An angel’s road to hell

89. Of troubles, subterfuge and a little bit of light

Cassandra Pendragon

Erya immediately sped past the curtain and Golamosh and I hurried after her. The small chamber contained nothing more than a bed and a tray with a bowl of clear water and some herbs which filled the air with a crisp smell that reminded me of freshly cut grass. Reia looked like a corpse. Erya had already removed the thin blanket and was nestling with a clean bandage that covered her left thigh. Reia’s clothes were gone but there were still some traces of soot on her body, apparently nobody had taken the time to wash her. She was pale, deathly pale. Her tail hung over the side of the bed limply and her breath was nothing more than the faintest movement in her chest. She looked frail and small, a far cry removed from the lively girl I had met a day ago.

When Erya had unrolled the bandage a sweet, rotten stench entered my nostrils and I had to bite my tongue to keep from gagging. At first glance Reia’s flesh seemed abnormally white, even more so than her face, with an inconsequential cut that oozed drops of a dark liquid. The veins around the wound were black, the maze her blood vessels formed clearly visible. The discolouration stretched towards her heart like the spindly fingers of an ancient monster reaching for its prey. The worst part: I thought the twisted mass of lines followed the shape of malevolent glyphs, their power shimmering through her skin like the veiled presence of a predator at night.

“Cassandra,” Erya’s tense voice brought me back to reality, I had been staring, motionless, at the girl for several seconds. Meanwhile, she had ordered Golamosh to the side where he was constructing a complex spell, purple light flickered across his raised palms, his face scrunched up in concentration. “Can you read it?”

“There are glyphs hidden in there? I thought it must be my imagination. No… I, don’t think I… wait. One glyph appears several times. I think I could draw it but I don’t know what it means.”

“Describe it for me, please.” She couldn’t see them? How had she known they were there, than?

“It consists of nine lines, they form a web, of sorts. There are three parallel lines running from top to bottom. Six more lines connect the lines to the left and right. Three run diagonally from the bottom left to the top right, parallel again with equal distances between them. The other three mirror them except that they run from the top left to the bottom right. They intersect along the line in the middle.” I wasn’t sure if my description was helpful but Erya apparently got the gist of it. She paled.

“Rot and decay, that’s the Web of Fate. Give me a second.” She closed her eyes and when she breathed out, a mist of greenish energy flowed from her mouth. It covered Reia in a heartbeat and condensed around her wound. Suddenly there was a hissing sound and the conjured cloud was sucked into the dark lines across Reia’s body. They violently flared with a red brightness and changed before my eyes.

From the chaotic mess of interwoven channels a short, clean row of glyphs appeared. I couldn’t read a single one but they appeared archaic, brutal and powerful, as if written by a hand that could barely contain its own strength. They shimmered along Reia’s thigh, her blackened veins still visible underneath. I heard a low moan behind me and saw Golamosh breaking out in a sweat, his fingers trembling and the light on his palms wavering. Somehow the transformation had influenced his spell and he was struggling to keep it intact. Blood rushed to his face but with a grunt he forced the light into the same patterns as before and Erya’s eyes flew open.

She studied the glyphs for half a second and sprouted words in a language I didn’t know but I thought she might have been cursing, colourfully. “Son of a…,” definitely cursing. She whirled around and studied Golamosh briefly. Satisfied that he wouldn’t keel over she turned back to me and continued heavily: “I was wrong. The curse is straight forward enough but the purpose, the anchor is much more convoluted than I expected. It won’t stop and consume everything it touches until dispelled by the master. In other words, we can’t break it without killing the girl, you brother already told as as much, and we can’t simply redirect it. We would have to take control of the whole damned thing. You’re a complete novice concerning magic, right?” I nodded.

“Alright, every curse basically consists of three different layers. The outer one keeps it alive, in this case it’s hooked into Reia’s life force and soul and constantly feeds on them to provide the second layer with energy. That’s the spell itself, a nasty, consumptive thing that unravels any form of life until it’s gone. The core is but a tiny spark, the initial construct that conjured the curse and gave it purpose. If we directly manipulate any of the layers, the curse will consume Reia’s energy to counteract the change until she has withered away. The only thing we could do is take control of the core and dispel it afterwards. Every spell contains a fragment of the caster, tiny bits of memories and identity and we would have to replace them with our own.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I couldn’t stop myself from putting in. Erya sighed.

