“Is Amanda not with you?” he asked.
Liz sighed and looked at the ground for a moment. She could feel many of the others behind her react similarly. She looked up into Trevelyan and Stephen’s confused faces. “We have some… news,” she said. “Can we head inside? Find somewhere to sit?”
Trevelyan frowned for a moment before he answered. “Yes, of course, follow me,” he said, leading the way. Liz looked up to see the huge spires towering above them before the arch swallowed them up and they were inside the castle.
Trevelyan led them through a short, wide corridor lined with doors and side rooms before they exited into the castle’s main atrium.
“Good flight over?” Trevelyan asked her as he led her over towards some seating nearby. There were a couple of other Magi in the room, Liz noticed, seeing them glowing in her Aetheric Sight. She quickly recognised them as Forest and Stella Ward from the Magi Legion. Liz did her best to keep the surprise off her face but wasn’t sure she managed it, as the pair offered her cautious smiles of welcome.
“The flight was uneventful, thankfully,” Liz answered Trevelyan as he motioned to the seats. Liz took one, with Maria sitting beside her. Trevelyan sat opposite.
“What’s going on?” he asked. “Where’s Amanda?”
Liz took a deep breath, doing her best to keep the emotion at bay as she answered his question. “Amanda… was killed…” She wasn’t sure how she managed to say it, but she did.
“She’s dead?” Stephen asked, disbelief making his voice rise.
Liz nodded. “Yasmin killed her a short time ago.”
“What?” Stephen half yelled.
Liz looked up to see Trevelyan looking at her, his gaze hard.
“Tell me what happened,” he said, his voice low and flat.
“I take it Amanda told you about Yasmin’s attack on Celest and me when she visited you?”
“She mentioned it, yes,” he said.
“Not long after that, we went with her to try and stop Yasmin getting her hands on the green Orb, but we weren’t successful. Amanda followed her alone into the Abyss. I’m not sure what happened during that chase, but shortly after Amanda left, the rest of Yasmin’s coven attacked the house. We fought them, and then Yasmin appeared, followed by Amanda.” Liz took a shaky breath as she thought back to the events of the last few days, still feeling utterly bewildered.
“Are you okay?” Maria asked her.
“I’m fine,” Liz said and looked back up to Trevelyan. “Yasmin killed her during the fight. She and her coven also killed Stella, Israel, and Aaron.”
“Damn it,” Trevelyan cursed.
“She needs to be stopped,” Stephen said.
“I have no idea how,” Liz said. “With that Orb, she’s more powerful than ever.”
“There’s always a way,” Stephen countered.
“I hope so,” Liz answered.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Forest cut in, moving closer. “But Stephen’s right, there is always a way.”
Liz offered Forest a thin smile.
Forest nodded. “Look, I know we’ve had our differences, but things changed that day in the Council chamber, and we want to help. I know we didn’t really get along for the most part, but I’m hopeful we can change that.”
“Thank you,” Liz said, hearing honesty in his voice.
“So, Amanda’s gone…” Trevelyan said, sounding defeated.
“Maybe,” Maria cut in.
“Sorry, what do you mean?
“We think there might be a way to bring her back.”
“I hope you’re not talking about Necromancy,” Trevelyan warned. “You know full well that messing with the natural order of things is strictly against Council rule.”
“We know,” Maria answered. “But... something is different. Amanda’s body is dead, but her Soul, her Anima, is still within her body and seems active, alive and well. It’s not showing any of the usual signs of degradation or that it might separate from her body anytime soon.”
“That is odd,” Trevelyan agreed.
“It’s not the only strange thing to happen today,” Stephen cut in.
His words were clearly meant to pique their interest, and Liz decided not to disappoint him.
“Go on,” she said.
“I think something happened in the Abyss, and I would guess that Amanda was a part of it somehow,” Stephen answered, not explaining anything. “Less than an hour ago, the Barrier in the Null Realm that stops Magi from entering the Abyss disappeared. It’s just gone, and we’re unsure why.”
“It’s gone?” Maria asked.
“That’s right,” Stephen confirmed. “Anyone can shift into the Abyss now.”
“What happened in there?” Liz asked.
“I don’t know,” Trevelyan answered, “and the only person other than Yasmin who knows, is dead.”
“Mostly dead,” Liz corrected.
“Right. So, have you tried to bring her back?”
“I have a few times, but so far, nothing,” Maria answered.
Trevelyan nodded. “I’d like to have a look at her, if that’s okay?” he asked.
Liz nodded. “Sure.”
Trevelyan stood up. “How about you bring her inside?”
“I can Port her in if you’d like?” Maria said.
“Okay. Let’s do this…” Trevelyan began, looking around until he pointed towards a nearby side room, “…over here.”
The group moved over towards the nearby room and followed Trevelyan inside and found herself inside what looked like a meeting room, complete with a long table down the middle of it. Trevelyan cleared the table with a quick working of Magic and then Maria Ported Amanda inside. She appeared on the table, laid out like she was still on that shelf in the cooler. Liz swallowed her emotion again, as Trevelyan stepped up to Amanda and looked her over with his Aetheric Sight.
