tense minute before the answer came.
"What the hell do you want?" There were sounds of scuffing dirt and weighty footsteps, coupled with Eilith's clicks and hisses as she put some creature through instruction.
"Pyrrha spared you."
Eilith didn't reply, instead proceeding to chastise her beast with a series of ticking noises.
Furnival glanced back and forth between both parties, and he edged away from Aradia with all the subtlety in his power, looking hopelessly lost and more than a little worried. It was a tangled situation even for those informed; Pyrrha couldn't imagine what might be taking place in the historian's thoughts, but she didn't have to; she could feel the low current of exhilarated dread coursing among thoughts of Morrigan, and the mix of bewilderment and suspicion directed at Pyrrha, tinged faintly with nostalgic fondness.
The creature at the other side of the mirror whined at the pitch of perpetually shattering glass and seemed to hurl enormous volumes of dirt, told by the sweeping, raining sounds emitting over muted gouging, and wordless remonstrations followed while Aradia awaited elaboration.
When Eilith finally restored obedience to the beast, she only said, "Anything else?"
Aradia vanished the mirror. Her pallid countenance was twisted with rage. "I will not—cannot put this aside. Your disobedience has undone all that I've worked for, and thrown into doubt all I'd hoped to achieve; you've driven me to . . . to lengths I'd hoped never to resort to."
"You'll let your feelings govern you?" Wasila said. "Even Eilith found it in herself to let the grudge settle for the bigger picture. Come now; you know you're making the wrong decision for everyone involved—yourself included. Maven told me—"
"Be silent!" Aradia's wand flashed out—the spell tore past Wasila when Pyrrha diverted it, blasting a hole in the parapet; Furnival cried out in alarm. "This matter is between Pyrrha and myself, but if you continue to interfere, I will oblige you the very same. And you," she added grimly to Daisy. "I don't know how you've come to be involved, but you will accomplish nothing here but your own downfall, unless you stand aside. In this, the two of you are extraneous."
Daisy opened her mouth, expression defiant; Pyrrha forestalled her with a hand on the shoulder. "It's alright. Take Furnival and get him to the Lodge," Pyrrha said, including Wasila with a glance. To Daisy she added, "Don't waste worry on me. I'll be fine."
They would find passage through the protections with Wasila to facilitate; with the common hall stripped bare of sensitive materials, the traversal was safe as it could be for both parties until the Vow was annulled.
"Make your last parting sentiment without regrets," Aradia said, grim eyes flitting from the retreating Wasila and Furnival back to Daisy.
Daisy gave a rare scornful laugh, the disdainful mannerism at such odds with her tender nature as to be unpleasantly striking. She turned and led Hati toward the doors without a backward glance; the wolf turned back and resisted with a low whine, but Daisy kept a firm hold of his scruff. Her voice was level, confident, but worry bled through her thoughts.
"Don't be too long, Pyrrha."
Aradia's expression tautened, the merest betrayal of affront, and she watched over Pyrrha's shoulder until the doors boomed shut; her unsettling eyes alit on Pyrrha's again. Wind tousled hair and robes about their tensed frames and keened as it streamed between the minute cracks and indents against the stone face of the cathedral, along the rim of the curving parapet. The cold clung to Pyrrha like a second skin, creeping in beneath her billowing robes until she turned the wind away with a twitch.
Flecks of red glittered in the pale sunlight as Aradia made a deliberate gesture; behind Pyrrha were bone-grating sounds of stone rasping on stone, and a pair of somethings landed with crashes that reverberated throughout the terrace. Pyrrha didn't need to look; the gesture had been one meant for animation, directed at whatever stone statues had previously adorned the empty pedestals, lying in wait from the roof.
Aradia took aim at Pyrrha's heart. "Now show me—"
Displaced air gave a fleeting shriek as their positions were violently reversed at Pyrrha's charm, and she recovered first; under her flitting wand empty space seemed to fold around Aradia like mummy cloth until it unraveled at a counterspell. Towering gargoyles with twisted features thundered forward on all fours while Aradia cast white light that poured like a stain across the air, carrying whispers Pyrrha yearned to catch; she dispersed the light with a gesture and wrapped a glittering barrier over herself; curses and stone claws struck the charm with devastating noise, and the gargoyles upon her obscured all but their frozen, fanged snarls and unfurled wings like those of massive bats.
Their enchantments slipped transfiguration out of Pyrrha's grasp, and even as they ravaged the barrier it began to part at the site of a flickering black wound, where the creatures rabidly dug in their claws; with a deft gesture Pyrrha divested herself of the spell and enveloped the gargoyles instead, the tide of magic pressing them back with ear-splitting scrapes of stone claws against stone until the charm went up in black smoke and Aradia stepped around with another curse at the tip of her wand.
No light flashed; instead it was Aradia herself who shivered and stretched until she seemed to shed her own ghost; it closed in with vaguest form barely cohesive, bony arms diffuse and reaching blindly, flowing around the gargoyles bounding once more across the terrace with bone-juddering weight.
Pyrrha parted herself into sanguine mist and felt great fists assail and displace her painlessly, but then a calamitous feeling seized her being, all that made her what she was; Aradia's curse had caught hold, disregarded her intangibility, and it ran deathly cold fingers down her soul to clasp around her every reason to exist and pick them precisely apart. She couldn't scream or struggle, only endure as she was piecemeal prised from herself by an inexorable intent bent on unmaking, unraveling—
Heat welled up and burned away the chill, cast off the curse with a feeling like life's every sublime relief experienced at once; Pyrrha had a fleeting impression of piercing blue eyes.
