Chapter 30
Celine’s lips thinned as she stepped closer to grasp my arm. “How did this happen?”
“Well, it started—”
“No, not yet. Not until we chop off the ears of those who aim to eavesdrop,” Celine interrupted, her words pointed straight at the brand.
She started toward the herb desk, rummaged about, and returned with a dried palm leaf, a hunk of charcoal, and some twine. She guided us to the nearest bench to sit. “Now, this might hurt a little, but I’ll do my best to make it quick.”
In the last few hours, I’d had the air pulled from my lungs, my veins filled with fire, and an essence stone ripped from my flesh. I doubted whatever was to come could top those.
“Ready?” Celine prompted.
I nodded.
“Okay, here we go.”
She crushed the charcoal over the burn, spreading it around evenly.
Left hand over her talisman, she closed her eyes and waved her hand above the mark in counterclockwise motions.
Seconds ticked by before I saw it: the strange glimmer building beneath her skin.
Light, but it didn’t resemble mine in the slightest. Mine possessed a yellow, afternoon-sun glow, but hers?
Pure white. I watched as Celine effortlessly moved the glow into two fingertips.
“Cillian,” she whispered, and jogged her head toward me.
He did as she prompted and sat next to me, bracing my back with his body and taking firm hold of my shoulders. I bit my lip, hard. Here we go …
Celine’s light devoured my welted skin and scalding heat sank into the muscle beneath.
I pushed back against Cillian as she guided her magic about in circular motions, attempting to burn away every last bit of foreign magic scampering beneath my skin.
The dark sigil wanted to flee, I could sense it, but it burrowed deeper in its inability to do so.
My own magic combatted it from within, trapping the spell between Celine’s and my power—light above and below.
“It’s strong,” Celine said, her focus cast into space like she could see through the eyes of her wandering light. “We’ll get it, just hold on a little longer.”
I squirmed. Longer, great. Celine’s touch mirrored the tail end of getting a tattoo: that slow repetitive ache when your endorphins ran out. Not unbearable, but not enjoyable either. The wormlike spell twisting around my tendons however, I couldn’t handle. It unsettled the hell out of me.
“Get it out!” I growled, teeth grinding together.
Cillian rubbed my back. “Hold on. Almost done.”
Celine’s magic began to ring the longer she held it in her fingertips. Her eyes grew glossy and her fingers began to shake, hand clamping around my forearm in a tight grip. “Got it.”
The spell inside me stilled and floated to the surface, belly up. Every hair on my body stood on end. Again, Celine looked at Cillian and jogged her head between the two of us.
He took a knee at my side, taking my hand in his. “Eyes on me, little shadow.”
“Why?” I looked him over, body shaky.
“It’s time to expel it.”
Excruciating is the only way to describe how that first slice felt.
Bone exposed to the air; the world began to spot around me.
But even as Fhírinne faded away, the release was unmissable.
Like an artery being ripped from my flesh, the spell snapped as the last piece of Baneful magic was removed from me.
And then the black enveloped me.
Pixels thrashed across my vision, giving way to a mountainside engulfed in fire. At its center, my willow stood surrounded by flames on every side. I thrashed through what remained of the forest, the panic knotting in my throat.
Bethesda—this was her handy work. Her punishment for having done away with her spell.
The bitch! I scoured the scene, my gut clenching as it all became clear.
I’d no way to put this fire out, and the flames sought complete annihilation.
Eyes blurry, I watched in stunned horror as the flames caught the one sliver of hope I’d had in my nightmares.
My safety, my sanctuary—devoured by fire. Gone.
Wood splintered in the canopy above, a charred limb crashing to the ground far too close for comfort. With one final glance, I placed my hand over my heart in silent reverence for my fallen protector. Thank you, dear friend. For everything.
I took off like a shot, challenging every bit of stored energy to push me forward and out of the forest. Despite the thick brush, I trusted the call inside me, the intuition of my Tinctured magic leading me to safety.
Smoke burned my eyes, funneling up my nose and threatening to steal my last breath, but I pressed on.
One dead end after the other, I fought my way to freedom.
I turned on a dime, left, then right, then straight ahead.
Get out. Escape. Live, I repeated over and over in my head.
I plummeted through the last flame wall and collapsed in an open valley. Lungs strained, I scoured the now fully engulfed mountainside, settling on the opalescent smoke twirling in the chaos. And my heart broke.
When my tears stopped—mourning replaced by the shadow of numb acceptance—I stood, turned my back to the mountainside, and started into the valley ahead.
With each step, the ground slushed below my feet.
I dared a glance and my bones chilled. That sound was neither mud nor standing water … it was blood. Fresh blood.
