Odarth and the Widow clashed no less than fifty feet away, with a sound like metal grinding together—chitinous armor meeting indestructible dragon scales.
With the sword in hand, Maria chopped at the webbing around her grandfather. It was as hard as steel, yet Maria was able to sever it after many careful hits.
She took the old wizard into her arms, cradling his head in her lap. “Gramps! Wake up, Gramps!”
He was unresponsive.
She shook him. “Please,” she sobbed. “Please, Gramps, I need you. The worlds need you.”
Odarth roared, lashing out with her tail. It connected with the side of the Widow’s body, and the giant Arachnid slid to the right, her planted, clawed feet ripping up the stone floor with the movement. The Widow cried out, but it wasn’t in pain; it was the sound of a person hanging on to their last thread of sanity.
It gave Maria goosebumps.
Fire roared from Odarth’s mouth, making the witch’s goosebumps smooth back into regular flesh.
The Widow crossed her legs and deflected the hit.
Maria couldn’t believe her eyes; there was a shield between the Widow and Odarth.
Magic, she realized. Her magic has grown stronger. I can see it in her eyes and in the way she carries herself.
As she watched the two beasts battle, a raspy voice filled her head. She thought it might be Anwyn’s again.
“Maria…the tree…the Blood Tree. Jewel of D-Deception is in thereeee…m-m-my d-dear…”
‘My dear’?
The words registered in her mind, and she looked down. Gramps’s eyes were open—just barely. He tried to smile, but his face was too swollen and bruised for it to look genuine.
She smiled back anyway. “Gramps? Gramps, hang on for me, please. Just hang on.”
“The Jewel, Mariaaa. The Jewel!” His voice took on a force Maria would’ve thought impossible in his current state. He raised his arm, shaking, and pointed to the shadows on her right. She followed his finger with her eyes. There, shrouded in darkness but standing ominous and radiant, was the Blood Tree.
Ice filled Maria’s veins. It looked like it was staring at her.
That’s not possible. Is it?
It was.
“Go, Maria. I’ll be all right. Go!” Already, Maria noticed life coming back into the old wizard. She didn’t want to leave him, but she knew she had no choice.
Pushing herself up and easing Gramps’s head onto the old stone of the dais,
Maria started toward the Blood Tree.
She was almost there when Odarth cried out.
It was a horrible sound of grating pain and dread. Maria stopped to watch their battle, but it was over. The Widow slashed her legs at the dragon, catching her in the mouth. Odarth fell backward, sprawling and unconscious.
Dead?
If she wasn’t dead yet, the Widow was going to make sure she finished the job. Maria had to stop her.
Can I do both? Can I get the Jewel and help my friend?
The Widow’s laughter boomed, shaking webbing and dust from the rafters.
Maria looked back at the Blood Tree. There, in the heart of the trunk, lay the Jewel. She could sense its power, just as she had been able to sense her grandfather’s power from deep inside the lair. The Tree seemed to be looking into her soul, tugging at her mind, telling her to give into the Widow’s will, her rule.
“Never,” she swore.
My sword—Ignatius Mangood’s before me, Anywyn’s before us all. I have to use it.
She brought the blade up and slashed at the trunk. The wood seemed to scream in pain, and it hurt Maria to hear that nearly as bad as it had hurt her to hear Odarth’s screams. A great blackness seeped out from the gash. It was not sap, she knew, but the trapped souls of those the Blood Tree had consumed.
They roamed free, now.
Then, like a beating heart, a red light pulsed inside of the trunk.
Maria slashed again. And again. And again.
Inside was the Jewel of Deception. She reached in with her bare hand, only to catch herself before her flesh came into contact with the ruby. Gramps had told her the stories; she knew what would happen, what she would see.
Baring her teeth at the thought of all that darkness, Maria ripped off a piece of her shirt, which was already tattered and hanging, and grabbed the Jewel with the fabric.
She looked to Gramps. He was gone. Passed out.
“You cannot destroy me,” the Widow boomed as she crawled atop Odarth’s unconscious body. “I am the night. I am blackness. I devour worlds and spit out their bones. I am all. I am eternal.”
The monster queen raised her abdomen. A large stinger protruded from it, easily fifteen feet in length, dripping poison from its tip in large droplets.
Maria knew what to do. It came to her as swiftly as her nightmares.
The darkness. The creeping darkness in the world in between.
It was hungry.
“Leave her alone!” Maria shouted. Fear stole over her. It tried to seize her muscles and freeze her to the spot. She wouldn’t let it.
This was her destiny. This was what she was meant to do.
Everything before this moment—coming into her power, defeating Malakai and the Man in the Mountain and the Dragon Tongue and the Orc, mastering the Rogue Speech, flying atop Odarth the Bright—had led up to here and now.
She opened her bag and pulled the music box free.
The Widow’s stinger retracted, and her black lips hid her bared fangs. “My music box.”
“No,” Maria said.
She slid the wood on the bottom of the box open and put the Jewel inside. The power thrummed through her body without having to call on it. It was like nothing she had ever felt before, and nothing she would ever feel again.
Words came to her lips, ancient and dark words from deep within her mind; incantations she didn’t know, but that her ancestors had known before her. With the spells came a tearing sound, like steel beams through a wood chipper. If Maria had not been possessed by some power greater than her own, she would’ve been
