Though the horse was quick and sure-footed, it took all of Owen's concentration to stay in the saddle. The few riding lessons he had taken with Jacks hadn't exactly made him a star equestrian.

His legs burned trying to maintain his grip, slipping first one way then the other as he tried to keep the horse on track towards the carousel. A spirit slammed into the kelpie's side, pinning Owen's leg between two bodies. He roared in pain, slashing out at the spirit who had hit them, but his knife met empty air and the horse was already correcting course and charging off again.

Reins slick with sweat slipped through his fingers, the horses mane stung his eyes, and Owen crouched as low as he could in the saddle to make himself a smaller target.

An orange fireball went whizzing overhead, signing his hair and causing the grey gelding to rear and scream. Slipping backwards over the beast's hindquarters, Owen flung his arms around the thick neck, shoulders straining to keep his weight in the saddle. The kelpie came back towards the ground, Owen's teeth clacking together on impact. Blood filled his mouth where he had bitten his tongue, but a quick check revealed his teeth were intact. He spat to the side, freeing one hand to wipe his mouth.

Gathering the reins, he kicked the horse into motion again, gasping as it instinctively jumped to clear a fallen body. As they sailed over it, Owen found himself looking down into the sightless eyes of Fauna, the second of the twin forest spirits. Her mouth was pulled back into a snarl, her vines trampled around her, and then she was gone.

Owen swallowed hard, tasting more copper, and refocused on their gallop through the battle. They were halfway to the carousel, and the fighting was thinning out in front of it. Just a little farther and they would...

The kelpie slammed to a stop and Owen's nose connected with the back of the beast's head. A sharp crunch followed by a wave of pain and blood and Owen's world went momentarily dark. Blinking away the flashes of light, he looked over the horse's head to see what had caused its sudden stop.

Atlas stood there, seeming oblivious to the fray surrounding her.

She looked half mad with blood dripping from the corner of her mouth and her torn shirt hanging off one shoulder. Her dark, red-tinged hair was in disarray and her dark red-tinged eyes burned with all the intensity and danger of a molten core.

"I should've taken care of you a long time ago," she snarled. She advanced slowly toward Owen and his mount. "All of this is your fault."

Steel glinted in her hand, and Owen knew given the smallest chance it would end up buried in him. But the girl was unmounted and tiny; she stood no chance against a charging kelpie. And even after all she had done, the thought of Atlas trampled beneath the hooves made Owen's stomach turn.

"Get out of the way and I won't hurt you," he called. The kelpie danced sideways as Owen tried to keep him steady.

"Oh no," Atlas said, "This ends now."

She put two fingers in her bloody mouth and gave a sharp piercing whistle. It was met with the flapping of wings; she was calling the harpy. Owen dug his heels in with a cry. They charged at Atlas, bearing down on the tiny servant who gave them a red smile, arced her arm, and threw the knife.

It gleamed in the air, spinning, and plunged into the kelpie's shoulder, missing its throat by inches. The horse screamed and bucked. Owen hit the ground hard, the air crushed from his lungs, and the already chaotic world swung around him. He tried to sit up, failed, tried again, heaving and retching. His horse was to his left, snorting and eyes rolling wild, but mercifully not run off. Holding his side, Owen staggered to his feet and hauled himself back into the saddle.

A long shrieking call that raised the hairs on the back of his neck came from above. The fury, with Atlas perched atop its back, was circling them like a great vulture getting ready for its next meal.

Spirits scattered in front of them like marbles as Owen and the kelpie resumed their mad flight. He felt the heavy presence of the harpy bearing down on him. He looked over his shoulder, gripped the reins, and at the last moment jerked sharply to the right. Atlas and her demon mount screeched past them, talons extended, and reeled about to climb higher into the sky.

Owen angled the horse so as to pull up the side of the carousel. They were so close, close enough to see Lira's eyes widening at their approach. The kelpie stopped and reared, hooves punching the air. It was tall enough that Owen and Lira's heads were nearly level.

"What are you doing?" she cried, still playing her song.

"Get on!" shouted Owen, not wanting to waste time on useless explanations. He reached out a hand. "We have to get out of here!"

At the same time that Lira started shaking her head, Owen's hand encountered a burning sensation. He pulled back reflexively, then reached out again more tentatively. His fingertips met resistance and began burning once again.

"I can't!" called Lira.

Owen's thoughts spun wildly while his senses strained outwards, trying to predict the next harpy attack. He remembered the spirit that had tried to grab her and locked eyes with Lira.

"You try!" he said. "I can't reach you, but maybe you can reach me!" He prayed the barrier was one-way; for Lira's protection rather than her imprisonment.

"I can't!" she repeated, more forcefully this time.

"Just try—"

"I have to—" Lira broke off, her gaze pulled skyward. Fear momentarily flooded her eyes before crystallizing into anger. She turned back to Owen. "Go, now!" she ordered.

"But—" he protested.

"GO!"

Owen flinched at the snap of wings, gave Lira one last glance. "I'll circle around!" he called. "Get ready to jump!" He spurred his horse.

"Get somewhere safe!" she shouted, ignoring him.

The last image he had was of her squaring her shoulders, violin still tucked against her chin, and turning to face the oncoming harpy before the kelpie swept him away.