“You’re right,” Trevelyan said. “It’s there and seems unaffected. How strange.”
“Do you want to try and bring her back to life?” Liz asked.
“I don’t know. I’ve not seen this happen before. I don’t want to interfere and cause problems. We don’t know what’s happening to her or why she’s like this. It might just be a delay, or it might be that something unprecedented is happening.”
“Do you mean that you think she might come back on her own?” Maria asked.
“I honestly don’t know what I’m saying,” Trevelyan answered. “To the best of my knowledge, this has never happened before. So anything I suggest would be a guess, at best.”
“So, give us your best guess,” Liz said.
“I already have. I’m not sure what else I can add.”
“Can you try to bring her back?”
He sighed and then turned to Maria. “You’ve already tried, right?”
Maria nodded.
“Alright then, I’ll give it a go,” he said, and Essentia stirred all around him.
Liz watched as Trevelyan reached out with his Magic and tried to return Amanda to life. Her rational side felt sure it would fail. Trevelyan was a stronger Magus than Maria, but Liz didn’t think that would make much of a difference. Still, there was some small part of her which desperately hoped that whatever Trevelyan did would be successful, and for those few moments, she clung to that hope, wishing for life to suddenly return to her mentor.
But there was nothing.
Amanda did not suddenly take a new, life-giving breath. She did not magically return to life. She stayed still and silent. And dead.
Trevelyan’s Magic faded away and he took a breath, the effort of the Magic tiring him.
“Nothing works,” he said, looking defeated.
Liz offered him a consolatory smile. “You tried,” she said.
“I wish I could do more.”
“You did your best.”
An explosion echoed through the building as Magic flared from nearby.
“What the…?” Trevelyan exclaimed.
- The Arkady, Ultima Thule.
“You’re right, they just Ported Amanda inside,” Maya said, having just returned from the cooler. Gentle Water had sensed the Magic and asked her to go check it out. She had and quickly discovered that Amanda’s body was missing.
“They try to bring her back,” Gentle Water said.
“If anyone can do it, Trevelyan can,” Maya said, but even though she did her best to sound confident, she didn’t feel it on the inside. Something strange was going on with her mother and she wondered if Liz wasn’t grasping at straws a little bit, keeping false hope alive. There could be a thousand reasons why Amanda’s Anima hadn’t left her body yet, and most of those probably had nothing to do with the chance of her coming back to life.
She admired Liz for her optimism, though, and for the way she’d taken charge of the group, despite being one of the youngest and least powerful.
Amanda would be proud.
Suddenly, an explosion rocked the ship. It sounded like it was a good distance away, though. Maya bent her knees for a moment, her hands going wide to keep her balance before the shudder stopped.
“Wow!” she exclaimed.
Lineage
Between
Amanda stared into the featureless white of where Georgina had been standing, hoping that her friend might return, but she didn’t. As she stared, a sadness fell over her as she thought back to her time in New York with her best friend before she had become a Magus. Georgina had helped her, protected her, and shown her that there was so much more to life.
Not that her life back then had been perfect by any stretch. Becoming a working girl, being one such low point. But that had been a means to an end when she had limited options open to her.
It was a choice she’d made knowingly, and although it had been a dark period in her life, it had been something that had helped her all the same.
Part of her would always regret making that choice when she could have maybe found some kind of work elsewhere, doing something a little less degrading. It was what it was, though, and it was now a part of her history, a part of her past, and maybe she wouldn’t be the woman she was today if she hadn’t done it.
Life is always full of what-ifs, but that was no way to live your life. Regrets were okay. Everyone had them, but she knew she mustn’t dwell on them, as that wasn’t healthy.
Slowly, the last of the fog lifting from her mind, she found that she could remember her life, her whole life for the first time since…
She sighed. There was only one explanation for it, and it wouldn’t do her any good to dodge it.
She was dead.
Yasmin had killed her. She’d stabbed her through the heart, and now she was dead, which meant that this was probably some kind of afterlife. But that didn’t make much sense to her, given that she’d seen first-hand what happened to people when they died.
Most people went to Sheol, the Realm of the Dead, and it most certainly did not look like this. Sheol was a grim, dark reflection of the real world. She’d not had much of a look around during her visits there, but she felt like she’d seen enough to know.
Plus, Sheol had a feel to it, a feeling of death and decay that was missing here.
Every fibre of her being said that this was not Sheol. Everything about what she could see and feel here told her she was somewhere very different.
But where?
She tried using her Magical sight to see if she could make out any details, but saw nothing. She wasn’t even sure she’d actually used her Magic.
As she looked around, still standing on the smooth, featureless floor, her mind wandered.
The freshest memory in her head was the fight she’d been in just moments ago, or was it weeks ago? Years, maybe?
She didn’t know, and couldn’t be sure as she had no frame of reference, but that fight was fresh in her mind and very clear. She’d attempted to stop Yasmin, to keep her from gaining more and greater power, and had failed. She’d fought her, but Yasmin’s Magic was just too much. She was too strong, and the Nomad had killed her for her trouble.
