by Elise Kova
Taavin rounded behind her, pushing her to motion. He pushed her toward the flame and Vi’s body only obliged because it was that or collapse in place. Luckily, her physical form moved on instinct, even when her mind refused.
“I’m going to say some words,” Taavin was saying. Vi barely heard him.
None of this was real. None of this was happening. It couldn’t be. He was speaking insanity. And yet her other option if she didn’t go along with it was walking back down into a hornet’s nest of Ulvarth’s men who would execute her father by dawn—if dawn even came. If they hadn’t already executed him.
What if Taavin had been lying about that to get her to move? What if they’d killed him in that courtyard and Taavin knew if he told her she would be a grieving mess? Could she trust him to tell her the truth?
Right now, the answer was a resounding no, and Vi felt as though she would be sick.
Taavin stopped pushing her and rounded in front of her. His hand cupped her cheek, but Vi could barely feel it. The motion was too familiar, too caring, for the strange man in front of her now. Madman or traitor—she didn’t know who he was.
“This is the only way forward. This is the only way to save your family. Repeat what I say, Vi. And I will be there to guide you in the new world, I promise. This is my destiny as much as it is yours.” He turned, his back to her, and knelt.
Destiny. She hated the word.
Vi was living a nightmare that ended with the world’s destruction. For the third time in three short days, she was overcome by a sensation of déjà vu. She’d had a vision of this very moment and she knew where it led. She knew what was about to happen.
“N-no.” Shaking her head, Vi stumbled a few steps back. “No, Taavin, I—”
Taavin stood slowly, looking to her. He advanced and Vi took another wide step—too wide. She stumbled, falling, landing hard because she didn’t even bother to catch herself.
“No, not this… don’t make me do this.”
“Don’t you hate me now?” His face was shadowed by the flame behind him, his mess of hair falling into his shining eyes. “Aren’t I the one who betrayed you?”
“Taavin, if I do this, you will die.” The words were a whisper, little more than a breath. “I have seen this—I told you. I will not burn you alive.”
“It’s because of me your father will die. I betrayed you, Vi.”
“Stop,” she pleaded. He was speaking truth right to the darkest part of her—the part she so desperately wanted to ignore.
“You wanted to take him to Norin if he wished, and I stopped that from happening.”
“Taavin—”
“You must do this!” His expression was a cross between pained and impatient. “This is the only way. This is the only path forward.”
“I’m not a murderer!”
“Then hate me more for making you one.” Taavin knelt before her. Even as she shouted at him, his voice didn’t waver and his gaze was set. He really was going to let her kill him. “Hate me because I will never let myself love you again. Hate me because you truly are the cause of all my torment. You are my nightmares. It was always you.”
Hate me, because I now hate you, his eyes said. That same burning feeling she’d embraced the other night was sparking again within the charred husk of her ribs. She wanted to sob and let out all the tears it felt like she’d been holding in for a lifetime. But if they fell now, they would merely evaporate on her cheeks.
“You must do this,” he reiterated, his voice gone soft. Taavin reached for her arm, pulling her upright.
“What happens if it doesn’t work?” Vi croaked, standing on shaking knees. “What happens if you’re wrong and I just kill you?”
“Death comes for us all.” He echoed the same sentiment as the first time she’d told him he was going to die. He looked her right in the eyes, so close his features went blurry. Perhaps, somehow, if everything he was saying was true, some part of him had known even then. “And if I am wrong, death will come for me before you when Raspian walks this earth once more… and you will have the satisfaction of killing someone else who wronged you.”
“You’re not making any sense!” She wanted to slap him. “Do you hear yourself? This isn’t logical and this magic, it doesn’t exist, and—”
“The watch was power—my power mingled with Yargen’s, and yours,” he spoke over her hastily. His hands gripped her shoulders, hard. “Layers and layers of magic, Vi… countless times. Countless attempts to stop this failed future from coming to pass. You have to return that power that’s in me to her, along with you, along with the scythe. Only that will give her enough power to send you back.”
“You truly are mad.”
“And you truly are the worst thing to have ever happened to me,” he seethed, so close their noses almost touched. Part of her wanted to kiss him, kiss the pain away. The other part of her was more tempted by the minute to give in and kill him. He was begging for it, after all. “Now, help me do this.”
Why was the line between love and hate so confusingly thin? She stared at his back, at the scythe positioned on the pedestal before the flame.
She wondered if she was about to trade some part of her soul—and if so, for what. It didn’t feel like much of her soul was left. Whatever was still there after all she’d endured, she may as well give to the Goddess.
Taavin knelt and Vi hovered behind him, swaying unsteadily.
Without so much as looking back at her—without even reaffirming what it was they were about to do one final time—Taavin begin to chant.
The words blurred together into a litany that would be his dirge. She could stop this now. She could clamp her hands over his lips and silence those infernal words that were already flowing through her.
But if she did that… then what? Taavin would likely perish anyway, as fodder to bring about a dark god. She would likely die fighting that same god. The world would end. Her family would be forever lost.
