Chapter Thirty-Four
It was not one creature, but in fact several: hundreds, thousands.
Sludges of black and lumpy, knobbly limbs crawled from the crevice, hissing with a sound that Circe could only describe as hunger.
What on Callistra was that stake and why was it sending out disasters with every movement?
Circe was thrown on her back as one of the creatures jumped at her, latching onto her arm.
She swallowed a scream, batting at the thing, but her fingers stuck to its skin like tar. The creature was only the size of her head, but it had jaws, and it was trying to close them around her wrist.
"Ah!"
She brought her arm to the floor and scraped it off, but in that time, five more had jumped on her, and more were on their way.
One bit down on her shoulder, and she hissed, scrambling for the stick she had shoved into her boot. With more aggression that necessary, she secured a grip and slammed it down on the creatures, getting rid of most of them as they rolled onto the ground. She hit one hard enough that it shook and exploded in a mess of dark goo.
That was when the stick snapped open at midway and turned into the staff that Rhoden had meant for her to have. Circe swung the weapon in her hands.
The creatures squeed, trying to move as the blunt edge of the staff skewered multiple bodies. While some exploded, others deflated slowly, like a balloon that was scratched rather than popped.
Circe smacked the staff down like it was a club, sweeping creatures out of the way. As soon as she had cleared some semblance of a path, she attempted to retreat back up the hill.
She had teeth marks in her ankle and teeth marks on her stomach. Deaths, why did these blobs of tar even have teeth?
Circe took a leaping step forward, but as she lifted her foot, a creature rushed to grab on, and she crashed to the floor, her chin smashing against the ground. Grass and soil smeared onto her face. She was almost certain she had dirt in her mouth.
"Enough!" she spat, whirling up. She slammed the staff down beside her. A shockwave reverberated from her palm, and as the creatures flew back a wide meter, Circe pulled herself upright and sprinted for the stake. Over on the other end of the field, Arche was struggling with the creatures just as much, having allowed them to create a pile onto her head as she knelt on the ground and flailed.
Circe ran for the stake, but too slowly did she remember the glimmer that surrounded it. Headfirst, she rammed into a forcefield, and then she was flung back so hard that she was seeing stars in the orange-pink sky.
A buzzing sounded across the field.
Circe sat up woozily, finding herself eerily close to the corpse of the third contender. She hadn't been able to get through to the stake, but she had nudged it upright once again with her magic, and the creatures had disappeared.
She stayed in her slouched form, waiting for the next threat, but nothing came. The wind stayed still, the trees continued whispering, and the boy kept bleeding out a little to the left of her, one of his hands across his chest and the other outstretched like he had a chance to get away.
There was no doubt his heart had stopped. She wondered how much more blood his body had left to expel.
Across the field, Arche had met surprise in the quiet as well. But she recovered faster than Circe.
Arche shot to her feet and pushed out with both her hands.
And Circe couldn't breathe.
She keeled to the ground, gasping and gasping but taking in nothing.
Circe saw only one way out. She clutched her staff tight and ran off.
She didn't know what the task was, and she didn't know how far this battle could go. All she knew was that magic lost its connection at a certain distance, and she needed to breathe.
"You can't run!" Arche roared after her.
Circe stumbled against a tree, and with that, the connection snapped. She inhaled greedily, her head feeling its rightful weight again. With a glance over her shoulder, Circe plunged deeper into the trees. Her toes stubbed against wayward roots, slowing her progress towards no destination at all.
She felt a breeze whip past her cheek.
Circe whirled her staff into the air as she turned, narrowly blocking Arche's flying knife. The blade cut a knick into her staff, but otherwise fell to the floor, harmless.
There was nowhere left to run.
Panting for breath, Circe stood with her feet apart, holding her staff up. She braced herself, waiting for movement.
Arche appeared in the line where the trees began, stilling.
"You make me sick."
She hadn't realise she was speaking until her mouth was moving, and then her raspy words were carrying through the forest, aimed like poisoned arrows at Arche.
"Spare me," Arche shot back. "It's not like you could understand."
Circe spun the staff in a circle, slamming it down beside her. "Understand?" she screamed. "You killed Embess!"
She slashed at the air with the staff and sent a ripple of concentrated magic. Arche stumbled but otherwise stood her ground, taking advantage of the weak links in Circe's outburst to advance closer.
"A few will always be sacrificed for the many." The leaves that were in Arche's path flew up, splitting a line for her to walk down. "Do you know who said that? Your grandmother, Circe."
"Killing your opponents isn't a sacrifice." Circe clenched her fist, collapsing the staff back into its smaller form. "It's cowardice."
Arche screamed in fury, and raised her palm at Circe. She was still too far to make true contact, but Circe felt the edge of her cloak rise up viciously and drag the rest of her body with her.
She was thrown off her feet, landing awkwardly on one arm.
"You want to talk about cowardice with me?" Arche screamed.
Hissing, Circe scrambled for her footing. Arche was coming closer. Distance, she needed distance.
Circe blew out a puff of air.
"Cowardice," Arche continued, undeterred as her body was pushed back by Circe's wall of air, "is being tucked up all nice and cosy in your little home, with your rich and powerful grandmother keeping you from the dangers of the world, while the people in your coven die from starvation."
