Sapphire

  The shared memory disappeared as a crack of lightning, a flash of horn, a gleam of crystal, and Mira was upon her. Suddenly, in that last moment before impact, Mira raised her head. Ava’s face was a white mask, but before her understanding could take hold, Mira’s massive chest rammed into her. There was a piercing cry, then absolute silence as Ava flew through the air and landed on her back, the wind knocked from her lungs.

  It was Lesath’s enraged roar that finally cut through her addled consciousness. She closed her hand then the other. They were empty. She wiped the rain from her eyes, then gingerly raised herself to her elbows. Mira lay not far from her, a long furrow in the mud marking where she had fallen and slid to her side. Ava tried to move and feared she never would again until she saw Mira’s chest rise with breath. She flung herself towards her and crawled. Mira did not stir when Ava reached out a tremulous hand to touch her warm body. A sob wracked through her throat, tearing her from the inside, as she clutched Mira’s soaked and tangled mane. The iron hilt of curling vines protruded from the strong chest while blood ran downhill in long tendrils.

  “No!” Ava screamed through choking sobs. “What did you do? What did you do?”

  Mira’s nostrils flared and a violet eye looked at her from beneath a half-closed lid. She tried to raise her head.

  “We were wrong,” Mira said quietly. “Do not let him…you can still change…” Her eye flashed with intensity for a moment. “The gateway…” But then those clear eyes that had promised to protect Ava grew glassy with death, and her head sank to the ground.

  Ava stared into the sightless eye, and her mind and body felt like an empty shell. She was someone else, a spectator, detached. Raindrops were beading and dripping from Mira’s eyelashes, making it appear as if she were crying. Ava, still clutching the mane, stared at the elegant head that would never rise again. Her understanding in that last moment when Mira raised her horn provided no comfort. The last unicorn sworn to kill the last human guardian had sacrificed herself instead. Ava felt an electric charge rush through her body, a power not her own, a power far stronger than the light she had unleashed on Karuna’s realm.

  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.