An angel’s road to hell

38. Of beginnings, ends and a little bit of change

Cassandra Pendragon

I was taken aback by the toll she had to pay for her spell. I felt great and was glad she had healed me but I couldn’t begin to imagine how a simple piece of magic could extract such a price. Still somewhat groggy I realigned my sprawling limbs and climb to my feet. I had to use the table for support but once I was up I felt pretty steady.

“Thanks, I’m okay now. But what happened to you? I’ve never seen you in such a state before. Did something go wrong?” She wanted to reply but a dry cough drowned out her answer. She choked and swayed, all I could do was pat her back gently and keep her steady while she fought against the fit. It went on and on, long enough for me to seriously start worrying if she was going to die on me right then and there. Luckily it didn’t get that far and after a minute or two the coughs subsided. Bloody traces of spit marred the corners of her mouth and she was struggling to remain upright. With a perceivable effort she wiped her face, her left arm still rested across my shoulders. In a hoarse voice she finally said:

“Nothing went wrong, this place suppresses most forms of energy. I had to tap into my life force to make the spell work and that’s not something I’m particularly good at. I burned much more than should be necessary and I can’t replenish it quickly, old as I am. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna keel over but I would very much like to not have to do it again.” She scratched her head and continued: “astral and soul energies can’t be manipulated in here. I don’t know why, maybe it’s a clever spell, a hidden set of runes or maybe it’s a consequence of the curse but right now I can’t do as much as I would like to. We still have a couple of minutes left before our friends stage the attack, just let me rest for a moment. You can have a closer look at the arch and maybe already form a connection with the curse and Boseiju.”

“Shouldn’t we try to find out what blocks your access to your energies? If it’s an enchantment or a set of runes I could destroy them and you would be back to normal.”

“We don’t have the time. It could take hours of searching and in the end we might find nothing at all. No, we won’t waste the precious time we have left with a fruitless endeavour. Stick to the plan. I am still able to link my mind to yours and if you give me a couple of minutes I might even be able to do more than simply provide you with information.” I wasn’t exactly happy to leave her in a vulnerable state but she was right. I helped her sit down in one of the meditation circles and dragged a couple of cushions over from the chairs. After I had made her as comfortable as the circumstances allowed, I turned towards the arch and approached it slowly. Call me paranoid but I was expecting some form of trap and even though I wasn’t afraid for myself, magic couldn’t touch me after all, I feared Greta wouldn’t survive whatever I might trigger.

But I crossed the room without causing any explosions, falling down a trapdoor or activating any other nasty surprises. Everything seemed quiet and I couldn’t hear or see anything out of the ordinary except for the howling wind and the stench of decay it carried into the room.

The arch in front of me was inactive and the residual energy I had felt before had dissipated. The tridecagram in the floor had cooled as well and no traces were left of the gargantuan amounts of energy that had soared through the place not too long ago. The only hint that remained was the blackened wood along the tridecagram where the molten mithril had turned it into coal. I gingerly stepped over the intricate lines that covered the floor and approached the arch.

It was a half circle, made of stone with angular runes all over it. They had been carved into the arch and time had turned the accumulated residue within black. I didn’t know enough about the magic to try and decipher what the runes might be used for, but I didn’t have to. All I had to do was search for similar strands of energy within the curse, Greta would tell me which ones I had to change and how they should look afterwards.

I closed my eyes and my second sight turned the world into shades of silver. My wings slithered over the arch and through the window, slowly filling my vision with complex formations of energy. I had no problems creating a visual depiction of the magic within the arch. It was unmoving, rigid and it was quiet easy to recreate the runic design within my mind. Instead of a stone arch I saw a myriad of intertwined… well, empty channels. It was like I was staring at a form for casting, ready to receive energy and morph it into the desired shape. I followed the pattern and tried to get a feeling for how it worked so I would be able to recognise its mirror image within the curse. Slowly I became more familiar with the design and even started to form a rudimentary understanding of its function. I could assign different effects to different parts of the pattern, I knew which part was used to anchor the spell to the arch, which part defined the destination and which parts provided protection from unauthorised tempering.

