Kill your darlings, p.30
Kill Your Darlings, page 30
“Then by definition, that means Earth is beautiful.” He draws back, holding me at arm’s length. “You can only believe in the beauty of Solera if you had something beautiful to draw from.”
How does he always know exactly what I need to hear?
“If I’d known I would get to meet you,” I tell him, “I’d have killed myself way sooner.”
Asher scowls and squeezes my shoulders. “That’s not funny.”
“It’s kinda funny.”
He’s unimpressed, but behind him, Cendrion has a twinkle in his eye. Glad someone appreciates my humor. If you’re not laughing, you’re crying—and I’m done crying.
“Stay safe,” Asher whispers. He retreats to Rexa and vaults onto her back. She spreads her draconic wings, allowing bloody sunlight to filter through their membranes. A wave of grief tightens around my chest, forcing heat up my throat. Finally, the right words come:
“Thank you.” I thought this story was about me saving him, but in the end, he saved me. All my darlings did.
Not yet.
Another chill floods my veins. I’m not dead yet, but I’m hardly safe. The war on Earth is much less epic than the one I’ve sculpted here, but it will be far more deadly. The battlefield: my bathroom. The objective: reach my phone. Call for help.
Hell, I’ll even accept the gods-damned thousand-dollar ambulance bill if I make it. It’ll be a price worth paying if I survive the night.
I stretch out a hand, and Cendrion comes to me.
“I’m with you to the end,” he says.
“As am I,” says Valen.
Though my heart protests, I shake my head at Valen. “You’ll be needed on the ground to lead the troops. This is not a done deal.”
He frowns. “You can’t control them with your abilities?”
“My brain is… fuzzy.” I neatly avoid the term dying. “The narrower my field of focus, the better we’ll fare. You command the army. I’ll take care of Zalor.”
Connect to the Shadow Lord. Connect to my body. Return to the land of the living.
Valen doesn’t argue. He’s a military strategist. He gets it.
“I want you to know that this is the realest thing I’ve ever felt,” I tell him, gesturing between the two of us. “And it was nice to feel it, just once. I’ll cherish the memory always.”
There it is—the infamous almost-smile, visible only if you know to look for it. “You may well feel it again. If we win the day, you’ll have your whole life ahead of you.”
“I’m an obnoxious misanthropic jackass, incapable of normal human interaction, who wants a perfect Prince Charming to dote on me but doesn’t want sex.” My lips twist wryly. “I don’t think you appreciate how difficult it’ll be to find someone compatible on Earth. Asexuality is the least of my worries in that equation.”
“You know none of that is true,” he says.
My instinct is to argue, but I make the conscious decision not to. Valen is the smartest person I know. Maybe he’s on to something.
I’ve been listening to my dark voice for so long that it distorted how I view myself. It told me I was a monster, and I believed that without question. Now that the veil has been lifted from my eyes, I see the truth: I am a complex, multifaceted, beautifully flawed human. I’ve lost some battles, yes—but by all the gods of Solera, I vow those losses won’t be fatal.
“You are worthy of love, little author,” Valen adds. Something in the timbre of his voice breaks my heart. “Never forget that.”
“No promises,” I quip.
Hugging him again would shatter what little focus I have left, so instead I hold out my hand for a shake. Awkward and self-sabotaging to the end. But hey—it’s in-character.
His fingers, warm and calloused and comforting, grasp mine. He brings my hand to his lips and brushes a soft kiss on my knuckles.
Then he’s gone, striding away to return to the army, barking commands to the thousands of shifting bodies. They’re eager for a fight.
I’m dreading it. I’ve been delaying the inevitable, concocting a good and proper climax for our journey, but I can put it off no longer.
Cendrion crouches. My armor is bulky but lightweight, comprised as it is of hollow-honeycomb dragonscales, and I clamber onto his back with ease. A low growl gathers in his chest, building until it becomes a roar. He trumpets a challenge to the sky and launches from the cliff. The cacophonous cheers of the army follow on his wings, pushing us forward.
It’s now or never. I summon my strength, gather my focus.
“Zalor,” I scream, “I want a rematch!”
