Tasia woke a few days after she had been sight-swapped to the realization that her body was whole once more and no longer felt numbed; her senses yes, but not her body. It had probably taken longer than it would normally had she been able to sleep properly; other than that first day, she had still only managed a total of an hour or two of actual sleep each night, no matter how exhausted she felt. She sat up carefully and resisted the urge to look around even though she could feel light on her face. It was just disorienting. As she carefully got to her feet, the door opened. "Leslie?"
"How'd you know?" Leslie walked over to help her stand.
"I always know when you're near." She considered how to explain. "My soul is music," she said carefully. "So . . . I feel in music, I guess is how I want to say it. Whenever you're near, I hear this lively music tugging my soul. It makes me smile. So I know it's you." She took a deep breath. The time had come to do what needed to be done. "I need to walk. Walk with me and make sure I don't run over anyone."
"Okay." Leslie held tight to her hand as they walked out into the sunshine. She could feel the renewed strength in her twin's body, and could also feel the boiling potency just under the surface of her skin in a way unlike she had before. She could also now understand that the tingling inside her blood came less from Tasia's majik than her own. "Why didn't you tell me?" she asked softly.
"I cannot tell you something like that." Tasia smiled wryly. "I knew it, when I met the five of you, that you were like the rest of us. Rachel called it something else. Ryan had no name to call it. Emily was too afraid to see it. And you and Rhya simply didn't know at all."
Leslie took a long breath. "I've been thinking. And . . . I can see the careful threads at play by Destiny. I met your ancestor Jean. I . . . was there. As part of this complicated thing called a Paradoxal Pivot where the future would effect the past. I thought it mostly to help Rachel finally Activate, but . . . I think it was for you. Because I talked to Jean, felt like I just had to, to convince her to accept Byron as her soul mate. I helped ensure my own twin soul's existence." She held tighter to Tasia's arm for a moment. "I wish this wasn't being asked of you."
They had reached the edge of a deep stream that still, somehow, managed to run with clean water. It still got boiled and filtered before use, however. Tasia released Leslie and walked toward the edge where she crossed her arms tightly. "Do you believe that people have certain tests to pass in their life? That they have to pass these tests in order to get what they want?"
"My mom once said," Leslie whispered, "that she and Destiny had a deal. If she did as Destiny asked, she would be given the one thing she wanted at the immediate moment. After everything she's done . . . the one thing she wants most is freedom, and Destiny has not provided it."
"Not yet at least." Tasia took a deep breath. "I suspect I may be, however unwillingly, under a similar deal. What I face now . . . is a test. I don't know what I want," she added softly, "but I'm here for a reason. There was nothing accidental about my birth. Maybe I was put here for you. Maybe I was put here for your mother."
Remember, you will awaken the sleeping majik.
"Maybe it's to teach all of you." She turned toward her friend. "That's what makes us so different from the Elder Cultivators. They were set apart from their predecessors by just being Duals and having both Ruler and Defender magic. We of this Era were strengthened more by having majik. Rachel said it: those of us who have the same element across Ruler, Defender, and majik will be nearly unstoppable. That means something truly terrible looms ahead of us, Leslie Ann. I don't even know what yet, but it does."
Leslie took a long breath. "We get to pick two elements for our majik, and one or two skills to learn?" She smiled. "That sounds nice, you know? I want Nature and Illusion. Because reasons."
Tasia smiled. "Good reasons."
"Any suggestions for skill? What would I be good at?"
"You already picked your skill, actually. We tend to do that consciously as we approach roughly five years of age, but I've noticed that those who have latent and unknown majik will instinctively pick their skills without knowing it, and then find it waiting if and when they do awaken the majik inside them. You picked Shapeshifting." She did not need to see Leslie's face to know she had brightened with delight. "Shapeshifting is only ever found in the hands of Nature or Air Flower Elements because those elements are most associated with the power of change. The fact that you love studying biology sort of helps, because if you want to change yourself into something, you need at least a rudimentary understanding of how that something works."
