The other soul lights pressed closer. The amber wave parted, and Lanzon emerged from the madness. He stood before Alan’s cowering allies to address the Immortal Council members, who grew more frightened by the moment. They had chosen to follow Alan in a bid to conserve their own power. They would regret that.
"You should know what's going to happen to your souls when you're gone if you don't get cleansed by vampires. It will be unpleasant," Lanzon said. His calm voice carried the cool edge of a threat. The spirits drew closer. "Can you hear the spirits around you? Listen to them."
One by one, voices emerged from the crowd. They rose up with an incredible power. Every corner of the chamber filled with their groans, as distinct figures broke their way through the chaos.
"I was killed by the Immortal Council for trying to escape the palace," a burly maker spat. His livid expression made the Immortal Council members back up into one another.
Another added, "I can feel your fear. You're weeping on the inside. How does it feel to know that your soul won't ever be able to rest? Shall we let the machine suck them up?”
"We can hear the shrieks of the dark souls going into the machine," a woman added with a pitying laugh. "They are being ripped apart in agony before they cease to exist. We're here to stop this madman, and there's no hope for you if we fail." She turned her ghostly head toward Alan, who trembled with anger. Nothing was going his way. He'd lost control of the meld, his servants, and himself.
"And what can you do against me?" Alan demanded, sucking in air to puff out his chest. He was raving. "I am the strongest being in all planes." He fired off a stray gem blast that sailed harmlessly through the spirits. They continued to grow closer, until they were all among us like real solid people in a crowd. Alan raised his head with a defeated gasp. His disbelieving gaze swept across us. The hatred inside his heart radiated off him.
A bracer fell off Alan and clattered onto the ground. Alan sputtered, staring at his fallen armor. The skin underneath was blackened and green from its contact with the armor. His human skin had partially rotted beneath the metal. He gasped and covered his exposed left arm with his hand. One of his shin guards followed on his remaining leg. The clothing had withered away beneath it, leaving spots in his pants that showed the skin of his leg to be in much the same state as his arm.
A tiny red insect darted past Alan. The bug zipped to my shoulder to land elegantly while Alan was still distracted with Zach's spirit. I kept my face forward, not wanting to give Ruk away.
"What are you doing?" I whispered under my breath as Alan began spewing more hatred at Zach. More of his armor fell off with echoing clanks. Alan roared at his maker guards to fix him, but they cowered beneath his commands. The machine spit out more crystals, perhaps feeding off the dark souls still inside.
"You weakling," Alan barked, turning back to Zach. "Just die already." His eyes bulged, gem included, from his skull. I curled my lips in disgust. Lanzon’s stone felt hot in my bracer, filled with the power from Irrikus’s chest plate. I knew exactly where I would aim once Alan gave me the chance.
"Now," Ruk whispered. "The machine."
I quickly darted behind the wall of spirits, using their intense brightness to disguise my presence. Dorian followed carefully. Alan was weak, but he was still armed. Zach let out a boisterous laugh at Alan's expense, drawing the madman's attention toward him. The council members sucked in a breath as I neared. I glared at one of them, a male ruler blubbering madly about begging for his own life, for being so loud.
Alan snarled suddenly. "I see you," he howled. The wheels of strategy turned in his head. He clutched his arm, stumbling toward us. His eyes flew to the machine with a beat of panic. His skin looked ready to peel off his body. His voice dropped into a buttery tone. "We can discuss—"
I was done discussing. My hand flew up to aim at Alan. I was still wearing the bracer and gauntlet Ruk had given back to me.
His eyes widened. “I can give you power you’ve never imagined. Think of it. We can rule the universe together. You can get justice.”
“Justice? The only justice I want is for my brother,” I shouted. “Here’s something from him and me. Consider it a parting gift from your family before your soul rips apart.”
I let out a powerful blast. The blazing electric energy landed squarely in Alan's chest. I let all the rage pour out from me. Again, again, and again, I shot at him with merciless abandon.
I'm done with you, Alan.
