Warning: This chapter may be upsetting to some. If you are not in a space capable of high tension scenes and death please consider waiting a week or two until your Wylde Magic reading experience can end on a calmer chapter. I love you and I do not want to cause spiked negative emotions that could do harm.

Bara Khalja.

It was like the darkness parted, revealing him as I climbed just high enough on the treacherous, vine-covered valley slope. The fighting never stopped around us as the vegetation underfoot tried to catch us off-guard. The mist still chased after us, cold and silent as the Winter court, making me wonder if it was truly a product of the nooks and crannies of the unclaimed Wyldes, or something else entirely. 

Baeleon was ferocious in his pursuit of anything he could call an enemy. Thain and Eberon fought beautifully in synch, keeping a distance between our group and any Winter foes that was almost comfortable. Many of the living enemies were weary of Thain and the reputation that came with him, not to mention Baeleon and his terrifying power. But the dead that rose to fight, they had no fear to stop them from their pursuit.

Overhead, all could see the wingbeats of Spaulder as he circled the skies above through the trees and pushed a strong wind down over our foes. He stayed well away from where our side was rising to the top of the valley slope, but judging from where he rained down his fire and roared his terrible roars, the enemy stretched far beyond what we could see with the top of the valley still under siege.

Schula grasped my hand tightly as we pulled even with each other, and the clatter of battle around us fell away. Because none of the rest of it mattered in that heartbeat. Everything else was so insignificant in that moment as I felt true rage. Hate for another person as he sat on his horse before me, sharpened teeth stretched into a sickening grin as he stared back with his cold, empty eyes.

Bara Khalja.

The breath was sucked out of me when he Lifted the gnarled white wooden staff overhead and began to murmur. Just as he did on Eberon's estate when he formed that bubble that shielded him.

"No!" I screamed, my hands flying to my sides, slipping through Schula's desperate fingers as I reached for whatever magic I could grasp. "Not again!"

But Bara Khalja just laughed as he looked at me, finishing his murmurs of dark magic and bringing the staff down in a swish.

With a grunt, I thrust my fire at him, trying to slip an attack in under his shield. It shattered against his magic, dulling the light of it for a moment before falling apart. I choked out a defeated cry, having thrown so much into it that I needed a few heartbeats to gather my strength back up.

Baeleon roared nearby, shoving his trident through the chest of an enemy as his head snapped to us.

"Are you the warlock?" Baeleon demanded.

Thain didn't even wait to make a move. Quick as lighting, he stalked around behind Bara Khalja and slashed at a risen dead incubus. The thing engaged Thain's claws with its horns as it reached to grab my dark fae's arms. 

I barely registered the motions in a flash, when Eberon was on Bara Khalja's other side, slicing at the barrier the warlock had raised. The moment Eberon's blade struck it, the magic ejected the golden fae backward with an angry scream.

"Eb!" Schula yelled, reaching out a hand as ice shot through her and across the ground, trying to creep up the bottom of Bara Khalja's barrier.

I raised my own hands to join her when something solid hit my head from behind. A sharp pain was delayed in setting fire to my skull as I fell forward onto my hands with a cry. A high pitch screeched in my ears, deafening all other sounds in an assault that left me disoriented and in pain.

Thain roared, but I felt it more than heard it. He lunged, tearing through his current foe and shoving himself against Bara Khalja's barrier, as though it was an insignificant obstacle in the shortest path between him and me.

"Wren!" Schula screamed, but all I could see was the movement of her mouth as she yanked me to the side, a large club falling on the ground where I had just been hunched over.

My eyes flew up the length of it, connected to a giant, devilish looking creature with black skin and rough plates all over its body. It looked more like a fae than anything else, but not by much it was so foreign. The long arms swung a huge club of wood with bits of iron shoved in it. Admittedly the iron would make it more hazardous to the fae than to me, but getting hit with a club half your size would injure anyone.

My ears still rang as I clamored to my feet, but the horrid thing before us was already being dealt with. The prongs of Baeleon's trident punctured its chest in a sputtering mess and pulled back out with a wet squelch. 

