Chapter 19 #2
This version of Lyra radiated the kind of confidence that made my ovaries shrivel up and hide.
There wasn't even a whisper of doubt in her posture.
There was no fidgeting or nervous energy.
I saw nothing that suggested she thought we might actually pose a threat.
She'd gorged herself on enough stolen magic to transform into something that flirted with godhood but thankfully tripped and face-planted before reaching the finish line.
Her twisted makeover was complete. She was ready to show off her shiny new apocalypse powers.
It was what followed her through the destroyed wall that made several curses slip from my lips.
They weren't the corrupted creatures or twisted experiments we'd faced before.
These were Forgotten Ones. The big brothers and sisters of that charming specimen we'd met earlier.
These bastards had ruled when humans were still figuring out which end of a stick was the pointy part.
They poured through the opening like oil mixed with molten metal.
Their bodies were refusing to pick a lane and stick with it.
One second, they'd be solid flesh and bone, the next, they'd melt into something that belonged in a blender.
My brain kept trying to catalog what I was seeing.
Every time I thought I had a handle on their appearance, they'd shift into something else entirely.
The largest one looked like someone had tried to build a person out of spare parts from a demolition derby.
Its torso was barrel-shaped and covered in what looked like rusted chainmail that had fused directly to its skin.
Arms the size of tree trunks ended in hands that were more claw than finger, each one dripping with something that hissed when it hit the wood floor.
Its head sat directly on its shoulders without bothering with a neck.
Its mouth was just a gaping hole lined with jagged metal shards instead of teeth.
Behind it came something with a vaguely humanoid shape.
Its torso was too long, its arms hung down to its ankles, and where its face should have been was just smooth skin stretched tight over something that moved underneath.
When it walked, its joints popped and cracked like breaking kindling.
Every step left footprints that sizzled and smoked in the carpet.
The third monstrosity looked like it had been human once, before someone had decided to get creative with some spare parts from a scrapyard.
Metal spikes jutted from its shoulders and spine.
Its skin had the gray, mottled appearance of week-old roadkill.
Its hands ended in fingers that were too long and too sharp.
When it smiled, I could see that someone had replaced all its teeth with rusty nails.
"The barriers between worlds have fallen," Cordelia announced unnecessarily from her position near the door. "What comes now has been waiting since before the first sunrise."
My next contraction felt like being struck by lightning while drowning.
Through the blown-out wall, I watched the battle erupt across our lawn with the kind of violence that would make war correspondents scurry for cover.
Tseki and Murtagh coordinated their assault on the Forgotten Ones with surgical precision, but these creatures were unlike anything they'd faced.
The chainmail-covered brute absorbed Tseki's dragon fire and turned it back on us, so it withered everything it touched.
The sight of them triggered that primal part of my brain that still remembered being prey.
My hands clenched involuntarily. Every instinct I had screamed at me to run and hide while I tried not to wet myself in terror.
Well, shit. This just got infinitely worse.
Lyra ignored the chaos entirely. She stood in the wreckage of what used to be our bedroom wall.
Her attention was focused on me with laser intensity as labor pain ripped through my body in waves.
"You can't stop what's already begun," she called out.
She was unnaturally clear over the sounds of battle.
"The moment their power activates, I'll claim it.
All of it. Everything they are, and everything they could become will fuel my ascension. "
Villains always insisted on spouting their vile plans.
It was ridiculous, but helpful. Lyra’s monologue gave Aidon and Hades time to spring their trap.
When she stepped further into our bedroom, power blazed from the stolen artifacts she was wearing and funneled to them.
Combining it with their power, they channeled it into a containment spell that had been laid into our property's foundation centuries ago and built upon continuously ever since.
Golden chains erupted from the floor itself, wrapping around Lyra's body. They used binding magic that drew its power directly from them. Something she couldn’t touch. Every purified ley line across the continent also contributed energy to hold her.
"Impossible," Lyra snarled, struggling against bonds that tightened with every movement. "I am beyond your petty magics! I have transcended—"
"You've stolen," I corrected through gritted teeth as another wave of pain crashed through me. "And stolen power has no foundation. No loyalty. No staying power when faced with something real."
Even as the chains held her, I could feel her drawing power from somewhere else. The Forgotten Ones weren't just her allies. They were her backup plan. She was siphoning their ancient energy to fuel her attempts to break free.
Through the destroyed wall, I watched one of the chainmail creatures suddenly go rigid as Lyra pulled its essence into herself.
The thing collapsed into a pile of ash as its power flowed into the witch's struggle against the binding chains.
One by one, she began consuming her own allies, feeding their strength into her desperate bid for freedom.
"She's killing them to fuel her escape," Thalia shouted as she raced forward. "And when she breaks free, she'll have enough power to force the birth and steal everything."
The lost daughter. The one stolen to fuel experiments. The one prophesied to return when the star-bearers' children quickened. Those statements ran through my head in a rush as I tried to process what she was saying. She shot me a smile that broke my heart as she passed.
For the first time since her escape, Thalia looked at peace with herself. Horror washed over me, and I shouted, “No! There has to be another way!”
