“What's more interesting is why they'd need it,” I murmured.
Rose shrugged, still gazing at the gate. “The obvious answer is they had a fey prisoner at some point who managed to escape, so they put this thing up to keep it from happening again.”
My lips parted as I began to speak, but the words died on my tongue as the air was split by a deep, throaty grinding sound. All three pairs of our eyes went directly to the gate. Yuka's hand went instinctively to the hilt of her sword, and Rose's stance shifted slightly.
Slow and ponderous, the gate began to swing open, splitting down the middle in a jagged sort of pattern that locked together when it was closed. The seconds felt as years while the unwilling iron gate was forced open from the inside.
Through the wide opening, I saw her. The blood surged through my veins and I felt my heart rate rise at the same time as the organ seemingly tried to escape my body through my throat. My fingers went weak, and I almost dropped the dagger to the stone beneath my feet.
In the center of the wide condemnation chamber was my mother. Her arms were drawn up behind her, chained to a rough-hewn wooden beam supported by equally stout posts. They'd stripped her of clothing and jewelry, wards and charms. Her naked body was covered in bruises, abrasions and other minor injuries seemingly inflicted for no other reason than to cause pain. Dried blood streaked her limbs.
I couldn't stop myself. I broke into a run, dodging Rose and Yuka's attempts to stop me. I was dimly aware they were shouting at me, saying something to me so very urgently, but I couldn't hear them at all. How could they be so cruel? She was the most wonderful person in the world. Mother loved everyone, unreservedly. And they'd hurt her so much, left her here to hang from her wrists in iron chains. She'd been beaten… tortured, there was no doubt.
“Mama!”
She wasn't moving. She didn't lift her head. It was as if she hadn't heard me at all.
“Mama…?”
Nothing.
I kept running toward her, closer, and the closer I got, the worse it looked. No, no, no. This couldn't be happening. She couldn't be dead already. There was no way. Something like this wouldn't—couldn't—possibly have killed Juno Alcyone, my mother. Even I could tell the wounds were superficial, meant to inflict agony but not fatal—
“Lily!” Yuka's voice split the queerly-still air. “Above you!”
A brilliant beam of silvery-white magic scythed from above and nearly incinerated me in the span of a heartbeat. Despite my last-second evasion, the beam still came close enough to draw a blistering line across my left arm. The pain was excruciating and intense. I saw black spots on the edge of my vision, but fought it. Rising red torrents of agony flooded into my mind, but I ignored them. Then Yuka and Rose were beside me. I caught no judgment in their eyes, no reproach for my reckless dash toward Mother that nearly cost me my life.
Another shaft of Light descended from above, and then another, and another, but this time it was the three of us, and we were forewarned. Instead of scattering and trying to dodge the lighting-quick blasts, Rose let out a wordless roar, channeling the aether within and shaping it. Our bodies were limned with golden light as the earth mana sank into our flesh, hardening it against attack. This time, when the magical projectiles struck, I felt no heat at all. There was a loud crack like a bullet hitting stone, and the lances of silvery light were redirected back to their origin.
“Rose!” Yuka shouted in warning.
I whirled around just in time to see a figure drop down from above with such brutal velocity that they would have killed Rose with a single kick—except for the fact that Rose had already stepped back and took full advantage of our assailant's momentary overbalanced state.
A blazing fist hammered into the figure's barrier. Rose loosed blow after blow against the enemy mage's defenses, though it appeared as if her strikes were ineffective. I caught the hint of a contemptuous smirk form underneath the blank white half-mask the stranger wore.
Then I smiled, because I knew how this would end.
Rose landed a final, devastatingly powerful punch, putting every last gram of her body's not-inconsiderable weight and momentum behind the strike. The masked mage's barrier didn't budge, and the smirk became a cruel grin.
“You have no hope,” the mage taunted in a flat, lifeless tone that seemed to be a product of the mask they wore. It was devoid of inflection and identity. “You can’t win.”
Rose offered a smirk of her own. “That so?”
