Ascension

by Sadie Moss

  I nod. “Now.”

  Callum dips his chin once. “All right. How do we do it?”

  They all three stare at me, waiting for my instruction. I almost wish I had more time to enjoy this, the way they implicitly trust me and are willing to fly off at a moment’s notice because I say so. It’s not that I expect them to do so, and it’s not that they’re compelled to obey me the way they were with Kaius. It’s that they trust me as much as they trust one another.

  This is the real moment of truth, I realize. We gathered our touchstone objects before the sacrifice, hoping they would be enough to anchor us to the other realm.

  What if they aren’t? What if we’re stuck here?

  There’s no way I can stop the end of the world from outside of it.

  I sink to the floor and motion for them to follow me. “We need to sit exactly as we were when we performed the ritual. I know we aren’t sure of the cardinal points here, but as close as possible should be sufficient.”

  The men jump into action, getting into their places around me so that we form a circle. I wait until they’re situated and then say, “Now, close your eyes and focus on your object. Echo, your sword. Paris, your mirror. Callum, Layla’s arrowhead. You need to picture it in as much detail as possible in your mind’s eye. Picture not only the object itself, but picture that it’s in your hand, exactly where you left it.”

  After I finish giving the instruction, I close my own eyes and conjure up an image of Nolan’s carving. I imagine the rough texture of the wood against my palm, and I trace my fingertip over the slightly lumpy head where his young fingers carved out the shape. I picture the protected clearing where the men and I performed the ritual, the thick brush all around us, protecting our bodies while we’ve been here.

  Then I start to float.

  Well, not exactly. It’s more that my form grows weightless, the way I felt inside the light when the light wasn’t trying to rip me into pieces. I tense at the sudden change, but rush to calm myself. If this is the first step in getting back to my body, I can’t lose my focus.

  As the floating sensation grows stronger, my vision grows darker and darker, until I lose all sight. Then, a moment later, the floor disappears from beneath me, and the warmth of my men’s legs pressed against mine vanishes too.

  I hang in a virtual void—no sound, no light, no sense of self. Panic attempts to creep in. Farse, what if this is the void? What if by trying to return to the mortal plane, we’ve transported ourselves into the black hole of nothingness?

  But wouldn’t I have lost all consciousness if that was the case?

  Then sensation returns.

  I’m sitting cross-legged, just as I was on the castle floor, only this time the ground is cold and rocky, and there’s a frigid slab of rock at my back. I cast out my senses and startle as I realize I can feel the void sitting beyond the darkness.

  We’ve returned to the place in between—where we came when we died, when we had to circle the vast expanse of nothing to get to the third realm.

  Or at least… I’ve come back here. I reach out to my left and right, my fingers searching the absolute darkness for any sign of my men. A cold breeze rushes past me and I shiver, leaning back against the wall as fear rushes through my veins.

  I’ll wait for them, I assure myself, planting my hands on the ground by my hips. They’re right behind me. Surely. And when they arrive, we’ll walk in the opposite direction, back around the void and hopefully back into the earthly realm.

  For a few agonizing seconds, I wait in isolation.

  Then, finally, I feel something at other the end of my connection to the men. I sense Echo first in the moments before his hand closes over mine. I open my mouth to greet him, but a burst of wind from the void steals my breath away.

  We sit together until Paris joins us, arriving on my opposite side only a few moments later. Callum is right behind him.

  Then I stand, using the rock wall behind me to balance. The abyss of extinguishment isn’t far from my feet, and the wall gives me the only sense of safety and comfort I have, outside just having my messengers there with me.

  Without a voice to tell them the plan, I carefully step past Echo, putting myself first in the line. I take his hand and squeeze, hoping he’ll get the hint to latch on to his brothers. After a moment of utter darkness and silence, he squeezes back.

  I lead the way, shuffling sideways just as we did when trying to find our way into the third realm. A part of me remains terrified that this won’t work, regardless of the fact we’ve done it before.

