by Zales, Dima
Her reflective spell repelled the blast, pushing it outward, back toward its source, but the bubble prevented it from going beyond its walls. The energy grew, unimaginably powerful and destructive, filling the enclosed space around Gala and weakening her defenses. There was no longer any hope of retaining control, of remaining calm in the face of this maelstrom—all Gala could do was attempt to survive. She was no longer making conscious choices; instead that deep, still-unexplored part of her mind was in control.
Searing, burning pain overloaded her senses as time seemed to slow. She felt her body starting to disintegrate, each cell screaming in agony at its torturous death. The explosive energy was merciless, terrifying, yet Gala’s mind systematically analyzed it, broke it down into its components. And then she knew what it was . . . knew it was the same force that powered the stars above. Hydrogen fusing with itself, forming helium—a terrible reaction that her mind could not find a way to stop.
So instead of stopping it, her mind found a different solution.
It would get rid of the energy by sending it elsewhere—to the Spell Realm itself.
As Gala’s mind ran through the necessary calculations, her agony intensified until she could bear it no longer—until she found herself completely pushed out of her dying body. She was fully inside the bird now, not just seeing but feeling what it felt.
There was a momentary relief from the pain, but then Gala made the mistake of looking down at the shimmering bubble—a bubble that now shone with the brightness of the sun. In an instant, the bird was blinded, and, unable to see, it began falling.
Plummeting to the ground, Gala somehow knew she was about to leave the bird’s body. With all her willpower, she tried to get the bird to fly again, but before she knew if her desperate attempt succeeded, she was brought back into her own body.
The pain was excruciating. Her flesh had disintegrated, ripped apart by the terrible forces of the fusion reaction, yet it was reforming again, somehow being fixed by the directive of her subconscious mind—a mind that seemed to reside elsewhere for now.
Crippled by the stunning agony, Gala lost connection with the mind of the bird completely. The creature was dead. Overwhelmed, she began to lose the remaining portion of her conscious control to one overwhelming emotion—anger.
Then, in a flash, she felt Blaise’s mind go blank, just like the bird’s.
Chapter 45: Augusta
Even with the protective vision spell, Augusta felt a blinding pain in her eyes. The sound of the explosion reverberated through her body, rupturing her eardrums, and the ground under her feet shook with such force that she was thrown to the ground, painfully twisting her ankle on the way. Stunned and gasping for air, she scrambled for a healing spell, her trembling fingers barely managing to load it into her Stone.
When the healing effect began, she could feel the pain in her ankle subside first. She was not sure yet, but her hearing appeared to be returning too, and she could hear some kind of shuffling inside Blaise’s house. Her eyes were healing slowly, however, and she could barely tell light from darkness. She had to hurry, so she used another healing spell to aid the vision repair.
When Augusta could finally see, the first thing she looked at was the other side of the Canyon—and her stomach churned at what she saw.
With a human being, the forces unleashed would have made them disintegrate into ash, leaving the shimmering sphere empty. This creature, however, was still there. Though it was no longer floating serenely, it still existed—and was lying on its side at the bottom of the bubble, curled into a fetal position.
At best, it was maybe injured, Augusta realized with dismay. It was definitely alive, though—she knew that thanks to a hidden locator spell she’d embedded within her fusion spell. She’d hoped she wouldn’t need it, but she took precautions anyway. This locator spell would allow Augusta to know where the creature was at all times, and, more importantly, whether it was alive.
She needed that location spell for her plan C—a plan she’d hoped she wouldn’t need to implement.
Now, however, there was no choice.
Slowly getting up, Augusta forced herself to walk into Blaise’s house.
* * *
Inside, she found Blaise lying on the floor in the hallway. It appeared that the explosion had knocked him off his feet as well. A thin trickle of blood ran down his forehead, and he looked dazed, as if he had just regained consciousness. For a moment, she had a strange impulse to heal him, to take away his pain, but that was absurd, given what she was about to do.
“You,” he whispered, propping himself up on one elbow and glaring at her. “What have you done?”
Augusta could see him reaching for his Interpreter Stone and the cards, and she quickly grabbed her own spell—the one she’d specifically prepared for this occasion.
It was too late, though. Blaise’s spell hit her first. Immediately, Augusta’s thoughts scrambled, her mind turning to mush. A confusion spell, she realized with the small corner of her brain that remained unaffected. A confusion spell that had gotten through her weakened defenses.
Everything felt slow, every thought, every decision, requiring major effort. Why hadn’t he just tried to kill her? she wondered hazily. Her eyes landed on Jandison’s bloody corpse, and her vision swam for a moment. Why hadn’t Blaise used a lethal spell on her as well? Did he still have feelings for her? No, that was stupid, Augusta told herself. He loved his creature now. She couldn’t forget that, couldn’t soften for even a moment—not if she wanted to survive.
Gathering all her strength, Augusta focused on what she needed to accomplish—the simple task of loading the prepared card into her Stone. It seemed to take hours, but finally she managed to slot it in.
Blaise slumped on the floor, his eyes closing as her spell took effect. Paradoxically, Augusta felt relieved that he hadn’t been standing, that he didn’t fall and injure himself further. It was ridiculous to feel that way in light of what she was about to do next.
