fifty #4
“Do you know what she showed me in my dreams?” His mouth was only an inch away from her nose. Sulim froze in place, aware of his hand around her wrist as he trembled in anger. No, fear. He was afraid. She was his lifeline to sanity.
“No,” she whispered.
He released her. “Something I’ve had to live with for the past few days. Because the High Priestess showed me that other life. She showed me many lives I’ve lived across several realities. They all come back to me using the last of what I have to do what I can. Do you know who’s by my side?
Every time?”
Although they no longer touched, Sulim was only drawn closer to him. Instead, she shook her head.
“You. We may not be soulmates, but you and I have something that’s just as strong. We’re still two sides of some same whole. I would die for you.”
Sulim drew in her breath before speaking. “You already have.”
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I still choose to follow my fate. Whatever happiness there may be for me out there, I’ll find it. Even in death.”
“Sonall…”
“I’ll see them again, you know.” There it was.
The bravado he always carried when the odds were stacked against them.
The assurance that at least, in death, there was something noble.
“My family. My sister. I can’t go back to the Void assuming they’re already on to the next life. If the julah have Elysian, then we have our families waiting for us for a moment on the other side. Then we go together. Right?”
“Sonall,” she repeated. “You’re my family.”
His mouth twitched into a smile before he quashed the very notion. “You mean that?”
“Why wouldn’t you be? Nobody knows me like you do.”
“Not even her?”
“There are things that both of you know about me that the other doesn’t. That’s the way it’s supposed to be.” She smiled, inviting him to share in her hope. “Nothing’s been a waste, zel.”
She trusted that he knew what she meant.
Us knowing each other. What we’ve been through.
What we have done in other realities. The longer they were here on this “other” side, the more Sulim saw beyond the close-up of the subject on the painting.
She saw what was contained within the frame, from the composition, the scenario, the lighting…
she saw beyond the painting itself. I see the artist.
The High Priestess. The unknown creator.
A brush stroke had brought her soul into existence, and here she was, living, surviving… thriving.
She was created to be by Mira’s side. Sulim was her partner, her companion… her backup. Her human heart. A reminder that all love and life was fleeting, no matter how many years they lived.
“We were born for this,” she hissed at him. “Let’s get it done.”
He pulled back, both aware that Mira watched them from her point on the imaginary triangle. As the golden stars swirled around them, and the wisps of violet Void matter curled around her limbs, Sulim stood in another corner, ready for whatever came.
“Concentrate on what you feel!” Mira called from her point. “On your connection to this world!”
“Is that how this works?” Sulim called back.
“We have to try!”
Although she had no idea to what end they did this, Sulim put her trust in Mira—much like two very powerful sorcerers must have put their trust in Joiya Lerenan, the High Priestess who commanded all of the souls in the universe.
Her mother. Sulim put her trust, her belief, into the woman standing with her inherited stave high in the air. At her cry, a red hue enveloped her, a line shooting straight to the center of their triangle.
Sulim watched on as the claustrophobic plane they inhabited closed in on them. Somewhere, in the distance, thunder rumbled. Maybe it’s something else. Something had been summoned once Mira put her talent to the test.
As for me… Sulim didn’t know what she was supposed to be doing.
She glanced at Sonall, who looked back at her with the same despondent look on his face from before.
When she realized that he was slightly glowing blue, Sulim held out her hands and realized that a golden sheen had overtaken her skin.
I don’t know what this really means… Somewhere, deep in her soul, she was connected to one of the ley lines of the universe.
The one that Nerilis Dunsman also contained.
Does that mean something? Sulim beheld as her black clothing was quickly overtaken by the golden light as well.
All around her, the blinding primary colors of the universe created a shape as strong as those very foundations of the earth they once stood on.
I don’t feel any different. Sulim didn’t levitate.
She didn’t hum, tap her foot, or swing her arms around to help Mira create what she sought. All Sulim had to do was stand there.
Which really wasn’t her style.
“Don’t move!” Mira called to her as Sulim stepped back. “I’ve barely got it stabilized!”
“What’s supposed to happen?” Sonall barked at her. “All I fucking see is blue shit!”
“Hang on!” Mira then yelled something in Julah.
All Sulim knew was that it wasn’t a spell.
She doesn’t have to say anything to make sorcery happen.
Theoretically, though, she also didn’t need a stave, yet here they were.
