Max watched as he stalked out of the trees. She knew Emmanuel had been watching and waiting, biding his time until he thought he could strike – and win. He had not even shown himself when Mordecai and Diana had killed his parents. Instead, Max knew he had been enjoying the violent scenes in front of him. He looked good – fit and strong – and Max knew he had been feeding off all the death taking place.
“Well, here we are my little Goddess,” Emmanuel offered, pleasantly.
Max swallowed hard, forcing herself to ignore the carnage going on around her, and focus on the being in front of her. “Here we are. What now?”
“Now?” Emmanuel raised perfectly shaped eyebrows, “Now I thought I would kill all those you love in front of you before I take you within myself and reduce the world to ashes.”
“Yeah, that’s not going to work for me, sorry,” was Max’s dry response.
“Still with the banter? Haven’t you seen enough yet? Haven’t you lost enough yet? Look around you, little Custodian, you’ve seen the ending to this just as I have. Accept it. Embrace it. Embrace me,” Emmanuel urged, stretching out a perfectly manicured hand.
Max ignored the hand for the time-being and instead looked around, her eyesight so acute that it missed nothing of the ravaged land or the people who fought valiantly upon it.
Diana was trying furiously to staunch the flow of blood from Beyden’s shredded leg with Darius’s shirt; Darius was standing behind her, protecting her from the onslaught of chades, who were like vultures trying to pick at the dead. They could smell the death on the beast paladin just as surely as Max could and were determined to finish off their prey. Darius took a nasty swipe to the stomach as a result of his refusal to move from his post. He didn’t go down but Max knew it was only a matter of time before the poison did its job and entered his bloodstream. There would be no help for Darius, let alone Diana or Beyden, once that happened.
Max spun around, hearing Dex’s cry. He moved faster than the wind to reach his brother, just as Darius fell to his knees. Dex was, as yet, unscathed in a physical sense. But Max could see his soul getting thinner and thinner from the continuous use of his altered vitality. With no paladin available to recharge him, it wouldn’t be long until the insidious beast within his soul made a comeback. Max had healed the blemish on Dex’s soul – that predisposition was gone forever. But she couldn’t stop Dex from using up all of his energy, thus, rendering him vulnerable to long-forgotten urges.
The singing of metal against metal had her focusing on Lark, who was in a feral battle against his father. Isaac was furiously attacking Lark with unrelenting force, but Max wasn’t worried. This at least, was a battle Lark would win. She continued watching long enough to see Lark slit his father’s throat. The spray from the ruptured artery hit Lark full-force, covering his entire front as his father fell awkwardly to the ground, his death gurgles echoing across the field despite the ferocity of the battle. Max saw the look of triumphant satisfaction on Ivy’s face as her lover dispatched of his nightmare for good.
Ivy herself was in a deadly game of cat and mouse with Terran, who, when he saw his Captain go down, lost his concentration enough to allow Ivy’s sickle to slice cleanly through his head. Max saw Axel helpfully kick over the headless body, launching one of his scythes at the chade standing directly behind Nikolai. Nikolai was in a deadly battle with three chades himself, and Max knew Axel had just saved the man’s life. Axel flew past the Commander of the rangers, grabbed his scythe on the run, and pumped his legs clearly hoping to reach Cinder in time. But Max knew it was pointless. Her grandson had already killed her. Poetically, Cinder had also succeeded in killing him in return.
More friends dropped to the ground, lifeless eyes staring in accusation – or so it seemed; Fawn and her paladins, Cayson, Cinder, almost every single member of the local council … and Dave. It was all happening just as she had seen. Every day and every night, she had seen this exact same fight. Millions of times, she had seen this scene play out in horrific detail. The only difference each time? The ending.
Squeezing her eyes closed, Max begged and prayed and pleaded not to see what she knew she would when she opened her eyes. She gave a second’s thought to just keeping her eyes closed. Perhaps if she didn’t open them, and she didn’t bear witness then it wouldn’t really happen? But she knew how foolhardy that thought was. There was no stopping fate. Swallowing down the bile in her throat, she opened her eyes just in time to see Ryker’s face almost get split in half by Emmanuel’s claw. Blood sprayed in an arc and a vicious curse left Ryker’s lips. He clutched at his ruined face, even as he brought his scythe down upon the offending hand, severing it at the wrist and turning it to dust.
But even as they watched, Emmanuel threw his head back laughed – his hand regenerated in the blink of an eye. “You fools! I am Life and I am Death. I carry a Creator within my body. Your pathetic blades are useless.”
Max knew what he said was true. As a life warden he could heal; as a chade he was a death dealer; and as a host to a custodian, he could create. But there was one thing he was forgetting; Max was all of those things too and more, because she held power over all seven elements.
Ryker staggered, Emmanuel’s special kind of poison taking fast effect and no doubt causing him excruciating pain. But what does her man do? He looks for her. The very first thought in his head is about her. It’s not about his torn face, or the pain he’s in. Hell, it’s like he can’t even feel it. All he cares about, all he feels, is her. Just her.
Clutching the knowledge fiercely to her heart, Max smiled at him. She wasn’t sure what he saw in that smile but instead of seeing relief on his face, she saw terror as he started moving toward her. But he wouldn’t make it to her in time. She would make sure of it.
She felt the rest of her paladins begin to panic as if they knew something was about to happen. Max sent as much love through the link as she could, trying to convey everything they meant to her with a single jolt of emotion. It was pointless, she knew. How could one possibly express so much love and gratitude? But she tried nonetheless. Unfortunately, it only made her Order panic even more, and they all began to converge on her – even Beyden – who dragged himself along the ground, a bloody trail following in his wake.
“I’m sorry,” she said. And she was. So very sorry. “There’s no other way.”
“Max?!” Ryker’s frantic voice rose above all the others and she only had eyes for him in those final moments.
“I’ll find a way to come back – I promise.”
“What? Max, no!”
She ignored the pain knifing through her heart and instead, stepped forward to embrace Emmanuel. She placed her lips over his own and tightened her arms, creating a cage she knew he couldn’t break. She then focused on lighting a fuse within herself. It was ridiculously easy – finding and tapping into her buried potential. She felt it swell and swell and gasped into her enemy’s mouth as light and colours started streaking from her pores. It was going to work; she knew it was. She was going to save them all – including those poor trapped souls inside of Emmanuel. Unfortunately, it also meant literally blowing herself up. Looking at Ryker one last time, she held onto his chocolate eyes – and detonated.
Supernova sure had one hell of a kick.
***
Ryker was forced to shield his eyes as a brilliant starburst of colour exploded all around them. Chades were incinerated in the blink of an eye, unable to withstand the purity of the energy in their presence. Many wardens and paladins on the opposing side who carried black eyes suffered the same fate. But Ryker didn’t care about any of that. Because as he dropped to his knees and the final light melted into the horizon, he felt his link to Max snap. A series of cries around him alerted him to his fellow knights. He knew they must have been experiencing the same gut-wrenching loss as he was, but he couldn’t feel them. Not now and not ever again. Because the Order link was no more.
It was gone.
Broken.
Completely severed.
He had lived through such a loss in the past and knew what it meant. His liege, his life, his Max … was dead.