42. Cress
Souls emerged behind me, a gilded flood of them. One, darker than the rest, shadowed me. It was a relief to see Braza, even though it was strange that she and I were only tethered by the merest thread. She reached into Phaeron’s shadows while he stared at me in disbelief, retrieving the dragon scale and diving back into Myuna’s torn belly without him seeming to notice.
“How dare you. She was delicious,” the goddess grumbled. She probed at the slash across her midsection, pushing the flaps of skin together, but they did not sew into a seamless whole like the last time I’d wounded her. Souls held the wound open and thousands of them escaped by the second, flowing into me. I felt their presence like a pressure within, my form stretching to accommodate so many different pieces of others and the power they wished to lend me.
Finally, Phaeron gathered his wits. “Cress, are you all right?”
“I think so.” I had the voice echo now, the power of thousands or more coming through me. “You might want to step back.”
He hesitated, before turning to Roe and the others, herding them with shadows and gestures. I flexed my hand, willing my new power to give me a sword to match my new stature. A hundred souls surrendered part of their energy for me to have one form for me, the hilt perfectly matching my enlarged hand. The blade was made of pure celestial magic, glowing golden like the sun.
Myuna stumbled to her feet and gathered her own magic, creating the shaft of a white-glowing spear and flipping its blade up. “You have…stolen from me. It is no matter. We will still end it here, in these moments past the prophecy. You defeated me…” she coughed up a dribble of black tar, smearing it across her white cheek. “And now I will defeat you.”
All the while, the flood of souls from her stomach did not abate. As I grew, she diminished, my light dwarfing hers. “Big words. Let’s go,” I said, lunging at her. Our weapons caught and rebounded. She stumbled backward, wailing in earnest and stirring up the Void to scream with her.
I clenched my teeth, trying to block out the awful cacophony. I struck out at her again, opening a wound in her side that closed itself quickly. Now it was obvious she drew on the life force of those within her to mend so fast or to strike so hard. A dozen souls had to give up their power to help me heal just as swiftly when the next thrust of her spear jabbed its point through my thigh.
Our gazes met. We were of the same size now, meeting somewhere in the middle of her impossible stature and my ordinary human frame. There was a new emotion there, something I don’t think Myuna had felt for a long time.
Fear.
She attacked in a flurry of blows, all the while stoking burning rays of light from the holes of several mouths that formed on her torso and arms. Inspired by her changing it up, I summoned a ball of concentrated light and threw it at her, shaking the Void with the resulting explosion and knocking Myuna forward.
“Kabewm,” I whispered for my handbook, which was hopefully flying in distressed circles somewhere on Earth, awaiting my safe return.
I swung my sword downward, intending to lop off her head. But it was still me and I wasn’t borrowing anyone else’s sword skills. The blade dug into her back and shoulder blades, creating a cut that seared itself open with blackened edges. The dark matter that seemed to hold her together internally was exposed.
“No,” Myuna groaned, lifting up and grabbing a huge handful of glowing souls that’d escaped while she hit the ground. She ate them again, struggling to swallow with several painful gulps as their fists made round outlines against her throat.
I kicked her weapon out of her hand and it disappeared into wisps of light. Holding the tip of my sword to her neck, I echoed her with a smirk, “Do you see what it is to face a goddess?”
Her lips spread across her gaping mouth in a grimace. “You are no goddess,” she thundered in her loud, but diminished, voice.
“I’m starting to realize that you never were one to begin with,” I replied, lifting my weapon for one last strike to end this.
Myuna launched herself at me, her mouth stretching even wider and sucking hard. I felt an obscene tug on the souls within me as she knocked us both to the ground. We grappled, her punching, me trying to stab her, and rolled a couple times before something lassoed her around the neck.
It looked like shadows and vines braided into one massive rope. At the other end heaved Phaeron and áine, plus Ben, Geo, Roe and Wren anchoring behind them. But further back, feeding shadows to make the rope as sturdy as possible, was a team of horned spirits.
I pushed Myuna and watched with a grin as the vines grew new tendrils to encircle her neck completely, with shadows following their path to reinforce them. She gripped the rope with both hands, gasping and thrashing, still leaking more and more spirits. For once, she was quiet, and my ears rang as I stood over her with sword in hand, wondering where to stab her to truly end her awful existence once and for all.
I opted for the heart, thrusting my sword downward clear through her chest. With one last jerk, she went limp, save for the flaps of her stomach where her victims continued to escape. I gazed down at her still face. “It’s over,” I said with the relief of a destroyed world’s worth of souls.
The rope around her neck faded, the vines withering away to brittle stalks in an instant. I was reaching down to tear her belly open further when her hands darted out, catching my wrists. “It is the turning of an eon. You are worthy where I no longer am,” she said, putting something in my palm.