He cried out in pain as the blasts struck him. He fell to the ground with an agonized shriek. I didn't stop. He had shown no mercy for anyone in his entire life.
“This is from every vampire you hurt. This is from every human you ever harmed. This is for every lie you’ve ever told.” Tears of grief and rage passed down my cheek. He was never able to be a decent man; the love I’d once felt for him had belonged to someone who didn’t exist. This monster had earned his fate. “Let the last face you remember be the nephew you gunned down and the niece who hated you.”
Alan stopped moving.
“You’ll never hurt anyone again,” I promised him. Dorian’s tentative touch on my shoulder brought me back to reality. I was so glad he was here. Our lives had been hard, but we fought everything together.
I stared as an amber spirit floated out of Alan's ruined body. For a moment, it nearly formed into a ghostly portrait of himself. A split second allowed me to see Alan's horrified face before the form shifted into a mass of rotten, violet black and flew toward the machine. The pull was relentless. With no dark souls going into it now, it lapped up Alan’s soul greedily.
The last thing I heard of Alan was the cry of his tortured soul as the machine consumed his darkness. Just like that, his essence was pulled violently apart in the churning machine. It gave off poisonous electric yellow sparks. Alan's evil was overwhelming, even to technology.
It should've been an orchestra to my ears. It was everything I’d wanted to hear for so long. Zach cried out with victory. My body sagged with exhaustion from everything. Nothing would bring my brother back to me. Nothing would bring Vanim back. Alan’s screams meant nothing to me as he was torn to shreds and expelled by the very device he’d thought would bring him glory. A particularly vile crystal landed in the bin. I walked over to it, snatching one of the terrified makers’ capes to wrap around my hand.
I picked up the crystal and looked over to see Zach smiling at me. With a few steps, we moved together to the edge of the floating island. My brother placed his ghostly hand over mine.
“Thank you,” I whispered to Zach, and let the tears roll down my face. “I only wish we could’ve done it together.”
“We did, Lyra,” Zach said. “Now, let’s drop this monster into the depths of this mountain, so he can never haunt anything.” Together, one living sibling and one dead, we let Alan’s crystal go. It plummeted, the faint purple glow glinting in the darkness before the shadows swallowed it up completely.
It was done. Alan was gone. I turned back to the others, who were staring at the sputtering machine with worried frowns.
And we'll all be right behind him if we can’t fix this. My satisfaction soured completely.
“We need to turn this thing off,” I said. Not time for celebrating just yet. Dorian nodded and looked expectantly toward Ruk.
“Any ideas? You have the most experience with it,” Dorian said. Ruk flew forward to examine the beastly contraption. He shifted into his humanoid form in less than a second and pressed a lever. He cursed as it let out a complaining spark. Sen pushed forward.
“Let me try,” she said briskly, but the machine gave off the same disapproving reaction. “Don’t you remember how it worked?”
“Yes, well, Irrikus seems to have made some upgrades over the last nine hundred years.” Ruk glared at the maker guards. “Any bright ideas?” They sank to the ground, shaking their heads. I glared at them. Maybe I should’ve kicked them off the floating island too.
Ruk let out an annoyed snarl. “I
diots! Don’t unleash power you cannot control.”
The light souls bunched toward the machine with Ruk and Sen. Sen's hands ran over the crystal sides. The amber energy around them almost made them look as if they were surrounded by celestial fire. Ruk’s red skin stood out starkly against the cold metal of the machine as he stared at the technology, perplexed for the moment. The wind continued to rage in the mountain. More sounds squeaked out as the machine was happy to finish off Alan.
"It's got so much energy," Sen muttered. She and Ruk bent over the machine anxiously, their hands fluttering above the complicated controls. Heat radiated off it. The buttons and levers continued sparking with their every touch, as if the machine knew they were trying to dismantle it.
I watched helplessly, full of adrenaline with no outlet. There were no more enemies to face, nothing more for me to do. The last step was to finish off the machine, and then Ruk could work on the meld.