Perhaps Taavin was the one to have it right all along—death comes for us all—and Vi was the one to have her worries tied around the wrong priorities.
Vi took a slow step forward. She knew her role. She’d do it just like she had in the vision she was given back in Soricium.
Her hands settled slowly on Taavin’s shoulders. Light was already peeling off of him, merging with the halo of brightness surrounding the flame. Barely-formed glyphs seemed to wrap, collapse, and form anew in complex patterns Vi couldn’t follow.
His magic, shimmering and bright, pulled hers forth as well. Together, it looked almost like a white-hot fire, but with a cool pale blue at the edges. Vi gave into the flow like a ship to a current. She shut off her mind and let him pull her along.
If she thought too much about what was about to happen next, she may not be able to do it. Her will might fail her.
She spoke.
Vi didn’t know the words she was saying, she didn’t know the meanings, but she echoed him anyway. She allowed the magic to be pulled from her. It felt almost like an invisible hand plunged into her chest, pulling forth all she was with a violence that seemed appropriate for an unnatural act.
They were two mortals, playing at godhood.
Taavin’s head tipped back and he let out a scream as his magic exploded in a burst of flame, mingling with the fire of Yargen. In the distance, voices. Ulvarth or the Swords were coming to investigate. They must have discovered her absence.
But it was too late.
The Voice was immolating under her hands, with the help of her magic. The fire before them blazed brightly, brighter than anything Vi had ever seen before—so bright, she was certain to be blind when it faded.
The whole world was consumed…
And Vi was falling into the void it left behind.
Chapter Thirty-Five
There was nothing but light, so bright she squinted and her head ached. Vi tried closing her eyes, but she couldn’t even do that to block it out. The light was in her mind, in her flesh.
It seared through her from the inside out.
She felt every layer of skin boiling. Red lightning finally broke through, flesh disappearing into the void above her as she continued to fall. She felt her tongue crisp and her hair singe. She felt the burn down to the clean white of her bones.
There was nothing left of her. At least, Vi couldn’t feel anything. All sensation had vanished from head to toe. She was a spirit, her body gone.
Tick.
Tock.
No… perhaps, there was something. The watch Taavin had given her still ticked. Vi was aware of magic swirling from the timepiece as time and space whipped around her like wind. From the magic that had been stored there with their final act together, life began again, and Vi let out a scream more animal than woman as everything rushed back all at once.
A new heart—her new heart—beat in time to the watch. Veins sprouted from it, unfurling outward like bloody ribbons. Bone and sinew became her foundation, sprouting muscle and then layering on flesh. Her nails grew back in place, her hair flowed past her shoulders.
And her freshly made, still-falling body began to finally, finally, slow.
Tick. Tock.
The end of the world is near, and we must be ready to meet it. Taavin’s voice echoed and Vi turned, trying to find the source of the sound. Her new heart began to race.
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.
Vi covered her ears, trying to blot out the noise. The faster her heart beat, the faster the incessant ticking. It would drive her mad before she even—
“Young one,” a voice that sounded like every man, woman, and child in the world speaking all at once startled Vi from her thoughts. There was silence, then the voice again. “My Champion.”
“Y… Y…” Vi could barely form a word. Her mouth was new, foreign, strange.
She turned in place, aware she was no longer falling. But all around her was nothing more than bright light, swirling yellows mixed with blues and whites. The same colors and intensity as the flames that had engulfed her.
“I am here.”
“Where?” It felt like eternity stretched in all directions, all possibilities contained within.
Vi looked behind her, and when she turned forward again she was startled to see the shadow of a woman. A long veil covered her face, bolts of silk hiding her form. A crown of pure light sat on her head.
“Queen Lumeria?” Vi said, finding her voice once more.
“No. It is I… I who have seen this world from its start. I who sowed the seeds of life. I who gave you ground to grow in. I who gave you light to grow by.”
Yargen. Vi would’ve dropped to her knee, but she was too stunned. She also wasn’t completely certain she could move her knees. Her body was as fresh and primordial as the light around her, yet it mirrored the woman she’d always been.
The magic of the Goddess was within and around her. But mortal flesh still covered that power. She was neither divine nor mortal. A familiar sensation for the princess who had never belonged in any one place—who had never been any one thing.
“Yes,” Yargen spoke as though she heard Vi’s thoughts, because of course she heard Vi’s thoughts. Vi stared at the face—veil—of a goddess. “I am in everything. I am everything. My essence, my being, cannot be comprehended by you or any mortal mind. So this is merely a form your consciousnesses has created, to make me something you can understand—a meager shell for all I am…” She slowly raised her hands, fabric floating unnaturally weightless through the air. “Because this is all I am.
“Or, should I say, all I was.” Her hands lowered just as slowly. “I have given you a boon once more, my Champion. Your mind does not deceive you—in you is the last of my power from this world, collected from what fragments were left. The flame has been extinguished. With it, the world you knew is gone.”
“Gone?” Vi repeated in quiet horror.
