Chapter 20
Minutes Earlier Cyra
Spaces of seemingly empty air rushed toward me, but I pushed them back with a forcefield. I had my sword out, but I wanted to avoid killing any symbionts if I could, knowing now they could be people of Thasia.
“Magdalene!” I shouted. “Show yourself!”
There was no answer, and I pushed further into the fog. I tried to reach out with my seeker power to find her, but it was no use. The power was for finding objects, not people.
I reached out with my mind power next. I could be overwhelmed if I tried to use it in a crowd, but Magdalene, Sandrian, and our own people were the only ones I was able to sense. The symbionts were invisible to Bressen and I in more ways than one right now.
I sensed something to my right and followed it. I’d only gone a few steps before Magdalene materialized in the fog. She seemed to be waiting for me to find her.
“You’re going to pay for what you did to Aramis,” I told her. There was no venom in my voice, only matter-of-factness.
I drew a ball of sunfire to me and sent it roaring toward Magdalene, but a shield of blue light formed in the air in front of her and dissipated the sunfire before it hit her.
“I don’t want to fight you, Cyra,” Magdalene said. “I was hoping we could help each other.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “You’re mad if you think I’d ever help you.”
“You want to kill me because you think I killed your father,” she said.
“You did kill my father,” I snarled.
She shook her head. “No, I didn’t.”
I stared blankly at her. “You expect me to believe that?”
“You have truth seer powers,” she said. “Is my skin red?”
I froze. No, her skin was as golden as ever.
I shook my head. “I know you killed him. Your frost-”
“I froze his body after he was already dead,” Magdalene cut in. “If you thought I killed your father, I knew you’d come looking for me.” She smiled. “Rather than try to get to you, I figured I’d let you come to me.”
My legs felt like stone as her words sunk in. If she hadn’t killed him…
“If you didn’t kill my father, who did?” I asked, but there was already a chill creeping up my spine. I prayed one of the symbionts had killed him, because the only other answer was too horrifying to consider. Please, gods, let it have been one of the symbionts.
But I could tell by Magdalene’s pitying smile what the real answer was.
“You did, my dear,” she said. “You killed him with that lightning you let loose when you thought your mate was dead.”
The ground dropped out from under me, and I tried to blink Magdalene back into focus as my vision spun.
“You’re lying,” I croaked, the sound barely making it up my throat in any form resembling words.
She didn’t smile, but her look still showed how much my willful blindness amused her. “You can see I’m not,” she said.
I could. Her skin wasn’t the faintest bit red.
Bile forced its way up my throat, and I began to choke.
I dropped to my knees just in time to heave the entire contents of my stomach onto the grass.
I gasped and retched as the horrifying truth of what Magdalene said settled on my chest like stones.
Months ago, I’d felt the weight of a huge pile of earth pushing me down, but this was far worse.
It was a weight that threatened to crush me.
A low wail pushed itself up my throat. It began as a murmur but built quickly until it turned into a full-blown scream of agony that vibrated my entire upper body.
Somewhere across the field, the roar of three gargoyles responded, but all I could do was clutch at my heart as tears streamed down my face. I heard Bressen call for me as well, but I had no breath to answer.
I’d killed Aramis. It had been me. I’d killed my own father.
If I’d thought I’d become accustomed to the feel of bone-deep pain by now, I was wrong.
That same feeling of being torn apart from the inside that I’d felt when the vineyard had burned, when I thought I’d lost Bressen, and when I’d first found Aramis dead returned threefold now.
My body caved in as I crumpled to the ground, wondering just how much more anguish my heart could take before it stopped beating altogether.
I felt a presence and lifted my head enough to look up. Through a blur of tears, I saw Magdalene standing over me.
“It’s unfortunate,” Magdalene said. “Your father was powerful. I don’t like to see perimortals lost when it’s the mortals that need to go.”
I blinked back more tears as I stared at her. “What?” The question was barely a breath.
“Mortals are a scourge, and you’re going to help me thin the herd.”
My brows furrowed deeply. “I don’t understand,” I said as I tried to push myself up to my knees.
“I’m sure you’ve been wondering about my plan,” Magdalene said. “It’s to get rid of as many mortals as I can. Not all of them of course, but it’s long past time to control their population before they overrun us more than they have.”
