Zodiac Academy 6: Fated Throne

“Lance!” I cried for the hundredth time, using my fire to burn away the shadows as I sought him out in the endless ring of darkness I was lost in.

“Lance, Lance, Lance!” Clara’s voice mocked me and I growled, raising my palms and burning back more of her power.

I couldn’t risk tearing right through the fog of shadows in case I hit Orion, but the second I saw that bitch again I was going to burn them right out of her.

“You’re pretty, just like she was pretty,” Clara cooed somewhere behind me and I wheeled around to try and spot her. “But all Vegas are nasty, nasty. You’re just like she was, that foul queen who cast me into the dark.”

“I saw what you were,” I called. “I know what she did to you.”

“Oh you know, do you? So you know the Nymphs were persecuted by that evil fire queen?”

“She was just trying to end the war,” I growled.

Clara snarled furiously. “She ruined my kind, made us into monsters and turned the entire world against us.”

“What do you mean?” I demanded, keeping a ring of fire tight around me to hold back the shadows closing in.

“We’re sisters, see?” she said forlornly. “Sisters are so very precious. But the queen betrayed all of her sisters.”

“I don’t understand. You were related to her?”

“Not in that way, oh don’t you see, little Vega princess? How very naive you are, and how arrogant too.”

“Lance!” I called again and she laughed shrilly.

“Lovers in my spider’s web,” she sang. “Well I’d best get on with it before this blood dries upon my palm. It’ll hurt a little now, then later it will hurt a lot.”

“What are you talking about?” I snarled, pushing my fire further away from me as I tried to carve out a space to see ahead of me.

Time was dissolving in here and I feared what lay beyond this, my sister, my friends, what was happening out in the battle?

“I’m going to do to you what I wanted to do to her,” she cackled. “I spent so long learning this spell, but I never got a chance to curse her like I wanted. It’s rather exciting actually. How many, many, many years I’ve waited for revenge and I’m going to draw it out slow and long and oh so sweetly.”

I pushed my fire deeper into the shadows, my pulse accelerating at her words.

“Come out here and face me,” I demanded, readying to fight for my life.

“I’m going to put a little fun twist on it too,” she went on like I’d said nothing. “Oh, it’s going to be so much fun to watch you both break when you find out what it is. I’m going to make sure you live long enough to see me rise. Daddy will be mad, but I am to be his queen, and maybe it’s time I started making my own rules.”

“Fight me!” I roared, letting fire billow upwards to carve a hole in the shadows above. I cast air beneath my feet, racing toward the sliver of sky that opened up, but it closed away again as the darkness pressed down on me, forcing me back. I hit the ground and snarled as I started running, sending flash fires out ahead of me as I carved a path.

“Lance, where are you?!”

“Darcy!” he cried somewhere close by and far away.

I ran harder with frantic, desperate breaths, needing to get to him. As soon as I was near, I could blast away this net of shadows and free us.

A heavy magic licked my skin and Clara started chanting words that made the hairs on my body stand on end. I couldn’t understand the dark language she was speaking, but I’d heard it spoken in the shadows before and it sent chills right down to my core.

“Ambres tenus avilias mortalium avar,” she hissed. “Irexus tu neverendum.”

I burned through the shadows that tried to cling to me, running faster and faster as the curse pressed down on me, enveloping my body then pushing deeper and deeper as it tried to take root in me.

I urged my Phoenix fire through my veins, trying to burn it away, but the dark magic slipped past it and I couldn’t stop it as it buried itself deep inside me. This was something I couldn’t fight and the thought of that terrified me.

“Novus estris envum magicae,” she breathed. “Avilias avar!”

An ice cold hand pressed to my arm and I wheeled around, blasting fire toward Clara before she disappeared into the dark once more with a shrieking cackle.

I looked down at my arm in fear, finding a bloody handprint wrapping around my bicep. The mark turned black and my head spun as the power from it rushed into me like a tsunami.

I stumbled, my vision darkening as the power gripped me and I found myself unable to fight off whatever was happening. I forced my Phoenix fire against it with everything I had, but it did nothing to stop it. And in the deepest regions of my heart, I knew nothing could as I fell to my knees and an ocean of darkness stole me away.