Chapter 31 #2
“No,” I agree, “but a mobius strip is infinite even as it stays in the same place. Perspective, Nana. No end, but stuck in the same loop. I am feeding my wish recycled aura within that loop. In a sense, I’m tricking the wish into believing I do have infinite aura.
Though I haven’t fully tested the actual edges of my magic.
Not sure you’d want me to either. After all, you did say I have no control. ”
And I finally open that first door.
Consuming is my aura and scent. The red sheet – not ribbons or threads – lays like a blanket that I know everyone can now see.
“Are you ready to evaluate my skill?”
She coils her magic around her as she lunges. Faster than Kolasi. I have no choice but to block with my exposed body, but Nana does not attack with a closed fist or technique that should test my skill. She comes at me with open palms and wraps them around my forearms.
Pain obliterates like it does every time.
Singeing my nerves and burning with a heat that wishes to turn my soul into ash. I do not, however, let it last long.
Nana does nothing else as she waits and watches. Expecting me to fall like I should. Succumbed to the pain.
“You think this is pain?” I whisper to her. Just like I did to that bone witch on the field. It has the same effect. “You don’t know burning.”
Then I twist out of her hold and shove her back. Fury rumbles and it presses my aura further. That was a low blow and she did it with an intent to hurt me. To punish me. To put me in what she believes is my place.
Her fury matches as she takes her nails and rips apart her shirt revealing a band covering her breasts and more muscles.
Dragging a hand across her collarbones, something beneath her skin shifts.
That something slices through her skin in gleaming white and she pulls it out.
The length almost unbelievable considering that’s her bone she twists into a sword, but they aren’t called bone witches for nothing.
Her skin immediately closes, though that doesn’t stop the blood that’s already fallen from staining her porcelain skin. I have to forcibly remind myself I’m not meant to kill her. They want to see my skill. Because it would be so very easy to end her life her right now.
She doesn’t wait for me to draw a weapon and swings at me. Her sword slicing through the air and I purposefully only move so much out of the way.
Her tip clips my shoulder and I let the blood run as I dodge her next attacks. She doesn’t have the mentality of allowing me to show my skill and instead is continuing with her punishment.
I pull my blood only enough to solidify a staff and when Nana brings her sword down in an arc, I use to top of my staff to meet her and then use her momentum as I twist and stir my staff to dislodge her grip. Sending her sword flying past the edges of the mat and bringing my staff down on her.
Another wound is created as she pulls more bones to create twin blades. Using them and incorporating martial art techniques that she thinks she taught me.
Her aura fights for dominants as she hounds into me. Most of her moves I mimic and I can feel her frustrations as we fight like reflections. I know her next move before she makes it, and because she wishes to punish me I will toy with her.
Hit for hit, kick for kick, blow for blow. She doesn’t understand. None of them do. Not that I have been forthcoming, but it was never their business either. Yet, at every instance they wish to insert themselves because they believe it is their right.
She growls at me as she tries to land a kick to my head but I block it with a kick of my own. Our shins collide and I can hear the crack from my bone. Twisting away, I’m given a second of reprieve as Nana sneers at me.
Pain sings.
Not the smartest countermove, however it’s worth it as I equally distribute my weight between my legs and ignore the pain. It makes her snarl. Her aura reaching to its limit to try and dominate mine.
“So much arrogance!” she spits. “I raised you better! I saw your human-like heart and knew you would not be like her! You were meant to be better!”
She slashes one of her daggers through the air and I feel the cracks running along my other leg, my ribs, my arms, my hands. I have no choice but to let go of my staff and my blood splatters across the mat.
“I will not have you end up like her, Mavyllora!”
“Like who?”
Fire traces along those cracks and raw power forces everything to hold in place. Preventing me from crumbling. I will not let myself crumble. It doesn’t prevent the pain, though. Pain that’s indescribable, but after a certain limit it all feels the same.
It becomes nearly a comfort.
It’s not a true beating, not like Kolasi gave me, but beggars can’t be choosers.
Nana points one of her daggers at me. “I will make sure you keep your humanity.”
Time moves oddly as I shut my eyes to bow my head and sigh.
“I am not Locklyn,” I whisper, knowing that she will hear me. “And you did not raise me.”
