The Ballad Continues…
CHAPTER 14
Hand in hand, Cage and Smoke faced the final arena.
Number seven.
They were almost done.
Gone.
The end, the end, the end.
Fei waited for them.
Smoke snarled. Cage didn’t hold her back.
“And so you have survived,” Fei whispered.
“To your disappointment,” Smoke snapped.
The blue fire in Fei’s eye sockets flared. Her crown glinted, the crescent moons sparkling, its pewter almost liquid in the dark. She stood on an empty island in a great abyss. Black sky surrounded them, the stars few and far between. It was a void of shadows, an abyss of reckoning, the last place in all the worlds they would need to defeat.
Fei quirked her head—her skull, really. She was a skeleton, stripped of flesh, death given form. Robes draped her plucked-clean bones, a silk so fine it rippled like water. “Is that what you think, daughter of death? That I hope you fail?” Fei shook her head. “No, certainly not, dear one. If I wish failure on anyone, it is on myself for chaining you to these perilous tasks. But not you. Never you. I would never steal your beauty so gladly.”
Smoke pointed her dagger at Fei’s skeletal throat. “We do not owe you beauty. We do not owe you pain. We do not owe you weakness. We do not owe you strength. We will not break ourselves down to build you up. And I am done with your rotten games.”
Fei blinked. Well, she would have blinked had she eyes. But her fire guttered, the blue winking out till the flames returned with a blazing hue. “I do not play games.” She sighed. “Regardless of what you think of me, there is one final Fallen, one last monster to defeat. I wish you luck.” She bowed and vanished, a wisp of regret.
One final Fallen.
They could do it. Cage knew they could do it. His heart echoed with the solid, unshakable truth that they would win.
But his head still spiraled down the ever-twisting drain.
Truth meant nothing in the face of panic.
His stomach seized, and he keeled over. Anxiety grew like mold in his veins. He stared at the wasteland before him, the ending of nothing, the beginning of everything, a pale green expanse suffocated by night. His body wanted to stagger, shut down, withdraw, retreat. But he was better than that.
He was more.
And so he knuckled his temples. Breathed deep, slow. Though his chest hitched and knotted, shoulders and ribs fighting to saw through his skin, he took it one step at a time. One sanity at a time. He tapped above his eyes, below his eyes, then his chin, shoulders, collarbones, wrists. I am safe. I am okay. Everything will be all right. He repeated the mantra till he believed it, weeding worry, washing away doubt.
Smoke laid a hand on his back, gentle. “I’m proud of you.”
Cage flinched. “Don’t be. I’ve done nothing, and everything still haunts me.”
Her hand squeezed. “Nothing?” There was acid in her voice—not aimed at him, but at those who had hurt him. “You crawled from a darkness so deep you couldn’t even see the stars to emerge burning brighter than the sun. You took the devastation life handed you and sculpted it into a beauty so brilliant that it eclipses the moon. You have dissolved the shadows of your past, which you alone are triumphant in conquering, fighting them off with the strength of a hundred armies.”
She faced him and rested her forehead against his, then continued: “You have looked into the jaws of death and pried yourself from depression’s every jagged tooth. You inspire me every single day, a warrior for light and truth. You have accomplished the impossible, time and again, without complaint, while life rages against you and beats you down. Only the best, most wonderful things are coming for us, and soon. This I promise you. You deserve the fiercest joy. We rise together, brother. Forever and always, beyond the end.”
“Forever and always, beyond the end,” Cage repeated. He kissed her cheek and straightened.
One final Fallen.
One last monster.
He was ready.
He was whole.
He was not broken anymore.
Smoke and Cage approached the center of the abyss. The ground was brittle, fragile, like cracker crumbs. The sky shimmered like wet ink, drool of the void. For once, Cage wasn’t afraid.
For once, the worlds were afraid of him.
Three Draghi sliced the sky. They were moons of muscles and spikes and scales. A deep purple, slimy as slugs, their skin shone in the dim twilight world. Eyes like torches glared down at Cage and Smoke, at brother and sister, stranded at the edge of the brutal unknown.
But Cage was calm. Anchored. Steady. Even as the Draghi landed with a ferocity to rival death itself, even when the world shook hard enough to fracture, he did not panic. Not here. Not now.
The middle Dragho roared. His breath, a sickly gray, rippled over the great abyss, withering all rocks in its path. It was toxic. Noxious. A cloud of fumes so potent it could dissolve a person on impact.
Cage shivered from death’s fog. It was close. Terrifyingly close. But he was also terrifyingly ready.
The other Draghi hissed. Fumes rolled off their tongues, mopping the abyss. Cage dodged left; Smoke dodged right. Both lifted their blades, saber and dagger. The Draghi squawked like wounded birds at the sight.
Cage lunged as Smoke drew. He caught the Draghi’s attention, fireflies in amber, as his sister carved a diamond onto the ground. Her artwork flourished into a spectacle that would make gods weep, a sweeping poem of love and loss, of kindness and blindness to the things that mattered most.
If they died today, they would have done enough.
Would have been enough.
Forever free of guilt and shame.
A Dragho attacked. Cage rolled and stabbed its neck. All three Draghi squealed and spat. Their toxic breath burned a circle of wrath.
The world buckled beneath them. The ground splintered into shards of rock. Cage dropped and rolled, desperate to reach Smoke. His sister stood in her diamond of fate, patient, waiting, trusting in him above all else, even when it hurt, even when it killed.
The Draghi roared again. The world dissolved further, porcelain thrown against stone. Cage leaped from rock to rock, over waterfalls of pebbles and dirt, between streams of dust and debris. A headache coiled behind his eyes like a worm. Pain shot down his neck and across his shoulders. Agony became him, and he stumbled, tripped.
But he did not fall.
Smoke reached out her hand. “Jump,” she whispered, and her whisper was louder than monsters, stronger than beasts.
So Cage jumped.
As the world died around him.
As the sky fell like droplets of rain.
As the void rose up and swallowed the pain.
He jumped.
And landed.
His saber swung in an arc and punctured the diamond. Violet light poured from Smoke’s symbol. Do Chrome, the final, the last. The Draghi yelped as the diamond erupted. Energy devoured the monsters with the hunger of salvation.
Cage and Smoke toppled off the dying world, wheeling into the abyss, dizzy, faint. Their ears rang like a broken symphony. Their heads pounded like battle drums.
But they were done.
But they were free.
If only they could live again.
Fei definitely plays games! They've done it, success?? What now?