by Kova, Elise
Her inner organs seared away. Underneath the once-tender flesh was crystal, and more crystal. Just as she had been in Taavin, the crystal was alive in her. It had always been.
Yargen? she thought. Vi’s existence was more inward than outward now.
I am here with you. I am you.
Vi coughed and a waterfall of ash cascaded from her mouth and back into the box. Slowly, the world came back into focus. She could see and hear, but her body was fully in Yargen’s control. She thought she’d been ready to fully relinquish control, but being a mere observer in her own skin rattled a corner of Vi’s consciousness that she thought had been long smothered.
“Summon him for me.” Vi felt her mouth form the words, but she did not feel herself say them. Her arms stretched outward, carrying the box forward. Her arms were awash in light, every color swirled atop them, settling into her skin before shifting again. Judging from the reactions on the elfin’ras’ faces, this was not her vision alone. This was her new body—the body of a goddess returned.
Together, Vi thought frantically.
A subtle hum was her reply.
I want to take this final step together. I can help you.
How? Yargen demanded. Vi could feel the rest of the unspoken question. How could a mortal help a divine being?
You have fought him as yourself, time and again. He knows you, Vi insisted. He does not know me. Let me help you end this.
Eternity drifted through her mind as the goddess debated her proposition. Very well, mortal. So it shall be.
The sensation of her body returned to her with tingling waves of magic. In her mind, she stood side-by-side with Yargen. It was not the same control as before; Yargen was not forfeiting out of necessity because her essence was not complete. Yargen was allowing Vi this final act.
“Scatter the ashes on his mark, and we shall begin,” the priest boomed.
The elfin’ra parted so Vi could enter the symbol. She did as instructed, scattering the ashes all around her. She stepped back out of the symbol, discarded the box, and watched as the elfin’ra closed back the circles again, all looking to their high priest.
The head priest raised his arm and drew a dagger from his belt. He sliced himself from forearm to palm. He held his wound over a stone chute that directed his blood into the carving of the split dragon below. The crimson river flowed unnaturally fast down the carved channels, filling in the outlines. As soon as the symbol was drawn in blood, it began to glow a bright red.
He began chanting, words fast and low that Vi barely recognized. She understood them though Yargen’s ears as the language of the gods, but trying to comprehend them with even a fraction of a mortal mind was impossible, so she didn’t try. She was beginning to learn the limitations of her shared space—what she could and couldn’t control, how much Yargen would let her understand and do.
The men and women of the circles raised their arms, joining their voices with their leader’s. The chanting grew louder and louder; some were wailing the words by the end. They threw their heads back in what looked like ecstasy, eyes rolling back.
Dark, ominous clouds rolled in overhead. The wind picked up around them, swirling to this spot, as though there were a void before her, sucking in the air. Vi widened her stance, bracing herself. Even in a place of darkness, her magic connected with the earth. She felt Yargen’s powers grounding her, connecting with the land beneath her feet.
The head priest descended from the dais with a purposeful stride. His face was red from shouting, and his eyes glowed a brilliant vermilion. He stared at her issuing a silent challenge; Vi readied herself, allowing ripples of magic to pulsate from her form.
When the man reached the center of the circled zealots, everything reached a crescendo in a bolt of blood-red lightning.
It struck the man, sparking off and sending the other men and women around him flying back. Their bodies, dead, littered the ground. Magic arced through the air like the rebirth of a cosmos, all condensing on a glowing figure rising from where the leader of this dark ritual had once stood.
A roar cut through the ringing in Vi’s ears as the man tilted his head back and let out a primordial cry. He should be dead; the lightning had struck him square in the chest. Instead he wore the red light as a second skin, seeming to grow in size before Vi’s eyes.
She’d seen all this before. Perhaps that was why she was so calm. She’d seen it in her vision of her failed future, and Yargen had seen it countless times. This was how it always began: a battle to determine which god would rule the next cycle of the world.