It was massive and white, pulsing with power and a slimy feeling. Hunger.
“When I cut out Stalvos the White’s heart at the end of my own world’s destruction, he gave me this. A mature seed of power.” She coughed weakly, more tar smearing her lips. “It is yours now. You are the goddess now, the one to own all the power in the universe. The souls you need are already within you. Consume them and rise.”
My stomach turned with disgust. “You saw a world’s destruction and chose to become just like the one who did it?”
“Power…so delicious. It is the way of things,” she whispered. The light rapidly left her eyes, dulling to a colorless shade. She collapsed in on herself, only a hollow husk remaining.
I stared at the seed for a moment, astonished that she thought I would ever think to consume it. How insane, that she willingly became a monster for the power it gave her. The dead clamored for me to destroy it, their terror filling my every pore. “No, it is not the fucking way of things,” I muttered.
I filled my palm with light, pure and searing, crushing the seed in a white-hot bath of magic. It crumpled to dust, drifting into fine particles that the Void absorbed.
Then I looked down at myself and wondered, what now? Because I was full of unknown magic and half again as tall as I usually was. The internal glow hid my nakedness at least, as it did for the souls now climbing out of Myuna’s husk and standing in a clump whispering and looking around.
I walked over to my friends and mates, feeling like I was lumbering with my change in stature.
“That. Was. Amazing!” Wren declared loudly, clapping with each word. “I got it all on film, don’t you worry. The whole supernatural world is going to know about this!”
A smile split my lips out of sheer disbelief that she’d been filming the fight. “There’s no internet in the Void, Wren. There’s no way you streamed any of it,” Ben corrected.
She slanted him an impatient look. “I recorded it. Now we have video evidence that Myuna is like, majorly dead, so we can get out of godforsaken Cerris City.”
“Good thinking,” I said, wincing at the boom of my own voice. “Um, I need to be de-goddessed now.”
Pretty much everyone turned to Phaeron. He’d released his shadowborn form and was talking quietly with a Moihan tribe male until he felt our attention on him. “How exactly did this happen?” he asked, gesturing up at my face.
“Well, you see…I think Braza’s energy gave the souls left within—”
Phaeron’s eyes dilated and he whipped his head around. “Where’s Braza?” he demanded.
“The last I saw her, she—oh shit.” I turned toward Myuna’s corpse. “She was grabbing the other half of her soul from you and diving back inside Myuna.”
In a blink, he was next to the corpse, pulling open the rip in her belly and sticking his head in to look inside. He released a muffled howl and fished in her stomach, removing something and turning to show me when I loomed behind him. It was the dragon scale…cracked into two uneven pieces. The runes on it flickered with the last vestiges of energy.
“There’s almost nothing left,” he said, looking at me with new realization. “All of the energy she gathered as a powercore went to awakening the souls of Myuna’s victims.”
A bolt of panic thrilled through me. This couldn’t be. She was an ancient powercore, the venerated protector of Moongrove Library. And the other half of her soul was tethered to me…a shiny little thread still connecting us to my awareness. Yet I had no idea where she was.
“I-I’ll just give some of the magic back to her. T-that’s possible, right?” I stammered, reaching for the broken scale.
He jerked away from me, breathing growing shallow. We were both panicking, feeding into a feedback loop that was no good for either of us.
Geo inserted his steadiness between us, both physically and emotionally. That loop of negative emotion broke upon his stone form, even as he laid an obsidian palm on Phaeron’s shoulder and my arm. “Braza is a being of shadow and right now, you are glowing like the sun,” he rumbled. “Undo this magic and perhaps she will show herself.”
“Well said,” Phaeron sighed, scrubbing at his face. “All right, Cress. Try again to tell me how you became like this.”
I did, leaving no detail out, not even flinching away from the fact that it was his deceased mate that kicked off the whole change that had led us all to freedom.
“Make me anew in your light,” he repeated slowly. “No…” He switched to Soiluirian, which I didn’t understand without Braza’s presence. “Clearly, you must release all of these souls that have bound their last vestiges to you. But we are still in the Void. What will become of them afterward?”
The spirit he’d been talking to stepped forward again, asking Phaeron a question. They spoke for a minute while I shifted with nerves. “My father claims to sense the way forward to the next life,” he eventually translated.
My jaw dropped. He was being really casual about having his father right there. But they were both standing rigidly, avoiding eye contact. It had to be a matter of pride at this point. “So, once I release these souls, they will be able to go too?” I asked.
Phaeron had a troubled cloud around him as he considered. “In theory. It would be for the best to release them and have them try, at least, my bright mate. It is not right for you to hold onto them for much longer.”
I completely agreed. So, I took part of his knowledge of Soiluirian along the mating circle and repeated the phrase he guessed would do the trick. “I have made you anew in my light and now I release you from your vow.”
