Chapter Forty WITCHING MOON
Chapter Forty
WITCHING MOON
Week Three, Day One
Year 3000
Sorin fought.
Anyone would. Sachi had expected it, might even have found a shred of sympathy for him, if she hadn’t just lived through a million years of his cursed reign in a handful of moments. She knew what the stakes truly were, what would become of a world chained by this man.
The battle raged around them, ghostly fighters slipping between and through them as they stood. Some were brighter than others, more strongly present in the world of the Dream. Still others glowed —the Dreamers on the field, who were slowly recovering the power that Varoka had siphoned away.
But some were dim, dimmer still where Sorin’s chains ensnared them. Sachi reached out to touch the trailing end of one chain as a man—one of Sorin’s soldiers—ran past. It dissolved beneath her hand, and the man stumbled and fell. Stunned, much as Lyssa had been.
“Stop this at once.” Sorin loomed over Sachi, reduced to using his height and broad shoulders as physical intimidation. The look in his eyes promised pain. “I have given you a great deal of leeway—”
“You have given me nothing.”
“I have given you mercy .” His hands flew out, flashing gold from the tips of his fingers.
The chain slammed into Sachi and tried to slither around her. She brushed it aside and stepped forward, where moving through the dozens of bindings stretched across her path shattered them all.
“I should have kept you sedated,” Sorin hissed. “I should not have given you my trust.”
“You didn’t. I flattered your vanity, that’s all. Just as Nikkon taught me.”
More chains, harder this time. More vicious. “I let myself get distracted by a viper with a passably pretty face.”
His anger battered at her like rough seas, salt and stinging. But Sachi could not help but remember—this was a man that Ash had loved . Beneath this rage, before he’d lost his way, there had been good in him. Sachi could taste it in the Dream.
So she gave him mercy. The mercy of truth.
“You have such a brilliant mind, Sorin. So much drive, so much will to create. And you used to make such beautiful things.” Her voice caught on a sob, and she almost thought she could remember some of them—hand-shaped cradles for new parents, toy horses for the village children. Boats for the fishermen who plied their trade in Siren’s Bay. “But you’ve hardened your heart, until you can’t even hear the earth or your people screaming for mercy. You’ve hardened it so much that I wonder if you can be redeemed ... or if you’re too broken.”
He stared at her in outrage. “Redeemed? You seek to judge me? I brought civilization to this world. How dare you?”
“You brought exploitation. Imprisonment. Even now, you’re reacting with violence instead of understanding that you might have been wrong.”
Sorin roared his wrath and threw another chain at her, this one barbed and white-hot. Sachi caught it, let it wrap around her hand and arm until she knew the feel of it. The weight.
Then she reached for the center of Sorin’s power—the glowing nexus beneath their feet. If she looked down, she could see it, star-bright and pulsing. She’d once gone diving in Siren’s Bay and found an anemone. Its tentacles had undulated in the clear blue water just like the millions of chains that spilled out of the nexus.
She could break them, but the chaos would be unimaginable . Millions of people waking up to the Dream at once. Some would manifest powers, as Lyssa had. Perhaps even more than usual, due to the inherently traumatic nature of what Sorin had done to them.
Sachi tried to take them instead. It was a violence she could barely countenance, keeping the people leashed like this, but what choice did she have? It was the kindest option. She would not take from them the way Sorin had, and she could dissolve the chains in a controlled manner. Their imprisonment would last longer, but it would end, and she could make sure that people were safe .
She pulled the magic close, but when she tried to take it in, she couldn’t. Her stomach churned, as if everything in her was physically rejecting such a construct. She tried again, struggling to push past the waves of nausea and pain that seemed to sear her very soul.
There had to be a way—there was always a way—but it could take years, decades, to uncover. And time was running short.
But there was one thing left that she could try.
“You won’t win,” she told Sorin. “The question is, are you willing to learn from this? Will you let them go? Give me their bonds?”
“Of course I’ll learn from this.” His face hardened. “Next time, I’ll make certain there’s no one who can stop me.”
Sachi’s heart broke. She would do what she had to do, and could only hope the guilt wouldn’t crush her. “So be it.”
She reached for the nexus again. It danced at her touch, and she smoothed its chains, coaxing forth the bits of the Dream that held them together until she was surrounded by a jumble of magic.
Go, she whispered. Be free.
And when another, larger piece of the Dream came to her, the same question vibrating through it, she told it the same thing.