Chapter 43 Romie
ATHEIA EMERGED FROM DECRESCENS HALL to find the world in shambles.
The skies over the quad bred a vicious sort of wonder, the kind that had anger churning in Atheia’s belly.
Where before, the night had been dark with the new moon’s reign, now it was full of strange, dancing lights and veins of lightning, and ruling high above were a moon and sun in eclipse. The mark of a new, twisted era.
Bewildered looks followed Atheia as she wound her way to the fountain at the center of the quad, her faithful Tidal Council and Regulators trailing behind her with their captives.
From here, Atheia couldn’t see the extent of the damage Clover had wrought, but she could feel what he’d done, how he had made himself into a god and blended all her perfect creations into one realm of pandemonium.
A sudden panic spiked through the crowd as the sound of wings drowned out all the chatter.
Overhead had appeared creatures Atheia had never seen in her lifetime, though she knew them from Tol’s memories.
Corvus serpentes, eldritch beasts from the Heartland that were half raven and half snake. Monsters born of Sidraeus’s magic.
Fury burned within her as the creatures swooped toward the quad, eliciting screams as people ran to avoid their sharp beaks and talons and spiked tails.
Atheia called blinding light to her hands to ward off the beasts.
She fashioned the light into sharp blades imbued with the death magic of Quies and sent them arcing toward the corvus serpentes.
They fell in twos, threes, plummeting to their death, yet more of them remained.
These monsters weren’t attacking, Atheia realized. They were trying to fly away from something.
Trying to escape the strange pocket of darkness that had opened up in the sky.
A deep, tenebrous bruise had appeared high above them, like a tear in a piece of fabric, a window opened onto an uncanny obscurity that could only belong to the sleeping realm.
Faint, distant stars could be seen through it.
And Atheia watched, as bewildered as everyone else, as it swallowed up a pair of corvus serpentes who’d been too slow to avoid its spreading stain.
Panic intensified as a second pitch-black blot appeared in the corner of the quad where Pleniluna Hall met Decrescens Hall. Part of the cloisters there were sucked right into the blooming dark—along with a student who’d been cowering against the cloister wall, and who never stood a chance.
Atheia’s stomach dropped. She felt, for a second, like a leaf in a storm, doomed to be blown this way and that way by forces greater than her, unable to seize control.
Stone crumbled all around as the pocket expanded, drawing more and more of the cloisters in its depths.
People ran for their lives, running to the other side of the quad, heading inside buildings as the tear in the sky also grew, and the few corvus serpentes that remained landed on the ground seeking safety.
Shaking out of her stupor, Atheia made the light in her hands amplify, desperate to stop the spreading dark.
But then, all at once, the nightmare stopped. The pockets of sleepscape remained where they were but ceased their spreading. Not because of anything Atheia did, but rather as if answering someone else’s whims, a conductor leading musicians to the abrupt end of a piece.
So this was what it had come to. The four realms of the living combined into one—and threatened into oblivion by the sleeping realm that was trying to tear its way through.
As if the living and sleeping realms were now fighting for dominance, unable to survive in this space together.
Devouring each other until, perhaps, everything was doomed to become dust.
This was what Clover had done.
Had it been his intention, she wondered, to destroy her worlds this way? To lead them faster to oblivion?
People were still screaming, scared, not realizing that the dark had stopped its senseless destruction. The corvus serpentes now in their midst were just as frenzied. And dangerous.
Atheia didn’t hesitate. Sharpening her anger, she let loose more of those whips of light and death, and in one fell swoop killed all the monsters that remained.
She caught sight of Sidraeus as he fell limply to his knees, all the color drained from his face, his eyes glazed over in pain.
Interesting—he must have felt the creatures’ suffering the same way he felt the pain of Eclipse-born.
At his side, Emory was looking at Atheia with an expression of incredulous horror.
It stirred something in Atheia—Romie’s consciousness slipping through.
Atheia gently nudged her back. This was no time for sentimentality from her vessel.
The courtyard had fallen quiet. All eyes were on Atheia now, faces so scared it broke her heart.
“Do not be afraid, my friends,” she said loudly.
She imbued as much calm in her voice as she could, sending out waves of soul-tending magic from Aestas to soothe their panic.
