Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight

We hadn’t slept, our insatiable need for each other and endless reclaiming of what we’d lost keeping us occupied hour after hour. I gave in to all the hopeless want that had consumed me these months, as I buried myself in the obsession which had kept me sane throughout so many horrors.

Here, in this place, we had stolen time from the world, day turning into night once more as we gave in to lust and greed and passion and slowly healed the ache that had scarred our souls while we’d been parted by the Veil.

I wasn’t certain if I was supposed to feel differently now, uncomfortable in my own skin or furious at fate, my father, all of it, but I simply felt content.

The world waited beyond these walls, but as I lay on my back, feasting on my girl as she fucked my face, I just couldn’t find it in me to care about that.

I gripped her round ass as I devoured her, growling against her clit and smiling like the asshole I was as she fell apart for me with a cry of pleasure.

Roxy tumbled down onto the bed beside me, punching me in the bicep as I continued to grin at her.

“We said we’d leave first thing,” she muttered, her voice drunk with pleasure and my smile only continued to grow as I pushed myself up onto my elbow and looked at what I’d done to her.

“We said we’d leave when we woke, but we haven’t slept so…” I reached for her thigh, but she slapped me away with a shake of her head.

“We’re in the middle of a war,” she reminded me, as if I could have forgotten.

“We were in the middle of something else too-”

“We need to go,” she said firmly, not for the first time, but the way her eyes flashed said she might actually mean it now. “We can’t. Not…not right now. Later. After you’ve returned to the others, and they can see you’re alive again. I can’t just keep hoarding you away in this ruin forever. They’re grieving too.”

I sighed as I gave in to her demand, licking the taste of her from my lips as I rolled over and got to my feet.

“I guess I’ll get dressed then,” I said, though I couldn’t really feign disappointment in the idea of reuniting with the others after so long. I yearned to see them so much that I felt like a kid waking up on their birthday, excited to rip into my gifts.

I eyed Roxy as I moved towards the exit so I could retrieve the clothes I’d been buried in from my coffin.

The moment I’d woken up in that place, I’d been filled with the desperate need to stretch my wings, so after finding Roxy laying in the grass beside me and relocating her to the bed within the ruins, I’d headed back outside, stripped off, and taken flight.

My Dragon had blasted endless flames into the sky as it was released upon the world of the living once again. I couldn’t deny the urge I felt to shift once more as I stepped out into the cold air with Roxy hounding my steps, her wedding dress back on and my smile fighting to make a comeback.

I held a hand out to her and she took it, the simple touch sending electricity pouring through my body as I caressed the scar on her palm.

“I don’t actually know how I’m going to be able to find them,” she admitted as we stalked up the hill, and I looked down at her as a shaft of moonlight made her black hair glisten with silver. “I lost my pack when we returned from death and my Atlas was inside it, so-”

“Your pack was beside my coffin when I woke,” I told her, and she gaped at me before trying to smack me again.

I caught her fist and yanked her closer by it. “Careful baby, or you’ll give me ideas,” I purred but she just rolled her eyes as she yanked her fist from my hold again.

“Why didn’t you mention that before?”

“Because I was more interested in fucking you than checking out your luggage,” I replied, drawing a snort of laughter from her.

I turned to face her, catching her cheek in my palm, and looking at the joy which sparked in her eyes as she gazed back at me. It felt unreal. Like we couldn’t possibly deserve this after everything we’d sacrificed and yet there we stood, reunited and stronger than ever.

“What?” she asked, blinking at me as I continued to study her and I shrugged, forcing myself to let her go again.

“Just you, Roxy. Only ever you.”

“Don’t go getting soft on me,” she grumbled as she turned away and started up the hill once more, leading the way onto the secluded clifftop where she’d once laid me to rest.

I paused beside my mom’s coffin, brushing my fingers against the ice as I looked in at her and Hamish, free from Lionel at last, gone where he could never find them, his soul too rotten and festering to ever be allowed passage into their side of the afterlife.

Roxy found her pack and quickly stripped out of her wedding dress as she exchanged it for a pair of jeans and black crop top.

I moved to join her, picking up my own abandoned clothes and dressing myself in the armour I’d died in, the bloodstain surrounding the hole in it a russet brown against the black.

Roxy noticed it too, raising a hand to cast it away but I caught her fingers in mine to stop her.

