A Sensual Summoning, page 38
“We need to break a seal. An old one.”
Freya cast her a surprised look sideways. Some might call her an adventurer, a pro in latent magical signatures that made the middle Kyteler sister a pioneer in the field of archeological witchcraft. Faye had no doubt she’d come across seals in the past, but never something like this.
She could almost hear the moment Freya’s brain switched to puzzle-solving.
“How old?”
“Pre-Cataclysm.” Faye came to a stop, looking left and right until the leys focused on poking her left foot before taking off again.
“You’re looking at a powerful seal if that’s the case,” Freya explained to a snort from Faye.
“You’re telling me.”
“This have anything to do with the Daemon?” she asked before they both froze, a crash from the distance spooking them both enough to hide in a spacious dip between the roots of a large tree.
The crashing continued, fading as it drew farther away from the sisters. Faye only hoped they stayed that far as she left their hiding spot cautiously after a few minutes.
Helping Freya up, she didn’t miss the way her face winced at the weight on her injured ankle. Freya was proud though and wouldn’t appreciate her mentioning it. Instead, she decided to put her trust in her sister one last time.
“Raef… he’s trapped by the seal,” she explained in hushed tones. “He’s been trapped for centuries.”
“Here?” Freya brushed a low hanging branch of spines out of her face that Faye walked under with ease. “How did no one else know a Daemon was here? What the hell could’ve—”
“The Necromancer.”
That silenced her, any mention of their kind’s most wretched defector was a topic they were always encouraged to steer clear of. She came to a stop, Faye looking back at her in frustration, the poison from Marek’s magic shortening her patience.
“I don’t like this, Faye.”
“You think I do?” She frowned; they were running out of time.
“I just mean… necromancy? Forgetting the fact that there’s a Daemon involved, that alone should send us packing.”
Faye bit her tongue on a thoughtless retort, considering how Freya must see it from the outside. This was beyond them; beyond anything mortals could be expected to contend with. But she’d been in the center of it from the moment she opened that book, she didn’t have a choice.
“Running away has always been my first instinct, and I’ve run so often and so far that for the longest time, I was lost without anyone even realizing it.” Looking up at the moon that was barely piercing the tops of the thick foliage, she sighed. “I only found my way when I stopped. I can’t run away this time.”
Freya didn’t say anything, the midnight damp curling the ends of their hair that made Faye smile as she shrugged nonchalantly.
“I don’t want to run away anymore.”
Something clicked in her sisters’ green eyes, and she released a drawn-out exhale.
“Well, when you put it like that…” Freya sighed, looping her arm through Faye’s when the younger witch continued walking. “I guess we’re freeing a Daemon tonight.”
Something about the way Freya spoke, the mild acceptance to something so continental a shift in her psyche was encouraging. If Freya could accept it, then Faye could achieve it.
“Or should I say we’re freeing my brother-in-law-to-be?”
Heat burst on Faye’s face when she dropped her head to push forward faster, Freya’s hold on her arm preventing her from going far as she chuckled as quietly as possible.
“So… where are we going?”
“I dunno,” Faye mumbled, cheeks still burning, “the ground hasn’t told me yet.”
“The ground—” Groaning, Freya pinched the bridge of her nose. “You know what? I don’t even wanna know. I’ll just follow your lead.”
She didn’t miss the faint smile on her sister’s lips and as shit as the situation they were in was, she was happy that she wasn’t dealing with it alone. Freya’s smile faded eventually, her hand pressing to her forehead that she knew was clammy and damp.
Faye knew she looked terrible. The difference between how she looked tending to Freya’s wounds to now was stark, and when she looked away, in the direction the leys led them, she hoped her sister remembered the former if things went awry.
“I’ll be fine.”
She continued on before the lie had a chance to settle, the occasional twinge of her chain to Raef pulling taut, highlighting the distance between them at that moment.
Eventually, the air changed. A dreamy haze wafted through the atmosphere like heat ripples and for a second, Faye thought the poison was making her hallucinate. But the magic sinking into her skin told her otherwise, the stream the leys had led them to gurgling happily with life.
Untangling her arm from Freya’s, Faye made her way to the edge of the stream, her toe colliding with something hard and metal from the sound it made as it rolled away from her.
The moonlight refracting off the stream caught its reflection before her hand darted into the water to stop it from being swept away.
It was only half of what she recalled made the whole, but there was no mistaking the otherworldly metal that she had seen wrapped around both of Raef’s biceps since the moment he arrived. Until he was wearing only one, the other lost.
“Daemonic emblems are made using a droplet of the Daemon’s raw essence...”
She remembered Raef’s words instantly, her eyes rapidly scanning the area surrounding the piece of the emblem she’d found. That was it, that was why this one area felt different to the rest. The reason the leys insisted on here.
There was a shard of Daemonic power somewhere in this area. Power that could break this chain once and for all.
Chapter 73
“Do you feel that?”
Nodding mutely to Freya’s question, Faye scanned the area surrounding Raef’s broken emblem. It had drifted downstream until part of the metal band caught in a detritus laden corner as it rounded a bend.