She wasted no time in piecing herself together again in a confluence of prickling flesh that flared with agony at every inch, outward from the chest. Looming gargoyles brought down their arms again and were met with hellish wildfire crowned by the burning maw of a dragon; the curse coursed over the creatures in a turbulent surge of half-formed infernal claws, jaws and talons shaped from the wicked flames, and in moments nothing remained but the upper half of the dragon still soaring from Pyrrha's upraised wand and tormenting the air with each moment it writhed and consumed.
With an enormous exertion of will she called the curse howling back; the radiant beasts churning within clawed for purchase against all in reach with the myriad appendages of beings shapeless and countless, ravaging all they touched under transcendent incandescence until her wand absorbed the formless inferno, its deafening roar cut short. Pyrrha found she still couldn't breathe in the oppressive curse's absence and saw several knives buried in her chest, strangely bloodless; she had reformed around the blades. Through a smoky haze she could make out Aradia approaching over melted, bubbling stone scorched black.
"How very like you, to meddle with forces beyond your control! It seems you cannot learn."
Pyrrha blocked an emerald curse with a conjured iron shield as she struggled back to her feet, innards burning for breathless pain; with a follow-up flourish the embedded knives slid free and hurled themselves through the air trailing blood; Aradia turned the projectiles to fluttering doves that remained soaked in gore, and the blood drew together to form Pyrrha's own wand arm for a near point-blank curse—in the nick of time Aradia directed the birds to intercept the searing light and unmade the disembodied arm with an air-shattering spell.
Breath flowed freely through rewoven flesh. Pyrrha swept away the murmuring mouths drifting closer in the smoke and drew the haze together into a gigantic staring eye, its baleful glare fixed on Aradia, whose outline began to flicker until she disrupted the curse with an inarticulate exclamation; the smog lifted to unveil an eruption of molten stone spurting up like a geyser to rain down with steaming heat.
A sweeping gesture coalesced the deluge into a bubbling serpent that curved back for Aradia and stopped dead in the air, cooled to solid rock that shattered into jagged shards the next instant; the fragments formed serrated blades that swung for Pyrrha and were batted away with staggered swipes that sent them spinning over the parapets, save one; Pyrrha stepped back and held up her free arm against the final blade, and it cleaved away her limb at the elbow with a brutal swing and a spray of blood; pain surged up from the stump in time with her pumping heart as she reduced the pursuing blade to dust.
Aradia faltered, the shock in her eyes escaping her mental composure, and the lapse served Pyrrha well as she made a complex movement that drew yet more thrumming pain from her chest; her sundered arm burned with crimson light instantly matched by Aradia's corresponding limb, and the old witch's arm tore itself away, spurted dark red at her feet and over her robes as she drew the wound close and gave a hoarse shriek.
It was the work of moments for Pyrrha to reattach her arm, the divide mending with a maddening itch, and Aradia had failed to recover so well; she was ever more pale, cradling a newly-sealed stump of an arm to her chest—its other half twitched nearby in a steadily widening pool of red. Her wand arm trembled when she aimed it at Pyrrha; an answering gesture sent the severed arm up and around her throat, where it vanished at a startled jerk of her wand.
Wild-eyed, the old witch gracelessly parried several curses and gave a drawn-out, chilling scream of rage that dragged from her throat; she thrust her wand at the bright blue skies, and the world went dim. Every brilliant beam of light shining from the sun seemed to draw together out of the atmosphere, sapping the world of vibrance that reconvened in a rapidly magnifying pillar of pure blinding heat that poured itself down upon the ruined terrace until the intensity became overwhelming, and Pyrrha ensconced herself in a protective charm that did nothing to render the radiant scene discernible.
The unnatural dusk shimmered all throughout with the heat radiating from the pillar of pure sunlight dividing their battleground. Pyrrha wove steady spellwork against Aradia's, vying to let free the sunbeams back to their natural angles, but she was thwarted in every attempt while the effect broadened further. No sound could pierce the interminable hiss of stone burning and melting into cherry-red slag. The wall of light kept extending at both ends until the terrace was entirely divided between them, and Pyrrha realized what Aradia intended a moment before it happened.
She was weightless. The cathedral soared high as its terrace dropped from beneath her feet with a great resounding crumble until she stood on nothing at all and the wind from her fall tore at her robes and stole away her breath. The broken platform flew further and further into the pale blue sky, the rushing air howled all thoughts out of Pyrrha's head until her mind was nothing but terror, and fire split her skull; Ashlin forced a forbidden spell to the forefront, and Pyrrha seized upon it with unbridled panic.
Her lower half flickered and her fall hitched when she cast, as if she'd struck something, and her heart stopped in anticipation of a landing that didn't come; she knew she had only moments and she still couldn't apparate, still within the cathedral's bounds—her heart climbed ever higher and she cast again, and halted dead in the air.
Thick grey smoke roiled where her legs had been. Suspended over the earth by nothing more than the force of her will maintaining the spell, the plight of her tenuous flight flooded her with a fresh wave of distress. There was nowhere to look that would settle her fraying mind—it was all so far away, all so unnaturally bright, and there was no peace in closing her eyes and surrendering to the unknown. Pyrrha forced her gaze up and focused on the broken terrace with all the composure she could reclaim, and willed herself to rise.
"God . . ." The utterance escaped around the heart throbbing in her throat, a pathetic prayer, a plea to something she'd never believed and still didn't, but her safe conveyance back to steady ground felt endlessly far from her power. Her heart beat so heavily it felt like to burst free. The whistling wind cascading down her shoulders in her flight stoked as much fright as ever, as if she were merely falling toward death in a different direction. The adrenaline shivers wracking her frame threatened to loose the spell from her fragile grasp.
