Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight

Ice crackled from my fingertips, racing across the floor, crawling up the brickwork and over the heavy wooden door which led into this room. I willed it to grow and thicken, creating an impenetrable barrier between us and the Dragons who were making their way closer with every step. I anchored the ice into the mortar of the bricks themselves and kept pouring my magic into it, feeling my way along the corridor beyond as I coated the walls, floor, and ceiling in a sheen of deadly frost.

My magic was aching for this release, the pain and horror that had flooded me with the annihilation of the rebels having bolstered my reserves to their maximum level.

I was one of the most powerful Fae in all of Solaria. So let the Dragons come at me if they thought they could take me.

My skin prickled as I tried to call on my Order form, coaxing it from the depths of my bones and feeling it stir as the suppressant began to fade from my skin, but it wasn’t enough to release it just yet.

The moment I’d realised the suppressant was in the air, I’d started creating my own oxygen, sealing a mask of magic around my face so I didn’t inhale another drop of it. I’d only drawn in a breath or two of the suppressant, and at that diluted level, I knew it wouldn’t be able to keep its hold on me for much longer.

I felt the vibrations of the Dragons’ footsteps as they pounded down the corridor across the sheen of ice I’d cast beneath them. I doubted they even noticed it in their rush to catch up to us and I let my power build as I counted them across it.

Sixteen. Shit odds, but then again, none of them were me.

My fingers began to tremble as more and more power crested in them, aching for the rush of release, crystals of ice forming across my skin and raising goosebumps in their wake. My breath rose in a fog before me, my power changing the environment itself in its desperate need for an outlet.

I closed my eyes, focusing on those sixteen pairs of feet as they thumped over my magic, the temperature still dropping around them as they closed in on us.

“I think there might be something here,” Xavier said from behind me, but I didn’t turn to look.

“Tell me when there is, not when there might be,” I grunted, the effort of holding back making my entire body shake.

A wave of fire blasted the ice on the other side of the door, the power of the strike echoing through me as they rattled and held.

I took that as my signal and unleashed hell.

My magic ripped from me in a brutal wave that had me buckling forward, the ice lining the corridor outside exploding with a sound like shattering glass as razor sharp spears shot from every wall, the floor and ceiling at once.

The Dragons were impaled, limbs severed, and organs punctured, and their screams filled the space beyond the door, my power booming through the entire palace.

Their pain hit me like an anvil to the skull, the raw agony filling me up and recharging my magic as I sucked it in like a whirlpool hungering for fresh souls.

Xavier cursed loudly, the awe in his voice barely touching me. I fought off the sensation of my own body being torn apart, their agony so potent I could taste it.

A groan passed my lips as I summoned my power again, forcing their emotions to one side from my own while still absorbing everything I could, ready to hurl it at them for a second time.

Navy blue scales erupted across my body and the weight of all that emotion finally tore through the Order suppressant’s hold on me. I grinned wickedly as I straightened, my mind shooting outwards and latching onto every single one of the remaining Dragons.

The sheer agony they were experiencing gave me my in, my own determination shattering their mental shields just as my ice had shattered their bodies.

There were eleven of them still breathing, their minds falling to my will as I invoked the full power of my Siren form and I parted my lips on a song which I had never dared to utter before.

This wasn’t the lure I released once a month, it was no source of secrets or discovery, but a brutal, merciless Dread Song which was designed solely to rip the sanity from the minds of any who heard it.

I threw a hand at Xavier, sensing his mental shields at my back, the walls around his mind crumbling even though I wasn’t aiming any of my gifts at him intentionally. A silencing bubble wrapped itself around him so tightly that not even a breath of fresh air could pass through it, sealing him away from this most terrible gift of my kind.

The Dragons beyond the door screamed with pain far more potent than the agony of their minds as my song carved its way into them, forcing them to relive all the worst moments of their lives and bringing every nightmare they had ever experienced to life within the confines of their heads.

They were trapped there, their terror fuelling my power until I was brimming with magic, overwhelmed by the force of all I was stealing from them, their minds quaking and trembling in my grasp.

A brush of magic against my arm made me peel my eyes open to look at Xavier where he was gesturing to a hidden cabinet filled with priceless liquor, no passageway in sight.

“There’s nothing here,” he mouthed from within his silencing bubble, and I nodded my understanding. We’d hit a dead end, which meant our only way out was through our enemies.

I looked towards the door again, the song rolling from the depths of my chest as it blasted through the minds of the immobilised Dragons beyond it. I could feel more of them heading closer through the palace now too. Too many even for the glut of magic which was roiling inside of me to deal with.

I couldn’t stop my song to speak, and Xavier wouldn’t have been able to hear me within his silencing bubble anyway, so I beckoned for him to follow me before blasting the doors apart with a shot of tornado worthy air.

Ice and wood splintered, the lumps of it crashing into the broken, bleeding bodies of the Dragons beyond the door and adding even more pain to all they were feeling.

The Dragons stared at me with wild, terrified eyes while they clawed at their wounds, some of them starting to bleed from the nose, ears, and eyes as my Dread Song cut their minds to shreds.

Xavier muttered something at my back as I stepped into the carnage, my hand sweeping out and directing the bloody ice aside as if it were nothing, leaving limp and bleeding bodies sprawled across the floor.

