Chapter 36 Morgana #2
Caledon releases me, and I drop to the ground, looking up to see an arrow sticking straight out of his temple. I look wildly around and spot Tira across the clearing, bow lifted, her eyes narrowed in fierce concentration.
Not just any bow, I realize. Ethira’s.
“That’s for my family, you bastard!” she screeches.
Etusca’s words come back to me as I choke through the darkness spreading across my neck.
Some people have a natural affinity for the gods’ weapons.
Some people don’t need to be a god to wield them against an immortal.
Only a god can kill a god. But a pissed off mortal can sure as hell do some damage.
I snatch the scythe up from where I dropped it. Caledon’s leaning against the tree, body bent, more dark blood bubbling from his head wound. His eyelids flutter as I move closer, his arms reaching down to try to push himself up.
“And this is for mine,” I say, and I swing the scythe, bringing it slashing down across Caledon’s torso.
It slices straight through flesh and bone, cleaving him open.
I step back to avoid the flood of black tar that spills forth, letting the body fall face down against the earth.
I watch as he spasms, shudders…and then stills.
I stare down at Caledon’s corpse, not quite believing it.
“Ana!” Tira sobs. She crawls slowly toward me across the ground, trying to navigate the still shining pools of blackness Caledon left in his wake. I fall to my knees, inhaling deep, heaving breaths as I blast the last of his darkness away from my neck with sunlight.
When she reaches me, we grab hold of each other. I know she must be squeezing me tightly, but I don’t feel it as anything more than a gust of air on my skin. I hug her back, but I’m aware of how fragile she feels in my arms, thinking she might crumble away like chalk if I hold her too hard.
“We did it,” I say, but my own voice sounds far away to me. I feel footsteps vibrating across the ground; the others are surrounding us. I search for Leon, finding his gray gaze.
“You did it!” Alastor crows.
There’s movement behind me as Drisha bends to check the body. “He’s really dead.”
But I ignore them both, eyes locked on Leon.
“Something’s wrong.”
I’m not sure which of us thinks it first, the thought ringing across the mooring at the same time.
“Something’s wrong,” Leon repeats aloud, looking around at the others. Tira releases me from her hug, pulling back to search my face.
Now that I don’t have a clear goal and purpose to channel it into, now there’s no one to fight, I can feel the immortality gripping hold of me.
The unending, limitless sense of myself, the way magic pours into me from the infinite river.
There’s nowhere for any of it to go, and it’s filling me up. It’s drowning me.
“It’s the immortality, it’s overwhelming her,” Leon barks to the others, throwing himself to the ground to kneel beside me. He grabs my shoulders.
“Listen, Ana,” he says, repeating himself through the mooring, so I hear everything in an echo. “You can handle this. You can control it. It doesn’t have to control you.”
“I can’t,” I groan through gritted teeth. My temples are throbbing, the veins in them feeling like they’re about to burst. In fact, my whole head feels like it’s going to split in two. Eternal power has crawled inside me, and now it’s trying to claw its way out.
“Why didn’t this happen to Caledon?” Etusca demands, her shrill voice like nails across my flesh.
“Caledon had a void inside of him. A black hole that absorbed all the power it could…”
I don’t hear the rest of Leon’s explanation, the pressure becoming too intense. My mind is like a glass box with a huge weight on top of it—the burden of my immortality is making the edges of my psyche fracture, hairline cracks spidering across it.
I dig my fingers into my scalp, screaming.
Soon it will shatter. Soon I will explode into a thousand pieces.
I almost want that. At least it would stop this pain.
I could exist as fragments floating in eternity, as long as I don’t have to hold this endless energy in any longer.
But then I wouldn’t be me anymore. I wouldn’t be with my friends, or with Leon.
I’d be alone again—forever. As isolated as a little girl locked away from the rest of the world.
“Ana, you don’t have to hold onto this. You can let go.”
But my hands are glued in place, trying to hold my mind together so it doesn’t splinter apart. I can’t let go; if I do, everything will break. Leon knows that. He can feel what’s happening to me. Why doesn’t he understand?
“Find somewhere to put it, my love. You don’t have to carry it all. Here, let me show you.”
Something breezes past my fingers. I’m aware of Leon in front of me, but only as a vague shadow through the haze of power sparking inside my eyeballs.
“I can’t do it unless you help me, love.”
He’s trying to move my hands, locked in place by my immortal strength.
“It’s too much,” I shriek. “Too much.”
“I know. Your soul wasn’t built for this. Let’s free it, together.”
That breeze brushes against my hands again. This time I lean into it, trying to touch it with the tips of my fingers. My hands release from my head, and instinctively I move them downward, but my head starts to throb dangerously the moment I let go of it. It’s going to break, I know it.
“LEON.” I scream his name across the mooring, unable to speak any more.
“I know, Ana. Let go. Let go NOW.”
And on his final word, my hands connect with something soft and alive.
It’s so alive. A thing with its own, vast consciousness and a soul that stretches on for acres, shared between a billion different organisms—growing and moving and breathing in harmony.
The Miravow.
I can feel it beneath my hands, thrumming like a heartbeat. Without another thought, I pour the energy into it.
My body aches with relief as the pressure on it drops, but it’s not enough.
I need this boundless power exorcised from my body.
I don’t want to live forever. I don’t want to live like this, being a conduit for endless power always flooding through me.
That power was begging to be used, and if it wasn’t let loose, it was going to destroy me.
But the Miravow?
The Miravow can be eternal without catastrophe.
Individual organisms would wither and die, and their energy would still continue on, feeding the forest, inhabiting a new part of it.
That is true immortality, and the Miravow could use it without becoming twisted or dark.
It is always flowing back into itself, withering and flourishing in a vast cycle.
I keep pushing, holding on to Leon’s words of encouragement as I expel every drop of magic I can from my palms into the mossy earth.
A soft glow runs across the ground and sinks into the soil like a fresh spring.
Near me is one of the puddles of inky darkness Caledon left behind, and it ripples as that light approaches it.
There’s a flare of bright white, and when it settles, the puddle has disappeared.
“It’s fixing all of them,” Hyllus says, lifting a finger to point around us.
Slowly, the power I’m gifting to the Miravow starts to undo Caledon’s damage, erasing the darkness of his pollution. Withered ground blossoms with fresh flowers, and grass grows, a luscious green returning to its stalks.
I watch, and pour my immortality away, until I’m sure not a shred of it remains. My body is in pain—human pain, mortal pain—and I relish it. My senses feel dulled, and my exhaustion sits right down in my bones.
But I’m me. Human, and gloriously vulnerable.
“Welcome back,” Leon says, pulling me into a tight embrace as I stand. This time, I actually feel it, his arms holding me firm, their warmth radiating into me.
“Care to enlighten us about what just happened?” Tira asks, bemused.
“Like I said before,” Leon explains, looking around at the others but not letting go of me just yet.
“Caledon had a void inside of him that allowed him to absorb power. When he became immortal, the power it unlocked didn’t overwhelm him.
Whatever he wasn’t using just drained away into the black hole inside him.
But Ana’s soul was overloaded with it, and it tried to break her apart so the power could be released. ”
“Gods,” Etusca says, clutching her hands to her face. “We could have killed you!”
“It’s okay,” I say. “I got rid of it. And I’m human again now.”
“But where did the power go?” Captain Drisha asks. I gesture to the forest around us.
“I gave it away,” I say simply. After all, that’s all magic is—a gift from the gods.