"There's more to be concerned for besides your own skin," Ashlin said with a tone neither kind nor cruel. "Remember why you can't fail."
The presence of her sister and her soft and familiar voice bolstered Pyrrha's resolve. It might have been a threat, but no part of her could believe that. She clung to all the reasons her life mattered, the lives she could spend her own to save, and those thoughts swelled and held her dismay at bay; she kept her eyes focused on the enlarging cathedral to the exclusion of all else and ignored the perpetual deathly thrill of weightlessness until at last she crested the jagged edge of the devastated terrace and alit on solid stone.
The world tilted under Pyrrha while another cascade of shock descended through her bones; she stumbled forward and collapsed to her hands and knees in spite of all sense telling her to guard herself, and it was several ragged breaths before she could summon the will to look up from the stone.
At the opposite side of the terrace behind ebbing curtains of smoke Aradia leaned against the parapet, hunched with exhaustion, favoring her cursed arm. Her expression held the culmination of all different sorts of sorrows, and it was directed not at Pyrrha but out over the landscape, at the distant horizon, where a miniscule patch of grey clouds gathered in defiance of the pristine weather. Beneath the murky smudge, flittering specks of inky black shapes sharpened more distinct every moment.
The sight of Morrigan sapped from Pyrrha what little warmth remained, and numb dread crept in to permeate the hollows of her form. Even as she found her feet a sharp ripple swept over everything, a fleeting flutter in reality's fabric, and her mind flashed back to the breathless seconds in Ashlin's doorway.
They were caught. The vast open skies surrounding seemed to condense and draw in close to mirror the constricted feeling tightening in Pyrrha's throat.
"We are out of time." Aradia's voice was raw. "I'd taken measures to obscure this place, but it seems your . . . connection runs deeply as you asserted."
The double doors behind them burst open before Pyrrha could reply, and the noise sent a spike of horror up her spine as she spun around, already dreading what she knew she would see; Daisy emerged with a whirl of golden hair as if from a waking nightmare with Hati at her heels, her frantic eyes darting from Pyrrha to the horizon and back.
It couldn't happen again.
"I told you—I told you—the Lodge!" The scar throbbed with strength of emotion that left her inarticulate.
Daisy winced at Pyrrha's voice, but rallied quickly, protest at the ready. "And what if you were in no condition to follow us? I couldn't just—!"
"Circe curse you, Daisy, I—"
Low ringing like cold wind over the lips of a cave filled the air and the sky went utterly black, the atmosphere faded away to bare the world's face to deep space, and shadows lengthened and swayed like disfigured revelers rejoicing a new age of shade. Everything was in arm's reach and pressing closer with asymmetric eyes peeking from the patterns worn into every surface—
Daisy's horrific scream set all to a standstill, and Pyrrha met her terrified gaze just as the wail waned to a wet gurgle and died in her throat; her flesh dripped down like hot candle wax to pool around her crumpled robes in a gruesome puddle that bubbled pink below stark white bones, one pleading arm still extended toward Pyrrha marking her final conscious impulse.
Nothing that happened next could possibly matter. She was gone.
Pyrrha stared at her best friend's remains without the faintest regard for the urgent pain from her scar; the pain flared, and she welcomed it and faintly begged for more, for madness, that she might shed all she knew in favor of pure and encompassing agony. Ashlin's voice in her ear was reduced to a meaningless drone. Loss blanketed every thought, smothered them until all her initiative was winnowed away to leave her inert shell anchored to worthless existence.
Daisy's absence left behind emptiness that defied dimension.
Gone.
Vaguely, Pyrrha registered the wolf's long ghostly limbs padding a predatory circle around what had been Daisy. Hot breath trickled wisps of steam between his aberrant crocodile jaws. Hati craned his neck down to lap at the somatic pool, lamplike yellow eyes locked on Pyrrha. The calculated depravity in the wolf's stare jarred her, and she recoiled with a thrilling burst of clarity and collected herself, set her mind diametrically against the curse that gripped it.
Before Pyrrha could cast the countercurse the phantasm lifted, natural colors and shapes bleeding in seamlessly like the shifting of a great lens into proper focus. Something surged in her chest to see Daisy standing alive and unharmed, wan face streaked with glistening tracks of tears; Pyrrha took three steps forward without thinking before turning halfway back, matching eyes with Aradia, who lowered her wand with ponderous care.
Hurried footfalls preceded Daisy's arms flung around Pyrrha, though she avoided constricting Pyrrha's wand arm; she broke away in moments and readied her own wand. Seemingly undisturbed by the curse, Hati paced restlessly before them, black nose to the air, as if he could sense the calamity descending upon them like a shift in pressure before a storm.
"What more are we to expect?" Aradia's resigned eyes had returned to the blackening horizon; shining pinpricks of gold barely stood out in the fluttering cloud.
"We can't stand against her," Pyrrha said slowly, still reeling with mingled relief and numbness. The scar radiated pain down her face. "No one can. She's beyond immortality; any harm to her body undoes itself straightaway. Magical influences outside the material sphere slip from her as if she were truly dead."
"What of confinement? A trap?"
"Anything you might consider, I've dismissed it already, else I would make use of it now. Even given the time, nothing we could weave would contain her; she won't be drawn in. She's mindful of herself and that weakness, as it were. Regardless, anything we might devise in haste would pale in the face of Fionn's deliberate charmwork, and she hadn't the avail of her staff as she wore that prison down. No," Pyrrha finished, leading the way to the cathedral doors, "until we learn more, flight is our only option. Come."
