The Faerie Curses

Chapter Forty-Eight: Scars and Broken Dreams

Everything around me was wasting away into nothingness.

The plants and flowers in the royal gardens wilted and shriveled at the hands of the death curse blanketing the sky and its sobbing moonbeams. Songbirds plummeted out of the surrounding air, falling into the grass and twitching their legs until lasts breaths fluttered from their beaks. Even the trees themselves were being drained of life as their leaves lost all color and snapped away from their dry branches.

Beside me, I could sense Glen and Queen Titania's magic power fading from their souls, leaking out of their bodies as it grew harder and harder for them to breathe. The black mark of the curse throbbed starkly against the skin of their forearms, promising them an eternity of silence.

For a moment, not even the warriors battling in the burning city said a word. I felt the weight of a doomed silence once again plaguing my ears, too much quiet in the world for it to seem natural. Life itself, all of nature, seemed to be suffering in the noiseless seconds that ticked by in the corners of my mind.

The column of shadows continued to envelop the night, stretching across the black horizon as the ground trembled in fear beneath my feet. I watched as The Master stood in the center of it all, brandishing The Summer Scepter and The Winter Wand above his head as their combined power released the curse that would finally give him everything he wanted.

Everything he wanted, was death.

Oberon shattered the stormy silence, coughing up blood that spattered against the grass where he sat clutching the gaping wound in his stomach. His limbs were splayed and bent in unnatural angles as his neck snapped back with barking laughter.

"You can't escape," he rasped, his skin shimmering grotesquely with slick blood and ink tattoos. "My master has control over every life in the realm." His gaze rested on Diandre and he ran his tongue over his teeth. "Even you will get your punishment, traitor. I don't need a curse to give you some more scars." The sprite's head tilted as he pondered to himself. "I'll try cutting a little deeper this time, maybe severing some limbs nice and slow until you begin begging me for mercy like you did when you were a sniveling, pathetic child."

Diandre clenched his fists, but I planted myself in front of him firmly.

"You won't touch Diandre ever again," I growled at Oberon, my voice dropping threateningly low. "I'm not going to let you hurt him. He was tortured once without me there to protect him, and it's not happening again." My shoulders heaved as I felt my body begin to weaken. "I'll take you down with me if I have to, you damn bastard."

Diandre rested his hand on my shoulder.

"Marissa-" he began, his face swelling with emotion.

But his words were lost and lingered helplessly in the air as The Master lowered The Objects of Power. All at once, the massive pillar of shadows crawled its way down from the sky. In a flash of blinding brilliance, it crackled in the air like a booming thunderclap before blasting back into the wand and scepter that had casted it.

I could sense The Master smirking down at the Objects of Power in his grasp, as if he could see our failure mirrored in their surfaces.

"The curse has completed its infestation," he chuckled darkly, his voice echoing behind his iron helmet. "And to think that hope of victory was just in your reach before I simply snatched it away from you." His armored fingers closed into a fist. I couldn't help but look into his amber eyes, though, and wonder if his fingers were holding something else that seemed to haunt him.

"How could you?" Titania seethed, struggling to brace herself against the rotting bark of an oak tree as the death curse poured into her body. "How could you do this to all my people?" Tears of grief and rage sparkled in her green eyes. "How could you do this to the children?"