Chapter 16 #4
I cried out, gasping as I waited for it to taper off.
That was one of the good things about being what I was.
I just kept healing and healing and healing.
No matter the damage.
“What have you done?” Ruxnoth roared.
He enveloped himself in his power, then went to step into the Fuel Core, to come at me.
I raised a trembling hand and snapped my fingers, my amber magic sparking briefly. “Kneel.”
He fell to his knees.
“What is the meaning of this?” he barked, eyes wide, so much delicious confusion and fear infecting him.
He tried to get up.
I snapped my fingers again. “Stay.”
The pain subsided and I smiled, rising to my feet, as he stared up at me in a whole lot of shock, something that flooded through the room.
“You were right about it being different for you as the creator of this place. The thing is, you neglected to factor in something kind of important. Well, vital.”
“What’s that?” he hissed.
I glared out at him, almost spitting the words. “Death overcomes life. Never the other way around.”
“You’re… you’re powering my realm… my creation… so—”
“So all the while you remain inside it, my nature—death—commands yours. I command you.”
“No!” he bellowed. “Take him! Take him!” he ordered everyone.
Ansel, Tiberia and Matteo were the first to burst forward.
But a massive blast of power from Wesley blew them back brutally into the wall behind them, literally knocking them out in one shot.
Yeah, he was a powerhouse, no doubt.
He winked out at me.
The other five flipped their hoods down, then joined hands, power flaming fast and furious. Building, building, building.
Then a single stream erupted, shooting through the ceiling, the next level, and the next after that, debris falling down in the process as it drove a hole right through all that thick stone.
They had to.
To get it to Dad, it had to pass through the fabric of the realm.
Mere moments passed when I felt a familiar spark in me.
I smiled. He’d felt it.
He’d lock on and do his thing shortly.
All hell started to break loose then, those loyal to Ruxnoth charging at my allies, some coming for me.
But then they all dropped.
Every single one of them.
I noted the red shimmering bands around each of their wrists.
Dad had them. He’d death-tethered them.
Ruxnoth strained from his forced-still position, looking out at those who he could manage to see in his eyeline. “Sylas! Sylas is alive? How is this—”
“Guess you didn’t account for everything, did you?”
In the next moment, a rush of black tendrils shot down the Fuel Core.
With the necromancers all ‘dead’, there was no longer anything hiding or protecting Sanctus from view, and this sort of infiltration.
So Ambrose was in.
“If that black magic is doing what I think it is, you’ll die. And when you do, your hold on me will break.” His eyes flashed. “Linger on thoughts of the suffering I will inflict on you and your helpless body remaining here while your spirit is pulled into the Veil.”
I suppressed a shudder at his words.
“Fantasize all you want, but once I die, now I’m the single force fueling this place you hold so dear to your warped fucking heart, so will it. The seat of your power will be no more. I can’t even imagine the loss that will actually be for you. Enough to shatter you, hmm?”
“You ungrateful wretch!”
“Ungrateful? You violated me, tried to break me! Over and over! You killed my dad! You threatened everyone I love! The whole fucking supernatural world!”
“You could have become great if you’d broken those ties!”
“What you did to me… I will end you! I won’t just unmake you, I’ll fucking kill you! Kill you! Do you fucking hear me? I. Will. Kill. You!”
A sinister laugh broke free from him. “Mmm… exhilarating. It seems I did break you.” His laugh continued. “Oh, my miraculous boy, I’m deep inside you. Every part of you.”
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” I roared.
That roar ended on a scream as the black tendrils filled up the Fuel Core completely, and I could no longer see Ruxnoth in front of me on the floor just outside the Core, a burn wracking my body as Ambrose did what was needed.
Warping the intent of the Core, where it started to eat itself instead of acting as fuel for the realm.
And he was doing it so rapidly, not taking any chances that Ruxnoth would find a means to stop it.
Because of that, it wasn’t draining me slowly, a bit at a time, where I’d just fall asleep and die, it was tearing me inside out to bring that about in record time.
I squeezed my eyes shut and collapsed to my knees.
The burning ebbed, but there was no relief, as it shifted to a feeling of my insides being scraped out, emptied… I didn’t even know.
My body was shaking, I could feel my power slipping away.
And then I was choking, my breaths becoming so labored, I felt my pulse slowing.
I keeled over onto my back, staring up at the black magic eating at the streaming Fuel Core.
Slipping away… it was all slipping away.
I was slipping away.
I couldn’t… I couldn’t breathe.
My chest hurt, a sharp pain that was stabbing and stabbing.
I lifted my hand to it, but my energy was gone, and it just dropped back down onto the rough stone.
It would be okay.
This was all just part of the plan.
The terror of it, all these sensations… they were nothing.
It wasn’t fully real. Not for me.
It wouldn’t matter.
It didn’t.
It…
I…
Blackness took me.