“Stop!” a voice called from above, barely heard over the ripping wind and teeming rain. “You’ll hit my son! We must go after them!”
James clambered along after Odin-Vann, off balance, tugged in the young man’s merciless grip. They clambered through a rippled gully of ice, sheened darkest blue with depth. Before them, James sensed Judith and Petra still battling, just around the nearest mountainous peak. He felt the drain of power as Petra struggled franticly to match Judith’s prime force. It wasn’t working. He sensed her desperation, the faltering quaver of her strength.
Petra’s element was the city, after all. She could not match Judith here any more than Merlin could.
Behind James and Odin-Vann, the canyon of ice wrenched, heaved, and gave a huge, splintering crack. Water boiled up, surged into the troughs of the frozen waves. James turned to look back, still stumbling in Odin-Vann’s wiry grip.
The Gwyndemere was breaking free into a field of shattered ice, even as figures on the deck attempted to climb down, to chase James and Odin-Vann. As he watched, the ship sloshed to starboard, cracking away from its icy bed, cutting off any pursuit.
Petra couldn’t maintain the ice spell. She had used the last reserve of her strength to force Judith away from the ship, to save those aboard. That, at least, seemed to have worked, if only for the time being.
The ice rumbled beneath James’ stumbling feet. Odin-Vann nearly fell, but maintained his fistful of James’ shirt, jerking him forward, into the howl of a dark ice valley.
Petra was there, facing Judith across the gully. Their magic lit the shimmering walls, reflected deep in the ice like prisms. Petra was backing away clumsily, shielding herself but no longer launching any attacks of her own.
Judith was like a dynamo. She flung jets of blinding light first from one hand, then the other, striding forward, still grinning, propelling Petra ever back, back, until there was nowhere left to go.
James cried out to her, but Odin-Vann yanked him forward, threw him down onto the wet ice, and kicked him in the side.
“How does it feel?” the young man seethed. “Being the weak one? Being the one about to be beaten!?”
“Stop!” Petra screamed, turning from Judith to Odin-Vann.
The moment her attention failed, however, Judith lashed out with her ice-tentacle arms. She slammed Petra backwards violently, bashing her against the slope of a massive, frozen wave. The water wraith raised her club-like arms and beat Petra again, and again, until she no longer attempted to rise. Petra fell back, her hair plastered to her forehead, dangling in wet ribbons. Her pale face and arms were the only things visible in the gloom.
“Use the boy’s wand,” Judith said, speaking to Odin-Vann but not taking her eyes from the prone form of Petra. “Let it be his last thought before the water swallows them both.”
“Nuh—!” James began, but Odin-Vann kicked him again, hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs. The young man was like a person possessed, maddened and blinded with poison avarice. He strode forward, raising James’ wand in his hand, sighting down it.
James tried to get up, to lunge forward and throw himself upon the crazed man. But his arms shivered with frailty. He could scarcely push himself up onto his elbows, barely lift his head to watch. He was feeling Petra’s deathly exhaustion, sharing it with her. And yet, even now, the cord between them thrummed, invisible but potent, making them one.
“It may be difficult for you,” Judith said, her own voice rasping with greed. She raised her chin and took a step back. “But Petra has nothing left to live for anyway. Regardless of what she says, she desires this. She wishes to die here, to sink to the depths, to be claimed by defeat. It’s what fate demands. Do it. Save her from herself.”
Rain poured into the frozen ocean wasteland. The storm raged, still strengthening. Thunder shook the ice beneath James. Water bubbled up through spreading cracks.
Odin-Vann’s fist trembled as he stretched James’ wand out toward Petra, sighted carefully down it. But even from his position on the ice, watching helpless from ten paces away, James saw that it wasn’t regret that made the young man’s arm quiver. It was anticipation. He was finally living the fantasy that he had harbored for so many years, to overpower and destroy those who opposed him. Petra had been his confidante, his one solace. But in the end she was merely an obstacle to true power. He would kill her and marvel at the feeling of it—of taking the life of a young woman that he had once called a friend—simply as payment to become Judith’s new host, for the immense power that his petty, broken mind had craved for so long.
Petra began to get up. It was a struggle. James could feel it, broadcast to him through the invisible cord.
“Don,” she said, and raised a hand to him, as if asking for his help.
“Avada Kedavra,” he barked, hoarsely, seeming almost to relish each syllable.
James’ wand burst green. The bolt spat, sharp as a needle, flashed the canyons of ice and curtains of rain into unearthly emerald daylight.
The spell struck Petra just below her throat. It blasted her back down again, slamming her against the ice hard enough to make her head jolt, her damp hair to flail and fall over her open, knowing eyes. The hand she had raised recoiled across her chest, and then flopped down to her side, where it lay suddenly still, horribly still.
She was dead.
James could feel it. The cord was still there between them, connecting them hand to hand, soul to soul, but in that instant her length had gone completely, finally dark.
James screamed. The sound was bestial, utterly bereft, empty of words. He drained his lungs completely and then seemed unable to draw another breath. His chest was locked tight, clenched with shock, and loss, and horror. He no longer noticed Odin-Vann as he took James’ wand in both hands, broke it, and tossed it away. He barely even noticed as Judith approached Petra’s dead body, reached down, and plucked the moonstone brooch from her jumper, smiling at it in her hand before pinning it to her own robe, claiming it as a trophy of smug triumph.
How is this possible, James’ mind raged. Petra had a Horcrux!
Only she didn’t, of course. Not in this timeline. She had travelled back to her previous self, but the dark magic of the Horcrux had not accompanied her. Here, she hadn’t yet created it.
And now she never would.
Together, the two murderers strode away into the darkness, the goddess of chaos with her new human host, leaving Petra’s last sorceress spell to crack and heave apart behind them, melting away, soon to drop her corpse to the depths, claimed by the very waves that she and James had once cheated.
And James would soon follow. Just one more casualty at sea, lost forever to the deep.
But he no longer felt weak. With Petra no longer summoning from the power that he had collected for her, his own strength returned.