My guardians. They waved their leaves at me and I waited for them to get closer.
“Cut them down!” The Mage shouted.
I flicked my fingers and the tree nearest to her knocked her clean into the air with a strong sweep of its branch. Motioning my other hand, lifting the flat of my palm towards the sky, I guided a jet of water straight out the earth which landed in the small of her back bringing her back down to the earth with a bang that left her motionless. I turned for the Emperor. He paced towards me, his soldiers swinging axes.
My trees stood up straighter, their bark groaning with the movements. Olives and cypresses stood side by side.
“I won’t let you use me for your ill,” I shouted.
He laughed, throwing his head back. “Don’t you understand, Mae? This, you and me, it’s a dance we always play, and you always give me what I need. Always. I take what I want, and you heal the wounds. That’s our role. It always has been.”
“But if you didn’t exist there would be no need to heal the wound,” I shouted above the noise of the trees moving.
His laughed echoed at me, although I sensed the trees were trying to mute the noise. “No god of war?” He stepped closer, his soldiers swiping at my guardians, their bark crying out with every parry that hit target. “There will never be a time when the god of war doesn’t exist.”
Finally, I understood my role. I understood everything that had happened. Both before and now.
I understood with a gut punching stab why my own world was so full of hate and destruction. Heather had been right. The world Mae Adams had been born into hadn’t had a Maia, goddess of fertility and abundance.
It hadn’t had me for over two thousand years. Just destruction and disaster after disaster.
It had just had a god of war.
I glanced over at the Mage. And she still worked for him. That was why she’d sacrificed Phil. She was guiding the god of war to Fire Stone.
I needed to get home.
I needed to get back to Fire Stone.
I reached my hands to my side, placing them on the rough bark of my nearest guardians. With my touch on their skin our thoughts instantly fused into one. I could feel every molecule within them. As they could feel me.
My golden energy, free and wild spread across them. One after the other the trees connected their branches until my energy hummed between us all.
“Oh, Maia, you never learn that I always get what I want. Your protector always dies, and you end up doing exactly as I say.”
Not this time, I told the trees.
I didn’t know if Tristram and the girls were free of the palace. I could only hope that my trees and plants, and the water I’d summoned would help them if they weren’t.
I’d thought it—they would. My connection to nature was the very centre of my being. If I wanted them free, then it would happen.
Tristram wouldn’t die this time. I wouldn’t allow it.
Protect them.
I sent my call out and then stamped my feet on the earth. The trees copied me, stamping their trunks with such intensity the whole earth shook, so hard it felt as though the planet were bouncing in the solar system.
Again and again, I stamped and so did they. A fighting rhythm, boom boom, boom. Today Maia would bring destruction, but only so tomorrow she could heal.
The earth fissured. The water I’d called gushed higher and higher. Loud cracks filled the air as the palace began to bow under the weight of water and damaged foundations.
Higher and higher the water rose. When it hit my chest, I remembered falling into the swimming pool when I was five.
I’d been sucked under, my arms and legs not working.
Then I’d been on the side, my lungs gasping for breath.
Now I knew how. The water lifted me, cresting me on its bubbling wave. A bow of a tree reached for me, wrapping its branches tight around my waist and hoisting me higher, out of danger.
Up there, looking down at the water and the trees swing at the men with axes, I could see it all. Feel it all. Power coursed through my veins, singing in my ears. The sun shone down, bathing me in a heavenly golden glow.
“You can’t end me.” Claudius’ face was a bright and bitter mask of fury. “I will just find you again.”
“I know.” I nodded, the golden light within me brighter than I ever thought I’d be able to hold. “And next time I’ll be ready.”
The water climbed higher and higher, until his face was red, his stormy gaze furious. “I will find you, and I will make you pay.”
I nodded, splaying my arms out wide to the side. From my hand golden arcs lit the darkening sky. “Look at this as payment for what you’ve done to my descendants.” I grinned, devilish and cocksure. “Now think of this. Now they are free to learn and train. When we meet again, I’ll have an army on my side, too.”
The water boomed then, the building exploding as the pressure became too much. My guardian strode through the water, holding me above its murky depths. The gates to the palace washed down and the water ran free into the land below, where it was needed the most.
Rome would survive, but I’d just done my little bit to bring down the Empire. Never would they come knocking on the shores of my country again.
When my guardian placed me down on my feet, I landed in a steady stream of water. The tree’s leaves bristled at me and I smiled, placing my hand on its bark. “You want to go and join the others?”
Another shake of its