Schula said something, I didn't know what it was. I was pulled to the side once more as the angry thing with the club screamed, the vibrations shaking me but still unheard outside the high pitch in my ears. 

Baeleon wasted no time in finishing what he started, but from the side of my vision, I could see a whole new calamity unfolding that pulled my attention sharply.

A massive form from the sky landed with a heated thud, breaking through the trees and shaking the ground. Landing and unbalancing many of us who were still trying to navigate a treacherous slope. Spaulder's bulk dwarfed even the most vicious creature before him, and I could even see a good portion of him where he stood. That either meant we were getting close to the top of the valley, or it spoke volumes to just how big a dragon truly was.

Fire. Heat. A blast of Spaulder's fury roared to life so brilliantly that the flames licked the sky and threatened to ignite the unclaimed Wyldes. Screams, fighting, the clatter of weapons, and the roaring of magic. I could picture all of them, despite the silence that now settled in my ears. 

Spaulder looked around wildly, a beast searching desperately for something until he scanned the edge of the valley to where Schula and I were. With a roar, he shook my bones and began to rush at us, Bara Khalja in his way.

And the warlock must have sensed it because even in the safety of his barrier he looked back to watch the dragon's rapid approach.

Baeleon took the moment of distraction to free his trident from the body of the giant clubbed fae and level it at Bara Khalja's heart.

Like Eberon's, Baeleon's weapon clattered against the magic and a shock of impact slammed back against the trident. But the Autumn king held firm.

THe ringing in my ears subsided, my left ear began to process sounds again, though muffled. At least I could hear Baeleon's roars of anger as he shoved his weapon against Bara Khalja's magic.

"Where is that bastard king of yours?" Baeleon screamed, drawing Bara Khalja's eyes to him. "Where is DuVarick?"

The barrier flickered. A subtle motion of surprise in Bara Khalja's eyes was the only indication that he was caught off guard as he maneuvered his unnervingly steady horse. Still within the confines of his magic bubble, the warlock raised his staff to point at Baeleon while facing Spaulder and holding out his open palm in that direction.

It all happened so fast.

The army at Spaulder's feet must have slowed him down to some extent, because he roared in fury and frustration as he blazed more fire around him. His charge at Bara Khalja slowed, but not stopped.

Baeleon yanked back his trident, the strange light that he wore through the darkness of the mist seeming to consume him, amplify him as he reared back and plunged his weapon into the magic of the warlock once more. I was astonished to watch the prongs thrust just inside the safety of the barrier, marveling at Baeleon's strength as the barrier reacted, bucking and hurling energy back up the weapon and into Baeleon.

Thain and Eberon were so consumed by keeping the area around us clear of fighting that they could do little else. Schula and I clasped hands again and began hurling an assault at the things around us. Enemies both dead and alive that would encroach on Baeleon's attempt at Bara Khlaja. 

On the other side of the warlock, Spaulder's furious lashing told me he was given more to deal with than before, and when spikes of ice shot up and tried to enshare his back leg, my heart pounded at the amount of magic and control that would have taken, considering Spaulder's size. Not a lot of beings had that kind of power, and here in the Wyldes, most of them sat on thrones.

While I was focused on Spaulder and fighting off more creatures, Baeleon cried out in rage. My head whipped around just in time to see him thrown back a little. Nothing like Eberon was, but it still tightened my heart to see someone as strong as the Autumn king fail to pierce Bara Khalja's defenses.

The warlock was also still with concentration. Whatever he was doing with his hand out and his staff up, he was murmuring something. Someting big. He had been at it for a few heartbeats and it terrified me to wonder what it could lead to.

"We have to stop Bara Khalja!" I yelled to Schula, my own words muffled in my hearing.

"What about Spaulder?" She called back over the sounds of battle. Her eyes widened as she looked over my shoulder, raising a hand and shoving it past my head to shoot ice at whatever she had seen.

