She watched, somehow still able to see as if it were happening only feet away as Eidolon’s eyes widened thoughtfully on the snarling forms of the dragons snapping in front of him. Hazel could see the knowledge grow to shine dark and wet in his dead eyes. Her heart sank even further. They had just given him another weapon to use against them and now that he knew of their weakness when he already had a fully stocked arsenal and they had woefully few.
With a terrible grin like a corpse smiling at her, he disappeared as suddenly as he had appeared in the first place, leaving only the remnants of black smoke and the taste of ash thick and choking in her mouth.
Hazel was left absolutely numb, shocked and appalled at the cataclysmic events that had just occurred, and her feet were rooted in place, this time from her own overwhelming fear. But then she saw the shift.
She cried out in fury as she watched the witches turn toward Jayce and Nika, their arms still outstretched in a defensive position. Frustrated, she ran forward to throw herself in front of them, struck by an inherent sense of déjà vu.
“Really, hasn’t there been enough violence? Enough blood shed?” She shouted at them, glaring until they finally lowered their arms. She ran to them, uncaring, and unthinking, she ran. Not even seeing through the terrified haze of tears as they shifted, but it was human arms that caught her, that held her close to them as she trembled.
“Hey, it’s okay. It’s going to be alright.” Jayce whispered softly, soothingly in her ear. Hazel looked around balefully at the carnage surrounding her. She could easily make out the forms of two council member lying motionless, lifeless on the once green grass. It was charred and black in places, still smoking slightly in others. The bloody wounds and burns were being patched or healed everywhere she looked.
“No,” She said solemnly, finally meeting their worried, cloud filled gazes. “No, it’s not going to be alright.”
Chapter 17
Furious, Hazel threw the ceramic pot of white chalk powder across the room, taking a deep breath as she tried and failed again and again to reach her powers, to access the magic she knew lay buried deep within her.
Doubts flew like bats through her mind, blindly in the darkness of her thoughts. After the terrible events earlier that day, she had never felt weaker or more useless than she had in that moment. Standing there, watching as the people she loved and cared about screamed in pain and terror all around her, and despite how hard she had tried, she couldn’t have wielded an ounce of the power that she knew resided inside her. It had been like throwing herself against a brick wall over and over. Useless, and painful.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, it was because of her. It was all because of her fool hardy belief that she deserved to be special. Deserved anything at all. Tears threated to stream down her flushed, blush stained cheeks but she fought them back tooth and nail, desperately fueling the anger that was so much easier to handle that the sorrow.
She could be furious at Eidolon for the pain he had caused and lived he had stolen, at the Guardian Mother for doubting her, even though she had just cause to as far as Hazel was concerned. But most of all she was mad at herself, violently, furiously angry at her own stupidity.
If only she had been able to accept the fact that she was weak, would never have tried to access her powers. None of this would ever had happened. It was all her fault. Every death, every fear and bloody wound and nightmare.
But then you would have never met Nika, or Jayce, a mall voice whispered. And that was the one thought that she couldn’t push away. She couldn’t block it out, and that made it even worse. Because despite it all, despite it all the terror and torment and heart ache, she wouldn’t give them up for the world. In fact, she might have done just that already if they couldn’t find a way to stop Eidolon before it was too late for them all.
Hazel threw herself furiously in front of the tall stand mirror, glaring hard at her distraught reflection.
“Come on, just do it. You can, you have done it before.” She reprimanded herself as she strained to reach her powers, to conjure anything at all that might help them, all the while remembering how far she had come the past few weeks with Jayce and Nika’s particular brand of help.