We wait for a response. The army’s shouting fades, leaving the air empty. Eerie silence fills the vacuum. I’m afraid I’ve done something wrong, missed my chance, waited too long—but I had to say goodbye.
Without warning, dark thunderheads erupt before me, blotting out the light. Just as the dragons teleported to the front lines with blinding speed, so too do the shadowtroops amass.
A pitch-black legion of winged demons materializes. Our enemies coalesce into a writhing hurricane of death.
Helming their army is the Shadow Lord himself. He rides no epic mount—he’s hovering on a cloud of darkness, alone and more terrifying than his horde of mind-controlled monsters.
“You know I don’t want to fight you.” His voice carries on the wind, making shivers crawl like ants beneath my armor. “I need you. I want you to live.”
“Then it seems we’re in agreement.”
I can feel confusion radiating from his powerful form. “If you wish to return to Earth, foolish wretch, just say the word. I’ll send you back, no questions asked, and we’ll continue our arrangement as if nothing has changed.”
“That’s the problem. Everything has changed.” I draw my sword and level it at him. “I’m officially rewriting the ending. You will no longer control me or feed off of me, you will no longer terrorize my friends, and I will not leave this realm until I know they’re safe from you.”
Zalor’s desiccated, parchment-thin flesh splits in a smile. “You’re in no position to bargain. Tarry too long and your time will run out. You can’t waste precious heartbeats on this battle-for-show, not when the hour is so late.”
He twirls a hand, indicating the lengthening shadows in the sky.
“I owe it to this world to give it the ending it deserves.” I draw a breath through my nostrils and channel my focus into a blade, an arrow, a deadly ray. “I owe it to myself.”
Brightness erupts behind the dark legion. Beams of lightmagic arc through the sky, encasing us in a glowing orb. I hear the terrified shrieks of shadowtroops and smile. The dragons made the first move. They’ve sealed off Zalor’s escape. He’ll be forced to confront me now. Or rather, I’ll be forced to confront him.
“You dare challenge me?” Zalor thunders, his voice shattering against my ears. “I am omnipotent. My word is law. You can’t defeat me—the only way to kill me is to kill yourself! You’ll never be rid of me.”
“That may be so. I can’t win the war, not really.”
He leers in triumph, reveling in my perceived weakness.
“But I can win this day. And I can win again tomorrow, if I try. I’ll wake up every morning for the rest of my existence and I’ll fight you, just to prove I can.”
The flesh over his black-fanged mouth curls in derision. “You’re fighting a losing battle.”
“It’s a battle worth fighting.”
My focus has sharpened to a molten point. I unleash my power on the world. A beam of lightmagic erupts from my sword, hurtling toward the Shadow Lord.
And with that, the battle begins.
Chapter 31
Connected to my magic, my world, I feel invincible. I’m dying, and everything is dying around me—but the thrill of an epic battle is, as it always has been, intoxicating.
The crush and swell of pitch-black demonic bodies is dizzying, but Cendrion navigates through them with expert precision. No longer does he hide his darkness—it’s out in the open for everyone to see. He uses it to deadly effect, glitching across the sky, phasing us in and out of existence to avoid enemies and attack hapless victims.
He banks sharply. I lean left as he tilts right, instinctively counterbalancing. I swipe at an enterprising shadowbeast that dares to dart overhead, opening its belly with my blade. It emits a horrible squeal and falls away. Cendrion straightens and I adjust. I’m like an extension of his draconic body. We’re a team, working seamlessly to forge a path toward Zalor.
My actions may have provided the Second Act Twist, but in my mind, Zalor is still the Big Bad. Perhaps foolishly, I’ve conflated connecting with him to defeating him.
A shadowbeast thraxwing, smaller than the one we faced in the Sky Archipelago, approaches us head-on, shrilling a dissonant cry. Its ribbed wings undulate. Its barbed tail thrashes. It opens its jaws and spits venom, emitting twin jets of pitch-black acid.
Cendrion pulls his wings in tight, keeping his humeri elevated. I’m sandwiched between them, kept snugly in place as he performs a flawless barrel roll.