"Bara Khalja is about to do something big," I said. "He's been preparing some kind of spell for-"

The earth rumbled.

My wide eyes flew to the warlock in his shield, thinking he was the cause of the tremmors. He wasn't.

Great shards of earth and stone jutted up in terrible spikes that rose high overhead, and they were all concentrated on Bara Khalja. The surprising assault from below pierced Bara Khalja's defences, if he even had them in the ground to begin with. Several spikes plunged upward through the horse and straight through Bara Khalja himself. His thigh was pierced, part of his torso near his back and out his shoulder, and another spike caught his uninjure'd sides's foot.

"Warlock!" Nassir boomed, raging forward and looking more terrifying than I had ever seen the gentle fae. His face smeared with hate, the eearth around him mishapen with every step he took toward Bara Khalja. He wasn't even watching the rest of us as he pulled himself to the shield.

"You will die today for what you did to Lark!" Nassir roared. He flung his hands down into the stone and earth as if they were no more than water, raising them over his head once more in a show of magic that raised mores pikes into the flesh of Bara Khalja's horse and rider.

It was a grotesque sight. Dark blood seeped from the stone spikes through man and horse. The poor beast below the warlock sagged with death and pain, but it's eerie demeanor from before remained as it stayed calm through the whole process. It's eyes never rolled, it never made any sounds of distress. My heart hammered. Was this it? Had one of our two terrifying foes been slain?

When Bara Khalja smiled, those sharp, filed teeth coughed out blood that dribbled down his chin and smeared his white bone paint. My stomach flipped over, causing me to be sick as we watched the warlock lift a pierced arm off of a stone spike and flick his staff downward.

The horse began to reshape itself. Bones correcting, strength returning. I could see it now. The horse he rode was no different than the risen dead that Bara Khalja summons. Another puppet of flesh and bone for him to manuver.

Bara Khalja himself began moving off of the spikes, laughing. I could only imagine the sound of his body releasing from the spikes in wet sucking sounds, and I was almost thankful for my affected hearing just then.

The moment he had freed himself enough to properly sit on his horse, he spoke again. This time in that language I didn't know, and when he struck the butt of his staff to the ground below, a burst of force pushed out all around him, knocking Schula and I over.

Tremmors. A great shaking of the earth unlike anything Nassir had just done rumbled through the valley. Panic from both sides ensued, apparently Bara Khalja didn't bother warning his own side of whatever he was doing.

"We have to move," Schula grabbed my arm and we scrambled to our feet. "We have to get to Spaulder!"

I nodded, pulling up and getting away. Thain and Baeleon could be seen lashing out at the warlock's barrier. Nassir, in a fit of directionless fury, assaulted him again as well. This time it would seem Bara Khalja was ready for the attack from below, and little of the spikes made it through as everyone manuvered the great shaking of the valley on top of whatever else they were doing.

Backing up from Bara Khalja meant more fighting. The risen dead that did his bidding were unafraid of the tremmoring earth, though it still tried to topple any who moved upright.

Ice and fire blasted through flesh and bone as we reached desperately for the third piece of our soul. Spaulder. 

Being so big, he was easy to spot. That went both ways though, as the enemy could easily find and swarm him. Ice, vines, magic of all sorts tried to ensnare his feet. He was far too powerful for any of that to stop him, but my heart was struck with fear for him when he said himself that he was not at his full strength yet. This shift was out of necessity, and the transformation surely took a lot out of him as well.

Fire. Angry, raging fire never stopped burning before Spaulder as he shot it at anything that moved. Cosntantly moving around to free his feet from the tricks of the Winter fae were a painful annoyance that distracted and enfuriated him furthur.

Schula and I had to get there. To help him.

But what happened before we could, was the final tremmor of earth.

All fell down before it. The shaking so furious that enemy and ally alike were knocked together like rattling beans in a pan to dry. No direction, no control over where we toppled and who we knocked into. Schula and I hugged each other tightly as it happened. In a brief flash, I could even see Spaulder flapping his great wings to help keep him as steady as possible before he ended up toppling sideways. The entanglement around his feet not helping his balance.

