Chapter 27: Mother.
Ash stepped past the line of trees and into the clearing. The clone she had cut fell before me in two halves, dissolving into silver mist before either half hit the ground. She moved to my side, sword drawn, her breathing steady.
"What took you so long, Hero?" I said. "I thought your kind would have better timing."
"Heroes are supposed to have terrible timing." Ash's eyes never left the silver woman. "We show up at the last second. That's how it usually went."
"I suppose that's right."
Isabelle had not moved since Ash arrived. Her violet eyes settled on the sword arm. "You." There was no warmth now. "How the hell did you do that? That didn't feel like just any power." Her violet gaze sharpened. "You're the other one. The one that little Inker man was dragging with him." Ash did not answer. The spinning mirror on Isabelle's arm pulsed once. The three remaining clones stepped forward. I shifted the satchel behind me.
"You know, you actually saved me the trouble," Isabelle said, and her tone was almost conversational. "I was going to have to find you after this and kill you anyway but this is much more convenient."
Ash's grip on her sword tightened, and her voice did not waver. "You're welcome."
The three clones spread outwards, trying to encircle us. "You take the nearest. I'll hold center." Ash was already moving. She rushed the first clone. Its greatsword came in a wide arc. Ash sidestepped, traced her blade along its forearm, and the arm fell away in perfect silence. She was behind the thing before it registered the loss. She touched once along its spine, and it split.
Another of the clones turned toward me. I raised my right hand -a wisp of Ruin, barely enough to be called an attack. Black wisps streaked and grey bloomed across the clone's throat. The neck folded inward. The clone fell.
The third came with a spear. It was faster than the others. I would not have been able to dodge if it hadn’t been so predictable. I twisted, pressed my palm into its chest, and sent Ruin deeper, past the surface. The thing shuddered and dropped.
Each attack cost me more than I wished. I pulled my hand back. More clones rose from the ground. Four, then six, then eight. They did not stop rising from the ground. Ash cut three with a single sweep of Parting, the air slicing open in front of her blade, and I felt the drain it cost her from where I stood.
I sent Ruin through two more. Another fell to Ash's sword. The bodies dissolved and more took their place. Isabelle had still not moved. She stood with her arms folded, and her clones kept coming.
I ducked beneath a greatsword swing and the blade missed my horns by less than an inch. I stumbled backward, and then I stopped fighting and looked. There. Or rather, there was nothing.
I had commanded armies. Had felt the weight of ten thousand demons at my back. Even the weakest Imp carried something. The animal need to survive. These clones swung with precision and speed enough, but their blows were empty. Up close, I could see it clearly. There was no will behind them. No survival instinct at all. They didn't so much as bother to have the clumsiest of defenses.
Isabelle's right hand was moving. Twitching, almost. I watched it, and I understood. Ash cut a clone across the chest, rushed back and raised her sword in the air. A clone rushed at her, but she didn’t seem to care.
Ash raised her sword higher still. For a moment, I thought I saw it glow. She swung, and I felt the mana she used. She swung Parting into empty air. Three feet to the left of the nearest clone. At a height that would have passed over anyone's head. At nothing.
Every clone in the clearing dropped. They fell together, as if someone had cut the strings of every puppet at once. The clones did not dissolve into silver mist, neither did they stand again. Whatever had connected them to the woman who made them no longer existed.
Ash stood in the center of the clearing, sword extended. Breathing hard. She staggered forward and barely held herself up from falling. There was finally silence in the clearing. I stared at her. "How?"
Ash looked at her own blade as if she didn't quite recognize it. "You're the one who said it," she managed between breaths. "Concept Magic...and inside the inside." She paused, struggling for words. "Except this was...I saw the…connections? The threads running to every one of them. So I cut them." She said it like she wasn't sure she believed it herself. “Didn’t know if it would work. Thought I might have just wasted almost everything for nothing.”
The Sever mark. How clever. I had been meaning to tell her what I suspected about her power, but it seemed that was unnecessary. No wonder this was the Hero who finally killed me. I almost smiled. Almost.
Isabelle had gone rigid. Her hands hung at her sides, and there was a look on her face I recognized -the look of someone who had thought themselves invincible, and had been proven wrong by insects. Her violet eyes fixed on Ash and for the first time, she did not look bored or amused. She moved. I did not see the crossing. She was at the treeline, and then her hand was around Ash's throat, and Ash's feet were no longer on the ground.
