Fall of the Spectrum

Chapter Thirty

This was a nightmare. It had to be.

At any moment, Gwen would wake up and Astral would be standing over her, telling her amid a bout of good-natured chuckles that she'd fallen asleep while studying. He would pluck the tome she'd been reading from her fingers, and they'd both laugh at the page creases lining her right cheek. Then he would help her up from the armchair she'd nodded off in, and—

But no, this was no dream. This was reality, and with that realization Gwen felt as if she'd been sucker-punched, all of the wind rushing out of her in a painful gasp.

Astral.

She ran toward him on leaden legs, the sounds of battle lost to the pounding of her heart in her ears. After what seemed an eternity of running, she fell to her knees beside him, putting one arm beneath his neck and the other across his chest, lifting him into a sitting position. A painfully long moment passed when nothing happened, Astral limp in her arms with his eyes closed.

Then at last, his eyes fluttered open, focusing on her. "Gwen," he croaked, giving her a weak smile. "You're okay. Thank the gods..."

"Shh," Gwen silenced him, holding him tightly against her chest. "Don't talk, save your energy. We've got to get you healed. Maybe Phenex or Asclepius..." She trailed off, blinking away tears as she tried to find either of them in the battling crowd.

"It's too late," Astral choked out, clutching at his chest. "I'm—"

"Don't talk like that," Gwen cut him off, forcing the words past the tightness in her throat. "You're going to be fine. Phenex and Asclepius will fix you up. Just hold on."

Feeling something warm and sticky coating her fingers, Gwen looked down and choked back a sob.

A wound larger than her fist stared back at her from the centre of Astral's chest, blood pooling from it in thick, reddish-purple rivulets onto the ground under him. She hadn't realized she'd started crying until Astral reached up to cup her cheek, his fingers cold and trembling against her skin.

"It's going to be okay, Gwen," he said, smiling at her in spite of his own tears. "Please don't cry. If this is how it ends, then I don't regret a thing. I—" He coughed, blood speckling his lips. "I'll always..." A spasm tore through him, his face contorting with pain.

Then there was only stillness. The beautiful grey-green eyes Gwen had looked into so often—the same eyes that had always been filled with so much life and wonder, that held such warmth—dulled, leaving only a flat grey behind.

"No. No, no, no..." Gwen rocked back and forth, Astral clutched to her chest, her vision blurring with tears. "Astral..."

"Gwen, look out!"

Gwen glanced up to find Forneus in front of her, a green barrier flickering before him and emitting a high-pitched crackling when Apophis's tail made contact with it. In the few minutes that had passed between Astral taking Apophis's attack and now, she had all but forgotten the serpent-god's presence.

As her gaze locked onto his massive, serpentine form, her grief began to transmute into something else; the cold sting of shock melting into anger, a volcano ready to erupt. The ethereal armour flared in reaction, only to vanish. But it didn't matter. As the last traces of the armour faded away, something else took over, a violet aura falling around her like a curtain until everything was bathed in purple.

Without consciously deciding to, Gwen lunged past Forneus—past more than half of the Fifth Unit, past Phenex and the Mythosian allies—and with a skill not her own, she began attacking Apophis in earnest.

Her last memory was of grabbing the ethereal blades from her hips, lashing out at the serpent-god again and again, and then there was nothing; only a vast abyss of oily blackness from which she couldn't escape.