Chapter 19
~Sylas~
It was making me anxious.
I’d gone from one pocket dimension wherein Remnant and I had dealt with Victor Halrow, to another one here and now where the despicable Genexis was located.
Meaning it had put me out of touch and beyond reach of Velra, Cassius, and Lazriel.
For longer than I was comfortable with.
Especially with the threats out there.
Especially with our child in the picture, Velra pregnant.
And not to mention, I needed to be reachable in general—to everyone.
I was also still fucking waiting on hearing back from Ambrose. He’d become a key path toward finding my father, so I could stop that madman before further damage occurred.
Damage like the hybrid massacre he’d performed at that CRS facility using a twisted version of Risen Reckoning.
And damage like this that I was witnessing here and now.
This fucking extermination facility. Built to take the lives of hybrids just because of what they were, as per Puritas rhetoric.
The actual structure was a decaying gothic monastery, the only thing within the pocket dimension, all the rest just an empty, gray space, even devoid of any sort of grounding base—soil, rocks, grass, even water—except that which the monastery sat upon.
I sank against the cold brick wall of one of the finishing rooms as we’d discovered Puritas called them. They referred to the mentally and physically breaking of hybrid beings for sport and punishment before they then killed them.
One of the rooms had been in session when we’d arrived.
It had taken me, Ryker, and two dozen Guardian Movement members time to break through the place, to dispose of the guards, run through every fucking room, before reaching these four at the farthest corner of the facility.
Three had consisted of beings murdered many days ago, still lining the floors, some even still strapped to the magical torture chairs.
But this one room, when Ryker and I had burst in, ten beings in it had only just been killed by a mixture of magical desiccation and internal implosion.
As a necromancer, I had the ability to pull the freshly dead back into the living world without harming the integrity of the Valley of the Dead or upsetting the balance. It had been within that brief and fragile window.
So, I’d managed to resurrect them all before they’d crossed from the Veil into the Valley itself.
I watched now as the Guardian members escorted them out, intending to take them to the infirmary at the Guardian Compound then rehabilitate them after the horrors they’d endured.
I just needed a moment.
I’d seen a lot before we’d even made it to this room.
Yeah, I was a Master of Death Magic, which meant I’d seen more death than most ever did. But this… the grotesque nature of it… the cruelty… it was something else entirely.
I jolted as Ryker burst back into the room, his green lightning let loose, and I watched as he decimated everything in seconds—the restraints, the equipment, even the dead bodies of the Puritas assholes who’d been in here murdering and torturing when we’d entered.
I’d told Ryker I couldn’t bring them back along with the rest.
Of course I could.
He was no fool either. But we’d left it unspoken between us.
He called his power back, hands shaking as he brought them to his face, scrubbing them over it and breathing heavily, before uttering a slew of curses.
As he started to come down from it, he registered me standing in the dark corner.
“I thought you were meeting me outside.”
“I needed a moment,” I responded, walking to him in the middle of the now completely trashed room that was just ashes and debris. “Great minds, it seems.”
He nodded, then shoved a hand through his hair. “We’ve been searching for this nightmare of a place for so long. Now it’s finally done with. But… getting to this point… so many who’ve suffered and died here at their hands… it can’t be undone.”
“Even with all your power and having the Guardian Movement at your disposal, the supernatural world pretty much wired—above ground, anyway—you can’t control everything. You can’t stop all atrocities.”
Our eyes locked.
“I’m glad you said that.”
“What?”
“It’s something you need to accept too.”
“Doesn’t seem like you’ve accepted it, Ry.”
“That outburst you just witnessed is a mark of me accepting it. Because it’s not easy, it’s painful to swallow down, so there are times when I need to unleash that frustration.
But accepting it is necessary. Otherwise you become a maniacal striver for ultimate power. ” His eyes flashed. “Like Morien.”
“He didn’t become that way from a place of wanting to protect.”
“No. It was from wanting to be above control. They are similar. In both cases, if there’s not a line, one you live and die by, you become like him, like so many who’ve been corrupted by power.”
As those heavy words hung there between us, he stepped up to me.