“Leave it,” I said, amusement touching my words. “Let everyone see the mark of the wound which killed me when they meet me on the battlefield. Let my enemies remember that even death can’t defeat me when I come for them.”

Roxy rolled her eyes but gave in, grabbing my battle axe from the remains of my coffin and tossing it to me.

“I’m going to call Geraldine,” she said, taking her Atlas from her pack at last and switching it on. I noticed the endless trail of missed calls and texts which she’d received while it was off, but she just dismissed them all, hitting dial on Geraldine’s number instead of bothering to read any of them.

I moved closer to listen in and on the third ring, Geraldine gasped an answer.

“Oh, my lady!” she cried. “Are you ready to return to the bosom of your dearest compadres?”

“Yeah, I-”

“There is mischief afoot!” Geraldine cut her off and shit, I’d really missed that crazy motherfucker. “Scoundrels and gherkin lovers converge on our once beloved academy this very moment. We have seen the light of truth via the Atlas of video knowledge, and it is so! We headed yonder to defeat the swines, and would welcome your most benevolent and wonderous help in this adventure.”

“Lionel is attacking Zodiac Academy?” Roxy asked in alarm, and I had no fucking idea how she’d come to that conclusion based on the nonsense Geraldine had just spewed, but it seemed she was right as her friend replied.

“It is so! He has set hell hounds of death to hunt within its fine walls and we have come to cleave them from this world. Also your dear and beauteous sis-” Geraldine wailed and a monstrous scream rattled the speaker before the call was abruptly cut off.

“Shit,” Roxy cursed, dropping the Atlas into her pocket, and grabbing some stardust from the pack instead. “Let’s go.”

I picked up her sword belt and cinched it tight around her waist as she snatched a dagger from the pack too. We left the rest of her shit where it was, knowing we’d be better off coming back for it later.

She met my gaze with those wild green eyes and threw the stardust over our heads without another word.

The world bent and twisted around us, the stars hissing curses beneath their breath as their own rules forced them to let us travel, and I couldn’t help but laugh at them before they dumped us unceremoniously at the gates to the academy.

I heard the screams before I spotted anything and Roxy drew her sword as she sprinted for the entrance, a blast of pure energy tearing from her and making the gates crumple in her path. The wards were already down and that was its own testimony to whatever chaos laid within.

My heart began pumping with adrenaline, my grip on my battle axe tightening as I willed the Phoenix fire imbued in it to spark to life, and a war cry escaped my lips.

I wanted to hunt down our enemies and rain carnage upon them, my need for bloodshed rioting through my flesh more potently than I had ever experienced before. My taste for violence spiked and I bared my teeth in a snarl as I hunted for a victim to fall at the swing of my axe.

Roxy looked just as feral as I felt, as she drew her flaming sword in an arc before her, the light of it reflecting in her green eyes.

Screams carried on the wind from the heart of the academy, and I used my axe to point the way before breaking into a sprint with my girl at my side.

We ran like the fires of hell were on our tails, diving into the darkness beneath the trees in The Wailing Wood and my blood pumped hotter, faster, the need for death and brutality a rampant desire which blotted out all else.

“Do you feel that?” Roxy asked, her gaze flashing with excitement as she looked to me, and I swear the need for violence in me pulsed at the look in her eyes.

“I do.” I had been born a warrior, never afraid of death or savagery, but no battle had ever called to me so powerfully before and there was an ache in my limbs which begged me to join the fight.

Perhaps it was my return from death that had me hungering for a kill with such vitriol but whatever it was, I had no time to question it as we sprinted into the academy grounds and took the main path which led through The Wailing Wood towards The Orb and other buildings at the heart of campus.

“There,” Roxy said, pointing with her sword into the darkness beneath the trees and I looked that way as I felt it too, pain and bloodshed and battle.

My pulse was thumping with it, my knowledge of it unquestionable and yet I had no idea how we could be so certain of such a thing.

A repetitive clicking sound broke from the woods to our right and I swung towards it just as a beast fit for hell leapt from the high bough of an ash tree.

I swung my axe up between us, my blade severing one of its four arms before I could even get a good look at it.

The thing shrieked, a flash of pale, bluish skin and huge pincers making me leap back and Roxy cursed as she swung her sword at it too.

