Chapter 47 – Black Parade / To All Things Must Come an End

Chapter 47

Black Parade / To All Things Must Come an End

            It is incoherent and filled with rage, primal in every sense of the word.  The music stops and everyone turns toward the source of the scream which stands at the top of the grand staircase.  It is a young woman, not much older than me, maybe Angus’s age at the oldest.  I don’t recognize her either from either set of memories that I possess.  She is tall, with fair skin wrapped around a delicate frame.  Her hair is a deep shade of purple, almost black, her eyes are a piercing green.  She is wearing a violet gown with black lace and accents, and hanging just above the cleft of her breasts is a sapphire jewel… wait, it isn’t hanging.  The gem is embedded in the flesh of her chest and glows faintly with an icy light.

            Where are the guards and the royal herald?

            As the thought crosses my mind, I see shadow figures rising from the balconies and landing where the guards had been.  Looking towards the feet of the shadow person closest to the girl, I see the crumpled figure of the royal herald. 

            Absent-mindedly I reach over to scratch at my left arm which is itching as if thousands of ants were crawling on it.  I look down and see the tattoo gifted to me by Ygg writhing on my flesh. 

            Fuck.

            The shadow figure above the herald’s body is still extracting itself from him when the girl raises her hand and points at me.

            A black bolt of shadow shoots towards me.  I have seen this before. I realize, as I instinctually raise a wall of ice between me and the attack.  It hits the hastily constructed ice, shattering it, but the ice does its job and stops the bolt as well. 

            “Brigid?”  I hear Angus say in shock beside me as the nobility realizes what is happening and screams erupt all around. 

            My brain doesn’t have time to process things before the girl has fired off multiple bolts of shadow, seemingly at random, for every person they strike, that person collapses and a shadow rises in their place, furthering the panic among the majority of the nobility.  One by one, the people around us collapse and the ranks of the shadow figures grow as chaos sweeps through the room.  Several of the nobility, as well as all of the royalty, have kept their heads enough to mount a counteroffensive and are mostly putting up a good defense, but most of their attacks just pass through the shadows, damaging them only a little, if at all.  Only a few magic types seem capable of doing any real damage, types like fire.

            At some point, Angus had drawn the ornate sword from his waist, but it passes through the shadows surrounding us as if they didn’t exist.

            “Fire,” I say through gritted teeth as I force another wall of ice up between us and the nearest wave of shadows. The shadow spears strike it a heartbeat later, spiderwebbing the surface with fractures before the whole thing bursts apart in a spray of frost.

            Angus does not waste time asking.

            “Fire!” he barks, loud enough to cut through the screaming. “Burn the shadows! Do not let them rise from the fallen!”

            The command carries.

            Across the ballroom, King Malcolm’s voice crashes over the chaos a breath later, sharper and louder and impossible to ignore.

            “Hold formation! Fire to the front! Protect the fallen! Do not let the shadows rise!”

            The remaining nobles in the room lurch to obey.  The effort is not clean at first, definitely not organized, but as the counter offensive slowly forms into something cohesive, it is enough… enough that the panic stops being a rout and becomes something uglier, but organized. Desperate, but survivable.

            A gout of flame roars across the ballroom from somewhere to my left, catching one of the shadow figures full in the chest. It recoils with a shriek like tearing silk, its form collapsing inward before dispersing into black vapor.  Another shadow lunges for one of the collapsed nobles sprawled across the marble.  Prince Edgar intercepts it like a battering ram.  His shoulder slams through the thing, the impact scattering its form long enough for him to drive himself between it and the fallen body.  His sword passes through the creature uselessly, but the force of the swing still throws its shape apart.

            “Move the wounded!” Edgar roars, planting himself like a wall between the shadows and the nearest cluster of downed nobles. “Do not let the shadows touch the bodies!”

            Across the room, Prince Donal has abandoned all pretense of princely detachment and is hauling a half-conscious woman bodily across the marble by one arm while hurling cutting gusts of wind with the other, scattering shadows long enough to keep them from reforming around her.

            Queen Catriona is already gathering the living.

            “Against the far wall!” she calls, voice clear and cutting through the din with terrifying ease. “Stay behind the defenders! If they fall, drag them back!” 

            Her voice is calm as she issues her commands.

            Princess Isabella stands at her mother’s side, pink light lancing from her hands in sharp, concentrated bursts that crack into Brigid’s concentration every time the woman tries to attack, forcing one shadow bolt wide and sending it into a chandelier instead of a nobleman’s chest.

