Mountain [18+] ✔️ Complete

Nineteen • Crater

I woke up in a crater, disoriented and sore. It seemed as if the others were just waking up as well, and we all looked around at each other, wide-eyed and shellshocked. We were silent as we climbed out onto the grass, looking around us.

There was no sign of the demon, nor Marius. I closed my eyes, falling into that meditative state easier than ever before, casting out my senses across the whole Mountain. There was nothing. Well, there was the thrumming of the earth, the powerful life force singing its happy hymn over being free from the darkness that had threatened it.

But there was no being of darkness or light, no trace of either of the beings that we'd just destroyed.

I turned around, my hands coming up to my face, and the others' eyes were fluttering, as if they'd just been doing the same thing, trying to feel with their magic. I swallowed hard, and took a deep breath.

Archer took my hand, and Damien took Lyla's. She and I linked the chain, and we started to walk.

We went back the way we'd come, stopping to rest frequently. We didn't speak, each in our own contemplative state. Whenever we came across something that had been distrupted by us or the demon, I helped the earth heal itself.

Three days later, we came to the clearing, that first campfire we'd shared, telling ghost stories. It seemed so far away now, so gone. The only proof that we'd been there at all was the little charred divot where Marius had made our fire. He'd said he would come back and fill it back in once we were gone.

I extended my hand, tears streaming down my face as I closed the hole, the grass sprouting happily up in its wake. A little bit of my heart stitched itself back together in the process, and I took a deep breath, turning back to my coven.

It was time to go home.