that she had decided.
She found him sitting on a pile of rock that had previously been part of the temple roof. He was staring absentmindedly into the air while smoking a cigarette. He looked up when he heard her approaching.
“Did you find what you were looking for?” He asked her.
She considered telling him about Ardeth, but decided against it. That was not important.
“I did.” She said quietly.
He threw the rest of the cigarette on the ground and put it out with his foot. “Then where do you want to go from here?” He asked her. She smiled at his question. For the first time since she had left the place she grew up she knew what she wanted to do. What her next course of action needed to be.
“I want to stay here.” She said. “I want to learn to control Cadeyrn’s powers.”
28
The training was intense. The magic an archangel possessed was far more powerful than anything a human body was ever made to withstand. Trying to draw it out was an enormous strain on her body.
Being at his temple helped her connect with Cadeyrn, but the effort she had to put in to use his abilities was still tremendous. She wondered if mages had this much trouble when they first learned to control magic. If so, she didn’t envy them.
For the last week, she had trained constantly from sunrise to sunset. The first few days, all she managed was a few bursts of magic, but now she was able to summon it at will. The problem was that she could only uphold it for short periods of time, before running out of energy.
She sat down heavily, gasping for breath after once again trying to keep the magic flowing. Her muscles were burning with the strain of drawing out that much power and she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep it up much longer.
She put her head in her hands as she tried to remember what she had done while fighting against Nadesha’s illusions.
She remembered fear. Fear of dying by the hands of the Demios.
She sighed in defeat. She couldn’t use fear to anything.
She looked up when she heard footsteps approaching. Alassane was walking towards her with his hands in his pockets, looking like he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Unless you want to kill yourself, you should cut yourself some slack.” He said casually as he stopped in front of her.
“As I am now, I don’t stand a chance against them.” She sighed. She closed her eyes in thought. “And I don’t have much time, do I? It won’t be long before they come here…”
His lips stretched into a frown. “No…” He said. “They won’t waste their time.”
“Then I need to be ready.” She said determined. She couldn’t count on Alassane to save her every time. She had to be able to hold her own.
She stood up and prepared herself to try again. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. She felt the magic flow through her body and tried to ignore the feeling of exhaustion that spread with it.
She opened her eyes and focused on a dead tree on the other side of the yard. She raised her hand, trying to keep it from shaking. Her entire arm was surrounded by a pure white glow.
She took aim and released the energy coursing in her arm. Blinding light rushed through the air and blasted against the tree. The dead wood gave in, and the trunk plummeted to the ground.
Selissa collapsed to her knees in fatigue. She breathed heavily as she studied her handiwork.
“At least you can control it now.” Alassane commented behind her. “It was rather pathetic watching you work so hard, while nothing happened.”
She ignored him. “When I fought Nadesha, it didn’t exhaust me to use his power…” She said thoughtfully. “Rather it refreshed me. Why does it wear me out so fast now?”
Alassane seemed to consider that. “Back then, the power was flowing freely instead of you drawing it out.” He said slowly. “It’s the power of an archangel you’re using. It’s far too powerful to be contained by a human.”
She turned her head to look at him. “What do you mean?” She asked confused.
He sighed. “I mean that right now, you and Cadeyrn are two separate beings. But he’s part of you, and the sooner you accept that, the better. His power needs to be your power, before you can reach its full potential.”
“I see…” She was not quite sure she actually did see, but she was willing to give it a try. She closed her eyes and felt for Cadeyrn’s presence inside her. Alassane was right… She could always feel him with her. He was part of her, and she needed to stop thinking of him as someone who was merely a voice in the back of her head.
She slowly got to her feet. Her body was crying out in exhaustion, but she ignored it. She would not be limited by a human body.
ℓ
For three days she kept on training. It got easier and easier for her to draw out her magic power, but she still couldn’t keep it up for longer amounts of time.
The yard she used as a training area looked like an immense hurricane had passed through. Trees and pillars laid scattered across the already mostly collapsed temple yard. She was slowly starting to be able to control the amount of energy she released at a time, but it had required sacrifices.
She stood in the middle of the destruction when she saw Alassane enter the yard.
He had wisely decided to stay out of sight, while she was causing havoc. He only checked in to make sure she hadn’t killed herself. Or caused the ceiling to collapse on top of her…
“It seems like you need some new targets…” He said as he surveyed the fallen trees.
“Are you offering?” Selissa asked with a smirk. She would definitely not be opposed to that idea.
He glared at her, but chose not to comment. He kicked some rubble out of his way as he crossed the yard and sat down beside her.
“If you keep going this way, you’re going to bring the whole damn temple down on us…” He scoffed at her.
She opened her mouth to retort, but was interrupted by a huge tremor shaking the earth. She stumbled and would have fallen if Alassane hadn’t grabbed her arm.
“That wasn’t me, you know…” She said shocked. Maybe he was right about the temple coming down on them.
The tremor continued, and she clung to Alassane’s arm to keep her balance. “An earthquake?” She asked and looked at him. What she saw in his face gave her the answer.
The look on his face was hard as he spoke. “No…”
That was all he managed to say before the tremor increased, and the ground started to crack open.
Confusion turned to horror as Selissa watched the earth being pushed aside and pale, bony arms with rotten skin claw their way out of the ground.
All around them corpses started fighting their way to the surface. Scrawny, decayed bodies surrounded them together with the stench of death. Empty, lifeless eyes watched them without emotion.
One of the corpses closest to them staggered forward and Selissa saw a muddied rosary swinging from its neck. Her throat closed up, as she realized they were surrounded by the lifeless remains of the sanctuary’s former residents.
29
The stench of rotten flesh was choking her. Deformed bodies were slowly moving towards them, and horrible, deranged snarls were erupting from throats where the vocal chords had long since rotten away.
“What is happening?” She asked Alassane, hating her voice for sounding so weak. She stepped closer to him as the lifeless bodies slowly started closing in them. She watched as some of them collapsed to the ground as their decayed limps scattered under them, only to have several others crawling over them in their quest to get closer.
She stood frozen in horror as one of the abominations reached out for her with long, bony fingers.
“Don’t just stand there!” Alassane shouted as he sent a blast of blue flames towards the corpse. With an inhuman scream, it burned and fell apart, its fingers mere inches away from her face.
“Are you just going to wait for them to rip you apart?” He asked as
he summoned up more flames, until his arms were covered with it. “Isn’t this what you have been training for?”
His voice snapped her out of terror-induced trance. “I didn’t exactly expect this.” She exclaimed. Another corpse stumbled closer to her, and she kicked it in the face. The skull broke right off the neck and the rest of the body fell apart and ended up in a heap on the ground.
Alassane sent a sea of blue fire towards the approaching cadavers and incinerated half the circle that had formed around them.
Distorted screams rose from the crowd of dead bodies, and burning body parts fell to the ground.
Selissa felt relief flood her as she watched them fall, but it was short-lived. Where the other had fallen, twice as many started crawling from the ground.
“Where are they coming from?” She asked, her voice rising in panic. Alassane gritted his teeth.
“Someone is raising them…” He said and blasted another group of corpses away. They had barely hit the ground, before more rose to replace them.
“A necromancer?” She asked disbelieving. She had heard townspeople speaking about those in hushed voices, but she had never met anyone with such a gruesome power. But then again, she had never been surrounded by living corpses before.
“He must be hiding somewhere nearby…” He said. “Behind you!”
She swirled around, but wasn’t fast enough. Fleshless fingers grabbed her leg and tried to drag her into the crowd of mindless acolytes. She started kicking furiously to get it off, but it tightened its grip. The bones of dead fingers tore painfully into her skin, and
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