The pressure within my body released like a deflating balloon. It was a near-immediate flood of souls, countless spirits fleeing the confines of our temporary pact. Many winked out of existence immediately.
Phaeron confirmed with his father that they’d gone on to the next life, rather than getting consumed by the Void. “He claims it has little power over them. Less than over us…but that may be because the Void has Myuna to feast upon for the moment. You may notice that it is suspiciously quiet,” he said.
I hadn’t noticed, but that was probably because I was feeling like a limp spaghetti noodle as I quickly lost the power of numbers that’d made me a “goddess.” My inner glow winked out and I slumped into his arms. Phaeron glanced down at my bare skin, having accidentally cupped my belly. His cool shadows enveloped my modesty.
Actually, everything felt cold all of a sudden, except for his body heat. I snuggled into him for more of it and he snuck a gentle nip on my ear. “Glad to have you human sized again,” he murmured.
“I thought being taller than you was the best part of all of this,” I sighed.
He raised a brow. “I’d get on my knees for you in a heartbeat.” Phaeron was nuzzling into my hair when the last two souls emerged from me…Ravai and Keshora. It was only my stiffening that had him look up.
I still had that basic grasp of his language that I’d borrowed, so I understood Keshora saying, “So it is true.”
And Ravai bulldozing straight past the awkwardness with a cry of, “Father!”
He gently nudged me aside and caught her when she flung herself into his arms. They spun and touched foreheads. “My Ravita. How blessed I am to see you again,” he said tenderly.
I met Geo’s eye, tilting my head in suggestion. They deserved some privacy.
Keshora intercepted me before I took more than a couple steps. “Wait. Braza spoke highly of you…Cress. She’s not with you?”
“I’m going to go looking for her,” I said, hitching my thumb in the direction I felt our fraying tether pointing. With a nod, she fell into step with Geo and me.
It wasn’t a long walk, but I kept shooting glances over my shoulder, knowing from some hazy secondhand memorythat it was a death sentence to stray too far from others in the Void. Keshora kept me occupied with questions, fitting in some pieces she’d missed by dying before the Age of Decay.
She keened with pain when I told her how Braza had died and of the desperate decision made to sustain her by making her a powercore. “She sacrificed herself for us. No wonder I felt her the moment I woke…it was a fraction of her magic that revived me,” she said.
My eyes filled with tears as we closed in on where Braza was and spotted her lying there. What had once been a hearty connection bolstered by her nearly endless pool of energy was nearly nothing because the half of Braza I’d carried was literally half of her now.
The Hungering Darkness had bisected her messily, cutting her soul from hip diagonally to her opposite shoulder. She had one wing and one arm like this. Her soul was still black and purple shadows, the jagged wound less ghastly with the details obscured. “You came for me,” she whispered.
“Oh my god, Braza,” I said in English, sinking to my knees beside her. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea you were sacrificing everything.”
“Would you have stopped me if I told you?”
“Yes! At least, I would’ve told you to save some for yourself. Anything but this.” I took her hand in both of mine. Hot tears trickled down my frozen cheeks. “Let’s get you back to Phaeron. He has the other half of your soul…maybe there’s a chance…”
“Allow me,” Geo offered, bending slowly and offering his steady arms for the task. I clued a distressed Keshora in on what we were doing and she helped me lift Braza into his hold. He carried her while I tried to calm her mother with reassurances that I wasn’t sure were true.
It seemed pretty certain that Braza was fading. Her black shadows were looking more like gray vapor, and the purple was sparsely intertwined with it.
Sensing my distress, Phaeron met us halfway with Ravai and the broken scale. Ben tagged along as well, holding me from behind to share body warmth. He was nearly too hot to the touch…I must’ve been more chilled than I realized.
“The scale is in two pieces. Could it hold both halves of her?” I asked desperately.
Phaeron tapped the larger piece of scale. Out flowed the bottom half of her, in the same drained state. Worse, actually, with her legs and tail flickered in and out of sight. “If Lucas were here…” he muttered. “She just needs some energy to stabilize her.”
“Can anything be done for her?” Keshora fretted.
“It is my time. But I cannot feel the next life…” Braza whispered. She watched souls winking out of sight around us.
Phaeron answered Keshora with, “She gave away too much. All of these souls moving on around us do so with her energy. She’d need at least…well, two sparks returned. But that will deny two souls the next life.”
Ravai gasped, exchanging a glance with her mother. “It has to be us.”
“Ravita, no,” Phaeron said immediately. “After everything you’ve been through, you deserve paradise.”
“Mother, he told me he has a plan to return her to life. To living, breathing life. We could do this for her. She sacrificed so much for everyone else…” She looked past him to her, clasping her hands together.
“What’s happening?” Ben whispered.
I explained the argument in English as Phaeron grew more dismayed. Keshora was nodding, moved by Ravai’s plea. “There’s no way for you to go to the next life if you do this,” he put in.
