by Emma Glass
You finally get what you want: my consent to be torn apart.
With a precursory glance, I saw that all the others were scattered across the rings of magic, each knocked out cold.
All except one. The elder witch defiantly rose again.
“Clever!” Tzavos laughed approvingly. “We are all here in my prison… but if you wake up, the link is severed. Dying to that magic within your dreams will guarantee you awaken, just as always before—and it will cast out all the others as well. My young charge, very perceptive…”
I felt my clothes rippling as the storm roared down…
“But I believe you have forgotten something, child…” The witch reached out a hand, grinning with a mixture of pride and boiling anger. “Oh, clever Clara Blackwell. The moment that you stepped foot into this ethereal prison of mine, you were no longer in your dreams anymore.”
Her retinas eyes flared burning purple.
“No, resourceful little witch… you were in mine.”
Tzavos spun her hand, as if taking control of the storm. To my horror, the invisible force of destruction began now to spiral upwards into the air instead, beholden to her will. Powerless, I watched as the ancient vampire ripped away my single escape route.
“You even incapacitated the final two dhampir for me? How very kind of you, my child! Once I deal with you, the ultimate move in this long game will be made…” Her eyes narrowing with victory, Tzavos ordered: “Delego.”
The storm descended once again—funneling right back into the amulet against my collarbone. I really don’t know what possessed me to even think it. It was a crazy thought. Even as the predatory magic of the spell poured down into the amulet, filling it with overwhelming power that would now course through my veins again, I had nothing to lose.
So I reached down into the amulet…
“What are you doing?” Tzavos demanded.
...And I focused. I need to control this spell. I need it on my side. And I need your help to do it. We’ve been through so much together, the past few years. I trust you. I’ve always trusted you.
“Are you trying to invoke my amulet?” Tzavos laughed. “You think you can inflict your will over a vampiric relic? One that has predated your life by thousands of years? It bleeds my essence, as it has done for countless ages! What do you think you can do that I cannot? What power—headstrong pupil of mine—do you believe you wield over it?”
I ignored her anger and focused inwardly.
And I addressed the amulet again.
She is imprisoned inside you. She believes she is your master. I don’t claim such power, do I? Have I ever thought I had power over you? The only claim I have ever tried to enforce is trust… a powerful trust between us. And if you help me defeat her…
“You’re a fool, Clara Blackwell. That power is mine!”
Tzavos Tzovac lunged towards me, her wings flapping. In her horrifying hybridization with the defiled sorceress, the elder vampire raised her glowing staff—a spell already muttered on her lips…
Chapter 31
Nikki
Everything was chaos around me. My mind hurt. My vision blurred. Peeling my cheek up from the floor, I looked over to the scene before me.
And my eyes flew open in dread.
Tzavos confronted Clara. “What do you think you can do that I cannot?” The younger witch stood all alone, her allies trapped in their spell-prisons or knocked unconscious. With all her guardians thrown to the winds, Clara Blackwell was proud and defiant to the end; but she stood no chance on her own against a Sanguine One. Tzavos Tzovac obviously agreed with that sentiment. “What power—headstrong pupil of mine—do you believe you wield over it?”
Only I was awake. And neither noticed this.
I steadily rose to my feet. Tzavos had her back to me. If you’re as smart as I hope, Clara, you won’t betray my position…
Clara seemed to be focused on her amulet. Good.
“You’re a fool, Clara Blackwell. That power is mine!”
The elder witch flapped her wings in a defiant launch. Tzavos burst towards Clara as I leapt after her, both of my daggers at the ready…
But Clara held out a hand, clenching it.
The vampire froze in the air; purple magic surrounded her as her hands slammed at her side. Even her rod fell to the floor, rolling uselessly away.
“Wh-what?” Tzavos gasped. “What is this?!”
“All this time, you thought the amulet was yours,” the young witch told her. I stopped gracefully a short distance away, landing silently and watching from the side. Neither of them, it seemed, had noticed me just yet. Clara glowed purple now, too, like Tzavos’s usual magic.
No… brighter than purple… pink. It is purple, dulled with white. You and your little miracles, Clara… what impossibilities do you weave this time? What arcane magic do you uncover?
“That power belongs to me! That’s my strength!”
“No,” Clara briefly caressed her amulet. “Maybe there was a time when it belonged to you… but you gave it to me. You instructed me to feed it powerful magic—and that is exactly what I’ve done. I have spent the past several years of my life bonding with this relic. It can sense my anguish. It knows that I am alone here. And in my greatest times of panic and despair… it has always been there for me.”
She lowered her head, her despair obvious.
“Clara, my child—what are you doing?” Tzavos growled. I could hear the panic in her voice. She is terribly afraid. Clara, whatever you are doing now, don’t you dare stop…
“You taught me this, years ago… it’s how you showed me a way back to Elliott Craven, when we were separated by the barrier between worlds. The worlds are about to die at your hands. My friends lie scattered. Even my beloved lays silent. And here I am, alone and about to perish as you steal my body to destroy the worlds. How much deeper can I fall now, Tzavos? I’ve already hit rock bottom…”
“My child, you do not understand what you are about to do! You are far too young and inexperienced a witch—you cannot possibly handle the strain! Please, for your own safety—”
Clara’s eyes burned with a pink glow. “My safety?!”