Isabelle seized Ash's wrist. She tore the sleeves aside and the two marks caught the moonlight. Something changed on Isabelle's face. The amusement drained out of it entirely. She turned Ash's arm, examining the black Line, and her grip on Ash's throat went tighter. "A Sovereign," she said. The word came out flat. "Something about cutting." She looked at Ash and sneered. "I really should thank you. A human with a mark like this becomes a problem very quickly."
Ash hissed, her free right hand clawing at her throat. It did not do much.
"Let her go."
Isabelle looked at me. She was still holding Ash aloft. "Lys." Ash's voice was strained but steady.
I raised my right hand. Black flame curled from my fingers. Isabelle regarded the flames with all the boredom in the world. “And just what is that tiny little Line you're hiding going to do to me?" Isabelle asked. "I don’t even think you have Essence."
"Let. Her. Go." I held the Requiem ready. "Or I will end you."
The smile stayed, though something behind it flickered. "Well? Give it your best shot Lys. I'll let you have one. Maybe you'll reconsider after this one is dead."
Isabelle was bored. She had expected more. She always did. The half-demon with the pretty eyes had been a real find, for the first time in years. A new Sister, precious enough to be worth the escort of half an army. Isabelle had made the offer, the only offer that mattered, and the girl had refused. For a human.
They always refused at first. They always came around later, once the world had shown them the lesson it always showed their kind. Isabelle held the human by the throat.
The woman clawed at her fingers with a grip that might have troubled someone weaker. The human’s Sovereign mark was the problem -at Line, it was manageable, but people with marks like that could climb as high as the heavens. It was a true blessing that Isabelle could snuff her out here. The Archon should have come himself.
The woman in her grip twisted. Isabelle tightened her hold and let her gaze travel. She'd be killing this one, so she might as well see what she was killing. The human was broad across the shoulders. Fit in ways that had nothing to do with fighting, and generous in ways that had everything to do with why a half-demon might be stupid enough to refuse her own kind. So that was it, then. This human slut was the reason.
Isabelle almost laughed. Desire made fools of everyone, and it seemed even half-demons were not immune.
She glanced at Lys. The half-demon stood ten paces away with her right hand raised and those pretty black flames guttering from her fingers. Impressive enough, for what must have been a Pyre mark just at Line. Isabelle had never seen flames like those before, but they’d dealt with her clones. Isabelle had barely put any Essence into the clones, but still, the girl had dealt with them. That was something. Then Isabelle looked at the girl's face, and her amusement died.
There was no fear in those red eyes. None. Isabelle had fought people with Runes. Had even survived people with Scripts. She had stared down veterans who had killed more people than this Lys had likely ever met. Every single one of them had shown her something. A flinch, the briefest flicker of doubt, however well-buried. The survival instinct was a stubborn thing, and it never quite let go, not even of the strong.
Isabelle had seen it in everyone. She did not see it now. What she saw instead was a certainty so absolute it didn't even look like anger anymore. It had burned past anger, past fury, past every emotion Isabelle had a name for, and settled into something else. Something calm. Something that simply knew, that it could destroy anything between itself and the thing it wanted to reach. Isabelle had served her Mistress for three hundred years. She had watched her break armies. She had watched her Mistress stare down people even Isabelle would run from.
She had never -not once- seen this look on her Mistresses’ face. She had never seen it on anyone's face. It was like reaching into a den and poking what you thought was a simple beast, and then the den moved, and you realized the beast was a dragon, and the den was its mouth, and the darkness above you was not the sky but the rest of it.
It was the feeling of realizing you had miscalculated not by a margin, but by a magnitude. Isabelle's hand almost loosened on the human's throat. Almost.
She caught herself, tightened her grip, and smiled wider instead. The fear passed. It must have been some trick of the light. "Well?" Isabelle said. "Give it your best shot, Lys. I'll let you have one."
The black flame crossed the distance. It was thin burst of fire, barely worth noticing. Her Tenet of Reflection held. The darkness broke across her skin and guttered out. Isabelle almost yawned. See? Just a Line, wielded by just a girl. Nothing to be afraid of.