The man’s jaw elongated with his screams. She watched as it jutted painfully outward. Vi heard the crunching of bones and witnessed new growth to make room for rows of razor-sharp teeth. His skin became hard and leathery as it stretched across plated armor underneath. His face became even more sunken and skull-like. His hair floated around him, swirling with the magic tempest he was birthed within. His eyes rolled back completely, exposing whites that seemed to glow faintly.
Lightning continued to strike around them. The electricity burnt away each of the bodies, as if rabidly consuming what scraps were left of the mortal essence that had brought both divine beings back into the world. Raspian continued to grow, remaking the mortal form that was given to him into something he found suitable.
Then, all at once, the wind died, the lightning ceased, and the world was still.
She didn’t have to look around to know that time and space had shifted. Reality distorted around the weight of the gods. The landscape had become even more barren, every building crumbling to dust. The horizon had all but vanished. Over Raspian’s right shoulder, the moon hung, cracked and bleeding, about to give birth to a wyvern that was ready to consume the world whole.
This suspended reality, outside of time, was a temporary battleground for them. It was the place the opposing gods could exist simultaneously: not quite the mortal realm and not quite the land of the divine. They could decide the victor here—who would return to the real world and rule, and who would be trapped in this liminal space until the next great battle.
Vi didn’t dare take her eyes off the dark god. She watched him warily. At any moment, he would attack, and their final battle would begin. The memory of her final vision, following the destruction of the Crystal Caverns, cut through all of Yargen’s influences and stood out in her memory.
The vision, that’s why you need me! Vi tried to communicate hastily with the goddess.
Vision? What vision? Vi didn’t have a chance to respond as Raspian raised a hand, pointing a clawed finger at her. Lightning punctuated his every movement. He opened his mouth and sound filled her mind.
“You finally meet me once more, Yargen.”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
“It’s time,” Yargen said through Vi’s mouth, using the language of the divine. Vi felt her lips make the sounds and understood the meaning of the words, but she couldn’t have repeated them if she tried. “Go willingly into your darkness. Meet me once more in a thousand years.”
“After you trapped me in that pit? No, perhaps you should feel what it’s like to be contained and smothered with no natural way out.”
He lifted his hand and Vi felt the magic collecting there. Yargen acted before she could.
She moved, tilting to the side, her hand swinging back. A spear of light trailed the line of her fingertips through the air. Her hand closed around it. She flung it forward.
The spear crashed against Raspian without so much as stunning him. He lifted his hand and a crack of lightning shot into the sky above. It arced through the clouds and came down as a hailstorm of bolts.
Vi dodged each one quickly. She retreated, gaining distance. Each attack carved static electricity through the air, giving her a split second to react before a bolt of red lightning scarred the earth where she had been standing.
Raspian lowered his hand and lumbered forward. He swung his other hand upward to cleave the land beneath her feet. Her body was s
ent tumbling back, head over heels. She dug her hands into the earth, seeking purchase. Just when she found her footing, a large rock fell atop her back and Vi cried out in pain.
She might be sharing her mind, but Vi felt every blow as though it was solely her own to bear.
“What a weak mortal form you chose this time,” Raspian said with his booming voice. “You have committed yourself to one girl, Yargen, when I have had generations of devotees ready to bleed for me. I took the essence of hundreds. What can one mortal do for you?”
We have to get on the offensive, Vi urged the goddess within her. He’s larger and slower. We can out-maneuver him.
She lifted her head and brought her hands under her shoulders, pushing upward with a grunt and finding her feet. With a strength no mortal should possess, she dislodged the boulder. Her focus returned to the dark god just in time to see Raspian swinging a clawed hand down toward her.
Vi’s instincts kicked in. “Mysst xieh!” The words escaped her, even if they no longer needed to be said. She reached across her abdomen. Mysst soto larrk, Yargen’s voice echoed in her mind as her magic wove a sword into existence. Fingers around the hilt, Vi drew it as if from a sheathe and slashed it across Raspian’s lower stomach.
Light flashed off the sword like steel on flint. There wasn’t so much as a scratch left behind on his gut. Raspian swung up with his other arm, reaching for her face. Vi bent backwards.