Only two sets of footsteps scurried at her heels. Pyrrha stopped before the open threshold and turned back to Aradia. The old witch's back was to them still, wand conducting a mute symphony over the hills and valleys far below the edge of the broken terrace; her robes and grey-streaked hair drifted and swayed in gentle opposition to the whims of the wind as her spellwork manifested itself. The white eye of the sun between cotton clouds washed away all chroma to create a pale, fiery palette tinged with grey far as eyes could see, as if the thinnest window veil separated Pyrrha from the world beyond.
A weight settled in Pyrrha's stomach when Aradia remained where she was. The old witch spoke over her shoulder before Pyrrha could entreat her.
"I will remain here to delay her as long as I am able—she cannot claim my life. Don't squander time scouring the building for a secret egress. Retrace your path and flee from the entrance; it is your most expedient course of action."
"Why?" Pyrrha said, her meaning clear as the question was faint.
"Do not presume to imagine any lingering fondness for you on my part," the old witch said lowly. "You are younger, yet, I confess, my equal at the least in magical prowess; you have what remains of my Cabal, and you share something innate with the Nightmare Queen. You have a stake in the living." Her head turned a little, as if she could smell Daisy behind her at Pyrrha's left hand. "In short, you are the one who possesses what is necessary to end Morrigan. The only one. This much is clear to me, now . . . perhaps it already was."
"I don't understand. You live for your son, as I live for my family." Pyrrha's hand found Daisy's shoulder without looking, brief contact that subsumed her friend into the defining word. "And I haven't even begun to comprehend the nature of our connection, if it truly exists."
"I have little doubt," Aradia said. She lowered her wand but kept her gaze outward, at the imminent disaster winging ever nearer. "With all the impunity of a sovereign being such as her, she elects to stalk you across the earth with unerring focus and precision."
"She's driven by vengeance for her defeat at Fionn's hands," Pyrrha said. "She wants her enemy's bloodline bled dry. It doesn't mean I'm the only hope of ending her."
She wasn't sure why she was arguing; a misguided self-sacrifice was a more favorable outcome than prolonging their duel until there were no victors, only victims. Perhaps she could inspire another drastic change of heart, that Aradia might elect instead to escape with them.
"There is more than simple murder in Morrigan's head," Aradia said. She looked down at the bisected arm she still cradled to her chest. "Consider well her power, and that you have escaped its undivided attention in person more than once—and for all your aptitude, Pyrrha, that is several times too many. Have you never considered why the apparent solitary window of opportunity she had to seal your fate, marked by that scar, did not warrant a lethal blow?"
"What on earth are you driving at? You think she's not striving to kill me?" As Pyrrha spoke, the notion claimed a terrible sort of logic that left her feeling as if the world had vanished from under her. The curse that had birthed Ashlin, the demented birds carrying her from Spire Island, the lethal attack directed solely at Wasila in the vapor chamber . . . Daisy clutched her arm painfully tight.
"That is my conclusion, yes. She wants you alive; this is an advantage the rest of us cannot claim. A slim advantage . . . but there it is. Exploit it." Aradia's head tilted back up to take in the encroaching plague, flittering under slow-billowing storm clouds like swathes of smoke from the sun-kindled horizon beneath, fiery white sparks flickering within. "Our allotted time for this exchange is dwindling. You must flee, before you render even this final endeavor of mine pointless."
Underneath turmoil stemming from the staggering implications Aradia had raised, new emptiness was finding a place in the patchwork void in Pyrrha's chest. "I'll unmake her," she promised over again; heat pressed against her skull from beneath. "All costs be damned, I'll see her dead. Somehow."
"You will," Aradia said. Left unspoken but unequivocal in her tone was that death would not deliver Pyrrha from the penalties of failure. Aradia flourished her wand in a neat series of loops that trailed transient ribbons of white light which dragged at the surrounding air before dying out, as if cleaving to existence with a futile will. Without the slightest disruption in the flow of spellwork, she turned her head back halfway to secure Pyrrha in a one-eyed stare that made ominous promises. "And afterward—directly afterward—you will bring me back."
Pyrrha nodded gravely. "Thank you for this, Aradia, and . . . I'm sorry. Keep Vincenzo close in your thoughts; let him ground you." He would be her Ashlin, the anchor that withheld her severed soul from flying apart into senseless obscurity. The notion of what Aradia had resolved to endure sent a chill down Pyrrha's neck.
"Of course, child." Aradia turned away to the deteriorating vista, shoulders rising and falling with a weary sigh, settling low under the burdens of decades yet unresolved. Distant hoarse cawing clawed at the edge of perception. "Go now, with all possible speed."
Pyrrha ushered Daisy and Hati inside the cathedral and followed at their heels. She spelled the doors to swing shut with a flick of her wand; her last glimpse through the sealing gap was that of an apocalyptic wave of dark wings and murky clouds scattered with glowing yellow beads that never blinked away, a crest of corrupted gloom blotting out the distant skies as the crows soared for Aradia's zenith, where they would rain down upon the old witch waiting amid twisting white lights.
They didn't speak a word when the doors slammed shut; Pyrrha strode ahead past the ruined gallery's plinth and drew her wand down over her robes; her lower half billowed and curled into grey smog, and she glided at speed over the marble floor, debris kicking up in her wake. Daisy matched her pace at a sidelong sprint, her robes transfigured into close-fitting tailored attire. Hati bounded circles around them energetically, quicker than either of them, barking to spur them on as they flew along the connecting hallway back through the main exhibit.
