by HDA Roberts
I swallowed, finding my throat dry. I took a drink of the water someone had kindly left at my bedside.
"How does this get fixed?" I asked.
He looked away.
"Ah," I said. "How long?"
"Depends. If you stay healthy, calm and don’t use any Magic, it could be years, or even decades before the leaks overwhelm what we can do to mitigate them. But, and I really can’t stress this enough, any use of your powers would greatly speed the deterioration. As in you’d have minutes, even seconds. Even the Magical flare that comes with strong emotion could increase the damage.”
I closed my eyes for a moment, my mind swirling.
"How do we mitigate the damage?" I asked, forcing myself to focus, to get as much information as I could.
"Lucille already has. She's adjusted your metabolism to help cope with the cellular damage, but that can only go so far. You're ahead of the curve at the moment, but only for the moment. You'll feel better for a while, but eventually..."
I looked down.
Damn it...
From immortality to imminent death in only a couple of days.
"There... there is one way to fix it," he said, almost whispering, unable to look at me while he did.
"We're not there yet," I said firmly.
"Kid..."
"We're not there yet," I repeated. I didn’t need to ask what he was talking about. There really was only the one type of Magic capable of interfering with a Soul, and it was one I just happened to have a very strong Affinity for.
"And when we are?" he asked.
"I don't know if I could bring myself to do it," I said. "The risks... and the cost..."
He sighed and patted my shoulder, "You're a good kid, Matty. Think about this, alright? If you need anything- anything, we're all here for you."
"Thanks, Bart," I said, already thinking. "Who knows the... specifics of what's wrong with me?"
"The Circle, your Cassandra, though I don't think she understood that... well, you know..."
That I was going to snuff it?
"Okay. Let me do some rummaging," I said with a small smile. He smiled back, patted my shoulder again and left.
Well... bugger. I was going to die.
And it wasn't going to be a monster, or a Black Magician, or even an angry girlfriend. My own broken Soul was going to kill me. There had to be a metaphor in there somewhere...
Killian was right, I did start to feel better after a few hours, I imagine that having a Succubus wrapped around me for most of that time only sped the healing process along. But there was always an ache, a certain burning itch that came from deep within me and wouldn’t go away.
Still, I felt able to get up and walk around... and eat! Damn, I was starving! That metabolism fix Palmyra put on me certainly had its benefits!
I'd woken up in the late afternoon, and it was deep into the night when I finally built up the courage to tell Cassandra about what was really happening to me.
She looked like she might pass out for a moment, and I'd vastly sugar-coated it!
Then she came over and wrapped me up in a huge hug.
"You are not going to die, do you hear me?" she whispered in my ear. "I won't allow it, Mathew Graves."
"Damn right," I said, feeling my eyes water and desperately hoping she wouldn't notice.
She sat on the sofa next to me and turned my head to look her in the eye.
"Are you listening?" she said.
"Of course."
"Good. If it comes down to a choice between living with the Black and dying, you know which choice to make, right?"
"I do," I said, looking down.
She smacked me hard about the head.
"Ow, why?!"
"I mean you use the Black, you idiot! I didn't mean die, what's wrong with you?!"
I chuckled, "Well, you have had some pretty firm views on that in the past."
"You are not evil, Mathew. If you need that power to live, you use it and we'll figure the rest out later."
"It's not going to come to that, Cassie. It can't. With what I've stolen from Myrddin, it would be far too great a risk. I'll find another way."
"And I believe you. But I don't want you getting to the end of this path and thinking something stupid like 'Cassandra will hate me'. I love you like you're my own flesh and blood. You do what you have to do, understand me?"
"Yes ma'am."
She hugged me again and thumped me gently in the kidney.
"What was that for?!" I protested.
"Girly tears."
"Shut up."
Cassandra agreed that we should keep the information about my condition contained to my inner circle, and even then only people who needed to know. Des would not be one of them; he had no poker face, and none of us wanted this information getting back to my parents.
I went to bed, but couldn't sleep for thinking. My knowledge of the Soul and Soul-damage was not extensive, but I knew that it was not easy to fix. As Killian had said, the Soul could heal itself, but not if the damage was ongoing.
I thought about it for what must have been at least a few hours. The Pixies and the dog came back and soothed me as I considered my options. I deliberately avoided thinking about the only one that I knew would work... assuming it didn't cost me my Soul in an entirely different way.
I did decide one important thing, though: this was not how my story was going to end.
Every problem had a solution. I had Magic, I had resources... I would bloody fix this!
But I was going to have to work out some method of using Magic without damaging my Well any further. I had one good idea, and when I asked Killian about it over the phone the next day, he said that the reasoning was solid, but not to take any chances.
It was a first step on what would be a long and interminable road, but I'd get there, crawling on my hands and knees, trailing blood and bone, but I would get there. I'd fix this.
Or die trying, I guess.
Epilogue
Telling Tethys wasn't easy, or pleasant for either of us, but I needed her to start working on finding people who knew about Souls. It wasn't an especially savoury branch of magic, and few, if any, respectable Magicians either knew much or were willing to talk about it, that left slightly... darker contacts, which Tethys promised she would exploit for me.