“I warned you, even then, what could happen!”
Clara Blackwell shook her head, laughing. “You were a great teacher, Tzavos. I thank you for everything you have given me. You taught me that the greatest power a witch has...”
Her pink glow turned black in a heartbeat.
“…Is her grief.”
An aura of blackness exploded around Clara.
“Clara!” Tzavos shouted. “Do not fall prey to your—!“
In a burst of magic, Clara hurtled straight towards her very startled enemy. The young witch roared in unnatural power, her very movements shadowed by after-images, as she knocked her trapped enemy to the floor with an unnatural swipe.
The vampire witch rose to her feet with her powerful wings unfurling.
“You do not understand, Clara! Your grief is powerful on its own—but with the amulet at full strength? You have the power to destroy the worlds yourself!”
Tzavos was clearly terrified… but she wasn’t the only one. A shiver of fear ran down my own spine.
When Sabine always did her little flash-step nonsense, it was like she blinked forwards. But when Clara did it… it was something you could feel in air itself, like the pulse before a storm. It made Sabine look like a second-rate sorceress at best. Her movement was instantaneous. An audible fwoom was accompanied by a quick crackle of black light as Clara defiantly stood in front of Tzavos Tzovac.
“You… you’ve gone mad with—!”
Clara backhanded the witch, hurtling her aside. Tzavos landed gracefully, wiping at her face. “You believed me a threat to the worlds? Do you see what you have become?”
I was stunned. The old bat has a point…
Clara blinked towards Tzavos Tzovac again.
When her strike connected, it bounced the elder witch up into the air, maybe a few m
eters up…
And she blinked in mid-air, connecting a knee…
And another, a fist…
Until she started blinking back and forth, volleying the vampire into the air as her strikes connected, half a dozen a second, easily. I had never once witnessed Clara even try to move how she did now—as if she barely considered her own motions anymore. She was in some kind of trance, and I wasn’t certain that she was completely in control of her own actions. We’re definitely in trouble now. As I stood at the sideline, deeply stunned, I tried to keep count of Clara’s blink-strikes.
I gave up long before she slowed her relentless attack.
There is no Fortification magic on any world that’ll fix that.
I considered myself lucky, as Tzavos Tzovac finally hit the floor, that Clara seemed to have forgotten her magic—or any magic, really. As she shot to the ground, Clara looked capable of handing out spells like Maestifico without so much as a second thought…
This has gone on long enough. I turned back to my brother; Elliott murmured incoherently. I bolted over to his side before I could do anything to earn Clara’s attention. I slid over to him and held out my hand, calling upon every drop of magic I had left.
“Renovo. Wake the hell up, brother…!”
Tzavos, battered and broken, tried to crawl to her feet. It seemed Clara was having none of that, because she held up a fist and lifted Tzavos into the air again. I turned back to them as I heard my brother steadily climb back up.
“Clara! Control yourself! If you awaken like this…!”
Elliott groggily asked: “What is… happening?”
“Good news and bad news. Which first?”
“Good,” he grunted, cricking his neck.
“Tzavos Tzovac is in trouble. Which is great.”
His eyes flew open. He quickly retrieved his sword and slid it into the holster on his back. “And the bad?”
“Take a look…”
He scoured the battlefield. “Is that Clara?!” His precious and fragile little human witch was currently wrecking the most powerful vampire either of us had ever seen. They were locked in a vicious battle of the wills. Tzavos cast a fireball the size of a small child, and Clara, well, she bloody caught it. And then she crushed it into nothing in her fist.
“Small question…” Elliot said quietly, “why is she glowing black?”
“You know that old tale about witches and grief?”
His spirits fell. “Yes…”
“Let’s just say… you really shouldn’t upset her. A witch at the end of her rope is strong enough to kick around a Sanguine One. Literally. You saw Sabine’s little teleportation trick… but what Clara can do is unreal.”
Elliott started to march towards the dueling witches, and I followed close behind.
“How do we make her stop?” He asked.
“If Tzavos can’t. I don’t think we can either…”
The battle was still raging. The way Clara Blackwell was acting, I was starting to think Tzavos might be right. Our little witch might threaten… everything.
“Want to try kissing her again?” I mentioned.
“…I have a feeling that won’t work this time.”
Elliott and I staggered as fast as we could, weakened by the trials and tribulations in this horrific dream. I half-carried him as we crossed the rotating magical rings. I hope to never see one of these infernal things again so long as I live. And to think, I used to love playing with runes…
While Clara was still destroying the Sanguine One, we could see that we were on the verge of something terrible. The sickening creature embodying Sabine was taking one hell of a beating, but it just wasn’t going down—and Clara seemed to be growing less stable by the moment.
My brother groaned in pain. “She can’t maintain this.”
“No,” I agreed. “Her mind can’t handle it.”