I shielded my face with my arm the exact instant Rose's fist exploded into fiery pandemonium, concentrating the full force of the explosion directly into the weakest point of her opponent's barrier. I felt a ripple of shock from the masked mage, followed by anger as their barrier cracked like shattered glass and vanished.
Just as she'd done the very first time we trained together, Rose combined fist and spell to devastating effect. The masked mage growled in frustration and fell back, raising a gauntlet-encased arm up in a defensive stance, while their free hand snaked around their back to draw a weapon.
I blinked as a shadow flitted behind. There was a sharp hiss of a sword clearing its scabbard and splitting the air as Yuka struck. The ringing song of steel on steel was accompanied by a shower of sparks. Somehow, the mage managed to draw their own sword before Yuka's slash could sever their spine in two.
The lips beneath the half-mask compressed into a tight line. “Hmph.”
With a great somersaulting leap, the masked mage shot up into the air and over Yuka's head, landing behind her. In the same impossibly-fluid motion, the mage's short sword extended outward in a low thrust. Yuka propelled herself into a spinning slash that sent the mage's blade wide, then darted forward to deliver a fourfold series of strikes with such alacrity I could scarcely track her movements.
Our opponent, however, was more than up to the task of defending against even someone of Yuka's skill and speed. With precise, abrupt movements, much like the strike of a snake, the masked mage parried, deflected and dodged backward to avoid the deadly Eastern sword-work.
Yuka pressed her opponent, giving them no time at all to do anything but react, placing them solely on the defensive. The exchange of blows had only gone on for a handful of seconds, half a minute at the very most, but I knew Yuka wouldn't be able to keep up this pace for long. Like me, she was small and slight. The masked mage was obviously Solarian and towered over us both; I wouldn’t have been surprised if they weighed nearly as much as Yuka and me put together.
I cast a hooded glance at Rose, who nodded. Whoever this person was, they fought brilliantly, and individually we would be outmatched. We had to fight together, though just by watching the masked mage, I knew that the three of us would be hard-pressed to win even then.
I closed my eyes and sank deep within myself, drawing forth strands of shadow from the magic that still glowed within my soul. I didn't know exactly how many more spells I would be able to cast inside the blighted land, but if I didn't do something, the masked mage would kill us one by one.
Necromancy answered my call, if a bit sluggishly. There was no ambient mana in this place, no residual pieces I could salvage to supplement the energies I'd brought with me. I hoped what I had would be enough.
An act of will sent an arc of violet-black lighting toward the masked mage. Yuka, having sensed my intent from the shift in my soul's resonance, was already moving out of the way. Her blade cut out in a wide, easily-parried horizontal cleave. It was bait, and the masked mage undoubtedly knew that, but they couldn't ignore it without being split in half at the waist.
In a brilliant move that combined defenses against two attacks at once, the mage's short sword swept up, deflecting Yuka's strike and sweeping upward to catch the bolt of dark magic I flung directly at his head. The short sword was briefly wreathed in sinister purple light before it faded away, and the masked mage smirked again.
Then their sword crumbled into useless black dust.
Rose wasted no time at all. Not
bothering to expend more magic—I suspected that Rose's mana reserves were even lower than my own at this point—she closed the distance between her and the stunned Solarian mage. Without their weapon and unable to reform their kinetic barrier in time, the mage managed to bring up an armored forearm in an attempt to ward off the attack.
It was insufficient. An instant before her fist collided with metal plates, she swung her body around, opening her palm to grasp the mage's wrist with her right hand, and then her left. All of the momentum she'd thrown into the punch was redirected into a brutal lift. Pivoting to present her left side, Rose levered the mage up upon her hip and slammed the astonished fighter to the ground with enough force to knock the breath from their body.
The mask fell away from the mage's face. I felt my body go rigid as I recognized the features, if not the person they belonged to, beneath the magical shroud.
Before the mage could scramble to their feet, Yuka was there, the curved chisel-like tip of her sword mere millimeters from the Solarian's throat. Cold blue eyes stared out of that face, filled with hatred and the promise of violence, but the mage did not look at Yuka or Rose.
