Sapphire (39 page)

She looked up, expecting the last thing she would
see would be a moloch’s deadly fangs, but none of them were even
facing her. Every single one was turning to the mountain range
surrounding the valley. Clouds were dissipating like mist along the
horizon, the rain was beginning to turn to a drizzle, and lightning
no longer scorched the sky. At first she didn’t see anything, then
she noticed a wave of movement along the ranks of molochs near the
foothills of the distant mountains.

The molochs, leagues away, were trying to escape the
thing emerging over the mountain top above them. Ava slowly stood
up, watching the amazing scene unfolding before her. Along the
ridge of the furthest mountain, tentacles of cloudless lightning
were shooting hundreds of feet into the air. She could feel the
ionic charge even though it was miles away. The hair on her arms
stood on end and tingled. A slow wave of sound began to roll across
the valley. The molochs were howling and roaring as the enormous
form of Kryos crested the peak.

As the howling reached the molochs nearest Ava,
another guardian crested the peak opposite Kryos. The giant golden
wolf radiated like he was the sun itself. Ava felt strength flare
within her, dissolving any last vestige of fear or doubt, as Zev
towered over the darkness below. She looked to the peak opposite
her. Karuna’s elegant elk-like body strode up proudly to stand
surveying the multitudes below. In her natural form, she was a
beautiful dark-skinned woman with large black horns curving back
from her head just like the kayi-elk while her elk’s body swirled
with the colors of the earth.

The molochs were wild, mad in their desire to
escape. Some tried to break and race away between the mountain
peaks where each guardian stood, but some unseen force pushed them
back again. She looked down at Mira’s body, then at the iron hilt
embedded in the still chest. The blade no longer gave her a sense
of comfort and protection. It looked like a dark and vile weapon.
Haltingly, she curled her fingers around its cold ore and tried to
pull it from Mira’s chest.

She bit back a gag when she had to
brace herself and tug it free with all her strength. It was in her
hands once more, slick and opaque with blood. As she watched the
raindrops begin to wash it clean, her eyes narrowed. Within the
crystal core the forms of Kryos, Karuna, and Zev were no longer
there. They had vanished. With shock, she realized she had never
truly destroyed Karuna’s realm; she had recreated it. The sword had
been a lock, protecting those who promised to protect her, and she
was the key. She wondered if Lula had ever realized how powerful
her protective magic could be. She was surprised to hear herself
laugh when she imagined telling Lula that when it came to righteous
light, pink was now her favorite color,
if
they ever saw one another again.
With sadness, she doubted that they ever would, not after what she
was about to do.

Yet, with this epiphany, in the
midst of all the chaos, alone and surrounded, she smiled. She
lifted her head and looked at the three guardians holding the
molochs captive, then back at the figures still entwined in the
crystal. Only a few figures remained frozen within the crystal:
Antares, Lula, Orin, Capella, her parents, and herself. A small
calming voice whispered within her,
Don’t
give up. Not yet.

Lesath, so intent upon the appearance of the other
guardians, finally swung his rotting head towards Ava. She turned
to face him.

“
You
. You made her betray us,” he
growled, saliva hanging from his huge jaws. “I’ll sacrifice you
myself then.” His eyes burned even brighter. “She can’t protect you
now.” He roared and threw himself at her.

She raised her hand to stop him just as she once had
with Karuna. Light shot from the earthen-veins crisscrossing
beneath their feet and wrapped around Lesath’s dark fur and exposed
bone.

“Mira didn’t do it just to protect
me,” Ava said as the moloch twisted and howled, held fast by the
ropes of light. “She did it to protect
all
of us.”

The other molochs roared and leapt forward, but she
swung her arm around to point her palm at them as well. Light
enveloped her whole body, then like vines they shot along the earth
and caught the molochs in a web radiating from herself and Lesath.
Their fury was deafening, but the ropes of light only grew and
tightened the more they struggled. She glanced towards Mira’s
corpse and held back the pain trying to claw towards her
consciousness. The crystal sword in her other hand was translucent
again but still stained with blood. Lesath snarled and snapped as
she slowly walked closer to stand before him.

“You destroyed us,” he said. “Your race must atone
for what it has done!”

Despite everything, she felt nothing but pity for
him, for all of the molochs human and unicorn alike.

“You’re right,” she said.

He stopped struggling as if his energy were being
drained. Ava glanced at the three guardians on each peak
surrounding the molochs that were trapped in the valley. The
guardians seemed to be waiting for her. She turned back to Lesath.
He watched her warily through eyes as dark red as the blood drained
from Mira.

“What is it you want?” she asked him.

He snapped at her, his teeth clacking a few feet
from her face, but she didn’t flinch. “I want your race annihilated
just as you annihilated ours! None of you deserve life. You defile
and dishonor its meaning.”

She nodded. “As you are now.”

His muscles bulged with fury as he
strained against her power. “Because of
your
transgressions, of what
you
made us!”

He snapped at her again, saliva flinging across her
face, but she just stared into his fiery eyes. She saw that there
was nothing but hate and pain swirling in their depths, and the
desire to destroy her. She looked around at all the monsters still
writhing in her power, the power Mira had transferred to her upon
her death, Mira’s last selfless act to protect her and perhaps help
change all their fates.

