As Nicola approached she felt a sickly sensation crawling across her skin. A few steps away from Paul lay the form of Myrkur. Already Nicola could feel the overpowering waves of tainted power surrounding him, a rent within the fabric of life through which dark energy pulsed, touching everything and threatening to overwhelm her senses.
The energy was moving, flowing around the wound in Myrkur’s arm and knitting the ragged flesh together. Something else began to ring alarm bells within her consciousness. Forcing her sight outwards she saw that all around the Serenti were reforming, their bodies no longer disjointed and flickering. A sickening panic jolted her body. Rushing forward she knelt next to Paul placing her hand on his forehead and sending her power into his body yet she could not heal him for the dark energy was blocking her. Cursing, she withdrew her hand just enough to renew the arc of fire that surrounded them, but now the effort began to drain her.
“Is he okay?” cried Alex feeling Nicola’s fear and panic pouring into her mind.
Shaking her head in despair Nicola placed her hands around Paul’s head once more. In desperation she poured all the power she could handle into him yet she could do nothing. All she could feel was that he was dying.
“No,” Alex shouted just as Nicola howled in frustration and banged her fists on his chest. Then the whinnying of a horse cut through the chaos of roaring flame and howling wolves. Turning Nicola froze in horror to find Myrkur towering above her on the great black warhorse, his shadowed cowl facing her, filling her soul with suffocating, choking evil. Paralyzed, she watched in horror as he raised his right hand towards her. Red fire began to glow on his fingertips.
“Nicola,” roared a now familiar voice across the flames. She turned her head just as Falk jumped into the circle of fire, his right arm brandishing a broadsword, his left arm hanging bloodied and useless by his side. Lightning split the sky and Falk lunged forward, sword outstretched, the blade intercepting Myrkur’s fire and sending it stabbing up into the night sky in jagged forks. Falk stumbled backwards with the impact, his face lit with red. In the same instant another figure flashed into the circle, a woman dressed in white, her features set with grim determination as she flew at Myrkur from the other side, her sword pointing at his ribs. Spinning his horse, Myrkur parried with more fire, the woman rolling away from the barrage as it licked the ground all around her.
“Get us out of here,” Falk cried in fury and desperation. Nicola stared up at Myrkur, felt the power of his fury as the cowl turned towards her. She turned her head back to where Paul lay dying on the frozen ground now stained crimson red. Next to her she was aware of his sister, her mouth wide open and screaming. She saw all this but still she did not act for, despite everything, she could not abandon the one she loved to die.
“Nicola,” Falk roared in furious disbelief.
As if waking from a dream, she turned back. She saw Falk stagger as one of Myrkur’s guardsman raked his shoulder with a cruel-looking sword. She saw the shock and pain in the Gyr’s eyes as an arrow tore into her upper arm and between them now she saw Myrkur, rising like an avenging angel. His arm was raised towards her again and the red fire was already tearing through the air towards her. Despair took her then, smothering her in a suffocating blanket of darkness for she knew she had no choice now but to leave him and a part of her died.
Nicola closed her eyes, tears spilling from the lids, moisture beginning to stain her cheeks. Outside of everything she felt the power, the pulsing form of life that still flowed around them. She reached out for the weave she had made, expanding it to include Falk and the Gyr. She tried to take Paul as well but the weave would not hold on him. With a single tormented cry she opened herself up, the force roaring through her veins like wildfire. On the edge of it she felt Myrkur, his tainted fury trying to block her but he had not fully recovered and she knew she still had a chance. With one last effort she joined the weave she had made and then