"There's another way," she said quietly. "The prophecy spoke of a willing sacrifice to break the parasitic network."
"Thalia, no," I gasped as understanding flooded through me. "We have five gods here. We can find another solution."
"There is no other solution," she replied. Her voice carried the kind of calm that came from finally understanding your purpose. "I've been dead for decades. Everything since my escape has been borrowed time. This is what I was meant to do."
She walked toward the center of the magical maelstrom, where Lyra struggled against the golden chains. Her Pleiades magic blazed brighter with each step. I’d never seen it like that. Silver-white light that made the stolen artifacts around Lyra's neck crack and spark.
"You cannot stop me," Lyra snarled as she drained another Forgotten One to fuel her resistance. "I have transcended mortal limitations!"
"You've stolen everything you are," Thalia replied calmly as she began to glow. Her power felt ancient and pure even as she started to look like a human bomb. "And stolen power has no foundation when faced with something freely given."
What happened next would haunt my dreams for the rest of my life.
Thalia didn't attack Lyra. Instead, she opened herself completely.
She lowered every barrier, every protection, and every instinct for self-preservation.
She simply let it all go. Almost simultaneously, her Pleiades magic poured out of her like water from a broken dam.
Instead of dissipating, it connected with every parasitic bond Lyra had ever created across centuries of systematic theft.
The network of stolen power that had taken a century to build began unraveling in seconds. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" Lyra screamed as her carefully constructed web of magical connections started dissolving.
The artifacts around her neck shattered one by one as the original Pleiades essence they contained was freed and drawn into Thalia.
"I’m breaking you," Thalia said as she became translucent.
Her life force was pouring into the cleansing magic.
"Every bond you've forged, every connection you've corrupted, every piece of power you've stolen—I'm severing them all. "
The parasitic bonds that had linked Lyra to my babies snapped like overstretched rubber bands. The relief was immediate and overwhelming. For the first time in months, I couldn't feel her presence lurking in the back of my mind.
But Thalia wasn't done. Her magic reached out across continents, following the ley line network to every site Lyra had ever corrupted. Decades of systematic poisoning began reversing. That’s what happened when pure Pleiades power flowed through the magical arteries of the world.
Lyra's scream of rage shook the foundation of our house. As her network dissolved, so did her manufactured divinity. The remaining artifacts cracked and shattered, releasing the trapped essences of the original Seven Sisters. Without her power sources, she turned back into a regular human.
Unfortunately, it cost Thalia her life. Her body became increasingly transparent as she poured everything she was into the cleansing magic. I could see through her to the battle beyond, where the remaining Forgotten Ones were beginning to retreat as their ally weakened.
"Thalia!" I cried out as another contraction threatened to split me in half.
"It's okay," Thalia's voice was barely a whisper now. It carried on a wind that smelled of starlight and freedom. "I chose this. For the first time in so long, I got to choose."
Her eyes locked onto mine across the wreckage of our bedroom, and what I saw there punched me straight in the gut.
Real peace. The kind that came from finally knowing your place in the world.
She'd found her purpose and picked her exit strategy.
That was more than most got. The acceptance radiating from her was going to haunt my dreams for decades.
"Tell Luciana," she whispered, her voice already fading as her body started coming apart like sugar dissolving in rain, "tell her I wanted to come home, and I love her."
The final surge of her magic slammed into the anchor network with the force of a nuclear blast. The cleansing wave tore outward from our property like a tsunami of purification.
It raced along ley lines to scour away corruption that had been rotting in the magical world's foundation since before my great-grandmother was born.
When the light died, Lyra crumpled to the floor like a marionette with cut strings.
She was nothing more than flesh, bone, and regret.
The power that had transformed her into a divine nightmare was gone.
It left her a hollowed-out shell of a woman.
She stared at her trembling hands like she couldn't remember what they were for. She knelt there in the debris and dust, broken in ways that had nothing to do with physical injuries. She’d been stripped bare of everything magical.
She looked smaller than I'd ever seen her. She was fully human and fragile. She was completely and utterly defeated.
The remaining creatures scattered like roaches when the lights came on, fleeing into the forest beyond our property line.
Without Lyra's power anchoring them to her cause, they had no reason to stick around for a losing fight.
The battlefield fell silent except for the sound of my own labored breathing and the distant crash of waves against our shore.
"What a stupid move," Lyra spat, staring at the space where Thalia had been with cold calculation rather than grief. "Sacrificing herself for people she barely knew. What did she think that would accomplish?"
"Put a pin in it," Nana snapped before I could respond, her voice carrying enough authority to shut down a small army.
She turned to Hades, who was still standing in our destroyed room, looking like he'd aged a decade in the last hour.
"Take her away. Now. Before I decide to finish what we started.
I want her to suffer for centuries. A quick death is too good for her. "
Hades nodded, his usual cocky demeanor replaced by something that looked almost like exhaustion. He walked over to Lyra and placed a hand on her shoulder with surprising gentleness. "Time to go see your new accommodations."
For a moment, I thought she might resist, but she didn’t. Before teleporting, Hades turned back to me. "I'll return soon," he said. For the first time since I'd known him, his voice was soft. "I want to meet my grandbabies."