But if we don’t fix the stupid machine, then everything’s over. Alan and Irrikus still win. My heart throbbed painfully at that thought. If only we had Reshi with us.
Tense silence filled the chamber, broken when someone emerged from the crowd.
"I think I can help," the spirit said. He was tall and lanky for a maker, with a gentle feline face. He walked up to the machine with a small smile. His eyes met mine. "I think I've been helping you all along, in my own way."
Lanzon smiled at the maker. "It's good to see you again, Azpai."
I nearly choked. "The Azpai," I blurted. He turned to me with a sharp grin as he neared the controls. “Reshi told me about you. You’re the one who made Lanzon’s stone.”
Azpai tilted his head. I doubly wished Reshi were here with us now. It would’ve meant so much for her to see her old friend again. They seemed to care for one another deeply.
"I’m sorry our introduction must be rushed. I'm glad you found so much use in my stone," Azpai said. "The energy of the universe redirected me here. I can sense what's in the machine. It's like it's calling out to me."
My heart gave an excited beat. "So, you think you can stop it?"
"I'm going to try," he promised calmly. His voice was surprisingly deep. He gestured to Ruk and Sen with wide, powerful hands. "I think I can help you both." I watched, astonished, as Azpai pointed out various parts of the machine with high-level explanations. It was like he could translate every part of the machine easily, unraveling the complicated points for them.
"You must've done research for Irrikus and his team," Ruk said in a wondering tone. "I never got to meet you. I was in a cell."
"I came after your time," Azpai explained with a wry laugh. "I managed to escape my ruler and run away… Unfortunately, I seem to have left behind a lot of good ideas for him. I recognize a lot of this as the beginnings of my own research. He's improved a lot, but I think we can manage. The energy inside wants to get out in its own way… I can hear the suffering in those dark souls. They were evil, but they still wish to move on. All energy must go somewhere. Such a machine never should’ve existed, but it will stop. We will make it.”
I watched with bated breath as they set to work. Ruk, Sen, and Azpai fell into a strange assembly line. Ruk and Sen seemed to sense Azpai’s every thought without him having to do more than make a simple gesture. I glanced around us. The crazed rocks shifted and moved, falling back into place. First, the staircase moved to where it should have been. Laini gave a gasp of delight, and Juneau cheered as the black rock shivered in the air. The other floating islands groaned as they slammed together, one after the other, to reform the mountain. Gray locked with black and then with brown, creating a strange collage of the mountain’s inside. I took a ragged breath, standing in awe as everything fell into place. Dorian shifted next to me with a soft murmur of wonder. Lanzon smiled as he looked up at Dorian, brotherly love passing between the two.
"It's happening," Lanzon breathed. "It's working."
The machine stopped its terrible groaning. Its sparks slowed and then died. The last bit of dark energy wound down to a faint, weak stream and finally stopped. I let out a sigh of relief as the machine powered down. The wind died completely, leaving a peaceful silence in its wake.
Zach blinked. “Did it really work?” He sounded dazed, disbelieving of the evidence in front of his eyes.
“The souls stopped screaming,” Dorian said in a wondering tone. I strained to listen. Indeed, all the cries had vanished. All that was left was… us. I relaxed for a second. We’d defeated Alan, which meant we had one obstacle down.
There was still the problem of the meld.
Ruk thanked Azpai and turned to me. “It’s off. For good.” As he said that, he smashed his fist into the main control panel with a satisfied grin. “It’ll never hurt me, or anyone else, again.”
I nodded. “Good. Have we stabilized the meld by turning off the machine?”
“We have,” he confirmed, but a grim shadow fell over his face. “We need to act quickly, though. It’s not over yet, and Alan poured gasoline onto the fire. Even with my powers, I can’t sense what might happen. Everything is fraught with possibility.”
“Then let’s move,” I said. My brother smiled at me warmly, pride beaming from him.
There was no way to go but forward.
36
Lyra
"And what should we do with the rest of you?" I asked the cowering Immortal Council members who were left. Their eyes locked onto the dead machine. Without a leader, the Immortal Council fell into a nervous silence.