“The world you were born into, the people you knew, the way you knew them, are no more.”
Gone. Everything was gone. Everything Vi had ever loved, would ever love, vanished at the whim of a goddess. Her mind ached and Vi didn’t know if it was from the struggle of trying to comprehend what was happening, or from what she’d already endured. She would cry in the face of such a truth, but Vi wasn’t sure she even remembered how.
“Do not despair,” Yargen soothed. “They are not gone forever. Just as you are not gone forever. You now possess a new shape… as shall they.”
“What? But you said—”
“This is the only way to thwart Raspian. The only way we can prevent him from destroying my world of light. We must begin anew in the shell of the former world and preserve my power, this time, so that I may face him once more in our deadly, eternal dance.”
“A new world,” Vi whispered.
“Yes, but a familiar one. Everything as you knew it has been wiped away. But the lines of fate remain. The life that was cultivated can still thrive. Everything is as it was, but new once more.”
“I… I don’t understand.” Vi shook her head. She wanted to. She desperately wanted to, because somewhere amid all the talk of the world ending was hope. Vi could hear it, and she lived for that hope, even if she didn’t yet understand its foundations.
“You will, in time,” Yargen assured her. “We begin anew. I return you to before the first moment where fate was changed. I place you back in a new world. You will be free of the bonds of time because my magic is in you. I have given you the power that lived in the watch your past self carried. I have bestowed the power of my Voice and the last vestiges of power from the flame on you as well.
“Together, we have scraped together my meager remnants to make this attempt at a world in which I am not weakened. When I rebuild this new world, you shall enter it as you are, knowing all you know. However, you shall be immune to time’s flow, a traveler among mortals.”
A new world. A traveler. If Vi understood correctly, the world was being remade with the crystal weapons still intact. But that meant…
“But what about my world? My father, my mother?”
“The only world that exists now, is the one we exist within. I am the fount of life and time. There is no other world.”
Vi shook her head and fell to her knees. What was it for? What was everything for? She’d struggled and fought to spare the world from ending, only to see the world end anyway? Raspian wanted to destroy the world, so Vi fought against him… only to see it destroyed by a different god.
Yet, if Yargen spoke true, there was still a chance to save it.
The Goddess approached, stopping before her. Queen Lumeria’s shifting silks floated through her vision as Vi stared up like a hopeless acolyte, beseeching forgiveness and mercy.
“Regain your birthright as Champion,” Yargen intoned.
The spear that was bestowed. A voice that both was and wasn’t her own replied from within her mind.
“Assume your mantle as Champion.”
To defend the Crystal Caverns.
“See my power is never tuned on itself again. See I am not weakened. See I am able to stand against the incomprehensible darkness that rages at the edge of your mortal world.”
The air was sucked from Vi’s lungs.
Light turned to darkness and she was falling again. Yargen vanished from before her and Vi was left alone. The wind sped around her. Her eyes dipped closed.
If she hit the ground at this speed, she’d die.
Perhaps that was the best end she could hope for.
But she couldn’t die. For in her was the power of Yargen. Wasn’t that what the goddess had said? And that power condemned her to remain adrift in the sands of time.
Vi gasped for air, opening her eyes wide. She lurched upward, the watch around her neck thumping dully against her chest. The world around her was bright—uncomfortably so—but not the same brightness she had just endured.
And certainly not the same brightness that peeled off her skin like some primordial, godly afterbirth.
Rubbing her hands over her arms and shivering in the heat, Vi looked around. She’d thought of herself in the sands of time… but now she was just in regular sand. Hay was scattered at her side, damp-smelling and foul. Whatever animal lived here would need something fresh, if the animal was still alive at all. The stables she was in were completely empty.
People drifted past on the other side of the gate. None of them noticed her or looked her way. Perhaps they couldn’t see her at all.
Vi stared down at her trembling hands. She opened and closed her fingers slowly. They still worked. She could keenly feel her nails digging into her palms when she balled them, just as she could feel the thin layer of sand shifting over hard-packed earth beneath as Vi pushed herself off the ground.
Swaying, she took one step forward, then another. She knew where she was before she emerged from the stable. The people were easy enough to identify, the architecture of the city even easier.
The city stables of Norin stretched on either side of her as Vi emerged along the main road. She remembered passing through these markets and streets with Jayme. At least, she thought she remembered…
Perhaps this whole time she’d been in one endless fever dream. Perhaps none of it had been real. Perhaps she’d been marching home with her family, took a detour to Norin she couldn’t recall at this moment, and suffered heat fainting. She’d only dreamt her father gone, her mother ill. She’d only dreamt of Taavin and Meru and—
“What do you think will be in the proclamation?” a wife asked her husband as they passed. Her voice was low, and as weak as her body looked.
Vi turned and stared. Luckily, the woman didn’t notice, because Vi didn’t think she could wipe the shock off her face if she tried. The wife hadn’t been speaking common. She was speaking the old language of Mhashan—and Vi could understand it with perfect fluency.