“I am the Tides returned to your shores, and I have come here to fix this world and restore things to how they were. But it seems the blight of the eclipse has been festering here for far too long. These creatures are from another realm, allowed to pass through here because of Eclipse magic. But I will keep you safe from them. I will stop this spreading darkness.”
“How?” someone asked shakily.
“By ridding the world of the Shadow’s taint,” Atheia said.
She motioned to her captives. “I have here the Shadow himself and the Tidecaller who brought him out of the Deep, as well as the traitorous lunar mages who aided them. They are the ones to blame for this. And once I am finished turning them back to the light, I promise you, the world and your magic will be restored, and there will be nothing left to fear.”
She could sense their unease, feel their doubts. They didn’t trust her to keep them safe, even if they wanted to. They needed someone to believe in, given all the impossible things they had seen in the last few minutes alone. They needed something true, a force they knew to be good.
“Trust in Bruma and Anima and Aestas and Quies, in we the Tides of Fate,” Atheia said. “Let me demonstrate to you how those who put their faith in the Tides will be rewarded.”
She motioned to the Regulators to bring Emory to the fountain.
While they dragged her there, Atheia crouched beside a still subdued Sidraeus and said, barely above a whisper, “You told me back in the godsworld that if I spilled another drop of her blood, you’d split me up into pieces.
So let me tell you, dear Sidraeus, that I plan to bleed her dry—and take my time with it.
When I’m done, she will die, and maybe this bond you share means you will too. ”
Atheia lifted his chin with a finger, watching with satisfaction as all the light dimmed from his eyes. “If I can’t kill you myself,” she said, “I’ll gladly settle for this. And I’ll enjoy every second of your slow torture.”
Emory stood in the shallow, freezing waters of the Fountain of Fate. Atheia stepped in after her, wielding a sharp dagger. She turned to the crowd and let them feel the weight of her gaze, willing their attention to remain on her.
The Tidal Council and other Selenic Order members—all of them wearing porcelain Tide masks—formed a circle around the fountain, looking up at Atheia like supplicants.
Behind them, the quad was a quiet sea of fearful students and curious professors and dispirited protesters, some still wearing their abominable Shadow masks as they waited with bated breath for what came next, ensorcelled by Atheia’s magic.
Atheia took hold of Emory’s wrist and pressed the dagger to it.
“Ro, please don’t do this,” Emory begged. “Don’t let her—”
Atheia did not let her finish. She slashed the dagger across Emory’s skin. Silver blood spilled out—they had branded her with the Unhallowed Seal while she was still in the thralls of her power, a near-Collapsing in effect—and mixed with the water in eddying swirls.
For the tiniest of seconds, Atheia lost the battle of wills inside her as Romie’s heart broke for her friend.
We need her, Atheia reminded her.
Romie knew this. But as she looked at Emory, fighting to stay conscious as blood pooled out of her too fast—as her eyes found the traitorous Selenic Order members they’d subdued, Virgil and Ife and Javier and Nisha…
They will all be all right, Atheia said. This will be over soon.
Romie had been in agreement with Atheia on getting rid of Eclipse magic, and though her methods had become increasingly twisted, curdling unpleasantly in Romie’s mind, she had let Atheia’s words convince her that it was necessary.
That the deity was getting the justice she deserved, and that this would somehow avenge the keys who had died at Clover’s hands.
Never did Romie imagine it would get this far.
Or if she did, she hadn’t wanted to believe it.
In retrospect, she should have drawn the line at the Luaguan professor’s torture.
But the shock of it had made her passive, resigned to her forced complicity.
What other choice did she have but to go along with what the deity inhabiting her body wanted to do?
She was no longer in control, and so it was better to be of one mind with Atheia than to fight back and see herself erased entirely.
But seeing her best friend like this… This, she couldn’t abide.
It has to be done.
Atheia wrested control of her vessel again as she slashed her own wrist so that her blood mixed in with Emory’s.
It was Romie’s blood, the blood of a lunar mage combined with the silver blood of an Eclipse-born, and yet it was not only Romie’s blood, but Atheia’s own divine essence.
Magic in pure form, mixing with the magic Emory had stolen from her.
The lunar overtaking the eclipse. Reclaiming it. Reshaping it.