Nonetheless, he looked still. Too still.
I didn’t kill him, Augusta reminded herself, shaking off the remnants of her confusion. Like Ganir, Blaise was merely in a coma that she had induced.
Her next set of spells, however, could end up killing him—if the creature didn’t act as Augusta hoped.
Chapter 46: Gala
No longer able to sense her connection with Blaise, Gala felt her anger turning into blinding fury.
Hardly conscious of what she was doing, she sent Blaise’s house back to its usual place in Turingrad. If he was somehow still alive, he would not be safe here, not with what was about to happen.
Once that was done, she closed her eyes and focused on the most powerful force she had known prior to this explosion: the horrifying ocean storms. Mentally reaching out far beyond the mountains, Gala took a precisely measured chunk of space from the air above the ocean and teleported it into the canyon.
The sky exploded with lightning, hail, and tornados. The storm filled every inch of the canyon, with deadly lightning bolts striking every second, turning the rocky ground into glass. The howling roar of the tornados and the pounding hail combined into a deafening cacophony, sheets of rain turning the bottom of the canyon into a lake within seconds.
It was a nightmare—one from which Gala was protected by the very bubble they had used against her.
The storm lasted at peak intensity for only a few minutes and then began to dissipate, no longer sustained by the weather conditions that brought it about in the ocean. As the sky began to clear again, Gala’s own fury slowly faded, replaced by the horrified recognition of what she’d done.
The canyon was all but destroyed. She had lost control again—and in doing so, she might’ve killed people. The Council had intended to hurt her, likely kill her, but she hadn’t wanted them dead. She should’ve found another way.
Before bitter regret could consume her again, Gala focused on what she still had to do: find Blaise. Closing her eyes, she concen
trated and teleported herself into Blaise’s house—which was now back in Turingrad.
* * *
A beautiful dark-haired woman was crouched over Blaise’s prone body. At Gala’s appearance, she swiftly looked up, clutching her Interpreter Stone. The expression on her face was full of fear and hatred.
“If you do anything to me, he’ll die,” she said, staring at Gala with striking amber-colored eyes. “He’s merely unconscious now, but I joined his life to mine—and to yours.”
“What do you mean?” Gala whispered, her heart pounding with a mixture of fury and dread. This had to be Augusta, Blaise’s former fiancée—the woman he had loved once. The woman who betrayed him and his brother.
The woman who set the Council on Gala and Blaise.
“I used a spell on him that’s tied to you,” Augusta said evenly. “His life is being drained as we speak—drained by your very existence. He’s dying because of you now—because you are here alive, instead of dead, like you were supposed to be.”
Gala gritted her teeth, fighting the urge to lash out at Augusta. She could feel the truth of the woman’s words. There was a complex spell woven around Blaise, one that indeed connected him to both Gala and Augusta. The threads that joined him to Gala seemed to be leaching something from him, killing him slowly but surely.
Examining herself, Gala realized that she’d felt something earlier—that some spell had been interwoven into that terrible explosion. The changes were subtle but noticeable, especially now that she was focusing on them. The spell ensured that she could be located anywhere; as long as Gala existed, the leaching would continue.
Gala could potentially unweave this spell, but it would take too long—and she didn’t know how long Blaise could last like this, with his life being drained by the second.
“There’s only one way you can save him,” Augusta said, her eyes glittering with something suspiciously resembling tears. “Your life for his—that’s the only way. I know you’re too powerful for me to destroy—and I know you can destroy me in a moment. But by doing that, you’ll be killing him. He created you; he gave you everything, even his heart. Are you going to let him die like this?”
Gala stared at Augusta, a sick sensation curdling low in her stomach. The woman wanted her to kill herself, to snuff out her own existence. It was unthinkable—but so was the thought of Blaise dying.
Torn, she stared at Augusta, her mind running through all the possible scenarios. With the spell Augusta put on her, merely teleporting away would not help . . . and she could sense that Blaise would not survive much longer. There was no choice: Gala had to figure out a way to kill herself if she wanted to save Blaise.
She considered one morbid scenario after the next—setting herself on fire, drowning at the bottom of the ocean, cutting her flesh to ribbons with a sword—but all these had a flaw: she had no idea if she could be killed that way. She had no idea if her subconscious would end up in control, saving Gala at the ultimate cost to Blaise.
There was only one alternative she could see.
Closing her eyes, Gala remembered the spell her mind had performed when the terrible explosion was used against her. She knew that the energy of that calamity had been channeled into the Spell Realm. Analyzing it, she realized that she could replicate that spell with one difference: she would be the one to go to the Spell Realm this time.
Gala opened her eyes to look at Blaise for the last time, and then she closed them again. Taking a deep breath, she sent Blaise a brief Contact message . . . and put her plan into action.
By the time she became conscious again, she was unable to hear, see, touch, or smell.
She was back in the Spell Realm.
Chapter 47: Blaise
Drifting in a strange blankness, Blaise suddenly became aware of an intrusion in his mind—of words that seemed to appear out of nothingness.
