Chapter 10
I followed the thread of the memory, launching myself deep within the moment while keeping a manifestation of myself at the ready, positioned in the inner core, and the main base of my magic locked outside Winston’s mind where I stood.
It was imperative that I didn’t mistake this opportunity for good fortune. The Celestial Coven thrived on traps, and I needed to ensure I didn’t walk directly into one.
“Have you considered our proposal?” the woman asked.
Winston slowed his aging, much like the pillars of the Celestial Coven. I thought it was a requirement of the four main members, but perhaps they encouraged immortality for all their coven members. In which case, that meant the possibility of more ancient magics at play.
“I seek to speak with your True Witch, not some lacky.”
“We are no lackies.” The blonde planted her hands on her hips, but there was a sway in her body that jerked ever so slightly in the opposite direction.
It was like she was being yanked by strings in every which way. A familiar sight.
“Respect us or—”
“You’ll break my mind like so many others?” Winston grinned. “Yes, I’ll admit, you lot have some serious psychic power, but it doesn’t answer any of my questions.”
Psychic supremacy. This was The Sisters Three, possessing a different witch from the one I’d banished them from when they attacked.
“What are you, exactly?” Winston asked, trying to make sense of the odd pluralization The Sisters Three used in reference to themselves. “What is she?”
“The True Witch is a god,” they replied. “As are we.”
“You say that, and the pitch is appealing, but I’m no gullible fool.” Winston crossed his arms. “These enchantment enhancements, they’re the source of your godhood? What happens when the charge they hold runs dry?”
“Our resources never run dry,” The Sisters Three said in unison. “We are gods. Ascended beyond compare, but the world in its current state is too small to hold all our glory. We need to open it back up, return all the magic to this realm.”
“So you keep saying, which is an easy enough lie to offer when lacking the power you claim to possess.”
“We possess more power than any witch,” The Sisters Three voice turned stern and echoed in Winston’s mind. “But let us show you the glory of revolution, the tides of time we turned, the liberation of magic we seek.”
Winston required evidence, proof of power, before he’d invest anything into this coven.
Why The Sisters Three found themselves compelled to convince this witch, I wouldn’t understand.
He was powerful, but not to the same degree as the others.
Perhaps all members of the Celestial Coven pale in comparison to the tremendous force the four pillars possessed. One could hope.
I braced for the impending flashes of visions, of history, the psychic witches etched into Winston’s mind.
They didn’t merely show him their history; they seared it into his mind.
I turned my head, studying the walls of Winston’s inner core, looking deep into the crevices and finding the scars marred throughout his mind.
The entire story unfolded from this memory, and I traced the images hidden in his mind.
“We gather here today to liberate magic for all,” Amara spoke to a crowd, dressed in a tunic. Her speech continued, echoing in a foreign language I didn’t comprehend. “We will no longer bow to the greedy gods. We will show that godhood is for all, not merely the few blessed by circumstance.”
It came with a delay, but the words were translated. An effort made by The Sisters Three, undoubtedly.
Amara appeared the same as she did now, but the creases around her eyes were deeper.
There were calluses on her hands and cuts on her feet.
Her clothing was speckled with dirt and grime.
Her skin was worn and tired. But she held herself with strength, the same strength I’d seen with her calm composure thousands of years later.
There was something off about this memory, this moment. The crowd, the words, and the design all seemed genuine and false simultaneously. The reality was stitched together, and I could see the faint scarring of the lies. But why lie?
“Because this isn’t Amara’s life,” I whispered.
She was much older than The Sisters Three. Predating them to such a point, they didn’t have any idea. I recall that much when I scoured their minds before killing them.
“How astute,” The Sisters Three said, stepping out of the strings of this memory and circling me like the vultures they were.
I half-expected them to spring out of the body they possessed from memory and attack me as a unified trio.
“Can’t attack,” the light-lilted voice said. “Not enough power,” said the raspy-voiced sister. “Seems you ended us,” said the stern voice, adding a sour glare from the face they shared in the body they’d stolen.
“Then how are you here?”
“We are but a fragment,” the stern voice explained. “The tiniest of specs trickling in the recesses of our coven. A safety measure.”
The same as how Finn had broken off a piece of his magic and locked it away inside my mind. The same way another piece had been broken off and trapped inside the mind of the chimera.
“If you think you can challenge me—”
The Sisters Three cackled. “Challenge you? No, no, no. You killed us fair and square. With little effort too, if the recollection dancing on the surface is truth and not conjecture.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing?”
“You wish to see the truth, learn the history.” They pointed at me, tracing the air. “Our memories are too broken to examine, huh?”
I didn’t respond, merely glowered, and channeled psychic energy.
“The memory is true, but we don’t know all the details.
Amara was born long before our time, when the gods were cruel and selfish.
Not like us. We want to give back to all.
Those who came before only sought to rule.
Rule without raining down gifts to their lessers.
We give to all. Sacrifice so the world can have magic. ”
“Aside from the Greek backdrop, what’s Amara supposed to be doing in this moment of history?”
“She’s opening the Gate to Hell,” The Sisters Three responded casually as if that were some random tidbit. “The gods hoarded power, locking away magic for themselves. By opening the gate, Amara unleashed magic for everyone.”
“You’re lying.”
If Amara had done that, the world would be overrun with demons.
“It was,” The Sisters Three said, not hiding their weak link to my thoughts. “Those demons raged through the world, unleashed in mass, and desperate for magic.”
Images of golden silhouettes fighting off shadows from every direction flowed through my mind.