Corpses covered the expansive landscape; an ocean of torn limbs, organs ripped from chest cavities, and countless severed heads making my stomach turn.
A violent battle had been waged here. No, a battle had been lost here.
A baby-blue sky hung overhead. I turned back to the mountainside—the Shroud’s foreboding violet sky above it—before turning back to the valley. This war was waged in the woken world.
It’s a memory, my omnipotent helper called out, voice so far it was barely audible. But not your own.
I studied the fallen soldiers closer, their necks and limbs strewn about in unnatural positions. Humanoid creatures—though clearly not mortal—lay intermingled throughout beasts. Their teeth and eyes resembled the Ancient Lores, but their broken bodies were lesser somehow.
White light engulfed the horizon, its radiance reminiscent of the pulse I’d seen in Celine’s fingertips before I’d succumbed to this strange vision.
The flame-filled trees billowed under its weight, threatened to snap in half.
Despite the light’s obvious power, I didn’t fear it.
In fact, I found myself drawn to it. Need arose in me. Find the source.
Another brilliant wave rushed overhead, splitting the smoky sky into a fragmented lightshow.
My steps quickened, the slosh below my feet sickening to the core as I wove through the corpse labyrinth.
So many lives lost. At the battlefield’s edge, I stopped, awaiting another pulse of light.
A burst ripped through the sky, stemming from a meadow below.
Rather, the being below. I swallowed hard.
Pushing ten feet tall, a creature of terrifying beauty snarled, her back pressed to a gaping rift in the sky itself.
Her unique wings—like colorful stained-glass windows—were shredded, opalescent blood leeching down her spine.
The winged creature fought to pull the rift’s frayed edges closed, to seal it, when a cry leapt from her mouth, snarls inside the rift drowning out her pain.
I drifted closer, wrapped in her shadow as she pressed her back to the divide, struggling to hold the beings fighting for release at bay.
My brow furrowed as I looked them over. It didn’t make any sense.
The beings she aimed to lock away on the other side were …
humans. Their snarls however were anything but: feral, beastly, and guttural.
I flanked her right side for a better look, and every muscle tensed as the situation’s full weight hit me.
With each step, the faces began to change and mold into their true form until it became painfully clear that these weren’t humans at all.
These were the Ancient Lores.
Seven wicked faces hung in the sky. Among them, Chaos and Famine nipped, bit, and clawed at her wings, leaving behind deep gashes on her spine.
Still, she held firm. Behind the two beasts I’d already lead to slaughter, a certain grin caught my eye.
Familiar white hair danced about the armored skin of a snake. Leeran.
No, Deception.
While his brothers fought and screeched, he merely held his outstretched arms over them.
Concealed them. The farther I drifted, the more the scene changed.
While they appeared like the monsters they truly were when viewed at the correct angle, with Deception’s help they wore human faces straight on.
Same as Leeran had done with me. Again, the blue sky struck me.
If this wasn’t the Shroud, then that meant—my hands clenched, goose bumps tearing up my spine.
They were trying to escape into the woken world!
From among the tangled mess of beasts, one emerged, towering above the rest and sending the others to their knees in forced reverence.
Cloaked in a thick fog, I couldn’t make out any features, but I could feel it all.
Terror, apathy, mourning … this Lore was somehow everything at once and the most devastating one of all.
Tears rolled down my cheeks without my consent as it reared a skeletal hand back, aimed at the impressive light being, and—
“Watch out!”
But it was too late. Disbelief brimmed across her face as she glanced down to find talons protruding from the space where her stomach should have been.
With one final heave, she thrashed the rift shut and severed the arm buried in her gut from its body.
Iron tangled on the breeze and stabbed up my nose as she crumbled to the ground, curling up in the pool of her own blood, the same way my mother had that night in Chaos’s tower.
For reasons I couldn’t explain, I fell to her side as her light dimmed.
Her once vibrant skin began to gray, and something in me snapped.
No matter how many times I tried to remind myself it was a memory, that these things had already come to pass, I tore and pried at the arm in her torso, trying to dislodge it.
Her bloodied hand cupped my cheek, my heart leaping.
“You—you can see me?” I sobbed.
“Time moves differently for us.” She forced a smile, and whispered in a gentle tone, “While you possess the key, another cannot.”
“What do you mean?”
She didn’t respond. Instead, she placed a single finger on my chest. “Awaken.”
An electrical charge rushed through me and jittered along each nerve in its path, setting them alight.
The magic within me shimmered in excitement, a new, all-consuming sensation rattling about in my bones.
My chest burned. It resonated out toward my shoulders as I peeled my shirt back to reveal a raw tattoo, a single, lustrous opal buried in the center.
Before I could ask why or how or anything at all, she evaporated into thin air; gone in a flash of lightning.