The Goblin's Heir

Chapter Seventy Four: Turn

"Fly, Augustus!" I shouted as Floki came hurtling towards us. I shoved him away just as Floki swept over us. He swung his axe at my head. Snorri snapped his wings in, letting us freefall out of the path of Floki's wild swings. Cerise's arms were around his neck. She pulled against him with all of her weight, trying to choke him out, to do anything short of killing him to make him stop his attack. 

My stomach lurched and a sharp pain went through my skull starting at the back of my neck. When he leveled out, I had to close my eyes and breathe for a moment just to keep myself from being sick.

"Sorry." Snorri lamented, looking back at me worriedly.

"Forget me, just fly as hard and fast as you can." I said. I just kept breathing, in and out until the lightheadedness went away. 

"What if you faint?"

"You'll catch me. I know you will. You always have. Mostly." An arrow zipped past my head and I kicked against Snorri's side, pushing him onward. I pitched myself hard to the side, guiding Snorri into a severe left-side bank that nearly turned us over. I slapped my hand against his shoulder blades. Speed. Speed. We needed distance between us and them. All the while I kept my arm looped around Magni's throat in a chokehold, applying just enough pressure to keep his head in that position and his arms pinned beneath his own weight so that he couldn't swallow the seed. 

"Let me go." He pleaded, gasping against the pressure of my arm. "I can stop them. I can stop everything." 

"No you can't." I snapped, looking back over my shoulder at my children chasing me down like wolves on the trail of a wounded deer. Floki led the pack. Cerise smacked at Floki's back, trying to get him to stop, but he ignored her. His eyes glowed fiercely within the hollows of his helm and the sharp edge of his large axe gleamed in the lightning filled sky. Even he...even my Floki... "Once you eat the seed, you'll become goblin king and all desire to destroy the Hollow will be gone. You'll be its thrall, just like your father and every other fool king before him."

"I can try. It's the only thing left to try."

"What are you going to do?" I asked, pushing Snorri into a roll as Odd began to fire more arrows at us, each arrow alight with magic fire. "Swallow it and fall on your sword?"

"The seed will try to heal any mortal wound if it even allows me to turn my blade on myself, but if I jump into the sea it will tear me apart until there is nothing left of me before the Hollow even has the chance to try." He answered and those words froze me to my very core. "Please, get me to an island. I just have to be close enough to the sea that I can make the jump before The Hollow can stop me."

"You'll die."

"Yes, but," he said, his voice small, brittle, "isn't that what I deserve?"

Something struck us broadside so hard Magni and I both went flying from Snorri's back. It was Cat. As Magni and I flipped through the air, I saw Cat's flyer and Snorri grappling with each other. Cat clung to her flyer's back. She stuck the long thin blade of her sword through Snorri's side. He screamed and tried to free himself, but Cat's goblin was as large and powerful as he was. The thing's mouth, beak shaped and filled with rows upon rows with teeth, sank into Snorri's throat and tore it away until his head came away. The goblin dropped what was left into the sea. 

Tears lifted up from my cheeks, carried by the wind as I fell and fell and fell. 

 We plummeted toward an island thick with goblins. They crawled over each other, tearing apart faeries, gnawing on feathered wings. Liber's...wings...his...other parts. They'd dismantled him, mangled him nearly beyond recognition. Were it not for the distinctive color of his hair on the severed head the goblins passed between them I wouldn't have known.