“The Guardian Movement is finishing with the cleanup here. The victims have already reached the Compound and are being seen to. The Puritas fuckers still breathing are being processed. Cornelius will be here in moments to disintegrate this pocket dimension. Everything is in motion.”
“That gives you and me some time to talk.”
“Yes. We need to iron out the proposal. And there is also something else I need to make you aware of.” He gestured around us with a grimace. “But not here in this hellhole.”
“Agreed. But—”
“You need to check in with your loves. I understand. Believe me. Nor do we have time for an hours-long meeting of the minds.”
“You’re being pulled in every direction.”
“Par for the course as Head of the Guardian Movement.”
“When war comes knocking.”
“Yeah.”
He held out his hand.
And then, with a flare of his green magic, he was teleporting us away.
We rematerialized in… a living room?
I turned to my left seeing a dark leather tufted couch with brass stud detailing adorned with sapphire and black throw pillows.
A midnight-black and emerald-green woven rug with a runic pattern was positioned in front of it with a charred wood coffee table taking up half its surface area.
The whole setup faced a stone fireplace.
Upon the mantle were several trophies from won competitions at both Maven and Lotus Coven—the covens I knew Ryker had once belonged to.
Back in the days when there hadn’t also been academies to choose from, and only educational institutions just for magic-wielders had existed.
There was an oversized cream armchair with gold accents in the far corner just to the right of an open door that I could see a small kitchen through. Adjacent to said chair was a heavy mahogany bookshelf full of magical volumes and very heavy reading and research material.
To the far right of the front door behind me was a staircase leading to the upper level.
“My cottage,” Ryker said, off my look. “Nestled deep in a forest in the middle of nowhere.”
“You… what?” None of that… computed.
His lips quirked. “I got this place during a time when I’d become far too much of a celebrity in the supernatural world and I had people knocking at my door in droves wanting assistance and favors—back before the Guardian Movement could serve the way it does now, when it was an elitist fuck-fest basically.
” He grinned, then lifted a shoulder. “I needed some peace and quiet. Didn’t last long with the rise of Draco, but I adapted and now, here I am, head of the same organization I once detested. ”
I folded my arms across my chest as I regarded him. “You’re drawing a comparison, thinking I detest the Guardian Movement also?”
“You believe it to be ineffective, reactive rather than proactive, and restrained when it should be the opposite.”
“Well, there is that, yeah. There are issues.”
He nodded. “Here’s the thing, though. When I took control, the Guardian Movement’s reputation was in shambles.
There was little trust left in it as an institution.
Cornelius had made some mistakes, sure, but it ran deeper than that, and Draco’s rise exposed all those cracks.
The organization had also become seen as more elitist than for the people.
This was at a time when the people really needed to feel seen and supported.
Things were at a tipping point. Cornelius needed me to take command, because the supernatural populace respected me, they liked me, and I’d been very obviously showing my distaste for the elitist snobbery of the place for years.
They didn’t trust the Guardian Movement, but they trusted me. ”
He leaned against the back of the couch as he went on, “To maintain that trust, I had to be very careful. Walk a very fine line. I couldn’t overstep—at least not publicly.”
“Not publicly… you’re referring to you being aware of Cornelius’ underground activities and his alliance with The Shadowed.”
“Yes.”
“Huh.”
“The Guardian Movement must always remain for the people. As such, I can never, under any circumstances, stray from that. Just like with me ensuring people get to choose whether they want to be incorporated into the world-sweeping antidote spell that will protect everyone from Dark Fae mind-meddling. You see it as ineffective, as taking undue time to do what needs to be done. But the moment you take away choice at that level, you are endorsing autocratic rule. And there, I’ve become the very thing I fought against and made a vow to never be. ”
“I get where you’re coming from, Ry.”
“Only partially. For what we’re about to do, you need to understand fully.”
He held out his hand, raising it near the side of my head. “Let me show you.”
I gave a nod, then his palm glowed with his green power. “Twenty-odd years ago, this is what had transpired, before the Guardian Movement became what you know it as today.”
In the next second, his power flared, and I was pulled into a past situation.