Wylde Magic | Book 3

Twenty Eight: Autumn Lament

Warning: This chapter may be upsetting to some. If you are not in a space capable of high tension scenes and death please consider waiting a week or two until your Wylde Magic reading experience can end on a calmer chapter. I love you and I do not want to cause spiked negative emotions that could do harm.

Bara Khalja.

It was like the darkness parted, revealing him as I climbed just high enough on the treacherous, vine-covered valley slope. The fighting never stopped around us as the vegetation underfoot tried to catch us off-guard. The mist still chased after us, cold and silent as the Winter court, making me wonder if it was truly a product of the nooks and crannies of the unclaimed Wyldes, or something else entirely. 

Baeleon was ferocious in his pursuit of anything he could call an enemy. Thain and Eberon fought beautifully in synch, keeping a distance between our group and any Winter foes that was almost comfortable. Many of the living enemies were weary of Thain and the reputation that came with him, not to mention Baeleon and his terrifying power. But the dead that rose to fight, they had no fear to stop them from their pursuit.

Overhead, all could see the wingbeats of Spaulder as he circled the skies above through the trees and pushed a strong wind down over our foes. He stayed well away from where our side was rising to the top of the valley slope, but judging from where he rained down his fire and roared his terrible roars, the enemy stretched far beyond what we could see with the top of the valley still under siege.

Schula grasped my hand tightly as we pulled even with each other, and the clatter of battle around us fell away. Because none of the rest of it mattered in that heartbeat. Everything else was so insignificant in that moment as I felt true rage. Hate for another person as he sat on his horse before me, sharpened teeth stretched into a sickening grin as he stared back with his cold, empty eyes.

Bara Khalja.

The breath was sucked out of me when he Lifted the gnarled white wooden staff overhead and began to murmur. Just as he did on Eberon's estate when he formed that bubble that shielded him.

"No!" I screamed, my hands flying to my sides, slipping through Schula's desperate fingers as I reached for whatever magic I could grasp. "Not again!"

But Bara Khalja just laughed as he looked at me, finishing his murmurs of dark magic and bringing the staff down in a swish.

With a grunt, I thrust my fire at him, trying to slip an attack in under his shield. It shattered against his magic, dulling the light of it for a moment before falling apart. I choked out a defeated cry, having thrown so much into it that I needed a few heartbeats to gather my strength back up.

Baeleon roared nearby, shoving his trident through the chest of an enemy as his head snapped to us.

"Are you the warlock?" Baeleon demanded.

Thain didn't even wait to make a move. Quick as lighting, he stalked around behind Bara Khalja and slashed at a risen dead incubus. The thing engaged Thain's claws with its horns as it reached to grab my dark fae's arms. 

I barely registered the motions in a flash, when Eberon was on Bara Khalja's other side, slicing at the barrier the warlock had raised. The moment Eberon's blade struck it, the magic ejected the golden fae backward with an angry scream.

"Eb!" Schula yelled, reaching out a hand as ice shot through her and across the ground, trying to creep up the bottom of Bara Khalja's barrier.

I raised my own hands to join her when something solid hit my head from behind. A sharp pain was delayed in setting fire to my skull as I fell forward onto my hands with a cry. A high pitch screeched in my ears, deafening all other sounds in an assault that left me disoriented and in pain.