Chapter 35 Morgana #2
Etusca gives him a long look that makes Alastor flush.
“It’s the artifacts that bring all the power to this spell—not ancient words or symbols.
We don’t need to call on divine power because it’s already here in these objects.
The difficulty is in getting them, but now we have them, there’s no reason the magic itself must be elaborate.
The actual experience, however?” She looks at me with concerned eyes.
“I can’t guarantee that will be easy. In fact, I can almost guarantee it won’t be. ”
I can tell she’s questioning herself, wondering if she should put the little girl she raised through this.
“Think about Agathyre,” I say, using one of the few things I know she cares about as much as me. “This is for your nation as well as mine.”
She nods, her doubt settling.
We move to the temple where I was healed.
Etusca says I can draw on the gaidonesti there with less risk of accidentally touching the power of the cursed star too.
I’m familiar enough with its magic that I’m confident I could recognize and avoid it, but she doesn’t want to take any unnecessary chances.
“We’ll have you pull as much power as you can from the gaidonesti before we start the ritual,” Etusca says, looping the seal around my neck as I stand beside the altar the dryads had me lie on before.
The other tokens are laid out on top of it, and I wrap my fingers around the disc as I look at them, feeling the hum of its power.
It’s meant to keep me safe, protecting me on this journey I’m about to undertake, but as Etusca’s hand hovers over the scythe, I can’t help but swallow.
Fear flares across the mooring from Leon, echoing my own emotions.
“This will separate your soul from your body,” Etusca says. “You must use it when you feel you have absorbed enough power from the gaidonesti.”
“Then the cup?” I ask, trying not to dwell on the idea of cutting my own throat like I watched Caledon do.
“Yes,” Etusca says, her hand moving over the goblet filled with water. “I’ve blessed the liquid. When you drink from it, your body will transform. That’s why you have to remove your soul first, because it could be damaged in the process of transformation.”
She doesn’t say why, though I can guess: mortal beings were never meant to become immortal. Our souls aren’t really built for it, yet here I am, ignoring all of that.
“What then?” I ask. “How will I know what to do without my soul? When Leon lost his, he was just a shell.”
Etusca nods. “The cup should help with that too. Mortal bodies struggle without their souls—it’s why they wither and die.
But as yours will be immortal, it won’t suffer the same effects.
It will be strong, and mostly sentient, though it won’t be quite you.
At least that’s my theory. I don’t know exactly how it works. ”
I hear several of my friends shift uncomfortably. They don’t like the reminder that we’re working in the dark here.
“I saw Caledon shoot the arrow from the bow after he used the scythe,” I say, forcing myself to sound more confident than I feel. “If he could do it, so can I.”
“That will be the last step. We’ll take you outside, and then you’ll shoot an arrow. Ethira’s magic should do the rest.”
“You can use one of mine,” Tira says, handing an arrow from her quiver over to Etusca, who lays it beside the bow. I smile at my friend, grateful.
“Alright,” I say, aware that with every passing minute, Caledon is likely spreading his pollution further across Agathyre. “Let’s go.”
I reach my hand out and press it against the shimmering surface of the gaidonesti.
I jerk as the stars’ power courses through me. I’d forgotten how it felt—the jolt like I’ve been struck by lightning, the immediate burst of energy that makes me feel like I’m going to explode. I fill myself up with it, drinking in the power until every nerve fizzles with magic waiting to be used.
I pull away, but my ears still hum with the pressure of the gaidonesti’s power, then I hold out my hand.
“Give me the scythe,” I say.
Etusca hesitates, but Leon strides forward, picking up the scythe and placing it in my palm in one swift movement.
“I love you,” he says, staring into my eyes as my fingers close around the scythe’s handle.
“I love you too,” I reply.
Without giving myself time to question it, I lift the scythe and draw its blade across my stomach.
It slips into me as easily as a hand breaking the surface of water.
There’s the brief sensation of something thin and warm moving through me, like a sliver of sunshine.
It touches a deep, familiar part of me—a part I discovered when I carved out some of it to save Leon.
Then, with a quick slicing sensation, that part is cut loose.
I’m not sure what happens next. One minute I’m looking at Leon, then there’s nothing to see, and no eyes to see it with.
I’m drifting in something I can only describe as absence, unsure how I got here.
I don’t know where I end and the nothingness begins.
I don’t even know what I am. What I do know is that an awful, sweeping fear grips me—a certainty that I am far away from where I’m meant to be, totally lost, and totally alone.
Hands grip a cup somewhere, its rim lifting to press against a pair of lips. Water spills across a tongue, and a body starts to stand, rejuvenated by the drink.
