Chapter 33 #2
Because why the fuck does his voice – which I couldn’t place before, couldn’t figure out where I’ve heard it before, couldn’t remember – sound exactly like Varian Asier’s.
I twist and wrap my whips around us and pull. It drags us closer together, but I’m never able to properly slice him because of glowing runes that appear on his cloak every time my blood touches him.
Runic magic.
And the movement surprises him which gives me the second I need to land a punch that brings him to his knees and tug the back of his hood.
Red tinged hair is shorter than the professor’s but still curled and landing just above his ears. The same red tinged hair that could look black in lower lighting.
Pain obliterates my middle as I’m flown backward and land hard on my back. A second later another hit comes for my face but I block at the last second. His fist lands against my blood covered forearms and sends me several feet into the ground creating the largest crater he has so far.
Disbelief wafts through my system but another emotions drowns it.
I finally twist that third lock and before I even open the door power splinters the air. The devil pummeling me freezes and I draw more of my blood before me to expel. Striking out, I send Kolasi flying and simply lay for a moment to process.
First it was the sun devil and his twin. But now this. . . Professor Asier’s – what? Father? Brother? Son? The man is over two hundred years old. He could have a child.
I take a deep breath and let that third door crack open as the other three already are.
My heart beats and it feels like the space glitches with it.
Getting up, I survey the scene. The rebels are still going against the celestials.
Kolasi is just now getting up from where my blast landed him.
The golden shield from Asher is still holding even as explosions of fire hit against it.
The devil slashes his arms through the air and roars.
“WHAT ARE YOU?”
He wouldn’t have asked why I can still burn if I wasn’t a vampire if he didn’t know. I will not be delusional enough in thinking I can dissuade him from that.
He comes for me again and I repeat his question.
What are you?
I let that first door swing wide. And that other emotion, that one that drowns the disbelief and everything else, it’s like gasoline on a flame.
What are you?
Well, the answer is simple.
Burning.
I am burning.
I am always burning.
His shadow blades extend past the points and become shadow whips now that he slashes through the air. So I consume them.
God, I am so fucking tired.
I am so exhausted. The golden devil had been right when he said I was not fully recovered.
In truth, I never even recovered from thirteen years ago.
Or would it be sixteen years. . . ? When that devil and mage took me in.
Maybe it was even before them. When I was born and my parents left me on the side discarded. Cast aside like trash.
A current of ash begins to fall from where those shadow whips had been ready to strike me. The devil is left struck frozen as I finally stand.
Blazing. . . burning.
Blue flame covers the blood that is covering my hand. And when I look into what I know are gold ringed red eyes, all I feel is rage.
I slowly turn towards the rebels still fighting. Hundreds. Possibly thousands. The hum in my blood becomes a low tenor as I watch them all cast their magics.
For a moment I contemplate unlocking that fifth door within. A key I’ve never even touched before because even locked I can feel true uncontainability.
But instead I slowly nudge that third and fourth door open and power consumes. A red sheet of aura so palpable I wouldn’t be surprised if they could see it now. Expanding across the entirety of the field. Past even the furthest reaches that I have tested before.
That deep tenor hum erupts in my blood and I begin the movement to circle my blood whips around myself.
Feathers of blue flame flutter after them as they create an almost shape like an ophanim with me within.
Rings within rings that for some reason remind me of a supernova. Red from my blood, blue from my flame.
I can feel threads from green and purple representing my other magics.
I am too tired.
Pure, damning wrath vibrates with every molecule and spark within me. I am ending this now.
The remaining witches had been inching closer and I can feel their auras. I can feel the ground responding from the wood witches who smell like that cloying earth scent. But there’s another that is almost familiar.
Bones burning on a pyre.
I lock eyes with milky glazed ones and pain eviscerates my body. Hairline fractures split through every bone in my body with the need to move. To bow, to kneel, to obey.
I had thought the last bone witch alive was Nana. Was Esmirra of Ebony who wanted to leave that title five thousand years ago.
“What a child,” I breathe, but my words thunder through the field. It stills the witches for a moment and I can feel eyes on me. That voice did not entirely sound like my own.
Cracks riverbeat loudly inside my head.
Pain, pain, pain.
“It’s not the same.” And I’d laugh if I was able to feel anything. I step my foot back without a waver of difficulty and twist my arms around and up. “You think this is pain?” The song in my blood whispers in the space with a melody. “You don’t know burning.”
There’s a sort of click as I keep the witches and that death devil in my sights. Like in the classroom before. An inherent knowing. Fate.
“But I’ll show you.”
They’re dead. They just don’t know it yet.
That hum hitches right before I release.
It knows now. Uncontrolled and raw. There will be no stopping it this time. No way to prevent it. No way to block.
Fate.
I release.