In what felt like minutes rather than moments they had bolted past the gauntlet of glowering portraits and found the chamber of historical curios floating peacefully in the bleak light of bluebell fire. At an upward flourish the pedestals and their eclectic burdens floated up after the arc of Pyrrha's wand, out of the way; she spotted a weathered carpet in the drift and plucked it out of the air with a gesture as they tore across the room and barreled through the exit.
Pyrrha reverted to bipedal movement to better traverse the mazes of lamplit passageways and ornate furniture throughout the next suite of chambers. Daisy and Hati fell back to her as she began to lag behind, and they ignored her gestures urging them onward. She hadn't the breath to argue; her heart thumped heavily, each beat too lethargic to match the demand of her body's exertion. Dizziness lightened her burning head and betrayed her coordination, but Daisy righted her when she stumbled, fingers tight around Pyrrha's sweat-slick hand.
"Stop! Stop," Daisy said abruptly, pulling Pyrrha to a halt; she steadied her friend at the shoulder when Pyrrha lurched too far forward.
"What—what's the matter?" Pyrrha's deep gasps drowned out Daisy's faint panting. "Can't delay—!"
"We have to, you're about to pass out. Sit," Daisy said with a light push; Pyrrha collapsed back into a plush armchair, barely clinging to the carpet rolled under her arm. "And breathe. You're—"
Daisy broke off as she performed a rapid evaluation, wand whirling about as her attention darted from one detail to the next in rapid succession down Pyrrha's form; pupils, lips, carotid, chest, fingertips. A brief tremor shook the room.
"You're in hypovolemic shock—severe blood loss, but there's no bleeding, internal or external. Was it a curse? Pyrrha!" A sharp smack across the face chased away the dark webs creeping in at the edges of Pyrrha's vision. "A curse, or blood loss? Self-induced?"
"Blood . . ." Pyrrha exhaled the word. Her eyelids sank under supreme weight, and for a vaguely euphoric moment, everything was tranquil. Nothing hurt; nothing even felt.
A painful jolt yanked her back into consciousness. Light stung her eyes and bitterness coated her tongue; she coughed, and it was agony in her chest. Heat flushed her limbs and face as fresh blood pulsed through half-collapsed veins like molten iron filling a skeletal cast. Pyrrha felt at once ill and invigorated.
"Gave you a Blood Replenisher," Daisy said, voice delicate. "Had to r-restart your heart."
Pyrrha put her feet under her after a few seconds, her breathing steadily easing, deepening. It took everything she had in her to sound sincere; she'd never before experienced such perfect peace of mind, but Ashlin seared her censure for that thought across Pyrrha's head.
"Thank you, Daisy." Pyrrha absently patted Hati's muzzle as the wolf whined, wet nose nuzzling her hand. "We need to . . . carry on."
It became clear within the first few steps that Pyrrha hadn't regained much vigor at all. The floor tilted under her boots like the heaving deck of a ship, and each stride taxed her far more than it should; it was as if she were succumbing to slow poison, but the dose had been a touch too diluted. When Daisy slipped her shoulders under Pyrrha's free arm, their pace quickened by a fraction.
Stumbling and halting, they emerged into the grandiose entrance hall. The chamber was subdued; nearly all the light that had once filtered through the high windows was choked back behind a suffocating layer of thunderheads that seemed draped over the cathedral's stained glass ceiling like sodden wool. The empty echoes of their footsteps carried all the way to the distant shrouded corners, between scrolled pillars and expressionless, looming stone figures.
Bone-chilling noise rent the air, a deafening death rattle exhaled from the direction they'd come, sickening in pitch and far too drawn-out to belong to what lived. A needling thrill raced beneath Pyrrha's skin. The building shuddered around them as if in revulsion for what took place inside its recesses, but not even so much as a fluttering tapestry evinced the upheaval. Pyrrha let her wand fall as the perpetual breath at last went thin and perished, a palpable sense of wickedness pervading the chamber in its eerily ringing wake.
The binding promise dissolving behind Pyrrha's heart alleviated a constricted sensation she had long since failed to notice.
"What's she doing now?" Daisy whispered urgently, eyes chasing at the room's shadows.
"It was Aradia . . . her final breath," Pyrrha said, stooping down stiffly to unroll the carpet across the stone. Belated affection for the old witch stole over her and faded away like a childhood memory. "She's done what she could for us; let's make the most of it. Hurry, now."
The carpet rose from the floor of its own volition, pausing at knee height. As Daisy and Hati moved to settle on its unwavering surface, Pyrrha looked up at the dynamic mosaics across the ceiling once more.
The fractured likenesses of legends past played out their lives' defining moments amid a living stage veined in winding wire frames of iron, colors muted against the shroud of cloud cover smothering the skies beyond. From the crown of a hill, a dull pile of unrefined emeralds like verdant coals, Morrigan's pale simulacrum stared down, indecipherable in her bearing, though starkly still among the chaos of motion surrounding her. The citrine shards of her irises alone glinted with the scintillating light that ought to have faded along with the sun.
The hair on Pyrrha's neck prickled. She mounted the flying carpet and settled comfortably as she was able upon one end of the airborne conveyance, opposite Daisy's mien of distress, the wolf between them alert and unblinking; he favored Daisy with a patient glance when she ran trembling fingers through his fur. A gesture saw them lifted from the stonework without momentum in the manner of a perfectly stabilized elevator; another motion, and they soared silently for the grand double doors.