Then the blonde woman's left hand moved. When had Isabelle stopped holding it? A finger traced a line across her collarbone, light as a lover's touch, and her body split open. Blood. Her blood. Running from a wound that should not have existed, because nothing short of another Rune was supposed to touch her. Her Reflection was not there anymore. More black fire came. It found the wound. It went through. The pain came from somewhere that was not her body.
"What-” Isabelle gasped. "What did you-" She screamed.
I raised my right hand and poured everything I had into a single lance of Ruin. Black flame crossed the distance and struck Isabelle's chest. It scattered. The darkness broke against her skin like water against stone, fragments guttering and dying in the air around her.
Whatever defense her mark provided, my Requiem could not breach it. The woman did not so much as blink. But Ash moved while Isabelle watched my flames break. I saw her left hand rise toward the silver woman's collarbone. A single finger, tracing a line across that silver skin.
Sever. Blood welled from a cut. Isabelle stared down at herself, and for the first time, I saw genuine shock on her face. I sent Ruin through the wound. Through it, past it, to the thing beneath -the concept that sat at the core of her defense. I had felt it when my first attack scattered. The concept simply said Reflect. It was woven into the fabric of what she was. The Requiem found it, and erased it.
Isabelle screamed. My right hand dropped. My legs nearly followed. The mana I had poured into that attack was most of what I could gather. Ash dropped from Isabelle's grip and rolled. She came up with her blade raised, coughing. The red marks circled her throat. I
reached Ash before I had decided to. "Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine," she said. Her voice was hoarse. "Did it work?"
The answer stood before us. Isabelle clutched at her neck, where the blackened skin was slowly spreading. Silver had turned to grey and grey was turning to black. The rot was slowly crawling through her. With her strange defense gone, she was as vulnerable as anyone. I was panting. I had little left for another attack like the first.
Oddly, the half-demon started to laugh. She touched her blackened skin, and her violet eyes narrowed. "You fucking traitor," she hissed, staring at Ash and then at me. "You would rather bleed for a human than stand with your own kind?!"
She laughed more. "I see," she said between breaths. "I see, I see." Her violet eyes found me, and they were wide. "I fucking see now! It's not just the one girl with the Sovereign." She looked at my right arm, at the black Line that hid underneath the cloth. "Both of you then. A half-demon traitor with a Sovereign. I should have fucking known."
Her laughter slowly died. She stared up at the sky, hand covering her face. She took a single very deep breath, one we shouldn't have been able to hear, and yet did. She looked back at us. "Fine," Isabelle said. She straightened. The blackened skin pulsed as she moved, and I saw her wince. "I've changed my mind. Both of you die here. My Mistress can forgive me later."
Ash and I set our feet. "You…you can't do that again, can you?" Ash asked.
"No." I did have some power left, but I suspected this woman would not let me use Ruin twice.
Isabelle raised her right hand in front of her face. Her index finger pointed up at the sky The silver mirror on her arm blazed so bright it cast shadows across the entire clearing. The air grew heavier. The world all around us began to shimmer and gleam. The entire clearing began to sway, every color shifting and turning. Ash had to steady me lest I fall down to my knees. The woman was using this Essence, and a lot of it.
"Let me show you two fucking whores," Isabelle whispered, "the peak of fighting with ink. Those Covenant bastards never would. A damn shame you find out moments before death."
The pressure built. It pressed against my skull, against my chest, against the inside of my teeth. Ash shifted beside me, and I saw her jaw clench. The ground began to change. The air began to change. Then the pressure stopped, so abruptly its leaving almost made me stumble.
Isabelle's eyes went wide. She took a step back. I thought I saw her knees wobble. "Mother," Isabelle said, dropping to one knee. Her jaw snapped shut. "M-Mistress," she said quickly.
The presence came before the woman herself. It settled over the clearing slowly. It was heavier than Isabelle's power. Heavier than the Phoenix. Heavier than anything I had felt since waking in this world.
She stepped from between the pale trees, and the shadows parted around her the way they had once parted around me. I saw the battle dress first. It was dark brown, fitted closely to the body. My breath stopped. A battle dress was no ordinary thing. There had only ever been a handful in the world, and I knew every one.
