“Yours isn’t all that up to it, either,” Thayen reminded her with urgency in his voice. He was quickly distracted by the Spirit Bender, who growled as he ran toward me.
“Quick, Tristan, say Maorum Manum!” Unending urged me.
I did as she asked and raised her blade again. This time, the scythe released a fiery red pulse, but Spirit was ready for it. He ducked and kept coming at me. In mere seconds, his weapon would cut through me—he wasn’t aiming to kill me. Not yet, anyway. No, he wanted to control me, to show Unending that he was going to win this fight one way or another. I didn’t have time for his flashy showmanship, or much energy left to fight.
Determined to survive, I cast another violet parasite spell. He slipped to the side and released a shimmering pulse in my direction. Reflexively, I used Unending’s scythe as a shield. The blow was hard, rippling through me like a supercharged electrical current, but the blade sucked most of it in.
Unending gasped. “Embellio malli.”
“Embellio malli,” I said, and an identical shimmering pulse left my scythe. It caught Spirit by surprise, but he was able to dodge it. I’d cloned his attack.
“Too late!” Spirit hissed, bringing his weapon down hard.
I blocked his strike with mine, gritting my teeth as his strength rumbled through me, nearly making my knees buckle. He pushed me back a couple of steps—his entire presence felt like a lead weight pressing down on my ribcage and making it harder to breathe. While I still had my vampire force, however, he couldn’t just take me out.
Unending fired a stunning spell at him, but Spirit pushed me farther back, and the magic missed him by inches. It was all she had left aside from the energy she needed to put into another teleportation, which we couldn’t do without her. Not in these conditions.
“It’s never too late,” I said to Spirit, looking him in the eyes. “You’re going to learn that you can’t always have your way.”
“Yet here I am, about to end this.”
“Hah. We’ve killed you before. We’ll kill you again!” I growled and pushed back with all my might, then released a flurry of violet spells. There were too many for him to duck. He had no choice but to use his scythe to block a couple of them. Moments later, he cursed under his breath, and the absorbed magic exploded in his face.
My arms hurt—from his physical strength and from the rapidly decreasing energy in my body—but one look at Unending and Thayen, and I knew I couldn’t stop. Spirit’s soul was incomplete, and that was my only advantage.
I kept firing violet fireballs at him, and he rolled over, left and right, trying to avoid another absorption. I saw his lips move. In between attacks, he pointed his weapon at me. It happened so fast, I didn’t have a chance to react. Something hit me in the chest. Something that instantly filled me with the kind of emptiness I might never escape. It spread through my body like a disease of misery and darkness. My brain stopped functioning. My muscles were overwhelmed with spasms.
“Tristan, no!” I heard Unending scream.
Spirit stood above me. I was already on the ground. When had I fallen?
It didn’t matter. His blade was an inch from my throat, as he narrowed his eyes. “Hey, Unending—watch this, babe. Watch this,” he said, about to cut me. I wasn’t sure if that would kill me or merely enslave my soul, but I preferred death to being his servant.
Unending rushed toward him, pushing Thayen back so he wouldn’t get involved. She gasped, and I managed to tilt my head slightly so I could see her. She wasn’t alone anymore. Spirit whirled around, a shocked look on his face.
“You and I have some unfinished business,” Taeral said, raising Thieron. Its curved blade captured the light in a peculiar fashion, refracting and casting it back in different directions. A cool glow traveled through the sculpted runes of its long handle, while the stone of Phyla shone black, as if the very void of the universe had been compressed inside it.
“Ah… you’re the mortal who killed me the first time around,” Spirit replied, trying to contain his frayed nerves, but it was obvious that Thieron scared and impressed him at the same time.
“Death charged me with whipping your ass,” Taeral shot back.
That was enough to light Spirit’s fuse. The mere mention of his creator, whom he hated with the fire of a thousand suns, sent him into a frightening frenzy. To Taeral’s credit, however, it worked in turning the Reaper’s attention away from us.
