Chapter 19 Cinder #2
Ash would never say that. She loved books. It was Ember who’d thought my choice in gifts was worthless.
She lunged, slashing a dagger at my stomach. The blade cut into my shirt, missing my skin by a centimeter. She swung the other arm, and I ducked and turned, grabbing her arm and wrenching it behind her.
“You’re turning into a dark witch.” Her voice sounded so much like my sister’s that I nearly let her go. “First, you bind my powers. Then, you choose a demon over us and send Ember into the pool of tortured souls.”
“That wasn’t Ember, and you’re not Ash.” I spun and shoved her into the pool.
She screeched and wailed, splashing and shouting profanities I had never heard from Ash’s lips. Ruin was getting it wrong, morphing the memories of my sisters into one being. Her cries turned into a melodramatic laugh before she disappeared beneath the surface.
I started to sigh in relief, but Discord clutched my arm and spun me around in time to see four beings emerge from the shadows: Ember, Ash, Mayhem, and whom I assumed was Chaos.
Behind them, another six tulpas emerged.
Their features weren’t as pronounced, but I recognized a few coven members in the mix.
The other must’ve been people from Discord’s mind.
Another shadow took form behind them, this one massive and four-legged. Yep, bringing up the rear was that goddess-damned centaur.
“Oh, for Hecate’s sake.” I drew a spade from my gardening belt. “Why don’t you fight us in person, you coward?”
Ember sneered, leading the crew, her eyes glowing an unnatural shade of gold as she swung her sword in a figure eight.
Claws extended from Mayhem’s fingers, and horns protruded from his head.
The centaur reared onto his back legs, his front hooves circling in the air before slamming onto the ground.
The silence that followed was thick and oppressive.
For a moment, the tulpas shifted uneasily, as if awaiting orders from their master.
My hands trembled, sweat slicking the handle of my spade, but I forced myself to stand tall and meet the gaze of each shapeshifting adversary.
This was no longer about memories or mistakes—it was about survival, and I refused to let Ruin dictate the story any longer.
“What’s the plan?” I cast Discord a sideways glance. “I don’t like our odds.”
“Neither do I.” He clutched gardening tools in each hand.
“Retreat and live to fight another day?” A took two slow steps toward the staircase.
“I loathe running from battle,” he said, “but I believe that is our only option.”
“Works for me.” I spun and took three steps up before Mr. Beefy appeared on the stairs. He held someone’s bloody spine in one hand, their severed head in the other, and he chucked it at me, hitting me right in the gut.
I stumbled, my foot slipping, and I tumbled to the ground. Thank the goddess I’d only made it to the third step. Discord hauled me up by the arm, and we stood back-to-back, our weapons drawn as the tulpas surrounded us.
“There are too many of them,” I said. “There’s no way we can fight our way out of this.”
“We have no choice.” Discord hurled a pair of herb shears at one of his brothers. The tulpa didn’t turn to smoke, but they passed through him as if he had.
“Their features aren’t right. They’re blanker than they were before.” I swung the machete at the advancing centaur.
“His magic is spread too thinly,” Discord said. “Perhaps we can use this to our advantage.”
“How?” I slashed the blade at a tulpa that resembled Shade, our shadow witch. It passed through his neck with zero resistance.
“If they aren’t fully formed, they can’t—” His words were cut short when Mayhem slammed his shoulder into his gut, tackling him to the ground.
“Never mind.” Discord threw a punch, but the tulpa turned to smoke before rematerializing three feet away. My demon shot to his feet and returned to my side. “Perhaps our combined magic? Use your persuasion to convince them to stop.”
“It’s worth a shot.” I grabbed his hand and opened myself to the rush of his energy. My entire body hummed with magic, and my arm hairs stood on end as I poured as much vim as I could into my words.
“You don’t want to fight us,” I said. “We aren’t worth your time.”
They inched closer, the circle closing around us.
“You’d rather go away and send your master to face us in a fair fight.” I pushed out another wave of magic, and they paused, their expressions blanking even more. “You don’t want to be here.”
They all blinked once in unison. Twice. Three times. A light sparked in their dead eyes, as if their master had sent his own wave of magic into them, and they continued their advance.
“It’s not working.” We could never beat this many entities, even if they could be killed. “Tell me what else you know about tulpas. There must be a way to get rid of them.”
“Their existence is tied to their master. He created them in his mind, using our fears and guilt to design them.”
“So we’re fighting Ruin’s imagination.”
“That is correct.”
A thought wriggled in my mind…something Ash had joked about a few months ago. What had she said? I ground my teeth, willing the memory into full focus, but it was hard to concentrate with a horde of walking dead…undead?...unalive?...looming toward us.
I swiped my machete at the one who looked like Shade. The blade passed through his arm, but it didn’t reform completely. A whisp of smoke lingered around the contact point, vibrating and fading as if it didn’t have enough energy to turn solid.
I gasped as the memory returned. “Servitors.”
Discord frowned. “Was that supposed to be a spell?”
“It’s a being Ash told me about. She said if she ever turned to dark magic, we’d know because she’d create a servitor to organize the library for her. I think she meant a tulpa.”
“How does that piece of information help us now?”
The Mayhem tulpa struck out, slashing his claws against Discord’s face. My demon roared and shoved the entity, opening the circle enough for me to dart through. My coven and the damn centaur followed me toward the pool while Discord’s buddies stayed with him.
“If they’re just part of Ruin’s imagination, that means they aren’t real.”
Discord dodged a punch, shoving his other brother into the wall. “They’re real enough to cause us bodily harm.”
“Only because we believe they can hurt us.” I stood still, my back to the pool, and faced my deepest fears and regrets head-on. My thoughts and emotions only had power over me because I gave it to them. It was time I took it back.
“I’d joked along with my sister and asked her to send the servitor my way when she was done with him. She said it would only work if I truly believed in it.”
Discord snapped his gaze toward me. “Our imagination fuels them too.”
“Bingo. Ash said the moment you stop believing in a thoughtform, it loses its ability to help…or in this case…hurt you.”
The Mr. Beefy tulpa slammed a fist into Discord’s stomach, making him double over. He straightened and threw a punch, but his arm passed right through the spine ripper’s head.
Discord backpedaled three steps before he hit a wall. Six entities surrounded him, black smoke billowing around their feet as the faceless four began to fuse into his brothers’ forms.
“What’s the plan?” he asked
My heart galloped in my chest, and I sucked in a deep breath, centering myself. “Take back your power, stand there, and let them attack. They can’t hurt you if you don’t give them the ability to.”
“Are you sure it will work?”
I straightened my spine and looked the Ash tulpa in the eyes. “I’m betting my life on it.”
Hecate, have mercy. The entities attacked.