Her eyes met Lesath’s. “It seems I
hold an important key to the curse, and so do you.” She smiled, and
his eyes narrowed. “The curse can’t be broken by myself alone. It’s
because of
you
that it’s endured.”

This enraged Lesath so much that
she nearly lost control of his bonds. His molten eyes flared in his
skull. “
I?!
I
seek only to balance this world once more, to see the unicorns
restored to life, and—”

“And to destroy us as we destroyed you.”

Lesath grew still and silent, contemplating her.
“You do not fear death then? You do not want vengeance?”

She shook her head. “No. What good would more of
that do? I can see now the power those intentions have.”

She inhaled, facing her fate as
Mira, as Orin, as everyone she knew had faced theirs for
her
. Sirrush and Lesath
may have played them all like pawns for their own designs, but in
this moment she finally understood the power of her own choices.
Whether she lived or died, at least she had chosen, in the end, to
live without fear, without hate.

She released him.

The last thing she heard was an earth-shattering
roar from Kryos echoing off the mountains.

In that last second as Lesath leapt at her, she
closed her eyes and let the sword drop from her hand. It shattered,
turning back into slivers of crystal, and the iron reliefs of her
loved ones vanished like smoke. As the other three guardians
launched their own power upon the armies of molochs, an enormous
blast of light erupted from Lesath’s peak.

The light mushroomed and arced high overhead as
Kryos lashed blue lightning over the dark sea below. It connected
with the soft glow emanating from Karuna as she reared with arms
spread wide. Zev threw his massive head back and howled a
beautifully haunting cry while golden light speared outward from
his shining fur.

Millions of crimson eyes turned skyward at the
ceiling of pure light. Millions of tusked and fanged jaws roared in
defiance. Millions of skeletal faces hissed and curved boney
fingers over their soulless eyes. Lesath hung suspended in the
light, inches from Ava’s closed eyes, frozen in murderous rage.
Time seemed to have stopped along with him, but he and Ava were
connected in a memory of the past; a past where one selfless act
could have changed the future.

She was power, she was grace, she was immortal
energy galloping across the landscape. Everything she saw through
her new eyes shimmered and shone with color, light, and detail she
had never noticed before. The world was more beautiful than she
could have ever imagined through her human eyes. In this mind she
felt only peace, a oneness with everything that eradicated fear and
other petty human emotion. She threw her mane and trumpeted a
beautiful cry to the others. Out of the forest nearby, erupted
answering cries along with many more black unicorns. But to her
unicorn eyes they were not black. They were swirling blue energy
with manes and tails of white fire. Then the humans came.

They came on armored horses, with swords, spears,
and arrows imbued with magical enchantments capable of slaughtering
the most powerful creatures in the world. She reared, not in fear,
not in anger or hatred, but only with the thought to protect her
own kind from this sudden malice. She knew what would happen if
such dark energy subdued them. The herd tried to veer away, but
they were surrounded. Arrows rained down upon them, and Ava saw
through Lesath’s memory, through his eyes, what happened. Not only
did she see, but she felt it.

An arrow pierced her side and she cried out in
agony, though not from mortal pain. She cried out from the selfish,
greedy, arrogant desire attached to the human that had shot the
arrow. Those same thoughts and feelings overwhelmed her. They began
to change her. She saw many other unicorns falling to the same
fate; she watched their blue energy turn dark as they fell, only
their horns still glowing white, the only pure power keeping them
from morphing into terrible forms. In the chaos, only she and a few
others escaped but not before she saw the heinous crime these
humans were capable of.

As she and the other few galloped away, she looked
back, slowed, and turned. A female human, with long blonde hair,
the one she knew as Lorna, dismounted her steed and walked over to
a fallen unicorn. Without hesitation she raised her sword and
brought it down upon the unicorn’s horn, severing its power and its
life. Strange, unknown feelings, welled up in Lesath: anger,
hatred, revenge. Feelings, as a unicorn, she had never experienced
before. But now she was no longer as she had been. Now she had felt
the sting of human greed for power, and she hated them for it.

The woman she had once known as a young girl, that
she had come to in the forest long ago, looked up and pointed at
her with a sword. There was no innocence, no love, in Lorna’s adult
eyes anymore, only desire and envy for a power she wanted to
possess.

The memory morphed into another, and Lesath was now
upon the mountain top, stepping out of the glowing arch. Much time
had passed. The slaughter had finally ceased. Here before her were
the three sisters. They had come with regret, with humble penance,
with an offer to right their wrongs. She could feel it in their
souls. In…two of them. Before she could turn back to the safety of
her realm, an S-shaped dagger imbued with spells sliced through the
air. As she turned her head away, it sheered off the tip of her
horn. Lesath reared and screamed, ears plastered back, anger
flaring like fire in her eyes. The other two sisters, Adhara, and
Capella attacked Lorna, but she was too quick and vanished with the
sapphire-like shards. As Lesath’s body began to change into a
moloch, the sisters fled. The arch erupted in light and began to
close. Ava began to leave Lesath’s body and memories, but not
before she felt his burning desire for revenge, not before she felt
the curse and the anger radiating from him to all those touched by
it.