The Turquoise Tower (Revenant Wyrd Book 6) (41 page)

The gifts of Baba Yaga swirled within them. They knew what had to be done, and they didn’t fear it. They embraced the knowledge that with the release of this power all things within them would be unmade, and they were not scared. They looked into one another’s eyes and nodded.

And then they let go.

A concussion of purelight and darklight raged inside of the temple, spinning around the walls, creating tornadoes of light around their feet. The walls vibrated, shuddered. Debris began raining down around them as the power of the light swept over them, blowing away thoughts of their life, of their future. All that filled them was the will to do that which must be done. And right now, what needed doing was eradicating Arael from the Great Realms, no matter the cost.

The power thrummed around them, rippling like waves on a serene shore.

Arael stared at them, the understanding that again they had beaten him evident in his amber eyes.

Pain seared through their palms, and when they looked down, Angelica and Jovian saw the familiar sight from their dreams: three sets of hands melted together into a triangle, of which they were each a point.

Bound to them were the hands of their sister. The hands that were now Arael’s.

And then they let the power pulse out of them.

Purelight and darklight strengthened until there was nothing to see, nothing to feel but the pure, unbridled power of the Goddess and Chaos, meeting once more in this most sacred of places.

A fallen angel fell from the sky before Joya, a pulse of purelight taking it from the world. Its body burst apart in a shower of ash as it met the sodden ground. From the ruins of its body spiraled up a single spark of light.

And then the world went insane.

The tower shook, a force so hard that Joya was blasted from the sky, slamming to the earth in a way she was sure would have killed any mortal. She was blinded for a moment, a torrent of power leaking out of the tower.

When finally she stood and looked upon the Turquoise Tower, there was a change happening.

Jovian stumbled out of the tower, Angelica’s hand clasped tight to his.

“Hurry,” he wheezed. “We have to get away from here.”

Angelica kept pace with him, stumbling down the rough steps at the front of the tower. The ground shuddered from the force of the power they had unleashed, heaving Angelica from her feet. Jovian was tossed into the air, and lost his grip on Angelica. His hands windmilled, and oddly his wings unfolded of their own accord, gliding him gracefully to the ground.

As he landed, he looked back. Angelica launched herself into the air with two swift, strong beats of her wings, and landed beside him as the tower cracked. Rivers of power opened up along the length of the tower, splitting it in two. The ground rippled with purelight, cascading from the tower like a waterfall into an ocean, and the two halves of the Turquoise Tower drifted apart like icebergs.

Though the tower split in half, the altar room stayed intact, like a central dais, the two halves floating away from it as if they were never actually attached to it. The altar room sank slightly in the churning dirt. No longer was there a need for stairs; the floor stood flush with the ground.

“Are you okay?” Jovian asked Angelica, and she nodded. He swallowed hard, stumbling under the weight of his wings. Would he ever get used to them?

“Who’s still in there? Where’s Amber?” Angelica’s voice cracked when she said her sister’s name. The realization of what had happened to Amber was fully dawning on her. Amber had died long ago. Like Sylvie had taken over their bodies, Arael had been nothing but a parasite, waiting for the opportune time to sweep in, destroy their sister’s spirit, and take over her body. Her form had been nothing but a puppet for his energy.

“I don’t know who’s in there,” Jovian said. He ignored the question about Amber. It was too painful to think about right then.

“There are three people,” Angelica said.

“Lying in a heap.” Jovian nodded. He linked hands with Angelica, and for some reason, it felt like two pieces of a puzzle coming to rest together in their rightful place. The power they had unleashed was ancient, all-consuming, and had fused them together so completely that they were no longer Angelica and Jovian, but a third entity. A singular being. A pillar of strength, a maelstrom of power.

Jovian shivered.

“Is Porillon dead?”

“It will take more than a single beheading to kill her,” a voice said from behind them.

Jovian turned to see Russel standing there.

“Deeper wyrd binds her to the world. She cannot die so easily.”

“Russel?” Angelica said, stepping forward. Jovian’s hand in hers stopped her.

“What’s wrong with your wings?” Jovian asked. “They aren’t white.”

Russel shook his head. Slowly his wings parted: silvery, glossy wings like that of the moon flowed like liquid from his back. He bowed his head to them, and a ripple of power ran over his being. His traveling clothes vanished, and in their place drifted a substance like smoke, forming around him a toga of shadows. His right hand shimmered, and there formed long, golden scissors.

When he looked up again his face had changed. The dirt was gone, and his skin was creamy, like caramel, and just as smooth. His eyes sparkled like a river in the depths of his sockets.

“What are you?” Angelica asked. But she knew. She didn’t need to ask what he was.

“Come,” he stepped forward, putting his arms around their shoulders. “It’s time you see who is there, on the dais.”

Though they hadn’t felt it, and they didn’t move their feet, they were suddenly standing in the altar room, staring down at the three figures on the floor, their hands fused together.