“So, again… how do we stop her?”
I watched Clara teleport forwards, deflecting a spell out of the air and sending it straight into Tzavos’s face. The elder magician sailed backwards in a flurry of black dust, reassembling instantaneously as she took a defensive stance.
“Control yourself, child! You will tear everything apart!”
“I’ll tear you apart!” Clara snarled, lifting up her hand. A flicker of pink fire rose above her palm—but I didn’t see her reciting any spell to produce it. “You strengthened me so you could use me! You must be destroyed!”
“Is she… casting without a spell?” Elliott gasped.
“She is definitely breaking a few laws of magic.”
“We’re fighting an ancient witch in a dream. I’m not sure laws of magic matter in here.”
“Okay,” I glared at him. “Ant what happens if she gets back out of the dream like this? What if Tzavos is right, and she rips the world apart?”
“Is that… possible?” He asked, strained.
Clara’s cute flame became a large, blazing pink fireball.
“Is anything Clara does possible?”
“You have a point.”
“I have more than a point,” I retorted. “I have an idea.”
Releasing Elliott, I left him to stand up straight off his own strength as I darted towards the two of them. Tzavos called up a shield that Clara burned away with nothing more than a flick of her wrist.
I hated getting too close to this. But I had to reach her.
“Clara!” I shouted. “You have to calm down!”
In a blink, the witch stood before me. Right before me.
Clara’s body glowed black as she stared me down with a menacing glare—one strong enough to terrify me. But in her eyes, I saw burning tears. “What?”
Briefly, I was too dumbfounded to speak.
She tilted her head. “Do not waste my time.”
“Wait—Clara!” I reached to grab her hand. It burned at the touch, but I held on. “You can’t stop her like this!”
Clara ripped her arm free, sobbing. “She must die.”
“Yes. Yes she must. But you’re falling apart! Can’t you see that you aren’t winning? You’re only delaying her!”
Tzavos peeled herself up off of the ground in a cloud of black dust, reconstituting herself. Lifting her head to glower at us, she reached a half-formed hand forwards and pushed down against the glowing circles that marked this arena. A demented smile grew on her twisted face.
“I won’t let her use me!”
“I know,” I sighed. “But let me share your—“
Clara teleported ahead in a blink, shoving her foot into the elder witch’s head. Tzavos was flung backwards again, but she did not seem to be worried—or even in pain.
“Clara, wait—!”
The ancient magician landed near the column of light. “You are a fool, Clara! You will end the entire—“
Another teleport. Clara kicked her so hard, half of her body disintegrated into black dust. Tzavos merely grinned as she was thrown backwards once again, across the pillar of light beaming into the air.
“You have become the worst a witch can be! And now—“
“Clara!” I screamed. “Don’t!”
It was too late. Clara launched herself towards Tzavos… and screamed, suddenly suspended in the light.
Elliott shouted I rushed forwards. He could have reached her—but I was just a little faster.
“All that grief,” Tzavos snarled in a borrowed body that was now mostly destroyed. “All that power. You can feel it, can’t you? It’s being rightfully returned. It funnels inwards… rebuilding me… granting me more than enough strength to subdue the last of my progeny, and to finally take what I must to save the true world…”
Clara shrieked, her body racked with pain. The magic was being sucked out of her—fueling this column of light that poured out from the rotating circles of runic magic. Elliott was half-staggering, half-running from behind us. I knew what he meant to do, and I knew what it would do to him. He wouldn’t survive it.
So I did it fir
st.
As the dust slowly rebuilt the witch, she swiftly turned her half-formed face towards me. “What are you—?“
I ignored her, diving into the light and knocking Clara free.
While she collapsed in shock, my body convulsed, racked with far more magic than I could possibly contain. I had felt this sensation before. It was lightning in my veins, surging throughout my body, fully robbing me of mind and control. I couldn’t think or breathe.
It was like those weapons the soldiers used on me.
But it was so much worse. I even felt it in my head.
“What… is that?” Tzavos growled. “What did you do?”
Trembling, I glanced down at my hands in shock; they glowed a rich, dark purple and black, alternating slowly between the two.
“Nikki?” Clara deliriously shouted.
I could feel it pulsing throughout me.
Grief. Pure, amplified grief… magically charged. The kind of power that only the darkest depths of depression could muster… but there’s something else, too. Something… horrible.
A shudder roared down my spine, but connected to no emotion. This was a convulsion. More were to follow. This was not a power that was meant to be mine. I felt how my nerves screamed with a distant form of agony.
I should have been… destroyed by that.
Elliott was here now, standing at Clara’s side. The two watched me with horrified stares. “…Nikki?”
The black and purple glow bled together. Now, it was something else entirely—a white light, covering all of me from tip to toe. I felt a serenity flood me, even as the power flooded my veins.
Tzavos repeated: “My child… you’ve corrupted my spell. What have you done?”
Battered and beaten, I let my head roll slightly to face her, only barely aware that the column of light had vanished completely. It was just me now—glowing in a powerful, furious, and deeply grieving glare.