Wildly off balance, she flailed. Yargen’s instincts kicked in. Her right foot swung out, her left bent as she tipped backwards, and she allowed herself to fall. A word Vi didn’t understand echoed across her mind. She plunged into the earth as though it were a pool of water. The once-hard stone vanished into puffs of light.
Suddenly, she was falling through the sky.
Vi twisted mid-air and looked at the ground beneath her, desperately trying to keep up with the goddess. Raspian spun in place, looking for her. His thunderous steps shook the ground.
A spear of light was back in her hands. Wielding it in both, Vi was ready to use all the momentum of her fall to sink into his shoulder, but a bolt of lightning shot her down from the sky.
Smoking and spinning off-course, she shoved the spear into the ground before her body met the hard earth. She spun around the weapon before it vanished. When Vi landed on the ground, she broke into a run. Raspian had turned to meet her.
Vi stole back control of her body from Yargen. She bounced backward at the last moment, flipping through the air. She’d never done such acrobatics in her life, but being divine had its perks. Yargen seemed to know Vi’s intentions at the same time, if not before, they crossed Vi’s mind.
When she landed she reared back. Misst soto gotha. A bow appeared in her hands and Vi released three arrows at once. As they flew toward Raspian, she threw out a hand, allowing her spark to run rampant. It was a hybrid of her Firebearer magic and juth starys.
Fire erupted around Raspian’s feet and he let out a roar as one of her arrows sank into a soft spot between the bony plates that protected his body.
So he can be wounded, Vi thought.
Not easily, Yargen replied.
Raspian recovered faster than Vi expected. He raised his arm in a straight line and the earth mirrored his motion. Clay grew like a Groundbreaker’s wall. The hand Vi had thrown out in the attack was enveloped in slime. Vi tugged and tugged, but the red earth hardened before she could free herself.
The dark god approached. She could feel static building in the air. Vi readied an attack when her free arm moved without her permission.
Mysst soto laark. The glyphs for the words appeared around her hand as it closed on a sword. In one motion, without any hesitation, her body moved and sliced off its own arm.
Vi screamed, though mostly in her own mind. No blood poured from the wound. It hardly hurt more than any other blow she’d taken, but the shock of cutting off her own arm made her dizzy.
Yargen was in control. She sprinted away from Raspian, pouring power into the severed stub of her arm. Crystals emerged, taking the shape of a new elbow, forearm, and hand. By the time her fingers closed in a fist, the appendage looked as normal as the last.
A wave of red magic erupted behind her. Vi looked over her shoulder, watching it crash over every rock and ledge. There was no way she could outrun it.
Spinning in place, she crossed her arms before her, kneeling. Mysst xieh rohko hoolo. The words combined in a way Vi had never expected, but with Yargen’s full power surging in her veins, a cocoon of light surrounded her just before the rush of Raspian’s power overtook her.
Sharp snaps, like whips against the outside of her barrier, filled her ears. Vi kept her eyes closed, breathing and focusing on nothing more than putting power into her shield. She felt it beginning to crack, worn thin under the assault. Lightning reached in, searching for her like flailing tentacles before fizzling out.
As soon as it faded she bounced upward, pushing the barrier out from her in a blinding flash of light. Raspian roared in frustration, holding his eyes. Vi moved for him. Mysst sut. This time, an axe was in her hands.
Wielding it two-handed, she leapt and swung it against the side of his face. Raspian recovered, turned, and opened his mouth. He caught her weapon between his teeth, clamping down and shattering it.
Vi tumbled with her remaining momentum, thrown over to his side. Raspian lunged for her. The weight of worlds threatened to smother her as the god was atop her. He grabbed her shoulder with his claws, pressing her into the ground.
We need to move! Fall in the sky! Vi thought loudly, willing her body to sink into the earth and appear elsewhere.
Too soon.
“Loft dorh!” Vi shouted as Raspian swung a claw for her face. He froze, tipping forward, off-balance. Vi scrambled out from underneath him, his claws ripping her shoulder.