"What is it?" I cried, still only hearing my own muffled voice.

Schula screamed something back, though I didn't know what it was. But we didn't have to wait long before the teeth appeared.

Thin, sharp teeth jutted from the rim of the valley. Unrecognizeable at first due to their size and the horrid implications of it. Any one of the yellowed teeth was just as tall as any fae I had met. 

Trees pulled away by the root, the dark mist climbed higher and higher on the valley slope until it choked and tangled all of us once more.

I could barely see again, but I did spot Bara Khalja perform the same trick he did before where he disappeared to safety without a trace but his lingering army of risen dead.

"Spaulder!" Schula screamed, this time I heard it. 

My head turned to see our dragon, and it shot full of fear as I watched the ice crawl over his prone body.

Thick walls of it, crystal clear and solid. Freezing him from the legs upward.

The tremmors began to soften and we could scramble to our feet, rushing now to Spaulder's side.

More fighting. More fury and sadness and fire. Fear. Fear of what was happening, of who I might lose before the day was out, and fear of DuVarick swirled up from my belly to choke me.

Schula took the lead as we pushed forward, reaching close enough that we could try to get Spaulder's attention. But he was distracted. Lived at the assault on him as he thrashed, bit, broke at the ice. Spilling fire all over it, melting it as fast as DuVarick covered him again.

"Spaulder!" I cried out.

If he heard us he was too busy trying to stop the climbing ice to respond.

A nymph charged at us and Schula fought it off. From the other side, I lashed out with purple and red fires in turn at a unit of dark, thorny dryads.

A flash to the side, we found where Bara Khalja had gone.

"Look!" I pointed. Schula's head turned to see, her fraying braid swinging around as she did. 

Thain and Eberon were unleashing an onslaught of distracting attacks on Bara Khalja's barrier. Nassir was behind them, raising earthen spikes all around as he watched their backs and tried to sneak in his own attacks when a moment allowed. He was tiring, I could see it. It was more than he had ever managed to do in any past battles we've been in. Running on only the rage he felt at Bara Khalja for killing his beloved triquetram, Lark.

Another tremmor. We crouched down and held onto whatever we could to stay upright and stable, but this one was even more ferocious than before. 

The great teeth could be seen moving, and atop one of them was Baeleon.

With power, so much power, he was a lit beacon in the dark mist. wedged between two of the teeth and pushing them apart as much as he could, he was screaming down at his army, ushering them to him, giving them a light to the only escape from whatever could possibly have a maw the size of a dark valley, and the teeth were slowly moving to close on a hinged jaw.

The implications were catastrophically, paralizingly, terrifying. Something that large slumbered int he unclaimed Wyldes, and could swallow a valley of fae.

"Thain!" Schula screamed, catching the dark fae's attention. 

In a flash, he looked as Schula pointed, then he bound off to help his king. Nassir stepped in to resume the assault where Thain left off, it was a seamless transition.

Meanwhile, Schula pulled us to our unsteady feet and we made our way to Spaulder.

At his feet stood the one we knew we would find behind the attack. DuVarick.

Schula froze for a moment, and then in a rage she rushed forward with me only a step behind her.

Ice, fire, we threw it all at the mad king. Of course he was surrounded by other fae, but we might not get a chance like this again while DuVarick's concentration was elsewhere. 

Spaulder roared in fury, whipping his head around and still laying on his side as the ice trap pinned his legs and the tremmors made it hard for one so massive to stand upright again.

Schula screamed as she rushed in, blindly attacking anything between us and our target. I followed, focusing more on keeping her alive than the attack.

In that moment as we approached the mad king of Witner, several things happened at once.

A large vine caught my leg, and I fell hard on my side. Still partially deafened, I was disoriented. Reaching out with my fire, Schula was now too far away so I targeted sometihgn else I could help with. Throwing fire on Spaulder's closest ice-covered legs.

Spaulder noticed, and in a triumphant roar, he sprayed more boiling fire over the places I wasn't already working on.