They stared directly at me, and I knew that our opponent was part of my family. It was then that I realized this child of Alcyone, dressed in the raiments of the Celestial Prophecy, had no manashard set into their forehead.
“Who are you?” I demanded.
The mage snarled without words and was violently jerked backwards, as if an invisible hand had grasped their collar and pulled them away. Yuka drove the point of her sword down, but it was too late, and the tip struck stone with a loud scraping sound.
Without hesitation, the unknown Alcyone mage soared into the air, flipping over their back to plant their feet firmly against the inner walls of the condemnation chamber. My eyes widened in alarm as the mage's soul flared with brilliant aether—that was abruptly darkened, plunging into deep shadow.
Violet-black lightning shot from the mage's outstretched hands. Death magic bore down upon me, aimed directly for my heart.
I was spent. I couldn't raise a barrier, and though I had a natural inclination toward the Forbidden Aspect, I was hardly immune to it. I leaped away to one side, but the arcs of crawling dark energy caught me on the same side that I'd been burned by the light beam earlier.
Pain shot through my body and I stumbled halfway through my evasion, tumbling to the floor and skidding to a stop near the gibbet Mother was chained to. I gasped, sucking down air rapidly, but was otherwise unable to move. The blast the mage hit me with had sapped what little strength I had left, leaving me weakened and paralyzed. Merely keeping my eyes open was a terrible struggle, and my heart withered as the Alcyone mage loosed a stream of the same black lightning at Yuka. To her credit, she managed to bring up a defensive barrier. Her reluctance to cast any spells since we'd entered the prison paid off.
“… Lily.”
My heart caught in my throat. That was Mother's voice!
She was still alive!
I couldn't move my arms or legs, and so I couldn't turn to look at her. I did my best to block out the sounds of the battle still raging on. Yuka and Rose seemed to be holding their own, but this mage was clearly a master of the arcane and the martial arts. Yuka had seen war and fought throughout her life, but she spent far more time with her nose in a book than a sword in her hand and a spell on her lips.
Worse still, this Alcyone mage seemed to possess a contradictory dual Aspect. They wielded both Light and Dark with an ease that confounded and terrified me all at once. It shouldn’t have been possible.
“Lily,” Mother said again.
“Mama, I can't… I can't move,” I mumbled.
Steel shrieked against steel and sparks flew as Yuka's blade met the enemy mage's armored gauntlets. She was tiring, and Rose wasn't having an easy time of it, either. The Alcyone sent terrible paralyzing blasts of Darkness toward Yuka, but struck at Rose with only piercing beams of Light, as if they knew of Rose’s twice-borrowed ward against necromancy.
Rose's cry of pain slashed through me and I would have flinched. I felt her pain as if it were my own, searing through my awareness and biting deeply into my heart. I couldn't watch any longer, and I squeezed my eyes shut.
“Lily, you need to… to get up,” Mother insisted.
I choked back a sob. “I can't.”
“You… you can.” I couldn't see her, couldn't see anything with my eyes shut, but I could hear her voice strengthening. “I'm here with you, Lily, and so is… so is Eiri.”
“No… it's no use.” I willed myself to shake my head, but all that happened was a twitch of my neck muscles. “Mama, I can't…. it drains me of everything I have every time I use it. The last time… the last time I was unconscious for four days!”
Though I couldn't see her, I knew she was smiling through the pain. My own pain began to recede, slowly, as if it were trickling out of me. I could feel the soothing cool flow of Mother's magic as she poured a tremendous volume of aether into healing my wounds. Strength flowed through my limbs. The prickly, pins-and-needles sensation came first, and then I found that I could move again. In what felt like an eternity, but was likely only a handful of seconds, my mind regained control of my body.
I tilted my head to gaze up at my mother, and was not surprised to see her smiling. There was a twinkle in her beautiful eyes, the same eyes she'd gifted me when I was born. That glimmer filled me with confidence, and I nodded to her with fierce determination.