On her feet again, Vi spun as Raspian regained control of himself. Chronot! Vi thought. It had been Taavin’s word. But Taavin had gained the word from the goddess who was now within her, and the magic blessedly worked.
Vi’s glyph remained steady on Raspian, fading slowly. Thank you, Taavin. She spared a brief thought for the man she loved and the moment she did, her heart beat faster. She felt her breath. She tasted the metallic tang of panic in her mouth. She felt human and alive.
Summoning an axe to her hands again, Vi swung it overhead at the nape of Raspian’s neck. It stuck, sinking deep into his skin. Magic, not blood, oozed around it, releasing into the air as a dark and rusty haze.
Raspian’s features softened. He became clay-like and was absorbed into the earth before Vi’s eyes. She spun, searching frantically for him.
Thrusting her arm into the air, a bolt of power shot upward, reflecting off the swiftly cracking moon. In this distorted reality of the gods, it seemed like everything was connected in odd ways. The sky was closer. The ground was malleable. The stars were gone unless they decided to put them there.
Her magic illuminated the barren earth. Light rained down as droplets that seared the ground like acid. A roar echoed across the sky as Raspian emerged from below with an eruption of lightning and lava.
Kot sorre. Vi pushed the lava back with a glyph in each hand, holding it at bay. She locked eyes with the god who was trudging over to her as the molten earth cooled. The sky was still filled with fading light and she could see every gnarled element of his nightmarish form.
Durroe watt ivin. Nine illusions fanned out from her, surrounding Raspian. Vi ran to the right. The other illusions danced around her, darting in and out, trading places. She was the living version of a street urchin’s card game—find the queen. Raspian was twisting, trying to keep track of her.
Vi lifted a hand, firing a bolt of pure light at him. Every other illusion repeated the same motion. Raspian swung at one, his claws sinking through it. The mirrored version of her dissipated on the wind as her magic struck him in the back. She danced again, struck again.
“Enough games!” Raspian snarled. He tilted his h
ead back and roared at the sky. Vi didn’t have time to react before lightning rained down all around her, one bolt striking her square in the chest. She felt it arc between her ribs. Her body seized as she fell to the ground, wheezing.
Blinking into the void above her, Vi gasped for air.
Keep moving.
She didn’t know if it was her voice or Yargen’s that commanded it, but Vi struggled to her feet. Her whole body continued to seize and tremble as the lightning created a cage over top of her, pinning her to the ground.
A clawed hand closed around her neck. The red magic sank back into Raspian’s arm as he hoisted her into the air. He held her aloft as she gripped at his forearm, gasping for breath.
“An age of darkness will rule this land once more.” His terrible voice echoed in her mind as his lifeless eyes locked with hers. Every nightmare too horrible to be remembered come dawn lived in those eyes. “A thousand years of destruction. A thousand years when the land is razed and the earth is reset.”
Vi pressed her eyes closed, blocking him out. Aldrik, Vhalla, Taavin, Romulin, Jax, a new Vi—everyone she’d loved in the world she’d been born into still lived in this world. Even if they were not the same people she once knew, even if they never knew her as she was now, they were living, breathing people who deserved a future.
“They deserve a future,” she wheezed, opening her eyes. Eyes trained on his shoulder, she snarled a defiant, “Juth calt!”
The taut skin stretched over the unnatural armored plates of his body exploded with shards of bone. Raspian roared and his arm went limp at his side. He dropped her and Vi scrambled away, gasping for air.
Halleth, halleth, halleth. Heal me, Yargen, she begged. The light within her flashed brightly atop her skin like a protective coating. She felt the interior damage from Raspian’s lightning mend. She felt the tissues in her throat reconnect.
But as she ran, the ground went soft beneath her. She was suddenly up to her waist in murky water. The light above her was going dark. Blood spilled from the fractured moon, flooding the land. Vi tilted her gaze upward and saw an eye open in one of the larger cracks.