  But I keep moving, shoving aside those fears in favor of my absolute determination to stop Kaius and Zelus from destroying earth.

  The edge draws closer and closer, and the wind whips more strongly. I cling to the wall as I walk, my other hand scraping the rock as Echo does the same. I can sense the nothingness, and it opens up a pit of despair in me. If one good wind grabs me, it could haul me over the edge, where I just know I’ll be gone—forever.

  But that doesn’t happen. Instead, that strange sense of exhaustion creeps over me. One moment, I’m cringing away from a burst of sharp wind, and the next, I’m opening my eyes inside the briar circle in the earthly realm.

  Nolan’s carved wooden horse cuts into the palm of my hand. I look down, surprised to find I’ve clung to it so tightly there’s blood on my palm. I painfully open my fingers, revealing the small, misshapen figurine that brought me home.

  Thank you, brother. My heart swells with love for him as I pocket the carving. I feel odd—different from before. Almost as if I’ve carried some of the third realm’s magic along with me, which is an insane thought.

  Before I can investigate the feeling further, Echo jolts.

  He opens his eyes, his sword toppling off his legs in his surprise. Paris arrives next with a gasp, whipping his mirror up to cling to it as if it’s a buoy and he’s a drowning man. Then Callum awakens wordlessly, his gaze fastening on me.

  I’m distracted briefly by the amount of blood on each of their chests, knowing mine looks the same. We were dead. Truly dead, existing in another body just as happened to me when I left the earthly plane and ended up on Ironholde. But here we are, back in our original forms.

  I can’t even wrap my mind around it.

  Callum is the first to speak. “Where are we going?”

  “Ironholde. Somewhere outside the castle gates,” I tell him as I get unsteadily to my feet. “Kaius is facing off against Zelus, and only terrible things will come of it.”

  “It’s happening right now?” Paris asks, leaping gracefully to his feet and shoving his mirror into his tunic pocket.

  I nod, and Callum asks, “How do you know?”

  “The light showed me. Or the throne. I don’t know.” Those few moments within the combination of the weave and light were incomprehensible, for the most part.

  But I know what I saw. And I’m certain it’s real.

  “We have to get to the portal.” I shove aside the curtain of brambles, and we all step out of the little clearing. “We need to get back to the afterworld.”

  “We can travel the weave to the portal in minutes,” Echo points out. “But we’re five days’ travel from Ironholde once we get there. At least. We’ll never get there in time to stop whatever is brewing.”

  His words send nausea rolling through me. Farse. He’s right—I didn’t even think of that. We’ll have almost no access to the weave in the Unclaimed Expanse, no way to travel quickly across the realm.

  We need some way to go directly to Ironholde, to bypass the Expanse entirely.

  The thought lodges in my mind like a burr, and as my men gather around me, a cold sensation sweeps over me. One I recognize.

  It’s the same sort of icy breeze I always feel when I step through a portal between earth and the afterworld.

  But we’re still miles away from the only portal I know of. How is this possible?

  The icy feeling intensifies, and Callum’s eyes go wide as he t
urns to look at me. “Sage? What’s happening? What are you doing?”

  His voice jolts me out of my thoughts, and the icy feeling dissipates. My heart thuds heavily in my chest as I look up at him, licking suddenly dry lips.

  “I think… I think I can create a portal. From here to the afterworld.”

  22

  “What?” Paris’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.

  “I don’t know what happened when I went inside the light, but something did.” I glance at all three of them. “Something changed.”

  “You can manipulate the weave into creating a portal,” Echo says, a little breathlessly. “How?”

  “Are you the Weaver? Did it work?” Paris pulls me into his arms, looking like he can’t decide whether to kiss me or pick me up and spin me around.

  But I shake my head, pushing against his chest gently. “No, not the Weaver, I don’t think. Some kind of process was started, but I—I lost the connection before it could complete. I feel as if I’m bursting with weave magic though.”

  “You can create a portal,” Echo muses. “The question is, can you bring all of us with you?”

  “I won’t know until I try.”