Gala’s words, he realized, his thinking slow and sluggish.
“Blaise, my love, Augusta made it impossible for me to stay in the Physical Realm, so I had to depart this world and take a chance by going to the Spell Realm. I am not sure what awaits me there, and I wanted you to know that the last days that we spent together were the most wonderful days of my existence so far. Gala.”
The message seemed to reverberate in his mind, repeating over and over again as he slowly began to digest its meaning. Recalling Augusta and her spell, Blaise realized that Augusta had done something to him, causing him to black out.
As awareness came back, Blaise became cognizant of his body lying still on the floor. His limbs felt weak and heavy, drained of all energy. A wave of helpless fury surged through him as the full meaning of Gala’s words dawned on him.
She was gone.
The woman he loved more than life itself was gone from this world.
He didn’t know how Augusta had accomplished that task, but that didn’t matter right now. He couldn’t let himself give in to the grief and hatred choking him from the inside; he needed to be able to think, to plan his revenge.
He could hear someone in the room with him, and he did his best to lie still, to pretend to be unconscious. Opening his eyes to a narrow slit, he saw his Interpreter Stone and a few cards lying spilled on the floor a few feet away. If he could only reach them quickly . . . but those few feet might as well have been miles, given the paralyzing weakness still gripping his body.
There was a sound of light footsteps and a rustle of skirts—and then the familiar scent of jasmine enveloped him as Augusta knelt next to him.
“I know you’re awake,” she said softly, her hand brushing lightly against his cheek. “You don’t have to pretend with me. I’ve seen you wake up plenty of times.”
Blaise opened his eyes, not bothering to hide the hatred burning within him. “What did you do?” he asked, his voice low and hoarse. “What did you do, Augusta?”
She stared at him, her gaze hardening. “It’s dead,” she said curtly, and he could see her hand tightening around her Interpreter Stone. “I know because I had a locator spell on it, and the locator shows nothing. Also, you are very much alive and not losing your life’s essence—which I tied to that creature.”
Blaise’s hatred intensified. So that was how she’d done it: Augusta had used Gala’s feelings for Blaise against her.
Something of what he was feeling must’ve shown on his face because she grabbed a couple of cards and held them close to her Stone. “Don’t even think about it,” she said quietly. “You won’t make it.”
Cursing the aftereffects of the draining spell, Blaise let his body relax, as though accepting the truth of her words. Half-closing his eyelids, he glanced toward the cards on the floor, spotting a paralyzing spell that would have come in handy.
At the same time, he heard Augusta let out a weary sigh. “Listen, Blaise . . .” Her tone was conciliatory now. “I had to do it, don’t you see? It was too dangerous . . . If you had only seen what this creature did—”
Shutting out Augusta’s words, Blaise gathered all of his remaining strength. He would get only one attempt at this, and he had to make it count. Ignoring the screaming weakness in his muscles, he swiftly rolled toward the Stone, his hands scrambling frantically for the cards.
And as he blindly slotted one into the Stone, Augusta’s spell hit him in full force.
It was like being struck by lightning. Every cell in his body exploded in agony, his body jerking under the lash of the energy blast. The pain was so intense that he lost consciousness again, his mind going blank.
* * *
When Blaise woke up again, he first became aware of the heavy, slow beat of his heart. His body was one big ball of pain, and every breath he dragged into his aching lungs required massive effort. Groaning, Blaise tried to move—an attempt that sent waves of agony through him again.
Nauseous, he forced himself to lie still, willing the spinning in his head to subside. Whatever spell Augusta hit him with had been just short of lethal.
After a few min
utes, he managed to open his eyes. Ignoring the pain in his neck, he slowly turned his head and surveyed the hallway.
Augusta lay on the floor beside him, her body unmoving. He had managed to hit her with the paralysis spell after all, he realized with relief. Her eyes were closed, and there was a small pool of blood spreading out from a wound on the side of her head. She must’ve hit her head when she fell. Probably a mercy, Blaise thought with uncharacteristic coldness; otherwise, the spell would’ve left her conscious, but unable to move at all—a feeling that was likely worse than mere unconsciousness.
Painfully rolling over onto his side, Blaise reached for the Stone that lay next to him. The simple movement sent his stomach roiling, but he managed to close his hand around it and grab a few cards before he had to close his eyes to combat the nauseating dizziness. After a few moments, he forced his lids open again to study what he was holding.
There was only one card that was even remotely related to a healing spell. Cursing, Blaise spied his pencil lying on the floor and reached for it, his hand shaking from the effort it took to grab the object. Then, ignoring the churning sickness in his stomach, he began to slowly write the appropriate spell.
Knowing that he was not in his best mental shape, Blaise took extra time to accomplish his task, making sure the spell would be safe. If he accidentally killed himself, he would never see Gala again. Anger surged through him again at the thought, and as soon as the spell healed him, he jumped to his feet, every cell in his body clamoring for vengeance.
Walking over to Augusta, he stared at her prone figure, a vengeful plan forming in his mind. His former lover had tried to make him an unwilling instrument of Gala’s destruction, and Blaise would make certain she regretted it.