Unfortunately I wasn’t able to connect to the curse outside. I could feel its presence and visualise its impact as malignant energy that coursed through the air but I wasn’t close enough to the source to form an image of the curse in its entirety. Damn, I probably needed direct access to Boseiju since most of the curse was now concentrated within the tree. From up here I was just groping in the dark. I had memorised the pattern in front of me and didn’t need the arch anymore, but I was hesitant. Did we have time to change positions again? Would Greta be able to cope with the storm outside?

“We have a problem. I know which parts of the curse I have to alter but I can’t connect to it from up here. I need direct access to Boseiju and I can’t reach its branches. I think we have to move outside again, or at least down to a lower floor so I can reach the ground with my wings. Are you up to it?” Greta seemed better, her breath was flowing steadily and despite the bloody traces still left on her face she looked much healthier than a minute before. But her reply was still quiet and she had to stop several times during her answer to catch her breath.

“Not really, I don’t think I can summon the protection spell again and the storm outside is getting worse by the minute. Maybe we could descend through the tower but I highly doubt the lower floors are as welcoming as this one and we can’t afford to lose too much time wandering around aimlessly. I have another idea. I know some runes of correspondence that might allow you to access Boseiju from up here if I manage to inscribe them correctly. All I need is a medium with a spiritual connection to Boseiju but I think I have everything I need right here.” Her hand disappeared inside her robe and after a moment she retrieved a gnarly piece of root, its polished surface showed how often she had touched it over the years. “It’s a lucky charm I have been carrying around ever since I took up residence below the roots.” She explained. “Just give me a minute and we should be set.”

She extracted a slim tool from the apparently endless depths of her pockets and set to work, slowly carving arcane symbols and intertwined glyphs into the wood. There wasn’t much for me to do so I remained quiet and watched her work. I knew runes were closely linked to the understanding of the practitioner and I obviously was miles away from comprehending what she was doing. I couldn’t recognise a single glyph, never mind understand what she was actually trying to do. All I saw was an intricate formation slowly taking shape under her dexterous fingers. For a moment I wondered how a blind person could produce so much detail in a carving but practice makes perfect, I reasoned.

It didn’t take much time but I was sitting on tenterhooks and each second dragged on for a small eternity while Greta turned the piece of root into a link to Boseiju, her meticulously moving hands formed rune after rune. With each stroke I could feel the energy around us react to the symbols until, with a gong like sound, they finally established a connection to Boseiju. The piece of wood lit up with interchanging colours and rose into the air before it fell down into Greta’s waiting hands.

The root started to change colour and I could smell the same stench of decay rising form it that permeated the air outside. The untouched parts of its bark turned grey and a dark miasma seeped out of it. She had been successful, the curse that had infected Boseiju was now active within the root as well and I should be able to use it as a surrogate. And it wasn’t a moment too soon.

The air, the tower and even the branch it was built upon shuddered under an impossibly powerful drumbeat. Even the storm outside receded for a moment before it returned in full force. I knew our friends were commencing their attack right now. We were out of time, it was now or never. Greta and I locked eyes for a moment and without another word she handed me the root. It felt alien and somewhat slimy in my hand, as if I was touching something long dead but I could feel the power it was linked to. A trickle of Boseiju’s might resonated within the root but it didn’t feel like the warm and nourishing presence I was used to. It felt cold, dead and I thought I could perceive the presence of tortured spirits, corrupted by the curse and bound to a foreign will. In short it was a piece of a vile presence, something best destroyed and forgotten and that was what we intended to do.

I threw the root into the air and caught it with 32 of my wings while I still maintained the connection to the arch with the remaining one. I closed my eyes again and waited for my second sight to show me what I needed to know. At first, all I could see was a blot of darkness where the piece of wood should have been but slowly it changed and grew into a distorted image of Boseiju. Instead of a mighty tree with an immeasurable amount of life force, a dark and twisted thing grew before my sight. Red and purple energy coursed through every part of it and a malevolent will dominated every aspect of its presence. Strands of purple and red energy warped it even further from what it had once been, even while I was watching and I had to suppress a sob as I realised that our protector, biased and unfair as he might have been from time to time, was truly and utterly gone.