Hati's claws clenched the thin fabric underneath them as he peered cautiously over the carpet's hem. Pyrrha barely registered their height; all she could consider was that tingle at the nape of her neck, a nightmarish sensation, as if a reaching something were inches from seizing her throat. Every sense had heightened to an acute, primal awareness, alert for the most minute detail that may precede Morrigan's arrival.
Over the pounding of her pulse, a new sound was burgeoning from the gravid quiet. Pyrrha didn't pause to categorize it. They drifted to a halt before the arched wood doors and she set upon them at once, flitting and twirling her wand, reeling off charms to unravel the cathedral's protections. The sound intensified while she endeavored until its ghastly nature became clear; a discordant chorus of screaming, wailing, unbridled lamenting, tearing as if from the throats of the restless dead.
"Guard your mind!" Pyrrha said over the cacophony. While she assayed for their freedom, Daisy's countenance cycled through a rapid series of expressions, and Pyrrha's alarm heightened further. Prepared and acquainted with the keening curse, she was able to stave it off; with neither advantage, Daisy soon uttered a cry of her own, clutching desperately at her head.
"Make it stop, make them stop—please stop!" Daisy's eyes bulged behind her clenching fingers, nails biting into the skin of her face. Her voice ascended to a wild shriek. "What did I—I never meant for that, never—please—forgive it, forgive me—!"
There were too many precautions about the doors, there was too little time—Pyrrha dispelled the principal obstacle and sent them flying back with a flourish toward the middle of the chamber—
"—my fault, I know it, I didn't want—"
Pyrrha could shut out the influence but not the noise; it climbed to an excruciating range of pitches prying at her sanity—she had to get out, get them all out—they flew until the mosaics again glimmered above over faint torchlight. The glass Morrigan's eyes burned, and her angular mouth stretched unnaturally wide to echo the wailing, her fractured world trembling and rattling with terrible power—
All moved with measured, fluid grace in a nightmare manifest, as though the reality weren't Pyrrha's at all, only a vivid recollection pared down and succinct; Daisy's babbling cut off as her voice broke, and she scrabbled for the carpet's edge and heaved herself over it headfirst; horror suspended Pyrrha's reaction for precious seconds until she brandished her wand and caught Daisy a bare few meters from the stone. A flourish brought her back, thrashing and howling, and she was set down again in unyielding, invisible binds.
The mad ululations reverberated through each shard of shattered glass when Pyrrha obliterated Morrigan's pane with a burst of light. An upward flick had them ascending beneath a shower of sharp edges, up toward the rumbling grey cloak of clouds blotting the sky; wintry air stung at her lungs and fiery pain surged from her arm—
Hati's eyes shined, brilliant and golden, nearly blinding as he savaged Pyrrha's arm between his snarling jaws; her own blood spattered in her eyes when he thrashed, a wrenching crackle of bones wrung to fragments in her wrist, nearly unseating her—she lashed out with a repulsing charm and an agonized outburst escaped her when the wolf clutched tighter, the spell barely buffeting him back.
The beast growled and ravaged and whipped his bloodstained silver mane about in spasms of violence—underneath the visceral throes radiating, panic rose like bile when Pyrrha felt Hati's fangs meet within the flesh of her arm, grating at her bones. She aimed her wand again and reached out to the blood spilling down the wolf's gulping throat, staining it stark red; black steam billowed between his teeth as the blood hissed and burned, and Hati howled and jerked back, jaws still clamped—Pyrrha's hand tore free with a wet ripping sound, secured in the wolf's gory maw as he slipped from the carpet and vanished over the side.
A shattered pane punctuated the uproar of the burgeoning storm and the ceaseless calls of dry-throated crows. Pyrrha's arm felt as if something were drawing out the tendons and ligaments, steadily hauling out the veins like a sailor at his grisly rigging, unwinding her arteries from inside. All that spurted forth was blood, a veritable fountain; she jammed the sundered limb in her lap and set the carpet soaring with a precise gesture. Daisy struggled in front of her, insensible, while they gathered speed against raging wind.
They cleared the cathedral's vast, sloping roofs, and were enveloped in a vile whirlwind of dark wings and bright eyes. Foul air flowed from the madly fluttering mass, hoarse cries strained their desiccated lungs; talons and beaks plucked, slashed, clutched at their robes while brittle wings buffeted. A whirl of the wand emitted a burst of golden light that clung to the air after an instant's travel; their carpet ferried them through the static flare and the swarm alike, the deadlocked crows reduced to transparent imprints insubstantial as ghosts.
Shallow furrows marred Daisy's body, and Pyrrha was relieved at their limited extent. Her own lap was suffused with lifeblood warmth that sapped her focus, muddled her mind; gale and thunder drowned out her most coherent chains of thought and left her with instinct. An intricate motion came with the ease of familiarity, directed at the gushing stump of her arm. Blood drew from her with a tugging in the chest. It flowed down her arm to the site of steady throbbing pangs and stalled, purposeless, as if her body had forgotten the hand it had lost. The pain sharpened.
A sliver of dismay descended Pyrrha's spine. She altered the spell with a motion, and her ruined wrist tingled, tickled as blood trickled from the wound and meshed together into flesh. What was left to her was only a useless stump.
A timely look back allowed Pyrrha to glimpse the swarm regain form like so many flecks of ink cast upon pale gold canvas. The light faded and the birds took wing again; a cluster twisted together in their heaving center to shape Morrigan, hollow pits shining like distant tunnels to death, flesh withered and mottled with all shades of rot. She brandished her staff in one shrunken hand.