“There’s no way for them to move on to the next life,” I echoed.
The air stirred beside me in a way I was intimately familiar with by this point. My birth mother took form and Ben gasped. I guess in the Void, all spirits were visible, as he’d never seen her before this moment. “Is the problem that they don’t have someone to show them the way?” Eris asked, uncharacteristically solemn.
“It’s a matter of energy, Mother,” I said.
“Well, I have plenty of that.” She smiled over at me, distinctly bittersweet. “It is time I moved on, dear one. I could think of no better way to go than in helping others…if they will let me.” Keshora was eyeing Eris with suspicion.
Phaeron and I spoke at the same time. He invited her over to try, while I blurted, “Are you sure?”
In reply, Eris hugged me. I stepped away from Ben, letting my birth mother hold me as an adult for the first and only time. More tears leaked out of the corners of my eyes.
Eris said, “You are the core of a mating circle. I watched you defeat a goddess. Yes, I would say I fulfilled my purpose here…to help you.”
“Thank you for everything, Mom,” I murmured. When I let her go, she gave me one last look and nod, before heading over to the ghostly dimensional family. At Phaeron’s direction, she held Keshora and Ravai’s hands, while they grasped the hand attached to one of Braza’s halves.
With a glance my way, he said, “I beseech my goddess for a miracle.” He wove shadows and soul magic, feeding energy from Eris to the two dimensionals. They glowed with a new infusion of power, before a portion of it passed into Braza.
Her shadows darkened considerably, but I continued to hold my breath, not feeling my connection to her grow any stronger. Phaeron blew out a tense breath and held out the two pieces of the dragon scale. Braza’s bottom half went into the larger shard without trouble. He chanted a new spell and held the smaller shard toward her head.
With a wrench I felt down to my own soul, he cut the connection between us permanently and Braza’s top half turned into curls of shadows that absorbed into the smaller shard. He tilted both shards to inspect the steadily glowing runes on them. Satisfied, he lashed them together with a tendril of shadow.
“It is fortunate the scale broke. I believe she will be okay,” he said. His eyes shone with a mix of grief and relief as he drew in first Keshora for a hug goodbye, then Ravai. My understanding of their language disappeared, tugged away by him for a few private words to them both.
Eventually, the two spirits turned to Eris and took her hands again. Together, they faded to nothing, heading off to the next life together.
I hiccupped a sob. It hurt a lot worse than expected to say goodbye and Phaeron echoed that feeling. Even though he’d come to peace with their deaths long ago, it was hard to have them back for such a short visit.
“Maybe you could see them again on Samhain,” I suggested quietly.
With a sigh, he adjusted his swords and sat. “Perhaps.”
We watched the last, straggling souls wink out of existence and the Void break down what was left of Myuna’s corpse. Soon, it was just us, the living, and áine came over, scuffing her hoof. “I know this was intense and all…but shouldn’t we be heading back?” she asked.
Phaeron quirked his lips. “You all may as well be sitting for this news.” He waited and everyone but Geo had a seat around him. “I don’t know the way back.”
“What?” Roe spluttered.
“I sense my mate like a second heartbeat and led you straight to her due to that alone. But wayfinding in the Void is impossible to all but the Vess,” he explained, putting his palms up in apology. “If we try to go back without assistance, we will only become hopelessly lost.”
Ben scowled. “What the fuck, Big P?”
“If Auric knows what’s good for him, he’ll rescue us!” This, Phaeron shouted up at the Void’s sky. “He owes us for sending Cress here in the first place.”
I looked at him in astonishment. “You came after me without any guarantee you’d return?”
“To clarify, Ben, Geo, and I did.” He slanted a look in my three friends’ direction.
“No.” Ben held up a finger. “To clarify his clarification, I did not know that was what I was signing up for.”
Geo cracked a smile in his stone form. “I would do it again,” he rumbled.
I propped my chin on my fist, shivering head to toe. “I love you all so much,” I said. Ben snagged me to pull into his lap to share more body heat.
Wren rolled her eyes, warming her own fingers by rubbing her hands together. “Please stop there before you start kissing.”
áine and Roe exchanged a glance. “I’d do it again too. That fight was fucking awesome, and it was even cooler that you all saved so many souls,” the faun said, with Roe nodding emphatically in agreement.
Some of the good cheer faded from Phaeron’s face. He ran his thumb over the cracked dragon scale he still held. The rest of us kept talking as a distraction, teeth all starting to chatter as the Void’s chill really sank in.
By the time Auric showed up, I was wondering if I’d perish here from cold. “So I owe you hmm?” he grumbled. He and Phaeron snipped at each other in Soiluirian, before the Vess opened a new rip in reality that radiated much-needed heat. I was the first to jump through.