I blinked again, not believing what I was hearing. “You serve the Protector. How can you justify that?” I asked.
“Protection is…subjective,” Magdalene said.
“Anything in excess can be dangerous. We use plants and herbs as medicine, but most, if taken in excess, can kill instead of heal. Fire can keep a person warm or be used for cooking, but when it rages out of control, fire will destroy everything in its path. Mortals are much the same way. A few of them are fine, but they become dangerous and uncontrollable when there are too many.”
She knelt down on one knee next to me. “People pray to the Protector to cure them from disease, or for their loved ones to make it home safe from war, but if the Protector answered all those prayers, do you know how large the population would be? Disease and war are necessary to keep us all from starving to death or living in squalor from lack of resources. You’re going to help me prevent that.
Mortals reproduce far too often and too quickly, so it’s time to do a little weeding. ”
“No,” I said. My legs were still wobbly beneath me, and I couldn’t stand yet. “No, the Trinity won’t let that happen.”
“They already have,” she said. “Do you remember the Great Flu? That was my doing. I created that pandemic to clear out the weak, and it worked for a time. Unfortunately, the human body is frustratingly resilient, and mortals built up an immunity faster than I’d hoped.”
I stared at her, hatred coursing through my veins. “The Great Flu killed my parents,” I spat at her.
“Those people weren’t your parents,” she said. “They were mortal and thus expendable.”
I surged to my feet and put everything I had into a ball of sunfire. Magdalene screamed as it hit her squarely in the chest. She must’ve seen me negate her frost with sunfire at the temple, though, because she did the reverse now, quenching the sunfire.
I didn’t wait for her to recover.
Magdalene’s eyes widened as she felt me fill her lungs with earth, but she reacted immediately with her own magic to pull it back out.
For several seconds, our powers engaged in a kind of tug of war as I tried to pull dirt into her lungs while she tried to keep it out, much like she and Axenus had done at the temple with water.
She sent a blast of her frost at me that sent me sprawling back onto the ground again, and I clutched at my chest until I was able to melt its icy grip with my sunfire.
“War is the next step,” Magdalene went on mercilessly. “So I created the symbionts.”
“How?” I asked, getting to my knees. “You don’t serve the Creator.”
“There are ways around that,” Magdalene said, “but I seem to be experiencing some side effects. That’s where you and the other syphon come in.
I need access to your powers so I can do what I need to do to thin the mortal population and put the world back in balance.
Then we’ll dissolve the borders between countries and the three of us will rule the continent again as we were meant to. ”
“You’re mad,” I whispered.
“I’m practical,” she countered.
Magdalene’s frost seized my chest again, and she reached toward me where I knelt on the ground.
I tried to draw my sunfire, but I couldn’t move.
Pain radiated out from my chest as the frost seized me, and I tried to cringe away from Magdalene.
Somehow I knew letting her touch me would be disastrous, but she was using all her strength to hold me.
Her fingers were only inches from me when Talyn appeared next to Magdalene and slammed into her, knocking her to the side.
Magdalene and the assassin rolled on the ground, and Talyn tried to raise a sword to strike, but Magdalene put a hand to her chest. Talyn grunted as a strong forcefield sent her flying backward.
She landed hard, and her head kicked against the ground as she tumbled back toward the rift I’d opened in the earth.
I screamed as Talyn’s body rolled again and fell over the chasm.
I tried to rise, to get to her, but I sensed Magdalene bearing down on me, and I called on my magic.
What erupted from my hands was part sunfire, part fire, part forcefield, and part something else I couldn’t name.
Magdalene met my attack with a wall of her own magic, and the force of the power meeting between us pinned me back against the ground.
For what seemed like minutes but was likely only seconds, Magdalene and I remained locked in battle.
I looked quickly toward the fissure, and relief broke over me as I saw Samhail pull Talyn up over the edge.
I turned back to Magdalene and rallied my power to push against her as I struggled to my feet.
We both seemed to break off our powers at the same time as we faced each other, panting with exertion.
“I know you saw part of the vision I had,” Magdalene said through heavy breaths as she straightened.
“I let you see it at the temple, but you only saw part of it. You weren’t ready to see the rest of it then.
You have no idea the death and destruction you’ve been prophesied to cause.
It will be incredible. Let me show you.”