Their weapons clashed, bright white lights flashing whenever the blades met. For some reason, Taeral couldn’t kill Spirit, but he had enough death magic knowledge to wield Thieron well. He’d put himself at great risk, however, considering that Spirit had been instrumental in the scythe’s disappearance. Taeral had to be careful.
My body still hurt, but the effects of the spell were wearing off. Unending took advantage of the raging battle and came to me, joined by Thayen. Looking into the boy’s eyes, I could tell he was horrified and overwhelmed by this entire situation. This was no place for a child, not even one as precocious and as experienced as Thayen Nasani.
Spirit and Taeral were fighting on a whole different level. The fae prince was fast and exceptionally agile, compensating for Spirit’s teleportation talents with his own half-jinni abilities. Appearing and disappearing all across the beach, they fought mostly with their scythes, as the Reaper was determined to get close enough for a cut. If he got Taeral under his control, he could force him to surrender Thieron. The thought horrified me, but I trusted the prince’s strength and resilience.
There had to be something about our resolve, at least, that would set us apart from an entity like the Spirit Bender, whose sole purpose was to wreak havoc and cause suffering. Unending hooked my arm around her neck, motioning for the scythe. “Bring it up to your chest,” she said. “You’re going to zap us out of here.”
“I thought you were—”
“I’m too weak, Tristan,” Unending replied, a pained look on her beautiful face. “I need to save what little energy I have left in case Spirit finds a way to come after us again. Now, go on. Bring it up to your chest.”
I followed her instructions, and as soon as I uttered the spell, I felt myself coming apart at the seams. Catching one last glimpse of Taeral and Spirit battling it out, I held on to the hope that the fae prince would survive this. After all, he had Death’s blessing. That had to count for something.
“Ugh, this feels weird,” Thayen murmured, glancing down at himself. He was disintegrating, atoms whisked away across time and space. Before I could try to reassure him that we’d be okay, the three of us fell apart altogether, our consciousnesses very much awake as we were sucked off the island and cast across the dark blue ocean.
I wanted to scream as I watched us fly above the water. Our reflection was bizarre, a swirling cloud of tiny black dots, like a flock of starlings headed somewhere far away. I wasn’t sure where we were going just yet, but I felt the temperature gradually dropping. Echoes of Thayen’s voice lingered, but I couldn’t quite understand what he was saying while in this strange limbo.
By the time we were whole and breathing again, the island was nowhere nearby. In fact, we’d ended up on the frosted ridge of a mountain, right in the middle of a snowstorm. The winds bit my skin and stiffened my joints. It was cold, so cold that even my vampire fangs were chattering. I shivered as I tried to keep myself upright, parts of me still tingling from the journey here.
“Are you okay?” I asked Thayen first, who gave me a troubled look and a firm nod.
“What about Taeral?” the boy replied.
Unending sighed. The freezing cold didn’t seem to affect her at all. I wondered if it had something to do with her more evolved Aeternae nature or merely her Reaper spirit. It didn’t really matter. At least one of us was calm and lucid enough to process what came next. “He’s on his own,” she said. “He took a great risk to intervene back there, but he did it so that we’d be able to leave.”
“What if Spirit hurts him?” Thayen asked.
&n
bsp; I shook my head. “We can’t worry about that right now. We really can’t.” I took the ring off my finger and showed it to Unending. “Like you said, the clock is ticking. So, how am I going to do this? How do I break the second seal, exactly, and what will it entail?”
“Bring the scythe down with all your strength. There’s no spell required. It’s purely a physical act,” Unending replied. “It will sever my bond to Visio. I’m already out of their rebirth cycle, and I’ll be free once you destroy the ring.”
“If you’re free, won’t you be able to just reach Death and finish this without losing your body?” I asked, desperately latching on to one last idea, a way that might not get Valaine killed by the end of this quest.
“I’m sorry, Tristan, but that won’t work. The third seal will still be holding me down. I won’t be able to help Death in time to save everybody else. We have to go all the way through this process before I can rise again. I need my Reaper form back.”
