92. Clash of Stone and Steel
Clash of Stone and Steel
Epilogue
Praya
Praya looked out over the water as she stood on the beach near Tide’s End and tried to assure herself they’d done the right thing. Ariel stood next to her, both of them hidden under an obfuscation glamour, visible only to each other and the other two people on the sand with them.
Well, the only two live people.
Praya watched Lord Bressen carry the shrouded body of the man once called Morland to the edge of the water and lay it down. He stepped back and put a hand at the small of Cyra’s back as she stepped forward.
Cyra held her hand over the body, and a moment later it became a pile of sand. Then the lord and lady stepped back as the surf surged.
Swells gathered on the water and crashed onto the beach to wash over the pile of sand formerly known as Morland.
It took only a minute or so for the waves to pull it out to sea, the water dragging each grain into its depths, just as Praya was sure Morland’s soul was now being dragged to one of the three hells.
Probably the lowest hell if even half of what she’d heard of the man was true.
“You still don’t think we should’ve come back,” Ariel said softly.
It was a statement rather than a question. Her wife always knew what she was thinking. Whether Ariel had minor mind powers of her own, or whether Praya just gave off such strong signals that Ariel couldn’t fail to pick up on them, her wife could always read her like a book.
Usually a very dirty book. But not today.
Praya shook her head. “No, the last few hours have convinced me we needed to return.” Although maybe not for the reasons they first thought.
She would’ve said more, but the lord and lady now trudged back up the sand to where she and Ariel stood by the dunes.
Praya tried to meet Cyra’s eyes, but her attention was drawn to the small dark creature that sat on the woman’s shoulder.
Less than a foot tall, the thing looked like a cross between the ugliest puppy she’d ever seen and something out of a nightmare.
Whenever the thing blinked, one glowing red eye always blinked half a second later than the first, and Praya couldn’t decide if the quirk was amusing or unnerving.
She looked away from the nightmare demoni.
She’d seen some of them centuries ago from a distance when she’d first lived on the continent, but this was the first time she’d seen one up close.
Demoni usually came in a horde – a wrath, to properly name the group – and it wasn’t wise to get too close to them.
This one seemed to be a kind of pet. It rode on Cyra’s shoulder, surrounded by a faint cloud of black smoke that wafted off its body. Lord Bressen didn’t like the thing, if the occasional scowls he threw its way were any indication.
“Thank you for your help,” Cyra said, and Praya pulled her attention back to the lady, her fellow Hand of the Gods.
Praya nodded. Cyra seemed stable at the moment, but Praya sensed the woman’s mental equilibrium shifting, as if it stood on sand and the tide was winnowing it away, just as the tide had taken Morland’s body.
Death. That’s what Praya sensed around Cyra, even more than she had the first time she’d met the woman. Cyra had used her powers to kill very recently, and not just her syphoned powers. She’d used those special powers given to her by the Nemesis itself.
The first time they’d met on the island, the lady had been relatively weak and unpracticed, but something had changed since then.
Cyra now radiated power, just as her husband did, and that power worried Praya.
She’d been nervous to come back and face Magdalene, but she now wondered if Cyra might turn out to be the greater threat.
“I helped fix a flaw in the natural order,” Praya said.
Bressen slipped his arm around Cyra’s waist and pulled her close as he kissed her temple. She leaned into him, but the demoni shifted on her other shoulder.
“Now that Morland is dealt with, we need to figure out what to do about Magdalene,” Bressen said. “If what Talyn told us is true, Sandrian is just a pawn in whatever game she’s playing.”
Cyra met Praya’s eyes, and Praya felt Ariel take a careful step closer to her. On Cyra’s shoulder, the little demoni blinked its staggered blink and resituated itself. It wrapped a clawed hand around some of Cyra’s hair near her neck and held on, as if it expected her to start moving.
“I feel the gods stirring,” Praya, said. “Something is changing with the Trinity, and it’s because of Magdalene.”
“She wants to restore the continental Triumvirate,” Cyra said.
Praya shook her head. “Not exactly. She wants to return to a time when syphons ruled the continent, but I don’t think she intends to share that power with us, no matter what she told you.”
“She wants to take your power for herself,” Bressen said.
“We’ve been taught to view the Trinity almost as one entity in three beings, but they’re more fractured than one might think,” Praya said. “The gods don’t get along perfectly, and there are times when one will grow more powerful until the others do something to restore the balance.”
Bressen looked at his wife. “The Protector must be working through Magdalene to gather power.”
Praya clamped her teeth together, and she was glad the lord had phrased that as an assumption rather than a question. She wouldn’t have wanted to respond.
As the oldest of the current syphons, Praya had gradually become more and more attuned to the gods and the shifts in their power, even out on the island, but it wasn’t the Protector she sensed gathering power now.
It was the Nemesis rising.