A Dragon to my right tried to reach his hand towards me, a desperate plea filling his eyes as they met with mine. But I could see what he was reliving, the horrors he had committed now turned on himself in his own head, and I didn’t feel an ounce of pity for him as I sang even louder and watched the capillaries burst in the whites of his eyes. Blood began to stream down his cheeks, and he toppled over, convulsing and thrashing against shadowy demons which no one but he could see.

I stepped over him, glancing back to look at Xavier who was carrying his huge, Pegasus wings with care, their weight unbalancing him, but there was no question that he was keeping hold of them no matter the cost.

A bang sounded to our left and I whirled towards it as a door flew open there, but there was nothing and no one in the space beyond it.

I wasn’t sure if it was intuition or insanity to follow the newly opened path, but I leapt towards it, feeling the other Dragons drawing closer, their roars of fury echoing throughout the palace halls.

Xavier broke into a run with me, my chest aching as the Dragons trapped within my song all began to topple like the others, their minds cleaving and breaking, locked within their own nightmares forevermore. No magic could fix what I had broken in them, and they would suffer their own vile terrors until someone saw fit to put them out of their misery with death.

We sprinted through the door, finding no one beyond it even as we headed into the huge ballroom, the one I’d heard had been locked to Lionel since he had taken ownership of the palace but had apparently opened itself to aid us.

The roar of the Dragons drew closer, but the moment we crossed the threshold, the door at our backs slammed shut once more, the sound of a lock echoing around us and making my breath catch.

My Dread Song faltered then fell away entirely and the last of the minds I’d been holding with it shattered. I grabbed one of Xavier’s wings from him, releasing him from the silencing bubble too.

“We need to get out of here!” he cried.

We tore across the enormous ballroom, the stunning paintings of every Order form imaginable which decorated the walls all seeming to turn their heads and watch as we ran for our lives.

“I will mount your heads on spikes at my gates when I finish ripping you apart, traitors!” Lionel’s voice boomed through the air, a spell making it resound across the entire palace and beyond.

We made it to the far side of the ballroom to a huge set of double doors which flung themselves open for us, silvery footprints appearing in the middle of the parquet floor ahead and turning down a small passageway that I wouldn’t have otherwise noticed.

A narrow staircase appeared before us, circling down out of sight and almost impossible to navigate while holding the precious Pegasus wings.

The sound of shattering glass reached us from the ballroom and a Dragon’s roar came straight after it as they began to rip the palace apart in their hunt for us.

“Follow my lead,” Xavier commanded, elbowing me aside and throwing one of his beautiful wings down onto the steps ahead of him before leaping onto it and pushing himself off.

He began to slide, and the iridescent sheen which sparkled across the rainbow feathers seemed to light the stairwell. He picked up pace quickly and disappeared with a whinny of either fright or excitement.

I didn’t have time to waste on questioning his logic, tossing the wing I’d been carrying down too and leaping onto it and starting to slide.

I cast air at our backs to make us move faster, the spiralling staircase whipping by so quickly that we could have given a Vampire a run for their money as we sped away into the bowels of the palace, and a whoop escaped me despite the terrifying reality of our situation.

I skidded off the bottom step, clinging to the bony ridge of Xavier’s severed wing with blanched knuckles and my heart thundering with adrenaline as I spun out.

Xavier was already on his feet, whinnying at me encouragingly and pointing out more silver footprints leading away into the dark, taking off after them with his wing held awkwardly in his arms once more.

I scooped up the other wing and raced after him, hoping we weren’t complete fools to be following some random footprints to fuck knew where, but it was pretty much the only option we had left to us at this point, so I was all in with it.

The sound of stone grinding trembled around the dim passageway and Xavier called out in triumph as he spilled through the darkened entrance to the hidden tunnels beneath the palace.

“Your hearts are pure and bound in steel. You’ll find safe passage here,” an ethereal, feminine voice whispered the moment I crossed the threshold, and a shiver trailed right down to my core. The ghost of whoever the hell had been helping us vanished once more and the entrance closed at our backs.

Xavier tossed a Faelight out ahead of us and I almost yelled in fright as a blur of motion shot our way. But before I could even summon my magic, Caleb skidded to a halt before us, Seth leaping from his back and hurling his arms around me.

“We saw the amphitheatre collapse,” he choked out, crushing me in his embrace. “And we thought, for a moment we thought that maybe-”

He was cut off by Caleb throwing his arms around us too, pulling Xavier into the Heir sandwich and cursing in relief as their love and fear washed over me.

“I love you assholes too,” I choked out. “But we need to get the fuck out of this place.”

“Agreed.” Caleb released us and threw his hands out before him, casting a sled out of wood and vines, along with a harness which he strapped around his own chest, ready to drag us all away. “Come on, we aren’t splitting up again tonight.”

The rest of us agreed to that happily enough and Seth and Xavier loaded the battered Pegasus wings onto the sled before the three of us leapt on too.

Caleb broke into a sprint with his gifts, and I cried out, clinging to the edge of the sled for dear life, the fucking thing swinging around corners with enough violence to risk caving our heads in on the walls with every turn.

He didn’t slow though, the roaring Dragons giving us every bit of motivation we needed to get the fuck out of here as quickly as we could.

Suddenly, we were bursting from the far end of the passageway and into the frostbitten air beyond the outer edges of the magical shields which had been keeping us from stardusting away.

Seth hurled stardust over our heads, and we were whipped into the embrace of the heavens, escaping the clutches of the false king once more, and the weight of our utter failure crushed us as we went.