It was a bitter pill to swallow, but deep down I was already adjusting. The inevitable was just that, and prolonging it or wasting time on improbable loopholes wouldn’t lead us anywhere. It would only give the Spirit Bender more opportunities to finish what he’d started. I couldn’t let him have this one.
Setting the ring on a flat stone, I took several deep breaths. My cheeks burned from the cold, and there was so much snow pouring down from the heavens that I could barely see ten feet ahead. “You can do this,” Unending said. “I have faith in you.”
I gave her a faint nod, then set my sights on the ring. It was a beautiful piece of jewelry and the source of enormous suffering. This thing had to go. I lifted my hand up high, firmly clutching Unending’s scythe. The weapon continued its soft hum in my grip, casting warmth and pushing it through my arm and into my chest, as if to stop me from trembling. It worked, and I felt like I had better control over myself.
“Here goes nothing,” I muttered and brought the scythe down as hard as I could.
The blade sliced right through the sterling silver ring, releasing a powerful shockwave that threw us all back. It swept through the snow and tore off parts of the ridge in the process, then spread out all over Visio like the aftermath of a nuclear mushroom. Everything rippled in the distance. The skies rumbled, and I found myself breathless for a short second.
“Unending?” I asked, looking around for her and the kid. “Thayen?”
Suddenly, the snowfall stopped. The blizzard winds eased up. An eerie silence settled atop the mountain as I began to make out familiar bodies in the snow. Without letting go of the scythe, I managed to get myself up and reached Unending first. I turned her over, and she sucked in a loud breath, her eyes widening as she wheezed.
“Oh, wow!” she exclaimed, her back arching upward. “Oh, wow!”
“Wow, what?” Thayen grumbled, his head poking out of the snow less than a yard away from us. His blond curls were frosted and still, the tip of his nose and his cheeks ruby red, but he was fine. I allowed myself a faint smile, realizing that we’d just tackled another major milestone. If only Esme had been here to see it…
“I feel it,” Unending said. “The binding. It’s broken. It’s like I can breathe again!”
For Esme’s sake, I had to keep going. She and the others were still battling the Darklings and the Aeternae. Hordes of them, to be specific. They needed me to finish this, regardless of how ugly it was bound to get. With two seals down, the third one was the worst and the most important.
Unending threw her arms around my neck and held me tight, her body quivering against mine. “Tristan, you did it… I can’t believe you did it…”
I wanted to truly take this moment in, to savor our victory, but time was still flying past us, and I couldn’t let Taeral spend too much time with the Spirit Bender or let my friends fight off the Aeternae masses back in Roano alone. I needed to pull myself together and finish the job, no matter how much it hurt.
Gazing into Unending’s eyes, I leaned closer and pressed my lips against hers.
One last kiss before I killed Valaine.
Taeral
My heart was stuck in my throat, but I could not give Spirit even the slightest impression of fear. He terrified me. He’d always terrified me. This was an entity with powers greater than a swamp witch, who could override and manipulate Hermessi, who could tread between worlds and do incredible damage—on top of that, he was extremely determined. That, in my book, made him an exceptional enemy.
He kept most of the attacks physical, occasionally letting energy pulses hurtle toward me. I’d trained for the past year with Thieron. I’d allowed the weapon to read my mind, to learn my movements, and to understand my reflexes. There hadn’t been a particular motive for this practice, but looking back now, I figured there must’ve been some kind of foresight involved. Maybe Thieron had known that the Spirit Bender wasn’t really gone, that there was a piece of him still in this world, resting inside twelve crystal shards.
Death had repeatedly said that Thieron had a mind of its own.
I managed to put some distance between us. The use of death magic was taking its toll on my physical body, and I wasn’t sure how much fight I had left in me. Failure was not an option, since Spirit could bend me into obedience and force me to surrender Death’s weapon—that would’ve meant the end of the world as we knew it, and I didn’t even want to imagine what such a colossal defeat might entail.