Sulim’s insistence that her chief have a weapon had come through. “Give me a second!”
Thunder clapped again. Sulim tilted her head over her shoulder, but still couldn’t see anything.
When she turned back, though, the source of the cracking explosion revealed himself.
“Get out! Now!” Nerilis landed beside his daughter, who did her best not to give him the attention he sought. “Are you insane? You’re blowing your chance to save yourselves!”
“We’re doing what we were sent to do!”
“Who the hell sent you? Your mother?”
A sharp, white light appeared in the center of the triangle.
As Mira held her own in the midst of the chaos, Sulim remained steadfast as well, fully aware that Nerilis could attack her at any moment.
You always go for the weakest link in the chain.
Then, the rest of the chain implodes. She knew her worth.
Particularly her perceived worth to a maniac like Nerilis Dunsman.
I’m human. And female. The only thing he might perceive in her favor was her speed, which was certainly on Sulim’s side.
She was about to say something when the light disappeared. A woman stood in its place.
“I sent them.”
All attention was on the woman with curly black hair and fair, moonlit skin that shined in that perpetual, starry darkness. Rahara. That was the name Mira gave her, and despite Sulim only bumping into her once before, she knew who this sorceress was. Ancient. Powerful. Connected to all of this.
“Who the hell are you!”
Nerilis yelled over the bridge of red light connecting Mira to Rahara, who remained at the center point with her hands at her side. The sorceress, however, was not concerned with his anger.
“Why, don’t you remember me? It really hasn’t been that long since we danced for Her.”
Nerilis entered the triangle, his golden hair following him and blocking Sulim’s view of what transpired in the center.
For a moment, both Nerilis and Rahara indulged in a stand-off that made the observant mercenary inside of Sulim—the same one who read people like the books they were—wonder if they had known each other in another life.
“You are an interloper,” Nerilis decreed. “You’re not even of this world.”
“Funny. That’s what your darling wife told me in my reality. To think, I was sent to this time and place by Her.”
“For what purpose!”
Rahara slammed her hands on her hips and glared up at Nerilis, who was only a few inches taller than her. “To save your daughter. And her happiness.”
“She has had countless chances to ‘save’ herself. She’s the one who has chosen to get herself killed here today.”
“Yes. By your hand. Tell me, in those other realities you’ve seen, have you enjoyed watching ‘yourself’ kill your daughter a hundred times? Because that’s not the man I almost once married.”
“Don’t speak of me so casually.”
The frightening thing wasn’t Nerilis snapping those words at an ancient entity, one who was probably powerful enough to send his body into the stratosphere of this strange plane. No, what made Sulim’s heart stop and her mind brace for erasure was Nerilis grabbing Rahara by the arm.
In the moment, the final war broke out.
Maybe he had wanted to see if she was real. And maybe he had meant to be gentler. But even Sulim knew that there was no such thing as either when Rahara leaped into the air, bringing the man with her as the two of them lifted up, up, up and away from the ley lines converging beneath them.
She had just the correct angle to see her necklace beating against Nerilis’s chest. Whatever he intended to use it for, the last of Cerilyn remained. It’s why we’re still here.
“Don’t move!” Mira cried again. “We’re the reason she’s here to stop him!”
Yet all Sulim wanted was to go to her, to cling tightly to Mira and beg her to get them the hell out of there.
Sonall was also twitching as he swallowed hard, his usual muster deflecting from how he wavered where he stood and watched on as two of the most powerful julah in history now did battle above them.
Rahara moved with the grace of a skilled dancer, her body dodging Nerilis’s attacks as if she knew his movements before he played his hand.
And when she fired back, it was to incapacitate, not to kill.
Even Sulim could see that as the softened lines on Rahara’s visage never wavered even when he shot to kill her.
Whatever entity had truly sent the ancient sorceress through time and space, Rahara would not divulge—but she would keep Nerilis distracted from using the necklace around his throat to bring about ultimate destruction.
We’re sitting ducks. Sulim couldn’t move or attack with her firearm, lest she break the bond that allowed Rahara to manifest in this plane.
All she could do was look to Mira, who shook her head and held the stave high above her.
She was drawing from the power of Sulim and Sonall’s ley lines, but even Sulim knew that they were only so connected to the universe.
They were human, after all. We don’t have talent.