Chapter 10
Hope
Hope finally reached the Badassery Suite, and it was, indeed, a mess.
Piles of dirty weapons and clothes sat in different places.
They had all dumped everything in this room after showering the dry blood and pieces of dead flesh of the sangins from their bodies.
The weapons, however, were her sole responsibility, since the others preferred the use of panom magic and shadows.
Opening her hand, she Gave a white stone table in front of her.
One by one, she picked her daggers from the floor and lined them up on the table from longest to shortest. She usually kept the shorter ones on the belt around her waist. The longer ones, on the belts around her thighs and across her chest and shoulders.
Finally, she removed the red and black crystal blades from her body.
The Red and Black Lawful Stabs, fruit of the blood of the Cardinals and the Cardinal Queen themselves, and placed them somewhere around the longer end of the collection.
As always, the blades pulsed slightly, their powerful magic begging Hope to wield them for Harming or killing. She didn’t trust those blades.
She cleaned each blade meticulously, then sharpened the edges of the metal weapons until they could make someone bleed by mere contact, polished the handles before finally returning each one to the sheath they belonged to.
When that was in order and the Black and Red stabs were tucked in closely to her body again, she looked around.
Closing her hand, she Took some piles of clothes, making them vanish.
Most panoms had to use their four powers evenly to keep their inner scale intact and avoid unwanted symptoms. If they Took, they had to Give, maintaining the vertical balance of the opposite magics from the South and North Petals of their panom mark.
If they Healed, they had to Harm, to keep the horizontal scale even with the use of magics from the West and East Petals.
If they didn’t, there were consequences.
Lenna became dizzy and couldn’t focus when her magic balance was uneven.
Ciaran used to become extremely cold, however, that would never happen again, since he gave up his panom magic for her.
Ayla used to have extreme pain in her eyes, to the point she couldn’t see, and that wouldn’t happen again either, since her eyeballs were now in the North Cardinal’s necklace.
Jake felt extreme pain, however, his pain tolerance was something out of this world, hence why the East Cardinal had claimed him as the Ruler of her Harming Petal.
Hope, however, didn’t feel her inner balance tilting to either side as she used the different powers. She couldn’t feel anything because, for some reason she still lacked to understand, she simply didn’t have a balance.
Perhaps it was because she was the Ruler of the Core of Thyria, the central and pivotal circle that held the four Petals connected, like her magic was the balance of magics.
What she felt, though, permanently beating with pride against the Cardinal-red panom mark at the back of her neck, was the Fifth Power.
The power she still hadn’t used since she had obtained it in the Fifth Judgment, and she didn’t know how to use.
Or perhaps she would know when the time came?
Using her four panom powers had come to her as naturally as breathing.
Would the Fifth Power be the same? Had Jake and Ayla explored the use of their Fifth Powers yet?
Back in Ciaran’s—now their—room, she was about to lie down again. A door violently slammed open down the house, followed by running steps as Nina shouted, “Hope, Hope! Hope, where are you?”
Adrenaline filled her veins as Ciaran and Hope started running towards the sound of Nina’s voice until they found her in the middle of the corridor.
Ayla was right behind Nina, her lips pursed tightly as her smooth yet messy hair covered her torso.
Lenna appeared at the end of the corridor, her arms closed tightly, her face shell-shocked and unrecognizable.
Indianna appeared from her room, rubbing her eyes as if she had finally fallen asleep not long ago.
Stevian walked until he reached Nina’s side, placing a kind hand over her shaking forearm.
“What’s the matter, dear child?” he asked, his brow furrowed.
Hope couldn’t process what she was seeing. This couldn’t be happening again.
Nina’s bottom lip trembled, her whole body shaking as her widened, ocean-blue eyes stared at Hope.
“I have a message for you, Hope,” she said.
A wave of terror was threatening to overthrow Hope as all she could focus on was Nina’s pure white hair. The hair that now had a black strand amongst the whiteness.
Flashbacks of Nina’s white-haired brother rushed through her mind, of every time he had a nightmare infiltrated by an unwanted goddess, waking with blackness inking his hair.
Of how the nightmares became more frequent, his mind and body taken over by the goddess who moved him between islands, eventually killing him.
Hope walked to Nina and lifted her hand slowly, touching the black ink on her hair, hoping it would be a mirage, hoping it would disappear, hoping it was only her mind playing tricks on her.
Not again. Not to Nina.
Nina swallowed, her small fist whitening while it shook. “The Cardinal Queen was in my mind last night.”
“What did she tell you, Nina?”
She inhaled sharply before speaking, her voice barely recognizable as she quoted the Queen. “I could smell your blood and your dreams from afar, Snow Child. Your sibling smelled just the same. Tell the Daughter of Red that the red era is over. It's time for the Black Queen to rule the world.“