Fairy Tale: Winter's Bite

Chapter 26: The Fall (Part 4)

Andromeda could practically taste Christopher MacRae's blood.

It was oozing from a nick on his left shoulder and was spotting his filthy, tattered tunic. Christopher may have mastered the art of fighting ambidextrously, but he wasn't using his left side effectively due to exertion, injury, or both. With his right arm, every chance he had, he cradled the rib cage below his left arm.

Canis Major, on the other hand, was not a disappointment. He had a superior weapon, the advantage of flight, and had spent his whole life training for this moment with the best instructors his inheritance could buy. He had yet to make a mistake, and even if he did, at this stage in the battle, her Gray Coats were practically fighting each other for the privilege to kill.

One by one, her soldiers joined the circle surrounding the duel, as if to close in on Christopher like a vise.

Andromeda's attention shifted to Joseph MacRae. He was fighting with strength and valor disproportionate to his size. With closer analysis, she noticed how the subtle flicks of his eyes could thwart her soldiers. He wasn't changing the course of the battle decisively in favor of the rebels, but he was getting on her nerves.

She stared at the white orb of the Imperial Scepter until it turned a blood red. After three waves of her hand over it, the orb emitted a thin strand of fire. She moved her hand quicker, and the strand lengthened. Then with the power from her scepter, Andromeda circled the strand into a massive ball of fire and let it float through the air and settle below the crystal chandelier.

Heads turned, jaws dropped, and rebel faces lit up with fear. Even the corpses seemed more lifelike as the fire flickered in their dead eyes.

When Joe glanced into the firelight, Andromeda caught and held his focus. She smiled at him to let him know that she could play mind games, too. Before she released the ball of fire into the crowd, she wanted to scorch his morale and watch his mental fortress crumble, piece by piece.

She moved the blaze closer to him, slowly, as both a threat and a tease. His eyes moved wildly, from her, to the fire, to the soldiers attacking him from every angle. The lapses in his concentration were putting holes in his invisible wall. The rebels who were once inside his protection were falling. As a final desperate effort, he had to use his body rather than his mind to shield his precious princess.

Joe wasn't a strong enough swordsman for even one of her soldiers, not by half, and his brother wasn't faring much better. The end was near for the MacRaes, and Andromeda threw back her head and laughed. 

Then, the palace doors opened with a crash. Before Andromeda realized what was happening, the ball of fire spun out of her control. It hissed into the wall behind her. The life-size painting of her father burst into flames. She turned to watch the only accurate likeness of her one and only king peel and distort, dropping into ash.

The ferocious fire surged along the row of paintings and licked into the wall that supported them. Andromeda rotated back toward the fighting rebels and sought his face, gathering her wits and powers to use against him. Only the King of the Unworthy would dare such an assault. 

Sure enough, Scott MacRae was charging toward the Grand Staircase with a clan of jungle barbarians at his side. He stopped next to Joseph MacRae, and together they diverted her foulest curses, her most treacherous hexes, her most heinous spells.

And when the Imperial Scepter flew from her hands and shattered against what was left of the wall, she retreated into smoke and shadow.

⭐️⭐️⭐️

For the first time, Chris could sense his opponent's fear. Rather than fight fairly, as he had done before, Canis Major kept lifting into the air, higher and more often. Time and again he plunged toward Chris with deadly momentum, his sword prepped to kill.