They forget. They always forget.
I forgot.
My blood begins to sing as I straighten and rip my nails into my palms. Drawing my blood out, I mold and solidify it into twin daggers that match hers. When I open my eyes she’s already coming after me, but time is still moving too slowly.
My bones groan as I move and match her attack. Adding strain to my body that is not as expansive as my aura or magic, but it never was.
Another hum adds to the back of my mind. It creates a pressure that feels like my skull is fracturing. I lose my hold on my blood and the force of the rush makes my heart – it makes my heart. . .
Nana swipes her dagger up and I’m too slow to properly defend myself so it cuts along my abdomen as I’m choking on my blood.
When she notices she takes a step back and I slam onto my knees. A hand on the mat as I bow my head and blood falls from my mouth with my other hand clutching the claiming mark over my heart.
My blood is moving too fast and instead of my heart acting as a chamber opening and closing to allow the blood through, it’s torn so there’s no proper circulation of my blood with my aura.
I need control.
Uncontrollable.
Wrong.
I have always been in control.
I silence it all. My hum and his, the song, the whistle. I shove that wish that is unstable within deeper into me. Then I stop my blood.
I force it to pause in my veins and spit the rest still in my mouth and throat out. Wiriness creeps along the edges of my mind wishing for me to sleep, but I have control. More than anyone ever truly knew.
Slowly dragging my hand from my chest, I bring it to my mouth and sink my fangs into my shaking hand.
My venom invades my system and with the blue belladon in my blood I focus my blood art to my heart.
Healing that tear even faster than what it would have taken.
Then I keep a steel-clawed grip on my blood as I let it start slowly flowing again.
The ground rumbles as I sit on my heels and slowly breathe. The first thing I see when I look up are milky eyes.
“What was that, Mavyllora?”
I hate that name.
There are people behind her and vaguely I can feel something like a light tug imbued with warmth.
“I’m not like her,” I say to which Nana frowns. “I’m not a god.”
Nana straightens and steps back as she sneers at me.
“I broke twenty-two of your bones and you still fought as if you shouldn’t be bedridden.
Your heart just ripped in half and yet you were able to repair it while you stopped your blood flow and with a fatal wound to your stomach that if I cut an inch deeper would have exposed your organs.
All while your aura didn’t even waver. There was no fluctuation with your spirit or soul, and even in all that pain you still kept up shields strong enough to keep a stone witch out. ”
“That doesn’t make me a god.”
She tuts. “Forgotten gods exist, Mavyllora.”
My body screams at me and I internally scream right back. A manic laugh bubbles up from my chest. I cut it off before I look too crazy but grin what I’m sure are bloody teeth at her.
“Blood witches cannot be born with blue flame. That is what is really impossible. The gods are not allowed to possess blue flame. Your mother should have told you that.”
“So what are you?”
I finally process the other bodies behind Nana. My fated, all who are straining their bodies so hard. I’m sure we would be able to feel their aura’s if mine wasn’t already dominating. Then there’s Mr. Kyros and the council members.
One of them, with gold lit eyes and a white ring around their pupil, is staring down at me. Her midnight hair woven around her head in a crown of dark gold. Her white gown almost reminds me of a toga, except there are slits on the side that expose smooth black legs.
I look back up to her face and note the gold rings in her nose and lip, the cuffs in her ears, the lines of makeup drawn around her features.
I wonder who’s drop of primordial blood flows through her veins.
Dark skin bronzed from the sun. Golden light accented from the day.
“I am nothing,” I finally answer her. “Just like your father intended me to be.”
That white ring around her pupil ignites and I can feel her aura brush against my skin. It’s warm like how the rays of the sun are. It’s warm like how it always is before it burns.
The skin on my cheeks begin smoking first. Then my shoulders. Then my chest.
She pulls her aura back before flames can bloom and I raise a brow at her. She chuffs at it but then tilts her head at me.
“No one since the War of Gods has been able to deduct who my sire is. How did you?”
I relax the muscles of my face and then darken my expression just a bit. Just enough that I know my nearly black eyes will give the effect I want as I say, “You look like him. And that drop of blood in you – “ I run my tongue over my fangs. “ – it tastes just like his.”