“Where are you running off to?” Spirit said, a grin slitting his face from ear to ear. His knuckles were white as he gripped his scythe, its double blade practically teasing me. I could almost feel its hunger for my soul. If these weapons all had minds of their own, I imagined Spirit’s would be just as evil and dark as he was. “I’m not done with you yet!”
“Have you ever considered that maybe you’re enjoying this a little too much? I doubt it’s healthy,” I replied dryly, inhaling deeply as the image before my eyes trembled slightly. I was tired, but I had to keep Spirit busy for as long as possible. A second seal was due to break at any time, and I’d actually drawn his attention away from it. I wondered for how long…
Bracing myself for the spiritual drainage that would follow, I brought up my forearm and placed it against Thieron’s handle, forming a cross. “Sur’el. Sur’eliel. Sur’han.” The blade illuminated from within, a variety of pastel colors dancing across its steely surface. I shouted the last part of the spell. “Ao Nan!”
Beams of colored lights shot from Thieron like lasers moving in different directions. The Spirit Bender’s contemptuous smirk faded as he was forced to disappear and reappear in various spots along the beach as the laser-like arms kept stretching out for him. He couldn’t allow himself to get touched by one, or it would hurt like hell.
He tumbled and vanished close to the beach while I held the spell up for as long as I could. It put a strain on me. I felt beads of sweat dripping down my temples, but this was powerful and crippling magic. All I had to do was aim it in the right direction. The closer I was to the target, the more concentrated and focused the beams would become.
But Spirit’s breath down the back of my neck was not something I’d expected. In a nanosecond, I’d teleported myself across the beach and away from him. His blade had barely missed me. “Close call,” I muttered. “Too close.”
Digging through my memory, I searched for a sequence of spells I could use against him—something sharp and violent enough to keep him on his toes. Only then did I notice the runes in the sand. I hadn’t even seen him draw them, but I knew they were his. The Spirit Bender had yet to run out of tricks, but I had certainly run out of patience.
He whispered something, and the runes began to glow. “Not on my watch,” I snapped, throwing fireballs all around. Wherever the flames hit, the symbols were obliterated—the temperature so high that the sand melted into bright orange glass, bubbling softly. The Spirit Bender giggled as though I’d just caught him doing something naughty. He was actually enjoying this deadly dance.
“I admit, I’m impressed by what you can do with Thieron,” he said. It felt like a genuine compliment. I scoffed.
“Now you’re making me blush.”
“You could do so much more with yourself, yet you play puppy to Death. It’s sad, if you ask me,” he replied, raising an eyebrow. I wondered whether he was stalling or actually springing for a negotiation. He didn’t seem intimidated, so why would he want to stop fighting?
“What are you trying to tell me?” I asked.
“Why not work with me? You already have Thieron. We could have the world to ourselves! Think about it—you’re clearly destined to be a Reaper, since you can wield that thing,” he said. “I could kill you and fast-track the process. You would be unstoppable with Death’s scythe.”
“How would that serve you?”
He chuckled softly. “I could use an ally in this world. All I have are fearful followers and hateful siblings.”
“Are you serious?”
“No. Just pulling your leg,” he retorted, then vanished.
Tension soared through me as I anticipated his next move. I teleported myself again just as he appeared and tried to slash me with his blade. Initiating the sequence of spells, I darted toward him, aiming to get as close as possible. My adrenaline levels were peaking, my heart close to exploding, but I still had some energy left in me. Might as well put it to good use.
Combining multiple words and sub-words from three different chants, I served Spirit up with a triple whammy of assault magic. First, I released a slew of translucent energy balls, each as fast as a bullet. He raised his scythe to defend himself, launching a rippling pulse across the white sand beach. It cut through most of them, but that just made the balls split into smaller projectiles.
I saw the color leave his cheeks as he realized what was happening. “You’ve mixed them up,” he breathed, then threw up several shields, making the air shimmer like a compact mass of diamonds.
A Shade of Vampire 86: A Break of Seals Page 9