            Glass explodes across the ballroom.

            Brigid laughs.

            The sound is wrong.  Too high.  Too bright.  Too delighted.  It cuts through the screaming like something joyful wearing madness as a face.

            More shadow figures pour from the fallen nobles, not summoned, born.

            Each one rises from a collapsed body in a slow, unnatural unfurling, peeling itself up from silk and still-warm flesh until the ballroom is no longer full of panicked nobles, but breeding shadows.

            My stomach drops.

            “We have to stop her,” I say, the realization hitting all at once. “Not them. Her.”

            Angus glances at me only long enough to understand, then he nods once.

            We move.  

            He takes the lead, his blade now coated in fire.  I widen the space around using walls and spikes of ice to deter the shadows while he cuts down the ones in our way.  A shadow lunges for Angus and I freeze the marble beneath it, locking its feet in place just long enough for Angus to cut through it with his blade.  Another rises from the nearby body of a collapsed lord.  I drive a spike of ice through its center, not to kill it, only to pin it, and Angus cuts past before it can reform.

            We do not stop.  That seems to be the trick of it, not really fighting, only doing enough to keep advancing.  Every second spent killing shadows is another body on the floor. Another shadow rising. Another problem breeding itself larger.

            Brigid stands at the top of the grand staircase like a conductor before an orchestra, violet skirts spilling around her feet, one hand lifted, green eyes bright with delighted lunacy as shadow spills from her fingers in jagged lances.

            She is smiling.  Gods, she is smiling.

            Izzy’s pink magic lashes across the room again, striking Brigid and throwing her next cast wide. The bolt tears through a nearby pillar instead of Angus’s throat.

            “Move!” Izzy screams.

            We do.  Angus takes the stairs two at a time.  I follow hard behind, ice snapping into place beneath my feet momentarily locking them into place with each step in order to steady my ascent.  Another black spear tears past my shoulder close enough to numb the air.

            A shadow drops from the balcony above us.

            Angus catches it with his shoulder and drives straight through, scattering its form long enough for me to throw a wall of ice across the stairs behind us before it can reform.

            It’s not enough to stop them but should be enough to slow them and buy us a few seconds.

            Seconds are everything.

            Brigid’s smile widens as we close.

            “Angus,” she says, and there is something almost fond in the way she says his name that makes my skin crawl.  “Still so eager to throw yourself in front of her.”

            Angus answers with a swing of his sword, but Brigid moves like she expected it.  Together they exchange blows, him striking with his sword, fast as a viper and her nimbly dodging as she cracks a whip formed from shadow at him.

            As soon as I see an opening, I fire darts made of ice.  Brigid tuts as she dodges out of the way, her whip cracking towards me and striking me in my hip.  My left leg goes numb and I start to fall, catching myself on the railing beside me.

            Angus screams in rage, renewing his attacks with newfound fervor.  Brigid laughs and dances away as if this were nothing more than a game to her.  They continue their dance while I recover and, once I feel stable enough, I attack once more.  This time, while I meant to fire more ice darts, I instead fire a beam of light encircled by a stream of darts.  For once, I see a reaction on Brigid’s face that is something other than maddening joy.  Her eyes widen in momentary surprise just before she darts out of the way, but this time she is too slow.  The beam missed but a few of the darts score hits across her back.  Fabric parts and black lace splits and beneath it.

            My breath catches at what I see.

            There, painted down the pale line of her spine in glowing crimson-black script is the same twisting mark I had seen on the back of a dead Woodkin child.  The same shape no one else could see.  The same shape I had drawn by hand because no one else believed it was there.  The shape that had burned into the edges of my memory, a shape that brought images of pain and terror to my mind just looking at it.

            My pulse stutters.

            That mark… nobody understood what it meant and it had no name, but somewhere in my mind, I recognize that shape.

            I know what it follows.

            The thought catches me off guard.  It is not my own, nor is it my predecessor's.

            Brigid laughs as Angus’s next strike forces her back another step.

            “You see it,” she says, her eyes briefly turning to mine and her grin turns ecstatic. “Oh, yes, you do see it.”

            Cold floods my stomach, not because of the rune, because of what that means.  She knows I can see it and if she knows… it knows.

            Brigid’s eyes lock on mine and something in her expression sharpens with sudden, manic delight.

            “Oh,” she breathes. “You remember.”

            The shadows stop attacking the remaining survivors and instead turn toward me all at once.  Every black shape in the ballroom pivots like a single body, speeding in my direction.