"I always thought my desire to learn biology had to do with being a Nature Flower Element. I guess it sort of was, but more. So what did Emily pick? Ryan already figured out he had Healing." Musingly, she said, "You know, the moment he admitted he was a witch, it should have dawned on us it had to be the rest of us as well. But . . . how do Rhya and I have majik and our parents don't?"
"The same way that the first witches came into being: Destiny gifted you." Tasia turned again toward the water and listened to it flowing. "Emily is a shapeshifter as well. Which will be entertaining, to be sure, since she'll have to do some studying. At least she loves science already, though she does lean more to the chemistry side. She'll have to pick up some biology with it when she starts university."
"So," Leslie said softly, "we have everything then, don't we? All of the skills witches could have, plus the ones not restricted to just witches, and then skills even beyond that like you and Storm being pattern masters—which I had never even heard of before until meeting you two, actually."
"For good reason. We're the only two who have ever had it. Remember the 'witch brains work differently' thing? Storm and I run at an exceptionally high frequency even beyond that. I got it because I couldn't not have it with my majikal strength, and I think Storm got it because I could not be the only one with it, and he just fit the best." She took a long breath. "And I guess we are full circle, talking of my . . . majik strength. And potential."
Leslie fought her sudden rising nerves. "You have to . . . evolve. Into Gray."
"Becoming Gray is a byproduct of my true evolution." Her eyes closed. "Leslie . . . I'm not a witch. Not really. Inside me . . ."
"Inside her," Cara said quietly, "is the infinite majik of a sorceress." When the two Cultivators turned toward her, she walked forward from where she had been listening. "A sorceress has infinite majik. She can do anything. Use any element, any skill. She can never burn out. You surely felt it, Leslie. Most anyone can."
Leslie slowly nodded. "We all kept saying she had what felt like infinite majik, and even her magic feels . . . infinite as well. She rivals my aunt, an Apex, for that. I guess I never really . . . understood what we were really saying by saying she had infinite majik. I knew that witches could only rarely evolve into wizards, and that such a thing as evolving into a sorceress could exist, but I just never . . . put the pieces together. Never realized that when Tasia said she had to shatter her soul and evolve, that she referred to being a sorceress more than she did becoming Gray, though I guess the two are thoroughly linked."
"Inexorably linked," Cara agreed. "A sorceress could only be Gray. She cannot be limited." She walked closer to Tasia and reached out to touch her skin beneath the dragon pendant she wore. "The Arian Draconis. You are Liena's final direct descendant."
"How did you know that?" Leslie demanded. "Liena lived ten thousand years ago on Protea!"
"Because ten thousand years ago, a newly born baby showed up on the step of Aria Castle, protected by an Elder dragon. She had been taken from the Majik War happening on Protea and brought to Aria for safely. The royal family adopted her, and she grew up alongside their son. As a thanks for loving and raising her, she gave the Ruler Cultivators majik to help them better support Aria. Shortly after she became an adult, she left to return to Protea where she felt a calling, a need, for her to be. Before leaving, she left a prophecy behind: someday, her final direct descendant would return and heal the world when it had broken. That descendant would a sorceress, and she would ally with a True Born Ruler to save Aria. Everyone has always known that story, and we began to hope and pray for it to be true when the False King rose to power. And then Tasia arrived. And we knew it was no story, but truth."
Tasia lightly touched her necklace. "That explains a lot," she murmured. "I had begun to wonder. Things Rodi had said, and things I knew about Liena herself. The . . . sheer deliberateness of my having to be here. Why Aria considers me her Defender, and why Iris and Aria share me so willingly. My Seed was born of Iris, but my very majik ties me to Aria."
Cara nodded. "I had a feeling you might have already begun piecing things together, but I wanted to tell you directly. It seemed unfair to not give you all the information I had. Whether it will help you evolve your soul, I cannot say. But you deserved to know."
"Is there anything I can do to help in the meantime?" Leslie asked.
"Well, if Tasia is willing, we can continue to push her physically in an effort to appease the Dark. If her Dark loosens its grip, perhaps finding her Light won't be as hard. Too, if she's going to be stuck unable to see during the largest part of the day, then she needs to hone that advantage again. Or conjure sunglasses."