“It is bad. It’s a million times easier to simply break a spell construct than it is to take control of one. Why do you think mages usually don’t even bother? Imagine the original spell as realm of its own and we have to fight its creator, its god within that realm. I’m also pretty sure it wasn’t the controlled golem who first formed that curse. It’s much to complex and was probably imbedded beforehand to be used as a last resort, a form of suicide attack. The curse would have consumed the golem as well once activated, I’d wager, if he had survived long enough. Frankly, I can’t do it, the magic would consume me in seconds. Same goes for everyone around. Poor Golamosh is already on his last leg just from interacting with the thing and halting its progression.”

“Oh, come on! Fine, what do I have to do?” Erya was baffled.

“Just like that? Cassandra, I know how powerful you are, probably better than most, but that’s a fight you can’t win. You’ll have to enter the spell and accept its rules to even try and that makes you vulnerable. You’ll have to allow the magic to take hold or it won’t work and than you’ll be subjected to it.” We’d see about that. “Don’t be dumb, you barely know the girl.”

“But I should, I should know her. Erya, these are my people. Tell me honestly, is there a chance?” She glowered but replied truthfully:

“Maybe, I’ve been with you in a magical dimension before and I’ve seen your shadow. You might, MIGHT, have a chance. But most likely it’s going to be your last piece of hubris. Think, girl, whom do you expect to be the architect of that curse? He’s burned your home as a puppet master from afar and know you’re going to willingly walk into his domain? Have you lost your mind?” Maybe, but on the other hand…

“I don’t care. I would’ve gone, even if it had been hopeless. But it isn’t. Don’t waste anymore time and tell me what to do. You’re not going to change my mind.”

“And what about Ahri, your family? What do you think will happen if I get them in here and tell them precisely what you’re about to do?” And then it clicked. That was why she hadn’t wanted them with us in the first place, she had been expecting something like this. The bitch was testing me! With a reverberating crack my open palm left a beautifully detailed handprint on her cheek.

“Oh, don’t you dare! Don’t you dare question my loyalty nor my resolve! You’d still have been stuck in a ruby, probably chartered off as a present for an abomination of a man right now if it hadn’t been for me. I bound myself to you through a promise despite your stupid little games and now you dare to use one of mine as an excuse to evaluate how far I’m willing to go? Tread carefully Erya, or you might come to know another side of me.” I hadn’t raised my voice but my wings had manifested and a silvery light shone from my eyes. Enough with the games!

Energy pulsed from my core in a continuous stream and the scent of herbs was slowly replaced by burning ozone. Golamosh’s magic vanished when one of my wings slithered through it and he opened his eyes in a rush of panic. His gaze darted from me to Reia’s prone form but I had already slung a couple of wings around her torso, like a compress, and physically restrained the curse. “Tell. Me. What. To. Do.” I pressed through clenched teeth while the light from my eyes was reflected in Erya’s black ones. My arms were shaking with suppressed tension while the shadows in the room fled as a wave of light flowed from my ignited wings. And the little devil was smiling at me!

“There, that’s what we need,” she chirped and released a spell through the focus she had been fiddling with behind her back. I felt a strong push against my chest and stumbled backwards. Before I could regain my balance I fell, but I didn’t hit the ground. It felt as if I passed through a curtain of cold water and my vision flickered. Everything turned grey.

A formless landscape appeared all around me, colourless and monotone except for streaks of blinding light that tore across the horizon. Unrecognisable shapes formed and dispersed in the distance while everything close by seemed frozen in place. A low keening sound reached my ears and an unnatural cold crept through me. It felt like I was being watched. Fine with me. I was seething and the faster I managed to attract whatever form of puny god haunted this place the quicker I could cure Reia. I pushed even more energy into my wings until I felt the familiar tug when space gave way around them. Wordlessly I fanned out my tails and struck the amorphous mass around me with reckless abandon. Deep wounds appeared and the realm started to bleed energy in front of my eyes. “Face me,” I growled. I knew I wasn’t going to do him any harm but even killing off the tiniest piece of the emperor filled me with wild anticipation. And maybe I envisioned Erya’s face in one or two of the spots I attacked.

