Chapter Forty Nine #2
As the water rushed around her, strengthening every possible second, the arcane entered her body again. She accepted more, more, more. With the onslaught, she began to understand. Onskar tried land arcane, sky arcane, and now sea arcane, yet she had room—so much space—to entertain the raw power.
All of the arcane.
She was a vessel.
All this potency for her to hold, all the ability to steal.
She hoarded it greedily within her clutches, and now she understood: Onskar could not take it back.
She knew it; he’d know it soon. The horror and fury mingling in his white lips told her he also began to comprehend.
Whatever Onskar sent would become hers. Entirely hers.
Everything.
The dizzying collection in her soul was a wild thing itself. Never had she felt so whole. Never had she felt so . . . herself. This was the moment which she’d always sought. The reason for her existence, and the extent of her arcane heritage.
To what end? she inquired.
She spoke her question to the burgeoning energy. It did not reply, yet she understood all the same. The answer became obvious through sheer understanding and instinct: her abilities did not enable her to use the arcane, simply to hold it. Action is why she had her other side.
The caged ferocity.
The unleashed siren.
With this knowledge, her siren self emerged again.
Confident, bold, and barely in control. Mila’s inner siren baptized herself in the arcane waters, emerging as a horrifying and triumphant villain who Mila never truly acknowledged before.
The molten heat of siren arcane was an indisputable thing. The tyranny of it. The headiness.
When Mila, child of the arcane, entered a siren state, only Onskar in his wyvern state could match her destructive ability.
Stinna would be proud.
Mila closed her eyes, pressed her palms together, and breathed deep. Her eyes glazed. Her lips elongated. The transition to siren swept her from head to toe as she leaned into the gathering power.
Siren Mila debuted the moment she split her lips.
The song welled in her chest where her heart should have been, and the wild, thumping beat consumed.
A single note cracked silent vocals and pierced the air before her operetta rolled free.
The brilliant, powerful, bursting melody drowned the Hall of the Sea.
Onskar dissipated to black smoke and reappeared on the other side of the Hall, hidden behind the reliquaries. He faltered as his arcane counterattacks failed. His seething response filled the air, but he could not match her.
She had taken from him. She held the lightning, the tsunami.
She curled each of his attempts into her awaiting center.
Stone. Sand. Dirt. Wind. Tempest. His failures became her strengths.
He didn’t change into a wyvern, and she understood that he couldn’t.
He hadn’t accepted that side of himself.
She breathed in the shards of his rage, absorbed them through her skin and soul, and continued to sing.
On, the anthem.
On, on the destruction.
Onskar shouted helplessly as she stole what belonged to him. He thrashed, skidding across the black floor to escape. Onskar, with all his power gained over millennia, all his cleverness and ferocity, losing to Mila with all her youth.
Her na?veté had become her greatest power.
Wind that she did not command shoved and coerced Onskar closer. With each attempt to free himself, he lost ability. Mila drank those abilities in and watched him weaken. His paltry attempts became futile.
Mila set her hypnotic stare on Onskar. Her siren pull, equally matched with his gnashing, feral stare, was too much. He shouted, sucked close, unable to wrench himself away.
Something unlocked.
A silent shucking broke around him, and kaleidoscopes exploded in colorful waves.
A rush tripped through her brain. She felt the rest of the arcane bind into her.
All of it. Hordes of it. It lashed itself to her until the gigantic chasm of her soul opened wide in an ever-present abyss, ready for more and more.
Onskar screamed.
The arcane became a swirling storm that formed walls within the Hall of the Sea’s inner circle. The sea faded into a black smoke screen. The reliquaries and the entire world separated as the two of them slid elsewhere.
Whispers spoke from within the storm, slowing her song. Mila faltered. The heat glided into her heart center, wrapping her core. Liquid power faded, and she felt the confines of her body again.
She descended.
The crashing storm became voices, emotions.
She smelled regret—so deep this regret. Rage.
Thunderous, terrible tempest that clacked her teeth.
Frustration deeper than words, and helplessness.
Flashes of a face appeared in the storm.
A young woman. Onskar himself. Hundreds of other fleeting expressions.
This was Onskar’s soul.
She stared into the miasma, surrounded by despair.
Depravity. Secrets and depression. Long halls, framed in black.
Gnashing loneliness. A crushing inability to control anything.
Souls. So many souls, gone. Fear. Terrible terror and anarchy and a gigantic, black burden she could not approach.
But . . . no. That couldn’t be right. He was the Arcanist of Souls. He had all control.
Or none.
She realized the full truth with a shocking thought: Onskar lived all those millennia tangled in lies, fears she could not find an explanation for, a quest for control, and no one to share it with.
Mila breathed fast, drawing in deeper scents of pain. No, not only pain. Agony. Horrible torment. Despair so deep she couldn’t comprehend. Fear so wild it frightened him. Notes of obsession twined within, the smell sulfurous and heady.
Her song faltered. Onskar screamed over the crashing storm. “If you see mine, then I shall see yours.”
Mila felt the moment his slimy presence slid into her soul. The notes of him rustling around, seeing her in her chambers, alone. Stinna’s maniacal shouts and commands. Stulla’s soothing voice. Mother, so distant, so loving, so cold, so calculated, so intense.
Then Pedr.
Sweet, loving Pedr.
His warm touch.
Softest caress.
When Pedr arrived in Onskar’s search, Mila fully embraced all parts of her soul.
Onskar’s piercing presence and darkness shied away.
In turn, she gripped Onskar, holding him in the light that Pedr lent.
The affection and reverence and care. How easily and readily Pedr smiled for her, touched her with love.
Onskar howled. His pain cut through the storm. She held on, clutching his soul in hers where the arcane flared to life like birthing stars. She contained it. Lashing her teeth together, she kept all while Onskar shrieked.
Everything began to hurt. She could withstand vast amounts, but could not accommodate more. So much capacity, this arcane. So great, her sacrifice. Mila contained more ability than Onskar ever carried at one time.
More than she knew existed.
She doubled over, helpless against the rising force. It would continue to grow until it killed her, her soul wrenched in half.
Onskar fell to his knees as she extracted his soul. His skin mottled as he squealed, eyes screwed shut in pain. With each breath, blackness belched from his throat. It whisked into the wind, gliding around and into her lungs.
Desperate to end his reign, Mila breathed.
Breathed.
Breathed it in.
It might end her, but she didn’t care. The arcane must leave Onskar and his soul must go somewhere. To a reliquary. This was her purpose: to disarm Onskar, remove him from the arcane, and make way for better.
She brimmed full, ready to explode, until a quiet shadow moved in the corner of her vision. Without leaving her, the arcane ballooned toward this approaching soul.
Who was this?
Onskar lay on the ground, shriveled. His pained cries dwindled to a groan. His skin lost color as he shrank. Muscles disintegrated over protruding bones. His clothes whipped into a tempest that swept his vitality into Mila.
The shadow coalesced into a pair of shoulders and an arcing knife as it sliced through the air, headed for Onskar.