"I tried that," Tasia muttered. "It didn't work. If Aria was in better shape, I'd track down my husband and make him adjust the length of day and night so they switch and I have a better advantage."
"He can do that?" Leslie asked.
"It's Shadow-based Ruler Cultivator magic; not Memory, as you might expect. But right now that is probably not a good idea. So we go back to the old-fashioned method of me trying to overcome my own limitations while trying to retake control over my own core."
Leslie took a deep breath. She would willingly eat the dirt as much as needed if it would help her twin. Once Tasia was better, she would just have to get her to train her so that she could return the favor eventually. She and Tasia followed Cara away from the stream and then faced off against each other where there would be enough room for all of them to move as needed.
The process was, from the start, painful and humiliating. Leslie wanted to cry in frustrated anger and pain. She should not have been winning! Tasia was so much better, yet her numbed senses continued to drag down her physical strength and skill in a way that only made the Dark hold her harder.
Tasia said nothing about it. If she was embarrassed, she didn't show it. When she was knocked down, she got back up. When she missed her attack and stumbled, she simply turned and tried again. When Leslie's foot rapped her in the arm or leg, she shrugged it off as if it had never happened. The swirl in her eyes churned and grew more violent as the Dark and Light inside her soul fought again for domination.
A mostly missed strike from Leslie made her bracelet fly, and the sharp edge of a link that she had not bothered to fix ripped across Tasia's upper left arm right above her Flower Mark and split the skin open. Blood welled and began to spill, and Leslie nearly threw up. "Oh god!" She would have leapt forward if Cara hadn't suddenly grabbed her. "Let me go!" she shouted. "I'm not helping her!"
"Shut up!" Cara told her raggedly. "Can't you see it happening? Hear it?"
Leslie froze as she realized her twin had not moved. She was staring sightlessly into the distance and had not moved or reacted to her injury. Music stirred and began to softly raise on the air. "No," she whispered thinly. "I don't want to watch her shatter!"
Tasia did not hear her any longer. She was done. She'd had enough. She was tired of the fight. Tired of the numbness. She would tear apart her soul and force everything inside to reconcile! She reached out demandingly and felt the painful welling of the music inside her soul. It hurt. It hurt blindingly. So be it. She was a Mystic. Only music could shatter her soul the rest of the way. She let it swell until it spilled into the air and she could not hold back her voice any longer.
Light in the dark so hard to see
Shatter this heart with your clarity
Pierce through the skin and free me
Don't let the darkness within conquer me
Neither Leslie nor Cara could breathe. They had never heard anything so beautiful before. Or painful. They could hear the Light and Dark inside her pure contralto tone. Her voice, her music, was already Gray. The music began to swell with such force that the land trembled and they had to move back before the rising waves of powerful magikry struck them.
Take me off of my throne
Strip me of all I know
Make me strong make me bold
I surrender all (surrender all)
Forcing her soul to produce music in its condition made the cracks begin to widen and spread. She dug in deeper and shoved beyond the Dark. The Light was still in there. She would find it and break it free!
Take the lungs from my chest
Take the air from my breath
The Dark raged at her and shoved her back. Her eyes burned and tears streamed unfelt down her cheeks. Memories of the past—hers, Jean's, Liena's—tangled together in an overwhelming wave of emotion she could not sort. She tore them aside and kept diving, kept forcing the cracks to spread.
Light in the dark so hard to see
Shatter this heart with your clarity
Pierce through the skin and free me
Let all that has kept me in chains break and bleed
She did not know that the cracks had become visible externally. Did not know that they were spreading across her body and beginning to leak out bright white color. The blood still sliding down her arm had begun to lose its red saturation.
Take the heart from my chest and it'll still be beating
Take a bird from the nest and she will find her wings
Take the sun from the sky and it'll still be alight
Her voice broke as she reached the depths of her soul. The music seemed to soften and wait in suspended beats. Her heart pounded like a drum as she saw the Light swelling against its confines. She gathered all of her will and smashed her hands through the center of her soul. It shattered apart in a blinding wave of musical power that ripped apart the air around her, and caused excruciating pain to explode through her body and soul alike. The cracks across her physical body tore wide and briefly blinded the two watching.