Circe made a dragging motion with her arm and flung Arche to the side, throwing her deep into the forest. With the witch out of the way, Circe fled from the trees and skidded back onto the field. She looked around wildly. The stake, where had the stake gone? Over the rise of the hill—there.
"It's refusing to work with the fae," Arche was still shouting through the trees, "even when they can offer technology that produces food faster, that heats our homes, that cleans our water." Her voice sounded all-surrounding. Circe couldn't tell where it was coming from anymore. "Cowardice is telling my father that he just needs to find a job so he doesn't have to starve for his kids to eat. Cowardice is maintaining this backwards way of life for the sake of it!"
Her father. This had all been about her father.
Circe hadn't even known that it was starvation which killed him. She was never told.
She should have asked.
Circe dared a search through the trees, spotting Arche a distance away, trembling in her rage. Panicked, Circe kicked at the barrier surrounding the stake, trying to find a segment she could break through. Nothing. How were they supposed to fetch the object? Were they supposed to retrieve the stake, or was it simply a distraction for the real task of killing each other?
Surely they can't encourage us to kill one another, Circe thought desperately. Why would you kill other powerful witches to find the most powerful one?
It didn't make sense, but the Council of Eo wasn't known for thinking clearly in times of crisis.
Circe readied herself to run again, but before she could move, she was pulled backwards, her arms and legs collapsing like a rag-doll.
"Out of power already?" Arche mocked, her face suddenly appearing over Circe, upside down.
Circe gritted her teeth and swung herself upright, slamming her forehead into Arche's. She gave Arche a savage push with magic, but Arche had been correct.
Splitting the earth apart had taken a huge toll on the magic simmering in Circe. She was dangerously low.
How many more weapons is she concealing? Circe wondered momentarily, shaking the staff to its full length again. She lunged at Arche, stabbing one end at the other witch's stomach. In the moment that Arche took to recover, Circe punched her on the jaw, then again on the other side. It was satisfying, but had no effect in taking her down. Circe raised the staff, but Arche twisted from the hit and clapped her hands together, repelling the end of the staff like it had hit a magnet of the same charge.
Circe recovered promptly, ducking low and swiping at Arche's feet.
But the two girls had trained together in the same coven. They studied together in the same school and ran over the same exercises. After years of sparring practice, they were too familiar with one another's tricks, and Circe hardly ever trained on her own as Pasiphae did.
She hadn't thought she would ever need to, but Arche came prepared.
"Do you know what your problem is, Circe?" Arche hissed. "You're so damn powerful. But you never learnt control. You never learnt how to make it last."
Arche bent backwards, her hands touching the ground and curving her body into the shape of a bridge, before clicking back up in one fluid motion.
Circe didn't stand a chance.
The sky above them seemed to brighten as Arche kicked out, knocking Circe down. A bird screeched loudly—Circe could have sworn it was in surprise.
She tried to look for it in the sky, her head pouncing with delusion, and Arche kicked out again.
Grimacing, Circe tensed her shoulder, trying to manoeuvre the staff, but Arche snatched it and turned the weapon against her, pressing the long bar against her neck.
Circe was pinned down, her throat in the process of being crushed. Arche's morphed, twisted, enraged face was all she could see.
"You could have just not competed," Arche hissed now, spittle forming at the corners of her mouth. "You could have just stepped aside. You could have just let me have it!"
An immense pressure was building in her throat, growing and growing until Circe felt like she would explode. She kicked and she writhed, but she couldn't shake Arche off.
She couldn't get ahold of her magic. Circe dug and dug, but there was nothing but an empty cavern in her chest.
This was it. She had made it into the final two of the Divine, only to die here.
"Coward," Circe hissed, even though she couldn't get the full word out.
Arche looked smug, but her eyes were dark, the word striking at her heart.
"Winner," she corrected.
She pushed the staff harder against Circe's throat, and all Circe could hear was her own wheezing and the roaring of bird song around her.
Large, devouring dots appeared in Circe's vision, but she forced herself to look at Arche, to let her see what she was doing.
I thought I could do it— I thought I could beat her—
It was a different battle altogether to fight someone who had this much anger fuelling their every action. This was something Arche had been planning for years. Vengeance guided her hand as she pushed the staff down on Circe's throat; the desperate hunger for power kept her fingers still, her grip tight.
Circe thought she could hear the carriages of Deaths rumbling in to claim her, a sweet melodic jingling coupled with low bells.
But then Arche's gaze went dull—
And a blade came through where Arche's heart was, a small nub of silver stretching from back to front.
The staff slackened immediately, and Circe inhaled in one long cough, half-thinking that she had already died. Blood was spilling onto her, at first only a few drops, then a continuous spray as Arche jerked, clutching at her chest in bewilderment as if she could force the dagger out, as if she could pretend it wasn't there.
There was a grotesque squish as the attacker removed the blade. Arche collapsed forward.
Gasping, Circe shoved her away with weak arms, revealing the silhouette that stood over the two witches, hands bloodied from the attack.
Circe covered her eyes, shielding her vision from the high sun. She thought she had to be hallucinating, but then the figure reached a hand down to help her.
"Get up," Pasiphae said.