I focused on the corrupted thing and slowly formed images of the different aspects I could discern within the curse. Like a symphony it consisted of several parts, individually they wouldn’t have much of an effect but together they could produce every atrocity we had witnessed today and even more. I quickly found the still inactive parts, dormant channels within the spell that waited for a surge of power to initiate the second phase. The pattern I had seen on the arch was there, slightly modified and linked to other aspects of the spell but still recognisable. I isolated it and concentrated solely on the inactive parts, conjuring a clear picture within my mind. It was time to get to work.

“I’m ready. The rest is beyond my abilities, I need your help now.” With a sigh Greta heaved herself up and I could feel her move to a spot directly behind me. Her calloused fingers touched my temples lightly and I heard her murmur: “I’m sorry. This is the only way, you can’t channel backlash through a remote connection. Don’t mourn me and don’t allow what happened today to change who you are.” I tried to whirl around, to get away from her and break our connection but I wasn’t fast enough. I felt her presence seep into my mind and soul, courtesy of the focus still clutched in her hands, and with a thought she caught my consciousness in a small bubble of thought and shoved it aside. I became a prisoner within my own mind, unable to control my body or my will, I was a passenger, along for the ride but unable to change the destination. I would have liked to rage, to throw myself against the invisible barrier that kept me isolated but I couldn’t even align my thoughts, never mind act. All I could do was bear witness as Greta worked her last piece of magic.

At first I could feel how she wrapped every part of her being around me, her soul covered mine like a blanket, her mind gently enfolded mine in the fathomless depths of her thoughts and her life force overlaid mine like a coating. Then she took control, gently following the pathways I had learned to ignore towards my core and coaxing my wings into action. I could see how my second sight changed, how more and more details became apparent within the curse before me and how Greta used my perception to dive deeper and deeper into the entwined spells that formed it. Whatever she did, it went far beyond what I had thought possible but I didn’t know how or even what she had done to achieve the effect.

She peeled away layer after layer until she found what she was looking for, An inconspicuous strand of energy that defined the location the uninvoked part of the curse would lead to. It was a small thing, almost like an afterthought, added to the monstrous symphony around it but I could feel how it was tied to every fibre of the curse, duplicated countless times within in each aspect of the second stage. Greta reached for it delicately and used my wings to carefully extract it from he surrounding energy without braking the links. She held it, like a mother would her child, cautious and protective, always ready to react to any change in her surroundings. And thus we waited.

We waited for the activation of the second phase, the moment the dormant channels would fill to the brim with energy harvested from the poor souls that had been infected. I felt Greta use a small part of her life force to form spell construct, similar to the one she was cradling but also different. Some small parts of the spell were changed but it was easy to overlook, like one of those puzzles with two pictures where you had to find a small variation. She held her copy close to the original and I felt how she prepared to access the energies within my core.

Another drumbeat rolled through the night and I felt a shudder run along Boseiju’s trunk.

A wave of energy, purple and red in colour but with an ugly taste to it, suddenly flooded through the curse we were looking at and nearly broke the dormant channel with its strength. The intricately woven strands shuddered and bulged but finally contained the fury of the onslaught and it was then that Greta decided to act.

In the instant before it could invoke, she used my wings to sever the connections to the original construct and inserted her replacement instead. I thought I could feel her laughing nastily before she squeezed every ounce of energy she could get her will on from my core and into my wings. Everything disappeared in a raging storm of silvery blue flames but I didn’t feel any pain.

Instead I was forced to watch as the layers of protection, Greta had turned herself into, burned away. During the next agonising moments I could feel her turn into stardust, layer by layer. First her life force burst into flames like gasoline, then her soul ignited and turned into motes of light. Her will, tough as nails, was the last thing to vanish into oblivion, but when the last trickle of power rushed from my core into my wings even that turned into ash.

With a splutter I dropped to the ground, tears in my eyes. A heavy thud sounded behind me and I knew Greta’s lifeless body had fallen to the ground. I felt alone, truly alone and an ominous crackling sound pierced the night.