The atmosphere prickled; lightning flashed down, caught the tip of Pyrrha's darting wand and angled toward Morrigan, who reacted with a swift, graceful spin as the arc met her upraised staff and followed its path, lashing out in a wildly brilliant pinwheel of searing whips that shredded the flock to ribbons. At a following flourish, simmering feather shafts and smoking shards of beak and bone honed in on Pyrrha, slicing through the storm as if it had no bearing on the air.
With a quick flick ahead of them Pyrrha parted the wind, enfolding their craft into a frictionless slipstream which seemed to accelerate their flight by double. The instant of inattention nearly cost her; a cloud plunged and poured down her nose, throat, eyes and ears in a deluge of smothering vapor. After a moment of panic, chest cavity swelling unbearably, she gathered herself and cast in a complex movement that averted the channel and saw the moisture drawn out from her pores, emitting a mist like aeriform sweat with a dizzying sensation of abating pressure.
The bodily fog left behind became crystallized ice and expanded at Pyrrha's direction to freeze the crows' projectile remains dead in the air. The parted winds passed with undue softness as the carpet flew ever further away from the suspended ice; Pyrrha spared a second to seal Daisy's cuts with a flick. Morrigan appeared through the frozen barrier as if it weren't there, but her form was more distant than before, and the witch sensed it.
Hellish human howling carved at the air once again. Pyrrha felt surging hatred and suffering at depths she'd never thought to delve; every instant experiencing it was a torturous lifetime torn apart from reason—
—DIED, WRUNG DRY—
—she struggled under wrathful blue eyes—
—NEVER RISE NEVER RISE NEVER RISE—
—she rallied, ousting the curse with enormous effort. The obvolute screams still twined and screeched against themselves in expressions of hurt that elicited stunted pain to hear, stinging shades of sorrows felt by another to their most terrible extremes, compounded countless times with dreadful clarity as if across a vacuum. Pyrrha spurred the carpet on to its limits as though all the unsettled afterlife pursued alongside the Nightmare Queen.
The fabric shivered beneath them. It twisted violently at the same time a tingle passed over the air—the edge of Morrigan's charmed cage—and it dumped them into empty space; they plummeted toward hills cast in grey, and the screams seemed to surpass their straining pinnacles; Pyrrha clasped her wand tight and snatched wildly for Daisy. She brushed fluttering cloth, caught it, and apparated, falling instead into a mute and claustrophobic void.
The featureless traversal seemed to crawl to an end, as if the empty realm itself were reluctant to regurgitate them. The wave-beaten coast that hosted the Giants' Causeway greeted them with a saline breeze; it had been her quickest thought. Distant cries of gulls set Pyrrha's nerves flaring anew. She opened her eyes.
Pyrrha was alone. The hand she'd clutched Daisy's robes with hadn't been there.
Daisy was gone, and utter denial consumed Pyrrha's mind; the voice that said Daisy was dead, that another careless mistake had cost another precious life, was ruthlessly stamped out. Drowning in alarm, gasping, she released the Body-Bind and made to apparate back.
The spell resisted her. Morrigan had entrapped the area anew, moments too late to snare her intended quarry.
She had Daisy instead.
Every trace of focus left to Pyrrha was directed at obliterating the obstacle; she charmed, cursed, raged and dashed herself against the spell until her body trembled with strain, with thrumming displacement pain, and then she kept contending. Like an insect pressing impotently upon window glass Pyrrha exerted herself against the impossible force until her head throbbed and her knees buckled.
From her voice, low and broken, came an insane noise which defied classification. Her five remaining fingers were numb around the wand. The craggy surrounding earth was disappearing, as if neatly pared from existence layer by layer, baring the smooth soil beneath. Blood pounded in her ears in relentless tides of inward pressure.
There was her answer. It was desperate, doomed to death, but that mattered no more. Pyrrha turned her consciousness inward and groped blindly along those infinite spans of intangible channels for distant kindred. It wasn't at all like seeking Ashlin, her sister's blood like a flare in the dark; relief and profound horror battled for primacy when at length Pyrrha found what she'd hoped and dreaded for, a far-off sickness existing in the same vein as her own vitality. Morrigan indeed shared Clay blood, twisted, tainted.
The witch reacted to Pyrrha's touch; the sanguine scraps of imitated life seemed to shudder, though with hatred or revulsion it couldn't be told. Pyrrha initiated the spell without another thought. It was an intricate work, and she performed flawlessly the gestures and invocations required to transport her flesh by their visceral connection; she would unravel and rebirth herself directly from Morrigan's own putrid body. What effect such a mingling may have she no longer cared.
A sudden warm and silvery glow suffused her closed eyelids, quite apart from the cloud-filtered sunshine reflecting from the waves. Forestalled, Pyrrha opened her eyes to witness a ghostly wolverine floating above the unnaturally uniform circular pit surrounding her.
"Safe. Apparated," came Daisy's voice, and with it, a profound relief. "Meet at Dad's place." The ethereal messenger curled up and faded in a puff of mist.
"Safe," Pyrrha breathed. She felt she may float from the ground at the weight uplifted.
Ashlin was quick to spoil the reprieve from despair. "Could be a ruse, a trap. Don't you think it best to let her be? This chance is perfect."
Not a trap. Not this quickly. Pyrrha was past exhaustion, heady elation further stunting her articulated thoughts. Morrigan is in Ireland, Daisy's father lives in London's Diagon Alley.
"Even so . . ."
We're going.