  I latch on to his hand, then take Callum’s too. Paris grabs Callum’s other hand, linking us all together. A shiver runs down my spine as I refocus my energy on my desperate need to return to Ironholde. Icy wind drifts over my skin, and I step forward, holding on to my men as tightly as I can.

  Then we’re moving.

  The ether draws us in and sends us hurtling through space, and no other portal travel I’ve done could’ve ever prepared me for this moment.

  We don’t just leap from the portal at the outskirts of Ironholde—we explode from it. I hit the ground as if I’ve been running, skidding across the grass and catching my balance before I pitch forward.

  Echo flies into my back, his hand nearly torn from mine. Callum and Paris crash into us too, nearly bringing us all down in a heap. I’m about to ask if they’re all right, but the words die on my tongue as I straighten.

  Because I realize we aren’t alone.

  Our journey to the afterworld using third realm magic has spilled us out right at Kaius’s feet. I had no idea where he was when I had the vision back on the stone throne. All I knew when I opened the portal from the earthly plane was that we needed to reach Ironholde.

  But somehow, the weave has brought us right to him. As if it could read my mind.

  Kaius’s hand is aloft, weave magic glinting at his fingertips as he faces off with someone else.

  Zelus, I realize, raking my gaze over the god who murdered my people. Who murdered me. Maybe not with his own hand, but certainly with his indifference and neglect.

  Like Kaius, Zelus is too handsome, too polished. He wears his dark hair long, and his skin is deeply tanned, like the southerners who came through my village three years ago seeking a better life in the north. Also like Kaius, despite his inhuman beauty, he looks strangely… normal, wearing a pristine cream-colored tunic and dark blue pants, his boots lined with white fur.

  I had hoped for an ugly troll. I had hoped for an inhuman monster with horns and bat wings, to match the evil that dwells inside him. Instead, I may as well be looking at a perfectly healthy human man, no different than Jacob Godwin.

  Except both his hands glint with weave magic as well—a stark reminder that although he may be as petty as any human, he possesses the power to channel his cruelty in ways I can’t even imagine.

  The two gods are facing off outside the walls of Ironholde, dozens of messengers stationed in military formation just behind each of them, each of them poised for battle as well.

  “Stop!” I let go of Echo’s hand and race forward, throwing myself bodily between the two gods.

  I reach into the weave and nearly jerk with shock as I feel the magic respond. I don’t even have to grasp the strands like I once did, back before our time in the third realm. The strands come to me now, curling down around my fingers and arms. My skin glows from the inside out as weave magic filters into me, awaiting my instructions.

  Praise be all things holy, I think, trying to hide my surprise.

  Our trip to the third realm wasn’t a completely lost cause. I may not have the full power of the Weaver, as the poor madman in the dungeon spoke of, but I’ve gained access to some remarkable magic.

  Enough to stand up against Kaius and Zelus, anyway. I hope.

  With a snarl, I raise both my arms, the weave flaring red as it dances around me.

  Kaius’s hand lowers, and he stares at me unblinking for several seconds. Then he sneers, although shock still hides in the depths of his eyes. “Well, well. She thinks she can do magic? Is that how you escaped my dungeon? Little soul, you have no idea who you’re meddling with.”

  “Don’t call me that!” I snap, lowering my hands toward him. The weave pulses and flows around my limbs like a living thing, practically begging to be let free. “You have no right.”

  “I don’t?” Kaius throws his head back and laughs. “Poor little soul. So lost in her love story, she’s willing to face down the gods. She still thinks her messengers can save her.”

  “I won’t let this happen.” My voice is steady, although my heart is pounding so hard I almost can’t hear over the rush of blood in my ears. “This war is wrong. The way you both treat your people is wrong. You can stand down, or—”

  The amusement that gleamed in Kaius’s eyes vanishes in a split second. Rage contorts his features as he steps forward. “I will not be told what to do! Not by anyone, and least of all by a pathetic little soul.”