The creature was about twice the size of me, insectile in its looks aside from its chest and head which looked disturbingly Fae, the male’s mouth stretching wide in a furious cry.

The noise that exploded from him didn’t sound like any voice I’d ever heard before though. It was high pitched and full of dread, the shriek it released spilling out around us until my ears rung from it.

I ducked low as it lunged at me with its pincers snapping, a blast of fire exploding against its chest as I threw my power at it, but my magic struck some shield tight to its skin and flared away again.

Roxy jumped back as the beast swung around and I whistled sharply to draw its attention, my heart thrashing with the need for this kill.

The thing lunged and instead of retreating, I launched myself at it, my axe swinging in a two-handed attack as I slipped to one side and swung the weapon straight into its back.

One of its arms slammed into me, knocking me away while my axe remained lodged in its spine, and it shrieked again as blood spilled from it. But it recovered fast and ran at me once more.

I rolled aside as it lunged, pincers slamming into the ground where I’d just been and Roxy took the opportunity to strike at it, her sword punching through the side of its neck and making it howl in pain.

Blood splattered over me, and my heart thundered as a feeling of euphoria swept through my veins, my limbs singing with the power of battle and a hunger for death building within me that screamed for more.

The creature fell to the ground, howling and thrashing and I pounced on it, drawing a dagger from my belt and stabbing it over and over again, the fury in my flesh demanding more even as it fell still beneath me, and I felt its death sweep over me like a breath of ecstasy.

Roxy decapitated the thing with a cry of effort and the bond between us seemed to pull tight, yanking against my soul as the moment of the kill united us.

I shoved to my feet, ripping my axe from the creature’s corpse and stalking towards her as her eyes lit with a feral energy that mirrored my own.

I fisted her hair, yanking her head back as I stole a kiss from her, the blood marking her body making her even more desirable as some power beyond the two of us revelled in the death we’d offered up.

She moaned into my mouth as she returned the kiss and I knew she felt it too, this unholy need for violence which was making our joined hearts race with excitement.

Distant screams broke us apart and I turned towards the path, grinning darkly as the fight beckoned us on.

The need for death and carnage ran rampant through my soul, that same, endless desire reflected in her eyes as the world seemed to hum with it.

We didn’t have time to question this strange, addictive feeling, and I broke into a sprint.

Roxy’s wings exploded from her back, and she took to the sky, a warrior queen on the hunt, swooping between the trees of The Wailing Wood.

I ran beneath her, power crackling in the air as magic built in her free fist, before we reached the buildings that made up the heart of the academy campus.

Students were running, screaming in terror, and racing between the buildings as we paused to take in what was happening, but as a few of them spotted Roxy, their screams turned into cheers of relief.

“The true queens have come!”

“We’re saved!”

“It’s inside Earth Observatory!”

Her blazing wings cast me into shadow behind her, but as they cried out at her arrival and she hesitated to listen to them, I took in that piece of information and sprinted away towards the screams I could hear coming from the observatory.

My blood pounded mercilessly in my veins as the need for more death consumed me, my muscles burning as I ran faster and faster through the shadows beyond the buildings.

I made it to the back of the observatory just as a great crash ripped through the air and a window far above me shattered.

A shield of heat exploded from me as the glass came raining down, and it fell in molten globules either side of me without so much as touching my skin.

Tarot cards fluttered from the broken window as I began to climb towards the thing which was causing those terrified screams inside the building, my toes and fingers finding purchase between the brickwork while I stowed my axe on my back once more.

I set my attention on the opening above, barely even noticing as some of the cards fluttered down to brush against me, the call of fate ringing in the air between them.

As one touched my cheek, I caught it, looking into the face of the Knight of Swords before he tumbled away towards the ground. Death approaching.

I couldn’t deny that.

I hauled myself up to the broken window then into the building itself, fire springing from my fingertips as I took in the darkened room. Six students were contained within an air shield at the centre of the space, their hands connected as they power shared to hold off two of the deformed monsters which were trying to batter their way to them.

The terror in their eyes had me breaking into a run as I drew my axe once more and I couldn’t help but notice my boot landing on the Death card like it was welcoming me to the fray.

“You will pay in blood and carnage,” a voice hissed on the wind, and I got the feeling the stars were watching this all too closely.

But as I fell into the dance of battle once again, I found I didn’t give a fuck about that, because the swing of my axe felt too fucking good.