“Oh no,” Jovian said, sinking to his knees.

“But how is this possible?” Angelica asked, staring down at her own prone figure, her hands interlinked with Jovian’s and Amber’s.

“No, no, no,” Jovian whispered over and over, rocking back and forth on his heels. Even as he did so, his clothes melted away, drifting like water across the floor of the dais, merging with the purelight rushing out of the tower, to be replaced with a white robe.

Angelica didn’t need to look down to know the same change was coming over her.

“Russel, what’s going on?”

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered to her. Behind him three beings grew out of the air. They were beings of light, and all three familiar, even if Jovian couldn’t see them yet. “This is your darkest hour.”

“Death?” Angelica said. And the moment she said it, she knew it was true.

The figures behind him emerged from their cocoons of light.

Amber stepped forth, more radiant than they ever remembered her being. Hair like sunlight flowed down between her folded white wings. A robe, pristine and seemingly made of light, cascaded around her lithe form.

She smiled at Angelica, and reached for Jovian.

“You two were so brave,” she whispered. Angelica took her sister’s hand, and Jovian followed suit. He was weak still, tears streaming form his face. “To face such odds, just to save me. It was all in vain, however. I would have told you if I could. I’d been dead for some time. In that Arael was right.”

And then a vision overcame them. They watched Amber running through the Sacred Forest, casting her gaze back the way she came. There was fear in their heart, and they knew it was the fear their sister had felt. Fear that Porillon would find her, or worse, that she would find the medallion she had left in the Lunimara for her siblings.

For a moment she had slipped through the bonds Arael held over her body. He was still trying to cast her out. She had taken over her form once more, and needed to get as far away from the Mirror of the Moon as possible. She had to get away, she had to make it home before the darkness inside of her could rear its ugly head once more. She knew what it was, had known what was inside of her since she’d sensed him during her elemental trials. It had always been with her, it was the other half of her soul, the part that corrupted her and at times, drove her to do things she normally wouldn’t have done before.

The force was Arael.

As if thinking his name called him forth, Amber stumbled to the ground, losing strength.

From out of the forest before her there came a hideous cackle that Jovian recognized at once. Before the green orbs appeared, he knew what it was. Black shuck.

The dalua dog stepped out of the forest before his sister. She looked up into its ape face, studying the tusks that framed either side of its head, and screamed. The black shuck laughed once, and lunged at her. But it didn’t attack. Instead, it burst into wyrd and surrounded her, seeking entry to her body through whatever orifice it could find. As it sank into her, it called forth the power of the Beast inside of her.

She railed against the intrusion, the trees feeling the might of her wyrd, but it was to no avail. As the ground tore under her with her wyrded struggle, and the trees splintered apart, Arael took her. He rode her body, driving out every ounce of what had made her Amber, and infused himself into every part of her.

“See,” Sylvie said, drawing them back to the present. “There was a fatal flaw in what I had done. I had killed Arael in hatred. And in hatred his power lies.”

They remembered her saying something of the sort before.

“Through my hatred he gained entry into my body, waiting for the day I would become pregnant. For some reason he knew that I would. I never fully realized that he was inside of me until the night I gave birth to you, my children. At the time I knew he had won, he had found entry to the body of my firstborn, Amber. But not only that, through the exchange he had deadened a part of my body, killed two of the adversaries he would’ve had to face once he came to power.”

Sylvie reached out to Angelica and Jovian, her hands cupping their faces, her dazzling wings treading the air without thought.

“The two of you were born dead. And I knew why. I knew that Joya couldn’t face this alone, that one lone survivor wouldn’t be able to stand against him. But there was no way I could give her any kind of power, for she was marked for something more: Realm Guardian. Even then the Shadow Realm brewed within her. I couldn’t slip in.

“So it was you, my poor, dead children, whom I sought to infuse with the power needed to face the threat that would become of Amber. I only had strength to pray to the Goddess, work that one bit of wyrd that every mother has: love. I gave myself over to you, imbuing you with the strength you would need, and unfortunately cursing you to a fate similar to my own.”

“And I knew none of this,” Dauin said, and they all laughed. “My task was simple: to love you and raise you as best as I could. If I had known Arael lived once more, I would have raised you differently, given you different gifts.”

“You raised us the best you could,” Angelica said.

“And we would have had it no other way,” Jovian said. “You gave us something to fight for. You taught us what love was, and gave us the power to drive us forward, to protect where we could, and to defend our family until our dying breath.” Jovian had to stop talking then, because his voice cracked.

They all embraced.

“So we are dead?” Jovian asked, pulling away from his parents.

“What is death, really?” Russel asked, stepping forward. “The Goddess told me to watch over you, and bring you home to her when the time came. But these words came with her message: nothing is ever truly destroyed, nor is it created. It changes form. It becomes what it was always meant to be.”