Then I saw the horns -two dark arcs sweeping back from the temples, ending in points as sharp as any blade. Then the woman’s skin, the color of ash. Then her dark hair, falling past her shoulders to the ground. Finally, the two red wings, furled behind her.
The recognition hit me mid gaze, as strong as any blow. I knew those amber eyes. I had given them orders. I had trusted them. I had wrung the life from them.
The demon’s mark caught the light. It was a deep red, covering her entire right arm. The ink was moving, crawling. It was in the shape of a beast that paced the length of her arm, its head turning. Even now, something in me catalogued the stage. It was beyond anything I had seen, such that I could only guess how far the gap between this woman and everyone else was.
Then I saw the darkness. It started at her left shoulder as dark veins that crawled up from beneath the battle dress, across her collarbone, down toward her chest. Where the black met her skin, the flesh looked sickly. Wrong. Morrigan. The name filled every corner of my mind and left no room for thought. I forced my thoughts to stillness. It took longer than it should have.
"Isabelle." The voice was low and yet it carried. A beautiful voice. I knew that voice. I had heard it sing, once, in the deepest halls of my fortress.
Isabelle flinched where she knelt. She was staring hard at the ground. Only at the ground. "Mistress, I had this under control. The half-demon has a Sovereign mark. I was just about to-"
"I felt what you were about to do." The amber eyes did not move from us. "I also felt what they did to you. I told you that Sovereigns were different, didn’t I? You cannot judge them just by their stage."
Isabelle's hand went to her neck, where the blackened skin from my Requiem still spread. She said nothing.
Morrigan walked forward. She passed Isabelle without a glance and stopped ten paces from us. Neither Ash nor I moved. I knew death when I saw it. I had been death, once. Her gaze moved over Ash first. It was a brief look.
Then her eyes found me. My body locked. She studied my face, my horns, the arms where my Lines hid beneath cloth. Her gaze lingered on my eyes, and something in her expression shifted. It was small -a flicker at the corner of her mouth. Her head tilted, barely, and for one moment I was certain she saw me. Me, as I was, not as I am. Then it passed.
Her brow smoothed. "Interesting," she said quietly. "So you two are the ones that old man sent so many soldiers to collect. I can see why." She glanced at my arms, though the sleeves covered them. "You have two Sovereigns, don’t you?" she said. I said nothing. "On a half-demon, no less. That makes you the very first in this world."
"Mistress." Isabelle said again, her voice regaining some of its composure. "This one refused my offer. She sided with the human. She-"
"I heard you." Morrigan did not turn. "I also saw her hurt you. That is more noteworthy than anything you have said."
Isabelle fell silent. Morrigan looked at me for a moment longer. Her amber eyes held mine, and I stared back into a face I had known for centuries. The black veins at her shoulder pulsed once.
"You are talented too," she said. "You've understood something of what makes a Sovereign different, even at a Line. That is rare." Her head tilted. "You are also stubborn. Rather like someone I once served under." The words landed before I could brace for them. My hands went still at my sides. "That is not a flaw," Morrigan continued, and her voice softened in a way I had heard only once before. "Stubbornness is a virtue, in the right hands." She regarded Ash for a moment. "I do hope you do not waste too much of yours on things that will not last." She turned.
"Isabelle. We are leaving."
"But-"
"She will come to us in time, or she will not. Either way, she is one of ours. We do not kill our family for refusing invitations."
"T-then the other one. Surely we can kill her now."
"We could," Morrigan agreed, turning back to me. "But I hope this Lys understands the…favor we are showing her by now." She turned back. "Come now. It seems that black flame was rather…destructive. You will need to be seen to."
She walked into the trees, out of sight. Isabelle stared at us. Her violet eyes burned, but she did not argue further. She spat on the ground between us, turned, and followed her Mistress into the dark. Then there was silence.
Ash was speaking. I knew this because her mouth was moving and sound was coming from it. I could not hear the words. There was a roaring in my ears, or perhaps it was only the absence of everything else.
My knees almost hit the earth. Ash was beside me in an instant. She shook me violently. “Hey…steady now."
I looked at her. "Do you know who that was?" Ash asked softly.
My mouth was dry. The name sat in my throat like a stone. "Someone," I whispered, "who should not exist."
Mother. The word that half-demon had used echoed in my head.