She wondered about her friends. She thought about Liz and how she must feel. She put herself in her shoes and imagined looking over and seeing Yasmin stab her through the chest, and the thought of that loss chilled her.
She needed to get back, somehow. She needed to help her friends because she felt very sure that Yasmin wouldn’t stop with just her. She’d be on a rampage.
She started to feel stressed and desperate to return to her friends when suddenly, the light all around her flared brightly and the floor fell away, leaving her floating in a bright golden mist shot through with white streaks of energy. Before her, a light flared and moved towards her, but Amanda wasn’t scared. She sensed no threat from it and somehow knew that it was friendly.
The white glow enveloped her, surrounded her, and wrapped her up, almost snuggling up to her. She felt protected, warm, and loved, and she relished it.
She lay there suspended, as if on a bed of the softest, most comfortable material imaginable, and all of her cares fell away. She was safe here and nothing else mattered.
She had no idea how long she laid there, but eventually, the light pulled away, and she found herself deposited back onto the invisible ground to stand by herself. Looking up, she saw the white light glowing in front of her and somehow, she sensed intelligence. She sensed power and knew that it was alive. It was an entity, but unlike anything she’d seen or sensed before.
“Hello?” Amanda asked.
“My child,” came a soft voice that Amanda wasn’t sure she’d actually heard. Was it in her head? Was she really hearing through her ears? She wasn’t sure. “I have long awaited this moment.”
“Um, I hope you don’t mind me asking, but who or what are you, and where am I?”
“Ah,” the entity said. “Let me make this a little easier for you.” The light lessened and a figure emerged from the glow, coming into view. Its body remained almost luminous as if glowing from within, but that wasn’t the thing that captivated her the most. It was like looking in a mirror, but also not. There were differences there. Subtle differences.
The figure looked like she was naked, but it was hard to tell for sure as the white glow still wrapped around her. Only her face was dim enough to look at for any length of time.
“You may call me, Sophia. I’m your mother.”
Amanda blinked, shocked and uncertain. “You’re my mother?”
Sophia smiled and nodded slightly.
“Really?”
Sophia seemed to let out a slight giggle, and Amanda felt the warmth and love flow out of the entity, and wrap around her. “Yes, really. I gave birth to you twenty-one years ago with help from Matt Walker, who I believe you know. He was kind and helpful. I am glad you have met him.”
“But... you’re not human, are you?” Amanda asked, feeling sure she was right.
Sophia shook her head from side to side slowly. “No, I am not. We have many names, including the words we call ourselves in our language, but on Earth, in English, we are known as Aeons.”
“Aeons?”
“We live between what you would call, universes and it was in your universe that I took an interest and set in motion events that would lead to you being here today.”
“You planned this?”
“Planned is perhaps a strong term to use. Suffice it to say, time flows differently for us, making many things possible.”
“But... isn’t Mr Black my father?”
“He is,” she answered, but Amanda felt there was more to it than that.
She became aware that another being was close by. Amanda looked up to see a dark hole in the fabric of whatever this reality was unfurl into view.
It was the Weaver.
“You’re here?” Amanda exclaimed, recognising the feel of his energy.
The Weaver nodded.
“The Weaver helped you, took you back in time on my request, he has been most helpful.”
; “You work for her?” Amanda asked the Weaver.
“That is one way to describe it, yes,” he said.
“I… I have so many questions,” Amanda stated.
Sophia smiled. “I know, my child, and you will have many of them answered today. I have so much to show you,” she said, as white light flashed.
- The Arkady, Ultima Thule
Maya looked over to Gentle Water to make sure he was okay. He was still sitting on the sofa, gripping it tightly, and looking somewhat worried.
“Are you okay?” Maya asked.
“I am fine,” he answered.
Maya looked around and moved towards the back of the ship and the open rear deck. She wondered if she might see anything from there and walked towards the door that led outside.
As she reached the door, something dark leapt up and over the railing, landing in a crouch, before it rose to its full height and looked at her with his elongated snout filled with rows of wicked-looking teeth.
“Going somewhere, Vampire?” the Werewolf growled at her.
Maya spread her hands and let her claws glide out from the ends of her fingers.
“Not a chance, fuzzy,” she said, using the word Amanda often did when referring to Werewolves.
Castle Under Siege
Ultima Thule, Enceladus, Saturn
Liz gripped the table that Amanda’s body was laid out upon, and looked over at Trevelyan. Essentia was already surging all around him, but his mind was focused elsewhere. Liz looked over at Maria and the others who all looked worried, and Liz knew exactly what they were thinking.
Yasmin.
It seemed impossible that she would find them all the way out here and yet, Liz couldn’t come up with another reason for the explosion. As she listened, more explosions rang out, followed by shouts and screams.
Liz looked back and caught Trevelyan’s eye.
“It’s her,” she said.
“I think you’re right. The reports I’m getting are sketchy, but it’s the only explanation.”
Liz turned to Maria. “Did she follow us?”
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