One brave soul, a female ruler with long black hair, lifted her hands weakly, lowering her defeated gaze to the ground. She didn’t need to say anything.
"Good,” I muttered. “That solves that." An immediate surrender was beneficial for all of us. We had no time for any other twists and turns messing things up. “Right.” I clapped my hands together, turning to see Ruk furiously pacing back and forth. The stones around us no longer flew dangerously through the air but rested on whatever stone they’d fallen against. They’d formed a strange patchwork staircase that led to our remaining floating island. Luckily, the rock underneath us held up.
Dorian watched Ruk cautiously. "So… how do we fix the meld?"
"That's what I'm thinking about," Ruk replied snappishly. He ran a hand down his jaw, rubbing the skin as he thought. "We need to do more than stabilize the parts that have already torn. We need to re-do the barriers entirely." He stopped and glared at the machine, the last remnant of Irrikus's legacy. It had already done a lot of damage. I stared up at the Mortal Plane stars peeking through the top of the mountain peak.
He wasn't the only one staring at the machine. Inkarri rubbed her arms, as if she were cold. Well, she did just watch her father’s usurper get violently dragged into it…
"My father always told me that light or dark was just an arbitrary soul type. He never believed that your actions truly had a part in it. This is what they teach us in Itzarriol," Inkarri confessed when she caught my eye. "I… just watched the darkest souls writhing in obvious torment, while light souls floated above them. I can see them floating free. Is this the fate that awaits me?" It was the closest she had ever sounded to childlike. I hedged on what to say. She was my enemy, but she had just lost her father. And she’d kept her word and tried to help us, in the end.
Sonia shook her head. "No, your soul has lightness in it, Inkarri. I've seen it. You have a conscience, but your father did not. You were forced to follow him, but now you're free. You can still become better than you are." Inkarri looked at Sonia with starving hope. It was true… According to Dorian, people sometimes changed their ways and their souls brightened. It wasn’t common, but Inkarri had a chance to turn her life around and become a decent person, unlike her father.
I watched her and Sonia, fascinated by their strange bond. Sonia faithfully believed that Inkarri would come around. Then again, she never faced Inkarri trying to murder her. I exchanged a glance with Dorian, who was observing Inkarri's realization with i
nterest. Neither he nor Laini said anything to discount what Sonia said about Inkarri having lightness. A disturbed shiver ran through me as I remembered the rush of darkness from my temporary blood cure with Dorian. Darkness had a powerful call, but there was always hope, if Inkarri was willing to make a change in herself. I did.
A sound like a nail on a chalkboard made me wince. One of the council members, who had huddled in defeat next to the machine, now stared at Inkarri intensely. His nails dug into the dead machine.
"But, Inkarri, you're his rightful heir," he said in a pleading voice. "As a dutiful child, you should take up your father's cause. Nobody in Itzarriol would contest your greatness."
Inkarri scowled bitterly. "Shut up. Let me think." She gestured to the machine, but there was a shade of uncertainty in her tone, as if she wasn't fully convinced. "My father just almost destroyed the entire universe. Protecting Itzarriol is my main concern.”
"But you—"
I cut off the council member's remark by stepping in front of him, blocking his view of Inkarri. "You know what's right, after all this," I said fiercely to her. Now that she’d started to question herself, I refused to let the rulers behind me ruin everything. "You've seen the evil of the council."
"They can't go back," Dorian added grimly. "They're far too corrupt to lead you on the light path. You saw how easily they jumped ship, as soon as your father’s body hit the ground."
Inkarri winced. Had that been too strong an image? To my great irritation, a voice rose up behind me. This time, it was another ruler.
"You can help rebuild Itzarriol," the woman said. A few other members threw praise at her and begged for help. My frustration grew, but Inkarri looked pensive. If I cut in now, Inkarri might get defensive against me. The only one who remained silent was the woman with long hair who’d lifted her hands in defeat. She continued to stare at the ground.
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