The maneuver allows him to dodge the caustic liquid. He shoots past the thraxwing, twists, and attacks the creature from the rear. It shrieks in agony as his jaws close on its tail. He whips his neck, yanking the beast toward him. I lurch from the violent movement, squinting against the brightness of the blood red sky.
Cendrion releases the thraxwing’s mangled tail and retracts his neck like a cobra, aiming to strike at the creature’s head. I beat him to it. Hurling myself forward, I grab his spinal ridge for support and bury my sword deep in the thraxwing’s skull. It dies without a chance to emit another cry, going limp and slipping from my blade to fall into the lightless chaos below.
“Nicely done!” I tell Cendrion. I recognize this battle—this is a play-by-play recreation of the final fight in Book Five. Although that fight was a bloodbath for my army, I can’t help but feel bolstered. We’re in familiar territory. I know this story.
Now I’m going to change it.
Cendrion tucks his wings up again, bracing me as he rolls sharply toward a shadowgryphon.
“To the north,” I scream. Though my brain has identified this battle, it’s still laggy, like an old computer struggling to run a powerful program. I don’t have enough RAM to handle it—which is unfortunate, since this is the battle.
The battle where my darlings die one by one, until none remain.
My cry to Cendrion comes too late. The obsidian gryphon snaps its avian beak and catches him on the wing, as I knew it would.
“Don’t disengage,” I yell. “Push forward, trust me!”
Cendrion hisses and, thankfully, heeds my advice. He uses the gryphon’s movement against it and bowls it over in the sky. It wasn’t expecting that—it was expecting him to pull away. If he’d done so, it would have used its powerful beak to break the bones of Cendrion’s wing.
With the gryphon unbalanced, Cendrion and I strike. He kicks at its side and I stab with my sword. I don’t have the bandwidth to summon lightmagic again. My powers of concentration have shifted. Remember the battle. Change the ending.
Save your darlings.
The shadowgryphon convulses in pain and releases Cendrion. He wields darkmagic, bringing us to a lightless, senseless place before reappearing above the crush of war.
Cendrion’s wing hasn’t sustained too much damage, but he’s not in good shape. I hear his labored breath. He’s spent from wielding and fighting.
“I hate to say this,” he pants, tilting his head toward me as he flies on, “but there are too many demons.”
“We can take them,” I say, reminding myself of both Asher and Rexa. Unquenchable optimism in the face of despair. The spirit to fight against overwhelming odds.
As I sharpen my concentration, bringing the battle into crisp focus, my stomach plummets. It’s not just because Cendrion has dived to avoid another attack. Even with the dragons and their lightmagic on our side, we’ve barely made a dent in the shadowtroops.
To the west, an aerial battalion from the Mortal Alliance has risen. Sylphs, manticores, and water-maji have joined our airborne phoenix troops. The animal wielders of the four base elements work in tandem to repel Zalor’s winged forces, but their combined efforts are not enough.
I note, with a painful thud in my chest, that the darkness consuming the heavens has spread to the land. Shadows seep across the gleaming cliffs of the Midgardian Mountains, blanketing the ground beneath the warring factions. The sky has also dimmed substantially. Beyond the dragons’ magical shield, the pockets of visible red light have shrunk.
“We’re losing,” Cendrion growls.
“We are,” I breathe. But not to Zalor.
It’s me. I’m dying. And because I’m connected to Solera, my death will be the death of this world.
I was so sure that following this story structure would bring me where I needed to be. There has to be an answer. What if I concentrate on myself? Focus on sensing, feeling my Earthling body?
Though my brain screams at me not to disengage from the battle where my friends are fighting for their lives, my gut tells me it must be done. If ever there were a time to let go of my handholds and trust my instincts, it would be now.
As Cendrion dodges a crackling tongue of black lightning, I close my eyes. I cling to his scales. The clash of war grates on my nerves. Too much stimuli—I must blot it all out. This is a dream, and I can control it.
Except I can’t. I’m torn. My focus rips like a piece of flimsy fabric, fraying between my two worlds. I’m caught in limbo, wanting to stay present with Cendrion and ensure none of my darlings die, yet needing to return to my body so I can end this nightmare. So I can save myself.