All around it, magic permeated the small area, an epicenter of raw power that transformed the air around them into liquid gold. It ebbed and flowed, drenching the magical receptors on their skin with nourishment.
A raindrop of power, that’s what Raef said the emblem contained.
This… this is what a single drop could do?
Faye stared in awe at the effect such a miniscule amount had on the land. From the crystalline clear water that sparkled in the moonlight, to the faint golden bioluminescence veining through fallen leaves and within the clusters of toadstools and fungi gathered at the base of trees. Those trees stretched taller, their groaning a song of nature Faye couldn’t be sure was real or just a product of her fever.
It didn’t feel like Scotland. It didn’t even feel like earth.
But still, it felt familiar, and Faye was satisfied that she could experience something like this in her lifetime. However long, however short.
Beside her, Freya hobbled down to sit at the riverside beside her and removed her boot to lower her swollen ankle into the water on a whim.
Faye watched in hushed suspense as Freya shook out her hand, magic crackling between her fingertips at the static friction before she muttered an incantation under her breath when she touched the swelling.
The water glowed, or her hand did, Faye couldn’t tell. Freya’s initial hiss melted into a sigh of relief along with her features as she healed herself easily.
“Whoa…” Freya exhaled, lifting her foot out to wiggle black-painted toes experimentally.
“Yeah. Whoa.” Faye’s nose wrinkled when Freya placed her hand, wet with power, to her forehead. The water was cooling to her feverish skin even if it stubbornly persisted.
“We’ve really been existing on fumes, huh?”
Dropping her head back, Faye watched Freya’s eyes roll closed. She couldn’t blame her. All Faye wanted to do was bask in the repetitive, comforting beat of magic coursing through and around them.
A wave of dizziness reminded her that time was against them. She waited as long as it took for it to pass, standing unsteadily until the water came halfway up her calves. If metal from his emblem had washed up from the stream, the shard of his power must be somewhere in it too.
She was working on a hunch, but if the power Raef placed in his emblems preceded the seal, then it might be viable.
“Look for something small and gold,” she explained to Freya as she moved to the far side of the stream, the water freezing but useful in keeping her alert. “If you find it, don’t touch it. It’s dangerous.”
She heard Freya stand, the older witch taking the banks as she stepped out of the stream.
“Say no more. I’ve come across my fair share of cursed items.”
“Not like this, you haven’t.” Faye turned to face her sister.
Freya liked skirting the rules, she enjoyed pushing boundaries to see what she could get away with ever since they were children. But this was one instruction Faye needed to ensure Freya wouldn’t disobey.
“I mean it, Freya. Do not touch it.”
Freya’s brows lifted in surprise, not expecting the demand regardless of how softly it had been spoken. Faye knew her first instinct would be to resist, to talk back or do the exact opposite out of spite, but a second later, the obstruction passed, and Freya nodded once.
“Got it. Don’t touch anything gold and shiny.”
Faye’s shoulders sagged in relief where they’d been tense, anticipating a confrontation. But as she crouched by a particularly active group of toadstools, she realized people would listen to her. As weird as that sounded in her mind.
It bolstered her courage in getting someone else to do what she needed them to do… should her plan succeed.
“Such sweet sisterly bonding…”
Marek interrupted in the back of her head, needling her for a weak point he could exploit. His level of activity was evidently exhaustive, his voice disappearing for a period of time before returning as it had now.
He fell silent, however, when he sensed the magic around them.
A beat of terror stole her breath, forcing her to sit with an intense fright that took her several seconds to realize wasn’t her own. Marek was able to abuse and leverage her own emotions against her, but he hadn’t noticed that she’d just experienced his.
Something here terrified the Necromancer, and she didn’t need a prize to guess what.
Power. Power strong enough to destroy him. That was something he hadn’t anticipated.
Faye tried to remain unfazed so as not to give him any hint of what she learned from him. Fisting her hand, she pressed her fingers into the blistering welts on her palm so that the surge of pain distracted her from everything with a gasp as tears blurred her vision when she finally opened her hand again.
“What’s wrong?”
Suddenly, her vision was filled with the concerned face of her sister. Freya took her hand in hers, Faye unable to feel regret for the sudden fear in her sister’s eyes when the pain had distracted Marek and given her some breathing room.
“This… this is the seal? Faye, this is bad—” Freya turned to cup some of the water from the stream and poured it over her hand to try to clean it. “You never said it was on you.” She sounded angry, but she often did when she cared about something. “This infection… it looks septic. It needs to be treated right away--”
“N-No…” She retracted her hand, the discolored infection marbling through her blood that escaped the sores. “Just keep looking.”
If Marek’s fear was to be believed, this was exactly where she needed to be to stop him.
“Wasting time you don’t have…” He began hissing in her ear, a jeering lightness that attempted to call her bluff when she wobbled as she stood. “Once my vessel catches you, it’ll rip that bleeding heart from your chest while you’re still breathing and feed it to you.”
An assault of images attacked her vision once more; every twisted, vile thing he fantasized about doing to her if he was free. It was getting harder to ignore them, especially when they crossed into hallucinations.