Likewise Mira, who had an abundance of information about damaging a Soul, had very little information about how one might go about repairing one without Black Magic. She did inform me that if that was a road I wanted to go down, then the process was relatively simple... as long as I was willing to expose the very core of my being to the deepest, darkest evil in creation.
I decided not to take her up on that. Though... I did memorise the procedure.
Otherwise, there wasn't a very great deal that I could do, at least not for a while. So I went back to studying the Gods' Blade. It had, after all, been the thing that had caused this mess; perhaps it could help me solve it?
I spent hours peering at it, using Mage Sight I’d asked Mira to cast on me. It was largely wasted time, but it helped to keep my mind off things, if nothing else.
When Palmyra came in for a visit a couple of days after the battle, it was a relief to get away from what felt like an increasingly dead end.
She found me in my library, sitting next to a wide coffee table, which was covered in notes and pieces of paper, with that wretched knife perched in the middle, almost daring me to poke at it.
"Hey Matty," she said, dropping onto the sofa behind me.
"Hi Lucille, I didn't know you were coming today," I said, standing to give her a hug.
"Just checking in. And I was bored trying to unpick the tangle your little coup created."
"How is it my coup?!"
"You were here; it happened under your nose, that makes it your fault."
"That's not fair!"
"Well... that's life for you," she said, sniggering.
I shook my head and sat next to her. She was
still grinning evilly.
"What?" I asked suspiciously.
"Hm?" she replied, suddenly the very picture of maidenly innocence.
"What are you up to?"
"Me? When am I ever 'up to' something?" she asked, affecting a hurt pout.
I just looked at her until she grinned and handed me a picture she'd taken from her pocket.
I sighed and looked at it.
My eyes went wide.
"No..." I said, glaring at the offending paper, "Who has this?"
She was smiling so widely, the Cheshire Cat would have been jealous. She leaned in towards my ear.
"Everyone," she whispered.
I winced, dropping the picture on the table. It showed Des in skin-tight red Lycra from the waist down, over which was one of those ghastly man-thongs that goes from crotch over the shoulders, this one in a hideous, lurid green. He was holding up a black mask in triumph, this with a rather prominent phallus picked out in gold over the forehead.
Someone, who would be punished severely as soon as I discovered them, had taken the trouble to Photoshop Des' hair so that it much darker and styled like mine. I noted that the photo had been taken of Des' left side. My scars were on my right cheek, which was convenient, as it gave the photo another little edge in authenticity.
"I hate you so much."
"Careful, I have bored apprentices and a very large stack of photocopy paper..."
"Why?" I wailed.
"Why not?" she replied.
It was at that moment that Des decided to turn up, saw the photo and tried to make a speedy getaway.
"Oh no, you don't! Get back here!"
He came back, looking sheepish, "The costume wasn't my idea. My manager said I'd get more girls," he said, grinning as he dropped next to the coffee table.
I slumped, "How much is it going to cost me to... retrieve these photos?" I asked, turning back to Palmyra, whose eyes had gone wide.
I frowned and followed her stare to the table... where Des had picked up the Gods' Blade.
Before I could say a word, something like "Put that down before you kill us all!", there was a flash of light, and the blade began to change before our eyes. Des' expression turned to horror as he found, like I had, that he couldn't let it go.
"Don't panic, it won't hurt you!" I barked, though I didn’t try to restrain him, for obvious reasons.
He calmed down, though his eyes remained locked on the changing blade.
It shortened, became broader, the onyx of the blade shifting into something lighter, more organic...
Bone.
The tip of the blade became broad, jagged at the edges, the handle shifted so that it appeared to be wrapped in something like crude hide below a hilt made of flint.
The transformation stopped and Des finally dropped the dagger. Mira caught it before it could strike the floor, letting it drift back to its stand. Des' mouth opened and closed like a landed fish as he looked at me.
"What the hell was that?!" he squeaked.
"Something not especially good," I replied, with a long-suffering sigh.
Afterward
Hello, and thanks for reading Primal’s Wrath. And an extra-big thank-you to everyone who’s stuck with the series all this way!
I hope that you enjoyed it, and that it was worth the slightly longer wait.
I’d like to say another thank-you to all of you who’ve written in with support, comments and critiques. You’ve kept me at my keyboard, and made me a better writer.
This novel begins ‘'The Descent Sequence', which sees Mathew tested in ways he never has before, confronting dangers and threats that test his will to fight and the strength of his character.
Book 7 will deal with the fallout of this one, expose new dangers and build towards a confrontation that will finally decide just what sort of man Mathew Graves will end up being...
Which will neatly set up the next trilogy!
Yes, there will be more. If you keep reading them, I’ll keep writing them. Even if you don’t, I probably still will. I love it too much!
Book 7 will be a while, as these things must, unfortunately. I prefer to have at least a first draft for the book following it before I start to edit the one before, just to make sure that everything lines up. Further, I have to finish work on the audible-edit of ‘The Magician’s Brother’ (the first one), which will take a bit of time.
It won’t be years, though, or even one, probably. Like I said, I have too much fun writing these to leave their world alone for too long.
If you enjoyed my writing, and you have a spare moment, I would greatly appreciate a review. Any questions and comments can be sent to [email protected], or to my Facebook Page. I try to answer every communication and I appreciate any and all feedback, positive or critical.
Thanks again for reading!
