Cozy Glow poured her magic into her wings. She snapped them down with enough speed to cavitate the air. A glaive of magical energy shot from her wingtips and slammed into the Secretkeeper’s chest. The golem let out a scream like stars being shredded in a black hole. Then its body disintegrated into a million fragments of stone.
Buried in the rubble of her defeated foe was a simple parchment scroll. The ink shifted before her eyes, cycling through a dozen dead languages before finally settling on modern Equish.
Cozy Glow reclined atop a smooth, flat boulder that had once made up part of the Secretkeeper’s stomach. She squinted at the words on the parchment. Then she squinted a little harder.
“Tranbu... trasbu... transus—ugh.”
She set the parchment down roughly and hopped down to her saddlebags. She scrambled back up the rocks, cursing around the pocket dictionary clamped in her teeth.
The scroll read, Stop reading. Save yourself. The blood of your loved ones and their yet-born kin of a thousand generations will wash over you. You will drown in it, yet you will not die. You will drown for a thousand years—
“Drama, whatever.” Cozy skipped to the next paragraph.
The heart of one wicked soul will never outweigh the harmony of collective. Only in legion will the wicked one devour the world. Three hold the key. Destroy them and consume their hearts. Only when you feel their sinew snap between your teeth and their muscles burn the pits of your stomach will your heart be—
Cozy paused and looked over to the pocket dictionary. “Trans... sub.. stan... tiated. Transubstantiated. Geez.”
—will your heart be transubstantiated into that which ends the world.
Beneath the warning was a rune in the rough shape of an ouroboros. Cozy Glow committed the rune to memory, then set to practicing it. She lashed out with her wing fast enough to cavitate the air. Magic coalesced on her wingtip. She drew the rune in the air. It glowed pink, then blue, then black. A winding trail of magic, sparkling like so many fireflies, appeared on the ground, leading towards the entrance of the forest.
All around her, the mists surrounding the Secretkeeper’s otherworldly home were fading away. She looked out hungrily at the night sky above her, all those millions of stars. They would be the jewels of her crown. They were hers. They—
The stones beneath her shifted. Cozy Glow went tumbling down the abdomen of the secret keeper. She smacked her head a dozen times on the way down. Each impact was enough to cripple her, if not kill her outright. Cozy Glow did not die, however. At every impact, a glowing pink shield appeared, absorbing the blow.
The final bone-jarring impact on the ground knocked the wind out of her. She sat up slowly, wheezing, bruised, but alive. The guide spell was also a shield. How convenient. She filed that tidbit away for later.
She bared her teeth at the dead Secretkeeper. She tried to scream at it, but all that came out was a squeak. The impotent sound cast her into a blinding rage. Her hoof found a small stone that had once been a part of the golem’s liver, and she chucked it squarely at the dead demigod’s head.