Kesh
It’s not enough.
Every trial won, every challenge overcome to bring me to this moment, hadn’t been enough.
Faerie, damn you, if this is not your wish, help us!
The Hunt swallowed Sirius, and then Kellee was gone, devoured in the Hunt’s monstrous avalanche of darkness. Only Sota remained, somehow holding the Hunt back as he fired stream after stream of his tek-arsenal into it. My drone, once so small, held back a world-ending nightmare on his own.
I pulled on everything I had, reached for everything unseelie, and drew down, demanding they answer. And they did. The monsters rushed closer.
It’s not enough.
The Hunt had grown too strong.
Mentally, I reached far and wide into Safira, farther into Faerie, calling for help, for strength, for light, and heard Faerie’s creatures answer. Countless bright souls, each one a piece of Faerie, answered my call. Wisps by the millions, so tiny on their own, but as they breached Safira’s swollen sky, they shone with a light second only to mine. And more arrived. The saru who had been forced to fight and kill their own. Gladiators with their saru names hidden inside their souls. My family, my people. Sonya and those who had escaped their love of the fae, and others only recently freed. They answered and sent me their strength.
It’s not enough.
Time was something I couldn’t control, and we had already run out.
The Hunt’s grasp reached around Sota. His guns smoked, his firepower immense. He screamed at the thing, and then the screams died in a static as the darkness consumed him too.
Grief added the fuel I needed to keep the light burning. If we died here, let it be for something. Let it be to save the innocent and stop the Hunt from spilling chaos across Faerie’s sister worlds.
I emerged onto the terrace, aglow like a star forced into a body, wings like those that belonged to the unseelie, and a living tek-whip alive in my hand. “I am the Messenger and all of Faerie stands against you.”
The Hunt’s laughter rolled on, as deep and far-reaching as never-ending thunder. I poured more power into the light, drawing reserves from the souls that had tried to come closer. It could not end this way.
Then the Hunt was an inch in front of me, choking off my light, and its blackness stretched into forever, like Eledan’s mirror had. All of the worlds would come to this. To nothing.
“This is not Faerie’s wish,” I whispered, not needing to raise my voice. The darkness was the only thing left to hear me.
A distant boom sounded. Then another. The noise was muffled, but I heard enough to know those were not Faerie noises. Another boom sounded, shuddering through the air, and the Hunt reared away, dragging its smothering weight with it.
Ships.
Not Faerie made. Sol made. The Sol Alliance emblem, which depicted their central star, blazed on their hulls. They appeared in the dark, peppering the Hunt’s blackness with their tek-light. And they fired. Again. And again. And again. Great holes gaped in the Hunt’s central mass, sizzling with lightning. The wounds didn’t heal.
The Hunt pulled itself from Safira’s paths, revealing Sirius, Sota, and Kellee sprawled on the ground. And the book, its pages open.
Kellee’s clawed hand twitched.
My heart leaped. He’s not dead.
Sirius’s flame spluttered back to life.
They live!
Sota pushed up on his trembling, burned arms.
They were okay.
“Kellee…” I dropped to my knees beside him and turned him over. He winced, baring sharp teeth, then cracked a vivid green eye open. My stubborn vakaru lived! “I thought you gone.”
“Now you know how I feel…” he groused.
“Holy shit… the humans found us!” Sota stumbled to his feet.
“At least they are on our side this time… for now.” Sirius looked down at the book. “Kesh?”
I hauled Kellee to his feet and helped him hobble to the book.
Sirius knelt beside it. “Now that you are the polestar, touch its pages, summon the Hunt here, and end this.”
“Is randomly touching fae artifacts a good idea?” Kellee asked. “Will it eat her?”
“Perhaps,” Sirius replied.
Before they could argue over the best way to test Sirius’s theory, I knelt in the dirt and spread my hands over the pages, like Eledan had forced me to do before. My skin crawled with an unpleasant itch, as though it were trying to unpeel itself and slither free. As I watched, the marks I’d carried for most of my life fell from my arms, from the backs of my hands, down my fingers, and into the book. Once on the pages, the marks morphed and twisted, transforming into fae words. Without Eledan, we could only hope those marks would be enough.
“What is that?” Sota asked, watching the words twist.
“It’s the end…” Sirius let the words settle, and I lifted my hands.
Another boom sounded above, so loud I felt it in my bones. The Hunt screamed, and as it writhed away from the bank of Sol ships, the Excalibur emerged at the fleet’s center, bigger, brighter, and aglow with fae colors.
A wind whipped up, carrying magic throughout Safira.
The fleet fired its tek-weapons again and again, each one landing like an iron nail through the Hunt’s center. The Hunt’s enormous weight lessened, and its darkness thinned, until the nightmare was little more than a normal storm being pounded into submission.
Sirius cradled the book in his arms and turned toward the sky and the battle overhead. He lifted the book and read the ancient fae words—Eledan’s words, from long ago, when he’d been a young and naïve prince desperate for Faerie to notice him.
The Hunt twitched and snapped, shrinking with every blast, until finally it bucked away from the fleet and rushed toward us.
I caught Kellee’s hand in mine and Sota’s in the other. I knew Talen watched from above as the swirling, howling mass of nightmare turned into a thick column and plunged into the book. It howled its way deep inside.
After the last of it had vanished, Sirius slammed the book closed to a strange, calm quiet, broken only by the rumble of Sol ship engines.
It was over.
No… not over. There was one more thing to do.
Power cannot be taken. It must be gifted.
I closed my eyes, still gripping Sota’s and Kellee’s hands, and mentally called to the mother I’d never had.
“Faerie, I’m returning your gift. The polestar belongs in your sky, where it shall forever remain.”
I expected more heat and light, but I simply felt Her gently run Her hand through my body. She was not malevolent, as I’d imagined, but a simple force made of balance and harmony, of time, dark, and light. Giving her back the polestar was the right thing to do, even if it meant leaving us vulnerable to Sol and their forces. Maybe now that Sol knew we were all Faerie’s children, we could get along? At least for a little while. Either way, the polestar and the Hunt were weapons that should never be wielded again.
Power lifted from my soul. I let it slide off, like I was rising out of warm water. Above, Safira’s strange sky peeled open like flower petals, presenting Faerie’s night sky, and there, among a million stars, the brightest one winked at us, back where it belonged.
I would miss the polestar, but I was not sorry to see it go. I sighed, feeling more grounded and like Kesh Lasota by the minute.
“You did the right thing.” Kellee’s voice was soft, and the words landed gently in the strange, new quiet.
I squeezed his hand and pulled him closer, then did the same with Sota, tucking him against my side. I had done the right thing. We all had. Together, we’d ended the nightmare.