The Crystal in the Chasm

chapter 36

Death Bringer laced his fingers into mine as he summoned an orb of raw black power in the air with his free hand. The walls were tumbling down around us as he gritted his teeth and pushed against them with a dark force, the rubble crashing and sending clouds of dust into the air. I coughed and ducked my head down, avoiding inhaling too much. Another loud boom rumbled through the air like a crack of thunder, disrupting my center of gravity and lurching the ground to the side. We crashed into a wall, cracks spreading across it like brain pathways. I snatched up a small satchel and slipped the crystal inside as I slung it over my shoulder.

"We have to move faster!" Death Bringer ordered, yanking me forcefully. "This place is going down!"

My heart was racing frantically in my chest, nearly breaking through my ribcage. I could barely catch my breath as we hurtled over fallen piles of rubble, narrowly avoiding crashing chunks of castle debris. Emerging from behind a bookshelf covering the hidden entrance to the secret pathway, the true extent of the damage done to my castle came into view. Pirates and fae alike scrambled through the wreckage, shouting and screaming in terror.

Fire was roaring up the disintegrating walls, consuming the place with a burning fury. Heat scorched through the air causing beads of sweat to drip down my forehead. The castle was crumbling like sand, the grains falling around us. Another loud noise sounded as a blazing ball of fire materialized, ripping its way through the wall and crashing to the ground. The explosion consumed a large group of people, winking them out of existence. I pulled Death Bringer out of the way just in time as a chandelier fell from the sky, my entire life falling apart around me. Feeling utterly powerless, my eyes stung as tears streamed down my warm cheeks. A flame flickered around a hallway entrance, the rest of the ways out entirely blocked by fallen chunks of the castle that built me. The roof that I used to scale, the books that I used to read, the hallways I used to run down, the floors I used to dance across... Everything was breaking at the seams, reminding me just how fragile even the strongest of things were once worn down enough.

"Who is doing this?" I stuttered as we narrowly avoided the reaching flames around the hallway.

Death Bringer groaned as a piece of slab struck him in his shoulder. He deflected the extent of the damage with a flick of his wrist, sending the slab across the hallway as he clutched his injury, our hands breaking apart. "I have a feeling that the Kingdom of Faerie didn't feel like waiting for our arrival. Now that your parents are dead, the alliance between them is shattered. This castle will likely just be considered collateral," he huffed breathlessly as we tried to avoid impeding doom.

"Do you think the troops my parents sent to aid them are still on their side? If they kill the lot of us in this castle, we will have no chance in winning the war entirely!" I felt the dread building in my core, anchoring me toward the earth as if I might just lie down and accept my fate. For a brief moment, I actually considered it. I would have nothing left if we made it out.

"It is likely. The course of fate seems to have altered paths, leaving the fight no longer in our favor. Pirates lost the upper hand," Death Bringer informed me as we mingled into a group of strangers.

"Onyx and Merlin! Arthur! Where might they be?"

He shook his head, "I don't know. There is no time. This place is going down," Death Bringer's voice was laced with something heavy.

"They had to have made it out," I said aloud, uncertain of if it was to myself or to him.

We were cascading down crumbling stairs, nearly tripping over the warm bodies brushing against us. I was shouting to Death Bringer as the crowd coaxed me away from him, my body being thrown around like a rag doll between large pirates. Their dark skin bumped into mine, slick with sweat running down their muscular bodies. The sound of fire crackling, various screams and cries of the injured, and shattering marble clawed through the air. People in the crowd were covered in injuries and black splotches of dirt and grime as they limped and crawled around me. I was losing Death Bringer, his figure rarely emerging through gaps in the crowd. He was calling my name through the chaos as the gap between us grew. I was crying and finding it difficult to breathe through the smoke, shoving aggressive bodies away from mine.