“It will be different this time, my little red lily.”
Chapter 33
Measure of Control
As it had always done before, Eiri's legacy answered my call.
The flames of Darkness roared out of my soul as the spirit blade forged itself from the seething font of sinister purple energies. I gasped from the sudden rush of power as aether poured into my soul, filling the gaps that I'd expended in our infiltration, the depletion I'd been unable to address while standing within the blighted land.
Mother had been right; it was different this time. Instead of drinking from the essence of my life, the spirit blade infused magic into me—so much of it that it was nearly painful. My soul felt as if it were stretching, and my capacity doubled and redoubled. The relic of Eiri's magic spilled forth such power that my fingertips tingled with the magic at my disposal.
I didn't have time to wonder why the spirit blade chose this particular occasion to give rather than take. Rose was in trouble, and I had to act now.
The Alcyone mage slipped past Yuka effortlessly, and I could tell from the trembling in her arms and the halting nature of her strikes that she was too tired to keep fighting. The mage knew it, too, and turned her full attention to Rose. Shafts of piercing Light lanced out from the mage's outstretched palm. Rose grimaced and twisted away, attempting to dodge, but the shafts of deadly magic struck, quick as thought. The violent wrenching of her body managed to spoil the mage's aim slightly, and the searing energies only glanced her right hip and thigh.
Blood spurted from the deep slashes burned through her clothing and flesh. The hit may have been shallow, but the power behind the spell was tremendous. Rose's evasion faltered and she stumbled, collapsing to one knee on the stone floor of the condemnation chamber. The mage's eyes burned with triumph and they collected more Light in their hand, preparing to finish the job.
I moved.
Silvery brilliance flashed against Eiri's sword, but only for a moment. The seething shadow-flame licking at the pattern-welded blade swallowed up the Light—and I felt a subtle surge of strength and vitality pour into my body. The spirit blade throbbed with life and magic as it devoured the spell, consuming the aether that fueled it.
“Do not touch her again,” I snarled.
The mage’s eyes widened in horror as they locked upon the spirit blade, but quickly mastered their emotions. A prodigious backward leap sent them soaring away, narrowly avoiding the deadly blade as I swept it out in a wide horizontal slash.
“Lily!” Rose gasped. “You can't—”
“She can.”
Both Rose and I whirled at the voice behind us. Mother stood, if a bit unsteadily, leaning upon Yuka's shoulder. My half-fey partner offered me an exhausted smile. Having already pushed herself beyond her physical limits, Yuka apparently decided to contribute to the battle by freeing Mother from her restraints.
“Meaningless,” the mysterious mage spat, glaring directly at Mother. “You are empty, and your bastard is a child playing with forces beyond her understanding. None of you will leave this chamber alive.”
“You'd do well not to underestimate her, Claire. I know you can sense the extent of her power.”
The mage's face twisted into a hate-filled scowl. “You dare speak my name, traitor?! Filth! Whore! It was you who dishonored our family! House Alcyone was tainted in the eyes of the Empire because you couldn't keep your legs closed!”
“Who are you to talk to Mother like that?” Still holding Eiri's sword in a defensive stance, I stared at the mage in shock and disbelief.
The mage—Claire—sneered in contempt, but said nothing.
“She's my firstborn child,” my mother stated, clearly and without the barest hint of emotion in her voice, “who was taken from me by the Celestial Prophecy when she was barely old enough to speak.”
My jaw dropped and I nearly lost my grip on Eiri's sword.
“W-what? I have a sister?”
“Half-sister,” Mother corrected, “as I'm sure you can tell.”
“You are not my mother!” Pure hatred blossomed in Claire's sapphire eyes. “You forfeited that title when you chose to lie with darkness.” Her gaze flicked toward me and she glowered with an even greater amount of enmity. “That thing is no sibling of mine! It is a monster, an abomination, a living embodiment of your sin, traitor!”
Midnight's Blossom Page 28