Eyes look down at the hands, clasping a bow and arrow. They look up to the sky, then nock the arrow, tilting it upward. An arm pulls the string back, fingers loosening until the string flies from their grip. The arrow shoots up into the clouds, disappearing.
My terror spikes as something pierces me in the nothingness, dragging me out of the absence into a world of sensation.
I’m falling, spinning downward, though I still have no weight or substance.
How can that be? This isn’t right; this isn’t where I belong.
My momentum slows and then I’m being swallowed up by something strange and unfamiliar—a foreign entity absorbing everything I am.
Becoming everything I am. I fight against it, but I’m already settling into my new home, the doors closing behind me.
With a gasp, I blink open my eyes, finding myself standing outside the temple.
The others are arranged around me, and I look down to see an arrow in my hand.
It takes me a moment to formulate everything in my mind, understanding that my soul was drifting in ether, then was pulled back to earth by the arrow.
My memory of it all is still fragmented, my awareness stunted by being separated from the physical world.
But the ritual is complete.
“Are you alright?” Leon rushes forward and takes my hand, his fingers holding my chin as he examines me. “I can feel you’re there. I felt your soul come back.”
I reach across the mooring and sigh, reassured. He’s right, our connection’s still there, even if it feels harder to focus on than before when there are so many other thoughts crowding in on me.
“Yes,” I manage across the mooring, still utterly disoriented.
I’d imagined some torturous ordeal, but the ritual wasn’t painful so much as terrifying.
I remember the feeling of being totally isolated with a shudder, trying to push away the horror of being ripped from my body and shoved into something else.
I glance down at my hands. They look like mine, at least.
“Gods, that was scary,” Leon says, echoing my thoughts. “Was it that scary when it happened to me?” Leon asks. It takes me a moment to realize he’s talking about when I had to witness him without his soul.
“Worse,” I say. “Because you didn’t give me any warning before you went running off.”
He grins at my weak joke, relief spreading over his face. I look over to the others, seeing similar expressions, as Etusca mutters rapid prayers of thanks to Viscalis and anyone else who will listen.
“How do you feel?” Tira asks.
“I don’t know,” I say, only now settling into the full awareness of my new body.
Except I’m not sure it can really be called a body at all.
It’s nothing like the vessel of skin and bone I inhabited before.
Everything is different—each cell rearranged to experience the world as I never did before.
My muscles are coils of raw strength, ready to propel me forward with the slightest encouragement.
My eyes see everything, all the minute details, from the smallest cracks in the earth to the singular hairs on a passing fly’s back.
I hear it beat its wings as it passes, as well as the air filling my friends’ lungs before it whistles out of them again.
I don’t feel my physical form like I did before: the weight of my clothes on my shoulders, the twinge in my limbs from fighting.
Everything brushes against me as inconsequentially as air, and there’s not a whisper of pain to be found from my head to my toes.
I lift my tunic to see the scars across my stomach are gone, along with every mark and blemish.
I hadn’t realized how tired and sore I was until now, when all of that has lifted away.
Stratton strides toward me and takes my hand, lifting my palm upward.
He must move fast, because the others don’t stop him, yet to me it seems like he’s taking his time as he lifts a dagger and presses the tip of it to my palm.
There’s no sharpness or pain to it—I feel a light pressure against my skin, but nothing more, and when he lifts the blade away, my hand is unmarked.
Invincible. Immortal. The reality of it swells in my veins, making me feel limitless.
But that’s not all I’m feeling. There’s more power than I’ve ever had access to before. Where once I felt my magic as a deep well, now it’s a massive river. I don’t know its source, but I can sense it flowing through me, constantly replenishing.
I’m bursting with divine might. Boundless with ultimate power. The force of it is unstoppable. And so am I.
“Careful, my love.”
A voice cuts through that power, tense with warning.
I look up and meet Leon’s gaze, his gray eyes silencing some of the heady sensation flowing through me.
“Remember what you did this for,” he says.
I nod, pushing the rush of my immortality down, trying to keep my head clear enough to consider what comes next.
I pick up the bow dropped to the ground beside me and walk past my friends back into the temple.
There I fasten Caledon’s belt around my waist, hooking the scythe’s handle onto my hip.
I even take the cup. I won’t make the same mistake he did and assume these tokens are of no use to me now.
I may have gone through the same ritual he did, but that doesn’t make me the same.
We only know of one other person who’s walked this path: Ethira.
A god famous for protecting the vulnerable, for traveling to all the corners of Tiearland and embracing all its cultures.
It’s his power that partly flows in my veins, and I know what he would want me to do.
To fight for this land. To protect its people.
I step out of the temple, ready to fulfill my divine purpose.