Schula, in all her rage, unleashed an assault of sharp ice at DuVarick. It distracted him just enough from Spaulder that we gained the high ground on freeing his trapped body.

Behind us, the tremmors began again with a jerking shudder. Screaming. Desperate, angry screaming.

I turned my head just in time to see the horrid sight.

Bara Khalja was gone again. Where he went, it would seem even Nassir and Eberon didn't know, because they were now running to help Thain and Baeleon pull more people from the valley's great mouth.

The teeth jerked out, revealing a slimy gray gum-like surface. Thain was carrying two injured fae out when it happend.

And it happened quickly.

Once the teeth were fully freed of the earth and trees and vines of the valley floor, they snapped. A long, black tongue reached out and caught Baeleon by the leg. It pulled him above the center of the valley of teeth. 

Screams. Desperation facing a horrid death as limbs, fae, magic, tried to crawl out of the closing teeth.

Baeleon raised his trident in a brilliant flash of light and power, slicing the tongue that held him captive. It didn't move right though, it almost seemed to be made of the black mist that blinded us all before.

I watched in horror as the tongue moved, re-formed, and pulled the raging king down. Down, down, into the dark maw. The screams of the dying a chorus to the ending as the teeth snapped shut with a shuddering thunderous snap.

Thain raged. Ramming himself into the walls below the teeth with everything he had. My heart tightened. Eberon and Nassir were either helping him or pulling him away. I couldn't tell. 

Fat, hot tears fell down my face. All of those people. Their king. Thain's king.

Gone.

The way he slammed himself against the valley of teeth broke my heart in two until I was pulled back to my own desperate situation.

The shaking reached us, and I was thrown onto my back with a hard thud. I screamed out, but it was still muffled in my ear that had regained sound. 

More tremmoring, but this time from in front of me. We made enough progress that Spaulder freed himself. Shaking his legs free and beating his great wings, he brought his head down to bite at DuVarick.

But that's when I saw where Bara Khalja had run off to. 

Raising his barrier on his horrid dead horse, Bara Khalja now had DuVarick in his grasp. Schula assaulted the barrier with everything she had in her, but she made no more progress on it than we did before.

The terrible tremmors started again from the valley of teeth. 

I climbed to my feet, my back aching sharply and possibly having re-broken the ribs I injured in the battle at mila's cabin. I wheazed as I scrambled to Spaulder's side.

Bara Khalja murmured his strange words.

"No!" I screamed, reaching out as if my fire could cross the distance in time.

He raised his gnarled white staff.

"NO!" I screamed, this time echoed by Schula.

And as Bara Khalja lowered his staff, he disappeared in a flash of light with DuVarick in tow.

"Stars curse you!" Schula screamed, running to the place where the evil pair were just standing a heartbeat ago.

Spaulder roared, and a moved to a protective stance around Schula and me. I couldn't understand why at first, the shock of it still hitting me.

The dead. There were so many around us. And the living Witner army too, but the true hazard now was the dead.

All of them rose. Anything we had felled since the start of the battle now raised in a sickening fresh army.

'We must leave this place, little ones,' Spaulder said.

"No!" Schula cried out desperately. 

I grabbed onto her, and Spaulder scooped the both of us up with one massive arm. My stomach flipped at the motion, and it was nearly the last straw that would make me lose my breakfast. 

With several strong wingbeats, Spaulder rose us above the undead. An assault of magic and arrows and spears chasing us as he glided over the battlefield.

i was too shocked to watch. I held onto Schula as we both cried. Clinging to each other and to Spaulder.

I registered when he dropped to the ground again, collecting Thain, Eberon, and Nassir. We were all shifted to his great back, holding onto the rough scales for dear life as Spaulder pushed off again.

As we flew away, all I could see below were the unnatural army of risen dead, and the Autumn soldiers that we had lost.

Slowly getting back up, just like the Winter ones.

I closed my eyes in lost sorrow. Even our own were to rise and fight against us, and now we had no king.

And all we could do was fly away.