Chapter 37 #2
Instantly, she felt a dark void bloom within her.
It was infinite, endless, and nothing, but at the same time, it was blinding in its intensity.
Ena was filled with a bone-deep terror, feeling as if on the precipice of a reckoning, on the edge of losing complete control to the unknown.
She wanted to cry, to scream in horror as she tried to pull away from whatever it was, but then just as swiftly, the terror was replaced.
There was peace. There was contentment. There was gentleness—and above all, there was purpose.
Her eyes flew open, landing on Mel and Cris. Their faces were stricken with awe just as hers was. She had no idea what was going on. Had something gone wrong with the spell? Was this Iblis? Because somehow, it felt like…
Mel nodded to her once in reassurance. This was okay. They had to continue the spell.
Ena nodded in return, locking eyes with Mel and Cris in turn. Both of their faces were filled with determination as all three of them reached into the entity they’d summoned and spoke again.
{Tellus restore}
Ena heard Ty gasp—like he was taking his very first breath—and her eyes fell to where he knelt before her.
His eyes, normally that beautiful light green she loved so dearly, were drenched in black. They appeared almost as dark as the void she’d felt within her—almost as if the void was now within him, flowing through him. He seemed frozen in fear and awe as his eyes stared into the pitch black.
What was he seeing? What was he feeling? He didn’t seem to be in pain, but he—
Just as suddenly, his eyes changed back. The light green with the dark ring returned, but there was a sheen to them now.
It was tears. His eyes were filled with tears.
“Ty,” she asked, suddenly concerned. She dropped Mel and Cris’s hands, and moved to cup the sides of his face, drawing his gaze to hers. “Are you alright? Are you hurt?”
“No, I—” he spoke, his voice choked with emotion. “I can feel her,” he said. “She’s here. She’s…everywhere.”
“You can feel her? You can feel Gaia?” Ena asked, emotion overwhelming her now too at the look of utter rapture on Ty’s face.
“Yes,” he said, breaking into a smile. “Yes, I feel Gaia. You—” He paused, bringing his hand up on top of hers where it rested, looking deep into her eyes. “You did it, Ena.”
Ena smiled at him as tears filled her eyes. Looking up, she saw similar looks of relief on Cris and Mel’s faces.
“We did it,” she said to them, her voice exhausted and relieved. “I can’t believe we did it.”
Ty stood up, turning to look at Turner, who still knelt next to Greya on the ground at the edge of the grove. The man was clutching his heart, with his head bowed, and Greya was looking at him worriedly, her face tearstained.
“Turner, are you alright?” Ty asked, moving towards his cousin.
Turner looked up as he approached, reaching up to take the hand Ty offered him. “Yeah, I—I think so,” he said, his voice sounding overwhelmed and confused. “I think…” He gripped Ty’s shirt in his hand, as if to steady himself with the feeling. “I feel her too.”
“What does it feel like to you?” Ty asked, his brow furrowed.
“It’s like this…understanding that wasn’t there before. This sense of rightness and balance to everything, where before, it just seemed…chaotic. I mean, the chaos is still there, too, but there’s something new now. It’s like—”
“Seeing through different eyes,” Ty finished for him.
“Exactly,” Turner said, looking at his friend with that wide smile of his. “To be honest, though, I don’t know if I like it.”
Ty laughed—that infectious way he did when he was carefree and happy. “We’ll have to get used to it, I guess.”
The two men embraced each other, hugging like their lives depended on it, and it warmed Ena’s heart to see.
When they broke apart, Turner looked to Ena, where she still stood next to Cris and Mel.
“Thank you,” he said, his voice sincere and emotional. “To all of you. This is…”
“How it was always meant to be,” Ena finished for him. “I Know that, and…something else too,” she said, her brow furrowing in concentration. Was that right? Could she…
Reaching out with her Knowing towards Turner and Ty in that way that usually was met with nothing, she felt them.
She could read their signs—the way they stood, the way they moved, the way they breathed, all of it told her of their intentions and their emotions, just like if they were a witch or a mortal.
“I can feel you, with my Knowing,” she said. “Can you too?” she asked Cris and Mel.
“I can,” Cris answered, and Mel nodded in affirmation, too, the witch’s small face relieved and peaceful, as if things were working out exactly as they’d seen.
“I guess now that the bond is broken, our magic works on one another again,” Ty said. “That’s…going to have some consequences.”
He was right. What would this mean for relations between the Covens and the Underworld?
Would it escalate tensions or ease them?
Ena had no idea. Suddenly, she felt so overwhelmed by everything, the repercussions of all this, what had happened to Heran—whose body still lay on the ground at Greya’s feet, now covered with a blanket from one of their packs.
Her body felt exhausted, and for the first time, she noticed how badly the cold air had gotten to her extremities. She moved to sit by the fire, but realized she still wore the amulet, which had dripped Ty’s blood onto her clothing.
Pulling it over her head, the blood-soaked amethyst brushed her mouth slightly as it passed her lips, transferring a drop of half-dried blood onto her.
She could smell it there—metallic and rich.
She didn’t know what came over her, but like some half-forgotten instinct, her tongue darted out and she licked it, pulling the drop from her lip into her mouth. Gaia, it tasted…
“So are we gonna talk about what happened?” Cris asked the group.
Ena jolted—suddenly pulled away from the ambrosial taste of the blood in her mouth as she redirected her focus to Cris.
Quickly placing the amulet back in the box, she looked at Turner as he responded. “What do you mean what happened? The spell worked, didn’t it?” he asked.
“Yes, clearly, but how did it work? What the hell was that that we summoned?” Cris asked.
“I thought you summoned Iblis,” Ty asked, his dark brow furrowed.
“I thought so too,” Cris said. “Or at least, that we were supposed to, but that didn’t feel like Iblis to me. It felt like—”
“Gaia,” Ena said. “You’re right. I thought so too when it happened. It reminded me of my Summoning.” How could that be possible, though? The spellwords they’d used definitely derived from the runic word for chaos. “What did you feel, Ty? When the entity entered you?”
“It felt like Iblis to me, or at least what I remember from my Trial,” he said.
She turned to Mel, who had been suspiciously silent throughout all this. “Mel,” Ena began. “What did it feel like to you?”
“It was like you said, it felt like Gaia, or what I remember of Gaia from my Summoning,” they replied, but they averted their eyes from the group, fiddling with their hands in front of them.
“What else do you know?” Ena asked. She Knew Mel was hiding something.
It was obvious to her now when they were being intentionally vague about their visions.
She knew Mel believed the future was unchangeable and liked to keep things close to their chest until they knew for certain what would happen so as not to upset people, and it was one thing if Mel hadn’t warned her about Heran’s death—especially if there was nothing she could’ve done anyway—but Ena still felt she had a right to know about something this big.
Mel sighed, collapsing onto the dirt next to Ena by the fire. “I don’t know much,” they began. “Just that…there are others.”
“Others?” Ty asked.
One by one, everyone came over the fire, even Greya, who looked stunned and struck by all that had happened, but was present and listening once more.
“Yes,” Mel said. “There are others who have noticed the…overlap between Gaia and Iblis before. And they worship something else entirely.”
“What do they worship?” Ty asked, his face serious and unsettled.
“Omnis,” Ena replied, remembering that vague reference she’d read in The Evolution of Magic all those weeks ago. “They worship Omnis.”