Marek was pulling out every stop to prevent her from finding that power.
“You don’t like death, do you? Neither do I… we’re alike in that. Of all the things you saw in Rafael’s head, it was the bodies that really got to you… I can see the memory of them here—so vivid compared to the rest.”
Freya was dead on the bank when she looked around, throat ripped out and bloody, matted hair stretching like choking vines across her fear-stricken face. Her cloudy, dead eyes followed Faye, mouthing two words at her over and over before she looked away.
Your fault. Your fault. Your fault.
She rubbed at her eyes insistently, the stars that blotted her vision a better alternative to Marek’s tricks. When they finally faded to show Freya, alive and still crouched in front of her where she sat, Faye exhaled shakily.
She couldn’t believe anything she saw, or anything she did at this point. She was sure she stood up, but that was all part of Marek’s hallucination too.
“Y-You need to find it, I… I can’t.” She averted her eyes as Freya’s face decayed in front of her, her sister still talking normally even as dead, brown blood escaped her mouth with every word.
“No. We’re going to a hospital, Faye. There has to be a GP or clinic or something in that town nearby.” She grabbed her arm as she stood, Faye staying seated even when she pulled. “Dammit, Faye! This isn’t worth dying over!”
“That’s not for you to decide.”
Freya froze at her words even though she didn’t have the energy to shout back. She looked like she wanted to kill Faye herself, but the frustrated tears glazing her sister’s wide eyes told her otherwise.
Stubborn, so bloody stubborn…
“If you’re not going to help, then go… I’ll do it myself. Raef can’t keep that thing distracted forever.”
“Fuck…” Freya dropped her head back, a treacherous sniffle making Faye wonder if that was an illusion as well. That’d be the cruelest of them all. But she decided to believe it was real, especially when Freya looked back down at her, tears tracking down her cheeks as she nodded.
Relief flooded Faye, and because of it, the hold she held on the curtain keeping Marek at bay slipped, allowing him to see her plan. A plan that would likely result in destroying the link he had to the present day.
Her.
“No,” he roared, a stab of pain in the back of her brain expanding to the point she thought her head was about to explode. “You think you’ll succeed? That a pathetic little outcast can stop me? Let me show you how wrong you are…”
Dizziness doubled Freya’s concerned expression as she slumped back heavily against the bank, unconsciousness dragging her down to the dark depths of Marek’s influence.
Whispering to Freya with a desperate squeeze to her hands, she could only hope her words made sense amidst the delirium and that when she shut her eyes on the real world, it wouldn’t be for the last time.
Chapter 74
He rarely broke a sweat in combat, but right now, Rafael was panting.
It wasn’t a case of the entity putting up a difficult fight. It was entirely because it remained unscathed. Every time he dealt it a fatal injury, it just stood back up. The fluid elasticity of its body allowed it to absorb any injury into itself.
That’s what it did now, after he’d ripped its head off.
Another merely grew atop the ragged neck, the messy clot of its former head slithering back to rejoin the source once he dropped it.
Sweat dripped into his eyes from his hair, landing on a partially snapped branch that he grabbed to throw at the entity while it recovered. The branch, thrown with such force, impaled the creature into the closest tree.
Rafael needed to eradicate it, to obliterate every atom of its grotesque form.
Then, there’d be nothing left for it to regenerate. If he was at full power, smiting the entity would be child’s play. But limited by the chain, something as insignificant as an immortal puppet was becoming a challenge.
If only it would stay put.
It writhed and clicked incessantly as it tried to wriggle its way off the branch he’d thrown.
It had only one mission to fulfil in its short existence, which made fighting it even more difficult. Find Faye. Any interaction it had with Rafael was in a bid to get him out of its way.
Twisting the handle of his emblem, he walked closer to the impaled beast, intent on severing its head once more. That slowed it down better than anything else he’d tried so far.
A string of clicks left the entity before it suddenly froze, cocking its head to a sound Rafael couldn’t detect, his guard rising and muscles tensing in anticipation. Whatever it heard changed its behavior and with a lunge, it pulled itself off the branch, leaving strips of watery flesh and blood on it.
It ducked with greater awareness when Rafael swung his blade, the golden edge burying in the trunk while it raced off behind him.
“Shit,” Rafael spat, pulling his blade out to take off after it.
It ran like it was possessed, limbs limp but unnervingly controlled. Unlike before, it ran in a single direction instead of running aimlessly. It knew where it was going, which spelt trouble for him.
Something flickered in the corner of his eye as he chased it, something that made his blood run cold.
A door.
His eyes widened. Not just any door. Faye’s. That meant she was unconscious somewhere, and that somewhere was exactly where the entity was leading him as that same reinforced steel began to grow around its edges.
Marek was trying to trap her inside and keep him out at the same time.
Once again, Rafael found himself torn.
He needed to be in two places at once, each one as critical as the other. In a lifetime of perpetually growing power, duplication remained something that only occurred in his dreams it would seem.
It was almost tragic.
With no obvious solution at hand, he pressed forward, the entity breaking left and forcing him to skid in that direction too.
