Sapphire

  She was completely alone. The darkness, the fear, the isolation was smothering her. She was choking, suffocating. She didn’t know how long she lay curled, sobbing for her friends, her family, for Orin, anyone, but finally she was exhausted. Her shuddering breaths slowed. She painfully opened her eyes, her lashes glued together with tears. The doorway was gone.

  A sweltering world surrounded her. The earth was charred with fire. Forests of burned lifeless trees twisted and curled their branches as if frozen in pain. Dried stream beds cut across the landscape like claw marks. There was an eerie warm glow on her skin. She craned her neck back and nearly fell to the ashen ground. There was no sky. A canopy of seething roiling magma-like clouds stretched high above as far as she could see. A noise tore her away from the incomprehensible sky.

  Something was moving through the dead forest. Branches snapped like brittle ribs as something large broke through. She raised her sword in front of her, ready to face this new fear. The creature broke through the last of the skeletal forest, and turned its grotesque head towards her. Something that had once also been a black unicorn was now a monstrosity of itself. Taller than Mira, the stallion stood staring at her with what was left of its face. Half of its skull grinned at her, pointed teeth reflecting the gilded sky. On one side of its decaying face a red eye glared, on the other half of its decimated skull a dark socket stared.

  It’s part moloch!

  She felt faint. She glanced around again for the doorway, any doorway, any possible escape. Only the desolate landscape leered back. The creature continued to watch her, as still as the lifeless trees behind it. She noticed bone protruded from other various parts of its cadaverous body, and then she saw its horn. Its tip had been shorn off. Nothing but dark jagged ends pierced skyward. It raised its head and pulled back what lips it had from fangs, hideously grinning. A voice echoed in her head, deep and abrasive.

  “Welcome to my realm,” said Lesath, the unicorn lord.

  Ava didn’t respond. She couldn’t. She felt her dry skin cracking between her fingers as she gripped the sword’s hilt.

  “Is it not…lovely?” Lesath took a step towards her and she finally found her voice.

  “Stop!”

  He halted, turning his head to peer at her with his one blazing eye. “Stop? No. You have something I want. I can feel it.” He began striding towards her again but she stood strong, the crystal blade aflame with the molten light.

  “You came here for me, remember, little guardian? To redeem your race. To undo your wrongs. To give me those fragments you carry.”

  He stopped a hands width from the point of her sword. It barely reached the underside of his jaw. She let go of her sword with one hand and reached up to touch the sapphires. He threw his head back, baring his sharp predatory teeth.

  “Give them to me.” He reared up over her head, black hooves beating the air, and a piercing-scream erupting from his cursed form.

  She stumbled back, still gripping the necklace. Spears of light escaped between her fingers.

  She fell to her knees. “Of course,” she suddenly heard herself say, her voice calm.

  The chain of light dissolved, yet the sapphires hovered around her neck as she let them go. It was easier to just let them go, to finally be released of her enormous responsibility. She was so tired. Her sword clattered to the burnt stones. Lesath’s body quivered. His broken horn began to glow from within like the shards now coalescing into a point. He bent his head as the broken horn sought to reform its shattered self. Ava could barely lift her eyes to watch. She was so very tired, so numb. There was something she should be caring about, something she should be doing, something—

  A flash of bright light blinded her. She threw her hands up and turned away. The catatonic fog lifted from her mind. When she blinked and looked around, searching for her weapon, she suddenly stopped with dread. Lesath’s horn was whole once more, a blazing spear of sapphire, but he was writhing and contorting, slashing madly at the ground with his hooves. She grabbed the sword and leapt away just as his flailing legs smashed the earth where she had crouched.

  She searched for the door again and still saw no escape. She was trapped. Lesath unleashed a gut-wrenching scream, and her panic rose with his cry. The last time she heard a scream like that was in Karuna’s realm. The realm she destroyed.

  “No,” she said to herself.

  She lowered the sword to her side and slowly backed away, shaking her head, refusing to believe everything would end like this, after everything they’d been through.

  “No,” she said again, but her eyes would not deceive her.

  Lesath’s skin was tearing, bones cracking, his whole body growing and morphing. The horse-like scream turned into a bear-like roar. His nose broadened, his teeth elongated, tusks curved outward, neck thickened, shoulders hunched, and finally claws extended where hooves once were. The sapphire horn had split and grown down his neck like spikes. Slabs of fur and flesh were still peeling off to reveal bone beneath as he opened fanged jaws and roared. Lesath was now fully moloch despite regaining the shards of his horn. He turned his eyes on Ava and she stared into their hell-fire depths.

  “Why did this happen?” she whispered out loud.

  She couldn’t understand what she had done wrong. Hadn’t she atoned for the wrongs her family did to the unicorns? Intention, said Capella’s voice in her mind. But her intentions had been good, hadn’t they? Lesath gurgled then roared a laugh. The rolling sound, like smashing boulders, made her skin crawl.

  “You have done well,” he rumbled. “But there is one last thing you must do for me, human. For us all.” He threw his monstrous head back and howled.

  He hadn’t seen the doorway yet. She glanced towards the arch beginning to materialize from thin air a few hundred feet away. She could make it. Every fiber of her body stretched towards the flashes of light beyond the portal as she sprinted away. Lesath’s echoing laugh followed her as she raced across the barren dirt. She would make it. It was right there, a hundred feet, fifty feet, twenty feet. She twisted her head around as her leg shot forward through the barrier. He was right behind her.

  She jumped through the waterfall of light, landing and rolling head over heels, as Lesath sailed inches above her. They both skidded only feet away from one another, but when she stood he was not looking at her. Instead he was lumbering towards Mira. He stopped when he was close enough to attack, but still Mira didn’t move. Her horn barely reached his hunched shoulders. She stood calmly, quietly, and stared at the monster in front of her. Her sides were heaving and drenched in blood and sweat.

  The three of them were completely surrounded, but every single monster was now silent, watching the moloch-lord in their midst. It had begun to rain again. Rivulets of water raced down the mountain side along with the still pulsing veins of light. Ava desperately looked around. She was the only human among legions and legions of creatures that had hunted her since the day she was born. Orin was no where to be seen. She caught a sob, choking it back down, as she raised her sword at the murderous creatures that had taken everything from her.

  Their prey was cornered. She had no one. No one but Mira. She tried to catch Mira’s gaze, frantic to know what to do. There must be something they could do. Mira had protected her all this time, kept these monsters at bay, she must have a way for them to escape. Lesath turned his bear-like head towards her and grinned. Mira also turned towards Ava, her horn flashing under whips of lightning lashing down from above. Ava began to smile, her lips trembling, then it quickly fell away. Mira rotated to face her and lowered her horn. Just before she charged, the molochs erupted with roars of triumph.