            My blood goes cold.

            “Beira!” Angus shouts.

            Too late.

            The first lance catches the shoulder of the arm supporting me on the railing.  My entire arm goes numb as the second strikes my thigh, and my leg buckles beneath me so hard I nearly pitch sideways down the stairs behind me

            There is no pain, not at first.  There is only absence.  A deadening emptiness that steals limb and balance and leaves only panic in its wake.

            I know this, oh fuck, I know this.

            Shadow surges up the staircase towards us.

            Angus turns, blade flashing, forcing space where he can, but there are too many now and they are no longer trying to kill us.

            They are trying to pin me.

            One catches my wrist, and another my ankle; the numbness is immediate and absolute as I hit the marble hard enough to see white.

            Brigid descends on me smiling.

            No… no no no-

            Shadow folds over me in writhing layers, cutting out the ballroom, the screams, the light.

            For one impossible, suffocating second, all I can see is dark, and then I feel it.

            Pressure… not on my skin… in my chest.  A point between my breasts goes cold with sudden, terrible precision.  My breath seizes.

            I know this, fuck, I know this.

            The garden. The maze. The dark. The pressure. The pulling.  It is all happening again… she is trying to do it again.

            Brigid kneels over me as the shadows clear just enough so that I can see around me.  She presses one hand hard to the center of my chest, the sapphire in her breast glowing with hungry, icy light.

            “Yes,” she whispers, ecstatic. “There it is.  I knew you’d remember.”

            Something inside me folds in on itself and the pressure sharpens.  My body locks up  and the world narrows to that point… that impossible, crushing pull.

            I cannot breathe.

            I cannot move.

            No no, not again.

            The gem.

            The thought hits like a radiant light piercing through my panic.

            “Angus!” I choke, the word barely forcing its way out. “The gem!”

            He hears me.  His gaze snaps from me to the sapphire embedded in Brigid’s chest and in the same instant all hesitation leaves him.  He moves as fast as lightning.  Brigid turns too, but it is too late.  His blade drives forward in a single brutal thrust, fire still wreathed along its edge, and the point slams into the sapphire buried in her flesh.

            For one impossible heartbeat, nothing happens.

            Then the gem cracks.

            The sound is wrong.  It is not the clean fracture of stone nor the brittle break of glass, but something wet and living torn suddenly open, a sound like a scream dragged through crystal.  Icy blue light shoots forth, spilling from the gem.

            Brigid shrieks.

            The sound that tears out of her is no longer laughter, no longer human, but something raw and ragged and furious enough to shake the marrow in my bones.

            Light explodes from me.

            It tears out of my chest in a violent burst, blue and gold and blinding, shredding the shadows pinning my limbs into nothing as they recoil and disintegrate in the same breath. Every shadow in the ballroom convulses at once.

            Then they collapse all at once.

            The creatures come apart in an instant, their bodies unraveling into black vapor and pale light, the darkness burning away as something softer spills free from within it. Threads of pale silver rise from the dissolving shadows and streak back across the ballroom, sinking into the bodies sprawled across the marble.

            Around the room, many of the fallen gasp.  Bodies that had lain still jerk with sudden breath.  A woman near the far wall chokes and rolls onto her side.  A nobleman convulses and drags in air like a drowning man breaking surface.  Someone begins sobbing.  Not all are so lucky though.  Some of the fallen remain still, unmoving.

            Brigid’s scream cuts off all at once as the backlash hits her like a physical blow.

            She is thrown backward hard enough to leave her feet, her body striking the marble landing and tumbling limp across the stairs in a heap of violet silk and dark hair.  She is still breathing, but unmoving.

            The sapphire embedded in her chest is no longer whole.  Its shattered remains dim in the hollow above her breast, split through with jagged lines of dead light.

            And then… silence.

            Not true silence.

            Too many people are breathing too hard for that.  Too many survivors are choking, gasping, weeping, trying to understand what they have just lived through, but the violence is over.  The screaming has stopped.  The shadows are gone.  And in the sudden stillness that follows, something in the center of the staircase begins to shine.

            The light spilling from my chest does not fade, instead it gathers, pooling with this light that had escaped from the broken gem when it cracked.  What had burst from me in violence now hangs suspended in the air above the marble, pale blue and impossibly soft, curling inward on itself like breath caught in winter, a blue and gold chain tethering me to it.

            The ballroom stills.

            No one moves or speaks.

            Before us all, the light begins to take shape.