#

The sight of Atlas on the fury's back, guiding the beast towards Owen, had stirred something in Lira. A thread of anger had managed to penetrate the numb shell surrounding her mind, creating enough space for her to pull a small shard of her conscious back through. Her anger crackled around the edges, sharpening the piece of her mind to a razor edge that her vacillation broke to pieces on. It wasn't much but it was enough.

She had known Atlas did not want them to leave, feeling her way of existence threatened at the idea of their departure. She had known that the little girl felt strongly enough about what she and Bebinn were doing to betray Lira so any chance of escape was cut off and their work could continue. But she hadn't known the girl was willing to kill outright for it.

And she wasn't going to let her. Lira had let far too much happen already. Comforting herself with the notion that it was all outside her control.

But it dawned on her, as she glanced to the side and watched her fingers move over the strings and then turned her gaze back to the still raging battle, that it had all always been within her control. Bebinn had even told her, months ago now, in that damp cavern cell in the dungeons, "the music is the means, but you are the source."

She could stop this. And she could stop it the same way it had all started: with music.

Lira refocused on the song, once more watching her fingers fly through the notes and visualizing them in her mind. She could nearly see them as tangible things, carried out into the carnival on spiderweb-thin threads in the air, connecting to those spirits Bebinn had gathered to fight for her, affixing to the junctures of their bodies. Just like puppet strings. And strings could be cut.

Lira took a deep breath, not knowing if it would even work but knowing she had to try. The first thing she had to get right was the timing; too quick a change and she would lose all control. She began to tip the pitch of the music lower, but kept the pace fast and her heartbeat racing along with it. The song slowly began to blend in with the crashing sounds of battle, until it was no longer high enough to be heard above it, but weaving amongst and in between the slashing claws and swords and sizzling spells.

Lira stole a quick glance of the surrounding carnival and was relieved to find the music was holding even with the change in pitch and volume. She refocused her attention and began a tentative bridge, but in her brief pause, uncertainty rushed in and her fingers stumbled.

In the moment between losing the note and finding it again, Lira felt a horrible, nauseating tugging sensation deep within her chest. Those musical marionette strings pulled too taut, straining like elastic about to snap, causing her to gag and stumble sideways along with several other spirits in the carnival. In another blink they had corrected themselves as the song picked back up, but Lira's legs were shaking badly and she still felt that she might throw up.

Without knowing how she knew, Lira understood that the spell she was weaving with the music now was much more complex than anything she had needed for the children, and it was using more of her soul to sustain itself than it ever had before. For a fleeting moment, Lira saw her soul as a candle that was burning too low to hold its flame much longer and she nearly dropped the violin in terror. But she feared doing so without first breaking the connection would snuff her soul out for good and she gripped the violin more tightly.

She had to fight to keep her fear from reaching her fingers again, now just trying to hold her original song, afraid to try the bridge again. Lira grit her teeth and turned her sight inwards, trying to find that anger again. Her mind went momentarily dark and again the fear of her soul collapsing threatened to crush her, but then she found that small shard of her conscious whetting itself on that thread of anger that was burning red-gold in her dark mind. She gripped it hard, feeling it cut, holding it through the pain.

She wrapped her mind around it, letting it burn through the fog that flickered at the edges of her brain. Smoke stung her eyes, drifting from a tent smoldering nearby, but it could've been her soul igniting and lighting her up from the inside out. Lira blinked smoke-singed tears away, coughing.

In front of her, chaos still gripped the carnival. Bodies, some still, some quivering, littered the ground all around the carousel, but the armies still battered away at one another, stepping on the bodies like so much discarded trash. Lira watched as a grotesquely deformed man with curling goat horns erupting from the side of his head and wielding heavy black chains stepped backwards and fell over one of the motionless figures. His chains made a loud clanking as they hit the ground, tangling with something else coiled and rope-like and green. The man shifted, trying to reclaim his feet, and Fauna's sightless eyes stared back at Lira.

Lira gasped and the burning sensation in her chest intensified. Her vision was momentarily obscured by another spirit flying past the carousel, only to be brought down with a shriek that threatened to rupture Lira's eardrums by the swiping paw of large, shadowy beast. The beast lingered over the spirit's prone form, tearing at its prone form. Lira tore her gaze away, staring once more into Fauna's eyes. Her vision tunneled to just the forest spirit's face, defiant even in death. Around her, the sounds of fighting, the flashes of light, the crying and screaming and dying pressed in even as the scorching beat of her pulse and soul pressed out.

The song she was still playing swirled around her like a hurricane, battering her, and Lira squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted it to stop, all of it. She could make it stop. All of it. She...would...make...it...stop.

With a screech that reached across the carnival, Lira wrenched the bow from the violin strings and the song cut off. Without an echo, it stopped. Everything stopped. 

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Hi, friends! Goodness, I am so sorry for the long wait for this chapter! Between the holidays and end-of-year deadlines, I have no idea where the time went. In any event, here it is! I'm still finding battle scenes a bit tricky to write, but I hope it was worth the wait :D

This chapter (Soulbound) is turning out to be a bit longer than I originally thought, so there will be a third part! I have about half of it done so far, so I'm hoping to get it in your hands within the next week.

In the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts on this second part and how the battle sequence is progressing. Thank you so so much for your continued dedication and support of Owen and Lira, it truly does mean the world. And we are SO close to the end. Only a few more chapters to go. Crazy!