“The gods of old were overrun by the demon hordes. Demons and devils danced on the corpses of the old gods, the false gods, the dead gods.”
Gold silhouettes fizzled out one by one, devoured by the gnawing shadows, replaced by splatters of blood until it pooled in every direction.
“I was born in an era where demons stormed across the lands.” The Sisters Three steered me from the sea of blood.
“My village was surrounded by harpy hunting grounds. The neighboring city made regular sacrifices to the krakens of the sea and the minotaur who burrowed tunnels through the streets. Demons dwelled everywhere, insatiable in their need for magic.”
They made it seem as if all the myths and legends that we now knew to be demons actually walked side by side with people.
“They did. They hunted and devoured the best of the witches, consuming our magic and raining down chaos upon the earth.” The Sisters Three’s voice got soft—almost somber.
“Magic finally belonged to us all, but Amara couldn’t protect the world when it was infested with demons.
So she founded the Celestial Coven. She sealed the Gate to Hell—banishing every demon once again but locking away all of the magic along with it. ”
Flashes of Amara, The Sisters Three, Lazarus, and Grim chanting a spell as the rest of their coven fought off hordes of demons played in my mind.
One by one, their members were slaughtered until demons surrounded the four pillars.
A bright light sprang from each of their eyes, burning away the demonic energy in every direction.
“In order to save the world, we had to strip it of the cancerous magic that lured demons in such destructive stampedes.”
That was how magic vanished. The era of nothing, where we lost our connection entirely. That was because of the Celestial Coven.
The lights surrounding Amara and the other pillars curved and looped around them, wrapping each of them in a cocoon of magic before vanishing altogether.
“We fell into the astral realms between worlds, we slept and we cast protections until eventually the world was ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“For when we finally returned,” The Sisters Three said.
“When we finally awoke after the centuries of slumber, we brought magic with us, magic for all with no need for demons to roam. The Gate of Hell remained sealed, but when we returned, we cracked the outer layer of the dimension just enough to give everyone a taste of magic.”
“A taste?”
“Come now, surely you know that a tree requires more than four roots,” they said.
“A tree thrives with thousands of roots. We all had access to infinite strength. The number of branches now pales in comparison to what was. The strength of those branches was mightier than even your best witches of today.”
The idea of more than four roots, hundreds or possibly thousands of them. It seemed absurd.
“We have so much more potential, all of us,” they said. “We’re meant to be gods.”
“Gods? The audacity, the stupidity, the fanatical belief is pathetic.”
“An expected response from a small mind with a sliver of power.”
“A sliver that slaughtered you three with ease.”
“And think what you could be when The True Witch achieves her goal,” they said.
“Imagine life after she properly completes her ritual. Godhood for all. Death but a fleeting, distant thing. Those lost souls, the infinite number, will be but a short visit away. We will all have the potential to traverse the universe in all its infinite glory.”
“You’re a delusional fool,” I snapped. “And I won’t let Amara or her coven force Tara into some terrible—”
“Terrible? Nonsense.” The Sisters Three scoffed. “Tara is the goddess of all. She will rule everything, everyone, everywhere. She will grant us the universe.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Yes,” they said. “The True Witch bore three children aligned with the stars above, casting rituals of old for promises of new.”
“Three?” I quirked a brow.
“One as a sacrifice to the gods of old who sleep eternal,” The Sisters Three said. “One to rule the demons of Hell. And one to reign over everything. Theodore and the abomination were brought into this world to ensure Tara had all she required for greatness.”
“Abomination?”
“The sacrifice.” The Sisters Three spoke with a venomous disgust. “A branchless thing.”
“Branchless?”
“Their mere existence is blasphemous.”
“I think I understand now.” I held back the need to recoil at their hateful emotions oozing in Winston’s mind. “You’ve been quite helpful. More so as a fragment than you ever were as broken memories in storage.”
“We can divulge so much more.”
“That won’t be necessary.” I retrieved their shattered, gnarled memories from my inner core and released them to the ether of the world. “There is nothing to be found there, only threads offering you a foothold in life.”
“Nonsense,” they said. “We are far too weak to be more than a whisper.”
“If that were true, you wouldn’t be so forthcoming.”
“You doubt our words?” The Sisters Three feigned offense. “Gods never lie. Our words are destiny, prophecy, law.”
“I believe what you shared holds truth to it,” I said, channeling my magic. “But I believe there are pieces you left out. Omitted to mislead me, mislead Milo.”
They tsked. “That clairvoyant is nothing to us.”
“And you are nothing to him, to anyone.” I clenched my fist, locking The Sisters Three in place. “It needs to remain that way. What is dead and gone should stay dead and gone.”
“But wait, you have a chance to make amends for your actions.”
I snorted. “Amends?”
“For standing against the gods, for opposing us,” The Sisters Three said with a pathetic pleading of desperation. “We can ensure The True Witch allows you into this new world, the world fueled by infinite magic unlike any our dimension has held.”
I isolated their fragment of being from the rest of Winston’s mind, ensuring not a trace slipped by and tucked itself away.
“I’ll pass.” I crushed them beneath the pressure of my telepathy. “And when I encounter the remaining members of the Celestial Coven, I’ll be sure to find the fragments you tucked away there, too.”
I sent this piece of The Sisters Three to their death, destroying the fleeting magic.
It became clear that Amara had to die, too.
If she would sacrifice one of her children for being branchless, if she’d lock another up until he obeyed her fanatical plan, then what would she do if Tara refused her?
The True Witch was despicable, and I needed to end her and her Celestial Coven. Permanently.