The scatter of afternoon traffic outside Mr. Pitcher's apothecary was as startling to Pyrrha as her sudden ragged appearance in their midst was to them. In the space of a moment she'd interpolated herself into the alien normalcy of society, a disastrous interloper among the deceptively fragile accord of humanity; Pyrrha at once felt stranded at the wrong end of an impossibly wide gulf. She disregarded exclamations of surprise and concern and swept through the stymied tide of wide-eyed faces to shove past the shop's propped door.
The eminently familiar herbal scents permeating the building brought back fond impressions of those few free summers spent often as not in Daisy's company. Pyrrha's energetic entrance had garnered glances that lingered at the sight of her scar, and she distantly lamented its immutable permanence, satisfying herself with a maintained glare at a wizard she meant to pass; the man all but stumbled out of her way. Along the glimmering aquatic aisle and through a doorway tucked into a corner she strode, up a brief flight of wooden steps and down a hall humming with her own charmwork, where she stalled at a door with a canary-yellow stain.
The door flew open and Daisy stood in its frame, alive and unhurt; she leapt their distance and buried Pyrrha in a trembling hug.
They made their way inside with empty comforts spoken in undertones, Daisy leading Pyrrha by the hand. Hurriedly, she concealed the stump of her other arm in the depths of her sleeve. An old apprehension reared its head with newfound life at the sight of Daisy's father waiting in the cozy sitting room. A rotund man, his rosy cheeks were wreathed by a vibrant beard with more silver than she recalled, his eyes ever alight with the same relentless kindness as his daughter.
"Come in, come in, dear girl, none of your skulking about at the outskirts here! I'm given to understand you're in no small amount of trouble," he said, eyes predictably finding her scar. He gave a sympathetic wince, and she looked away. "Merlin's burning beard, but it's plain in your face the papers haven't hinted at the half of it!"
Pyrrha tore her eyes from the worn ottoman settled in the corner. "The papers?"
Mr. Pitcher gave a small, pensive nod and beckoned them into the kitchen, where he began preparing tea by hand. "You're sought after, I'm sorry to say—the both of you—in connection to the cursed wildfire in Ireland, and an attack on the staff at Hogwarts. I've been 'interviewed' no less than four times, myself."
His tone wasn't accusatory, but Pyrrha felt welling shame all the same. "I can't begin to tell—"
"Well then, don't!" Mr. Pitcher said. He turned his broad back on them to attend to the kettle. "I know a bit of how you think, my girl, the little knots you twist yourself into, and any other time I'd be more than glad to sit you down and assuage your troubles however I could. But we both know, don't we, that there just isn't time for any such diversion."
"No?" Pyrrha glanced at Daisy to convey some disquiet.
Mr. Pitcher gave a deep, strained chuckle. "Don't fret, Pyrrha; she hasn't told me anything she shouldn't, or I can guess I might have lost my head by now! Sick with worry, that's me, of course, but—but I trust you two, my daughter and my might-as-well-be, you know."
The scar trickled fire down into her chest.
Mr. Pitcher's voice lost all pretense of a cheerful evening visit, taking on a burden of grief and exhaustion. "I . . . well, Pyrrha, I couldn't be more sorry about little Ashlin. Such a mischievous ray of sunshine I should never forget."
There were gnawing pains upon pains laying claim to Pyrrha, and she felt she may choke if she tried to speak. Daisy came to her aid after a poignant silence.
"Why haven't we got time, Dad?" she asked softly.
The man heaved a great sigh while he reclaimed the whistling kettle from a burner. "It's like I told you, of course. Eyes are searching, and they're armed with pictures, descriptions—including that scar. Having had that mark marched through my shop a short while ago, I can't imagine interested parties aren't far behind, understand?"
Digesting this newest ill omen, Pyrrha received the proffered cup of tea automatically, and a splash and shatter preceded broken china littering the sodden floor. The cup had slipped at the false expectation of another hand.
The tense quiet stretched. Pyrrha could feel keenly Mr. Pitcher's eyes on her riven arm as she tucked it back into her robes, unable to raise her eyes from the mess. The pieces flew back together at a halfhearted flick of the wrist.
". . . Can't it be healed, then?" Mr. Pitcher nearly whispered.
"I don't know." It was brought home to Pyrrha then what the uncertainty meant; that she must unlearn every thoughtless habit, every muscle memory established in twenty-nine years of life, to compensate for a permanent crippling lack.
In light of everything taken from her, the loss hardly mattered at all. It was only another trial she would prove equal to. To her faint surprise, it was instead Hati and his patient silver eyes she mourned; the steadfast wolf was yet one more who had deserved far better in a protector than her.
Two high chirrups sounded from the cuckoo clock in the sitting room; the three of them perked up.
"That'll be our, ah, uninvited guests," Mr. Pitcher said, failing to smother reluctance and worry when he added, "now go on, girls, and get yourselves to the fire. Won't do for me to be caught harboring fugitives, no matter the right of things. I'll be here whenever, whatever you need, until it's all straightened out."
"Thanks, Dad." Daisy embraced her father, who met Pyrrha's eyes over his daughter's shoulder with an expression indecipherable as his emotions beneath, so numerous and nuanced they were.
"You'll . . . you'll take care when you can, won't you both?" Mr. Pitcher asked, almost as much of himself as they, it seemed to Pyrrha.
"Of course we will," Daisy said.
"I'll have Daisy back to you safe and whole," Pyrrha said. The scar bled heat in covenant.
They took their leave in a flare of emerald flames, and Mr. Pitcher watched the empty fireplace until a polite and firm knock echoed from his door, eliciting a final sad breath before he turned away.
"That wasn't what I asked."