The Goblin's Throne

Chapter Sixty Six: The Penalty for Stealing

Knut kept screaming my name. The shout broken by heartwrenching sobs. He twisted in the shadowy hands that held him, pulling himself towards me. The hands held fast and pulled him further down until his cheek pressed against the stone floor. His eye was lit bright green as the souls of his creations returned to him in a flood. In whole mouthfuls, they were swallowed whole by the creatures I thought I had bought.

I felt The End's claws pet my boiled and charred skin beneath the iron armor. It was like it wasn't there...like it was as inconsequential to him as everything else must be to a god-beast. His touch was gentler than what I'd felt before and somehow all the more frightening. Then it turned cruel. His claws dug deep into my ruined skin, cutting straight through me.

Lysander pressed his fingers into the sides of my skull. I could feel them warm a little with magic, but his fingers shook terribly. Fear took root in me. I twisted and bucked, fighting to get him off of me. To get away from his hands. All I could think of was Helene's boiled head between them. He wanted to do the same to me now, cook my brains in my skull...but nothing came. He roared into my face in frustration, his body shuttering, fighting the toxin robbing him of his strength. Overcoming my armor had taken all he'd had. His boundless power was spent. 

He couldn't kill me in the way he wanted, so he settled for the next best thing. He wrapped his hands around my throat and squeezed, attempting to finish what my brother began at The Upheaval. The way I seemed doomed to die.

I could feel The End's claws cut their path over me, dragging themselves over my body and across my ruined face until at last, it mimicked Lysander, his hands overlaying Lysander's own, replacing Lysander's hot flesh with something cold and sharp. 

I stared up into his eyes, feeling his blood seep through my armor to soak the clothing beneath. It dripped down his chin onto my cheek. I forced a painful smile. "You can kill me, but you won't reach them." I rasped, struggling to make any sound at all with my scorched throat. "You and I are dying here together." 

"Even if all I manage to do is kill you, it'll be worth it." He squeezed harder and forced his weight down...silencing me. Pain lit my senses. Pain not only from the burns that covered me from head to foot or from my starving lungs but the very knowledge that I had failed my children.  My eyes rolled back as my senses started to fading. First, my sight began to darken, then Lysander's voice started to drift away. I could still make out Knut's distinct voice, repeating my name again and again. It sounded like I was underwater. Then he too went quiet and darkness crashed in, pressing down on my chest. I was being dragged further and further beneath the surface into a silent, endless abyss.

"She's not for you to kill." Came a rumbling voice from the lowest reaches of that Abyss. 

Suddenly, Lysander released me and struggled to move off my body. I sucked in a breath, gasping as I filled my lungs with blessed smoke thick air. Slowly, my vision corrected and sound came flooding back. Lysander was sprawled beside me, raising his hand defensively between himself and someone else. "Don't. Don't. Please, not yet."

At first, my heart leaped with hope, believing it to be Knut, that he'd freed himself, but when I turned my head in the direction Lysander was looking, I saw that Knut was still being held to the ground by those shadowy hands...and that it was Bran Lysander was pleading with. 

"I should've let her kill you!" Knut snarled at him, making noises that were more animal than human. He thrashed about, baring his teeth. Still, the hands born of shadows held. 

Bran ignored him.

The Unseelie youth stepped towards us, in an odd, almost staggering way, dragging one foot as if that half of him was paralyzed. The half of him that moved towards us was covered in a cloud of black smoke that billowed and shifted, making horrific shapes. In the smoke, I saw The End's bared teeth, his arm had become terrible claws and his eye burned like a candle with golden flickering light.