Chapter 47: The Defiled’s Last Prayer
Petals flew around the fallen druid and the witch, as the garden was colored and soured into a frozen wasteland, a result of two rooted devastation between old friends. Foggy freshness filled the witch's nostrils, then into her lungs, and finally into her stomach, the poison inside her quivered like a beast in a corner as it was slowly devoured by the witch's magic.
The witch's breath unfurled a living mist of ice, as her face was marred with scattering frosts in her cheek. Feeling her lungs' beasts cowering and tearing away, she tapped her old friend's head with her staff, thorns sinking into the cloths as it threatened with no mercy against the protector who prioritised hatred over her duty, the druid's eyes still steady with no hints of resign or defeat.
"I will not, Demond." The druid casually lowered her head, the scent of ice dusts and flowers chipping away her lips. "Kill me if you need to. It will be the only way you could deactivate the runes."
"...don't bullshit me." The witch seethed her teeth, as the roses' thorns further sunk into Adil's skins, black blood now seeping that spoke of utter malice and corruption, as no signs of pain even registered for the Druid's expression. Demond narrowed her eyes in pure rage, no longer sorrowing but merely frustrated.
"Twenty years. Adil. Twenty years. I won't bother to lecture you about metrics, so I will at least spare you the time." Demond's staff pulsed as it pushed further into the druid's skull, the magic within mirroring the icy cruelty of her owner. "I will hesitate, yes. But if you insist to keep your stubborness, I would no longer bother to make Selene an orphan for the second time, you hear me?"
The absence of shouting, but merely a whisper of a merciless threat against her child shuttered even the silvery gaze of the Druid, the reality sinking in as the words bent and swriled even the redness that fueled her for twenty years, but...she nodded her head, the children's laughters that warped into cries, the sisters' playful groaning that unraveled into a smiley, silent acceptance as the flames engulfed their skins, stilled the redness once more.
"...just do it then, old friend."
The druid's calm embrace for death betrayed her lasting care for her daughter, tints of defeat texturing her words and tone. The witch scowled at the bitterness of the old hag's dishonesty, her staff further stuttering in its magic to echo the decaying, exhausted roots that bowed for the thorns, children unwilling to meet her master's eyes for their failures.
The icy vines quivered at the druid's flesh, the black blood tainting the pure, glittering ice, the majestic crowns of the icy rose now tarred in the blood of 'betraying' her old friend, but the ice witch hardly seethed, her throat buzzling of fogs instead of mudded poison, as she lowered her staff and stared coldly into Adil's silvery eyes, the ragged edges now tasted the blood not of defeat, but a hunger that belied the witch's shaky resolve, as they slowly sunk further into the druid's neck.