I do want to save myself. I was unable to see the things I had, unable to divine a path toward a happy ending. I was afraid.
And… I’m still afraid.
It dawns on me that I’m terrified. Trapped in a pocket of darkness, eyes closed, the sound and sensation of the Shadow War lessens and allows me to feel what I’m feeling.
I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to suffer through a miserable life.
I can’t retreat, but I’m reluctant to advance.
The only way to change the ending is to survive.
It’s this moment, the moment I’m torn between my two realities—because it would be a disservice to say that this world and these characters aren’t real to me—when I feel a spark of something… Other.
I become aware, peripherally, of unpleasant sensations. I’m lightheaded, I’m nauseous. Pain from somewhere else is registering, hovering at the edges of my fuzzy, unfocused mind. I can’t process it because I’m afraid.
Rooted in my fear. Drowning in it. I don’t want to die. I’m not ready to die. I refuse that other reality, the one where I destroyed my own life. I want to take it all back because I’m afraid of dying and I am not having a good time anymore and I want to wake up, even though I’m terrified of the real world, I want to wake up—
“WAKE UP!”
The shout yanks me out of the in-between. My heavy eyelids peel open and a blur of red and black and gold burns my retinas. I shake my head, rattling my swollen brain around my skull. Echoes of pain and pressure shoot through my nerves.
I gasp for air. I focus.
Cendrion has broken through the shadowtroops and zooms toward the edge of the magical enclosure. My gaze snaps to the north. Zalor lurks there, hovering on his inky cloud. He’s not making any special effort to escape the dragons’ lightmagic enchantment—but neither does he engage.
Several shadowbeasts swarm in from the periphery of my vision, guarding their master. A pitch-black wyvern darts close, but a wyvern is no match for a dragon. Cendrion dodges, executing a perfect aerial loop around his foe and raking his talons down the other’s spine. The wyvern shrieks and drops.
Gritting my teeth against the pain of movement, I swipe at a shadowgryphon. It falls away from the bite of my shining sword, spiraling down to its doom. Cendrion works like a well-oiled machine, rending three more demons to pieces.
Now our path to Zalor is clear. Though we’re still a good mile away from him, I feel his gaze on me. A thrill shoots through me. He’s waiting.
This is destiny dovetailing. The battles have converged.
Connect to Zalor. Connect to Earth.
Save Solera. Save myself.
There’s a rushing, a roaring in my ears that has nothing to do with the battle. The roar bends, convulses, and becomes a rhythmic beat.
The beat of a war drum.
The beat of my blood.
I’d expected my heart to be pumping slowly, given my blood loss, but it’s galloping. My gut clenches and adrenaline, more corrosive than thraxwing venom, sears my veins. Why would my body do this? Why would it speed up my heart, vomiting more blood into my bathwater? It’s pushing me toward my death. How will I survive?
“You think you can change your ending?” Zalor’s voice reaches me, each word an arrow fired from an invisible crossbow, puncturing me. His voice is no longer his. It’s mine.
Just as I know him, he knows me. We’re connected, and he knows my weaknesses. Knows how to exploit them for his victory.
“Don’t forget, Impostor: I’ve had a window to your life, too. I’ve seen your soul. You’re a failure. You’re nothing. Thirty years of suffering, thirty years of blood and sweat and tears. Where has it gotten you? Do you think another thirty years will make a difference? Do you think you’ll magically become the person you wish to be?”
I’m frozen on Cendrion’s back, paralyzed by Zalor’s—my voice. The voice that screamed at me. The voice that drove me to violence.
He’s right.
“He’s wrong.”
My gaze shifts, flickering from the Shadow Lord to Cendrion. Though he valiantly wings onward, propelling us toward our fate, one of his amethyst eyes catches and holds mine.
I’m wrong. I’ve been wrong all this time. And I know that—I feel like I’ve had this revelation a hundred-thousand times in the last four chapters of this mad adventure—yet with each rapid fire heartbeat, I forget. My brain’s unable to focus, to remember the things I’ve learned along the way: that I am not alone. That there is hope for me. That I’m a fighter, always have been.