Had I been manipulated? Sure. Had it been necessary? Probably not, I could rally my temper well enough on my own, thank you very much. But when the scene around me abruptly transformed I came to be a little grateful for her troubles. The blink of an eye after I had first cleaved a tear into the dimension I found myself in a darkened throne room. Black pillars of marble and rubies carried a ceiling with intricately painted scenes from a long and cruel life. Torches along the walls provided just enough light to fill the hall with dancing shadows among patches of utter darkness. A massive, golden throne towered at the centre of the chamber, ghostly flames playing around its base. The figure on it was clad in a flowing, bright red cloak with an elegant crown atop its brows. I took a step forward and flames suddenly danced over the crown and illuminated the person below. Ahri’s face leered at me, her emerald eyes full of disdain and hatred. Oh my, that was a mistake. Normally I might have hesitated to attack, the simple act of raising my hand against her repulsed me deeply. But right now, I didn’t give a fuck.

Rising up from my crouch I took a step forward, torrents of light ripped the air apart behind me and cut deeply into the surrounding pillars. “First I’ll tear your face off and than we’ll see what you truly are.” The figure scrutinised me contemptuously and a single syllable thundered through the room, Ahri’s soft, vivacious voice nearly unrecognisable with power and spite:

“Kneel!” The realm shuddered and the weight of a world crushed down on my shoulders. I trembled and strained against the burden, my wings dimming when I channeled more and more energy into my muscles to keep upright, but slowly, centimetre for centimetre, my legs and back started to bend. It felt like bands of iron had been slung around my body, crushing the air from my lungs and irresistibly dragging me to the ground. I wanted to scream, to cry out my defiance but even the air round me had become solid and was bearing down on me. Blood vessels popped and my energy tore away at my ligaments and bones, a warm liquid ran down from my eyes and ears but I was still standing, even though it wouldn’t be for much longer. I felt like a bug, already stuck beneath the boot that would squish it and I was pissed.

I relented and allowed my knees to buckle. The floor rushed up to meet me but before I struck, I vanished into a shower of silvery sparks and materialised again before the throne. I smiled through bloody teeth while my wings shot forwards: “that wasn’t nearly enough.” The creature didn’t care, its answer was almost bored: “if you say so.” The throne and its occupant disappeared before I could touch them and a circle of purple flames ignited around me with a pair of eyes mockingly blinking through the fire. Faster than a thought the trap converged on me.

Pure agony flooded my body when the first purple sparks brushed against my skin. For the briefest moment I forgot where I was or what I was doing, all I knew was the consuming heat that dance along my nerves and gnawed at my sanity. A tormented scream ripped from my throat and I toppled over, my head striking the ground with a solid thud. Ahri’s voice that held a sensual note by now whispered in my ears: “is that enough? Or can you take even more?” The flames bit deeper, hungrily consuming every spark of hope, of individuality until nothing remained but the pain. The pain and my anger.

Defiance made me move and instinct carried me along the silvery lines in my mind. Gasping for breath I materialised 30 meters away, behind one of the pillars but before I could regain my bearings, crushing arms of cold stone wrapped around my torso. The marble had sprouted claws and fangs, blurry faces pressed against its surface from the inside, madly trying to get out while they pulled me ever closer. Like a fly in a spider’s web I was ensnared within a heartbeat, thick fingers of solid darkness held me tight. “Silly girl. There’s nowhere to hide in here, I am everywhere and everything. You’ve entered my realm and now you’re mine!”

My back was pressed against the pillar and I stubbornly lashed out with my wings. Cleanly cut pieces of rock rained down around me while I fought to get enough space to blink away without being reduced to a pulp. Insane laughter accompanied my struggles. “Oh, look at you! So much fire. You’re going to entertain me for a long time and with your essence I’ll be able to finally leave this place. Dance for me, Cassandra, dance!” And so I did.

With a pirouette I fanned out my wings and slashed through everything around me. An instant later I collapsed into a flash of light and appeared in the centre of the chamber on the now vacant throne. Where had it gone? Before I could move again the very air around me froze, the shadows in the hall started to wiggle and shiver and the gruesome scenes carved into the ceiling came to life. Tortured souls, subjugated monsters and weapon wielding minions sluggishly fought against invisible forces that held them back but malformed limb after malformed limb they struggled free. “This is not reality. This is a manifestation of my will and you won’t ever leave!” Animated nightmares dropped down, the darkness closed in from all around and the air held me in place like an ant in ember. I was trapped in the dream of someone else and the rules were his to make.

Suddenly I had an epiphany. If this was but a figment of his will, I wouldn’t have a real body. I had entered a spell, not a real pocket dimension. Everything I was, was energy, purpose and my visualisations of what was going on. There were no muscles to burn or skin to rupture. I could access my core freely, in here, I wasn’t limited by my frail tissue. In here, I was more than a god, I was a true angel and I wouldn’t succumb to a ghost from my past. Let there be light!