  He pauses between each of the last words, hurling them at me like poison-tipped daggers. This is the same Kaius who bellowed his fury when his messengers broke their allegiance to him and rescued me. The same Kaius who eviscerated that poor, mad soul in the dungeon.

  This is the Kaius who has mistreated both his messengers and his people alike, discarding anyone who doesn’t serve his immediate purposes.

  And this is the Kaius who has vowed to extinguish me like a bug.

  Before that final thought has even passed all the way through my mind, his hands fly up, impossibly bright light bursting from them. It flies toward me, and I cross my forearms in front of my face, letting weave magic ripple outward. His white light slams into the red of my shield, and I’m shoved backward by the force of the blow, my feet digging into the dirt for traction.

  I throw everything I have into keeping Kaius’s magic from touching me and my men, and it ripples outward and away from us, dispersed by the power of my shield.

  Just as quickly as it came, it’s gone. Kaius closes his fists, and the killing magic disappears.

  My limbs feel shaky and weak, but I stand up straight, drawing on the support of my men behind me as their one time ruler blinks at me in stunned silence.

  “No.” His voice is low, and the amused drawl from earlier has disappeared completely. There’s anger in it now, along with disbelief and… fear. “That’s impossible. No soul can wield the power of the gods.”

  I don’t answer. I just keep my hands raised, poised to strike or defend against another attack.

  Kaius’s gaze shifts to the god on my other side, his eyes narrowing in anger. “Did you know about this? She’s one of yours.”

  A deep drawl from behind me catches my ears, and I shift my weight so I can look at Zelus without letting my guard down in case Kaius attacks again.

  “No. I would never permit one of my souls to gain so much unbridled power. My people know their place.”

  Disdain drips from his voice, and it makes my blood boil. My people have worshipped him for their entire lives, hoping for a better existence in either that realm or the next. And all he has to say about them is that they know their place.

  No wonder he accepted my sacrifice without lifting a finger to help my village. As far as he was concerned, that sacrifice was owed to him, and he owed nothing in return.

  The weave magic cra
ckling around and through me sparks, responding to my anger, and I hurl a blast of it at Zelus.

  His eyes widen in shock, and he barely manages to lift his hands in time to block the strike. Magic clashes against magic with a resounding crack, and when the air clears, he’s staring at me as if he never truly saw me until now.

  “Brother.” His voice is hard as he addresses Kaius, although he keeps his gaze pinned on me. “We have a problem.”

  “Oh?” Kaius’s voice is vicious. “Is it our problem now? She’s your soul.”

  “And she’s surrounded by your messengers. Or men who were your messengers.”

  Kaius growls, and I can practically feel the bitterness pouring from him at the reminder that he’s lost his hold on my men. “What are you saying, Zelus?”

  “I’m saying some things are more important than our old grudges.” Zelus points at me. “Whatever has happened to this soul poses a threat to both of us. I’d like to fight you, brother, and I fully intend to. But at the moment, this is my most pressing concern.”

  Kaius’s eyes narrow. Then he nods. “Fine. But once we’ve destroyed her, I’m coming for you.”

  I blink.

  Oh, farse. Everything just turned on its head so fast I feel like I have whiplash.

  I got what I wanted, at least for the moment. The gods are no longer at each other’s throats.

  Because they’ve agreed to join forces against me.

  Suddenly, weave magic comes at me from both sides. I react quickly, shoving out the magic that’s clinging to my arms. Energy bursts from me, but as soon as the gods’ blows meet my own, the power explodes outward, dissipating into the air.

  Callum leaps at Kaius, his sword arcing with deadly accuracy at the god’s head. In the same instant, I recharge and toss a sphere of hot magic at Kaius, trying to distract him from Callum’s attack. But the god isn’t easily fooled. He knocks Callum’s blow away with a block to his wrist, and absorbs my magical blow with his fingertips.

  My heart drums out a fast rhythm in my chest. The power I’ve gained from my time in the third realm is incredible. But I know what I told Paris earlier is the truth.