The glimmering shards fell into little bits of Light and Dark that started to blend together into radiant Gray. As she reforged her soul together anew, her voice came back and lifted with more power than ever before.
Light up the dark blinding me
Tear it apart don't worry about me
I am alive eternally
In the sun and the wind and the rain
Feel me breathe
Her voice held the final note for an inhumanly long moment without losing power. In truth, it gained power. Dark held Light, and Light held Dark, and everything fell into the untamed swirl of True Shadow within the Mystic Sorceress' soul. The swirl of infinite majik across her pupils was no longer diluted. It pulsed and throbbed like a small shadowy galaxy leading the way into eternity. The blood that still spilled had lost its color entirely. It had turned to the same rich hue of Gray as her power. It dripped off of her elbow, and when it touched the land, clover began to bloom. The raw force of good in her blood could bring life to even the stagnate and dying world of Aria. In that moment, though her physical appearance did not change, she was more beautiful than her princess had ever seen her before.
Neither Leslie nor Cara was breathing. When Tasia's knees buckled, Leslie scrambled across the ground and braced her. Her heart raced madly inside her chest as she held onto her twin and hid her face against her shoulder. "Tasi?" she whispered. Tears began to well in her eyes as she suddenly felt the beautiful, musical, glowing presence of her twin's soul overlapping her own again. The music softly echoed into her soul in turn and felt perfectly safe and wonderful. "You're okay now?"
"I think so." She straightened slowly and took a long breath without dislodging Leslie. Gouges had remained on her soul where her lover soul mate was still missing, but most of the rest had healed. Never, ever, would she tell Leslie just how terrifying and horrifying that evolution had truly been. Like a wound that had just been healed, a dull throbbing echoed inside her heart and soul. Tears shimmered fresh across her eyes as she let her head drop onto Leslie's shoulder. "That really, really, sucked."
Leslie held onto her even tighter. "I love you," she whispered. "You can't ever leave me, okay? I thought you would. I thought when your voice broke that you would be taken from me. I can't handle that."
"Hey." Tasia eased her back and rubbed at the tears in both their eyes. "It's done. We move forward from here." She looked at her arm and sighed. "Also, that hurts. And before you ask the obvious, yes, I can see in the light again. Better than before, actually. I had been stunted in more ways than perhaps even I realized. I don't know how long it'll take before I reach my full potential, but now I can." She healed the wound on her arm and then grabbed Leslie's wrist. "Let's see here." She found the ragged link and used a bit of silver-gold, with underlying gray, majik to melt the edge. "There. Better. It's a wonder you didn't cut yourself."
"A sorceress," Cara said as she walked closer, "is both majik and battle combined. Though we could say 'magic' as accurately for Tasia as we do majik. Perhaps we'll just call it arcanistry to indicate them both, for I feel she will also start doing amazing things with arcane forces we've never seen before. Her power is more alike to the arcanery of the Apexes than not, so we had best just give it a similar name, the way majik and magic have similar names."
"I think she was already playing with arcane forces already." Leslie hugged Tasia again just because she could not quite bring herself to let go.
"Beyond that. She is fit to be a Lead Defender by nature of being a sorceress as well. A sorceress is said to be the one who leads armies into battle and the one to whom others turn when they need darkness to protect them and light to shine their way. To be the sorceress she was always meant to be . . . she had to be Gray. Not Light, not Dark. True Shadow."
"And I am starving," Tasia decided. "Evolution is murder on the appetite. Let's get something to eat and then see about figuring out how to find and contact our friends, if they don't find us first because of that song."
* * * * *
Days of following the river had turned up no sign of either Tasia or Leslie. Striker would leave and come back and leave and come back, but he found nothing either. They finally doubled back to the fork and started following the other branch through a thick forest. They made camp along the way, and when they woke the next morning, they were not surprised to find Striker gone again. He returned shortly once more, and he was carrying a piece of familiar material. It was Tasia's scarf, and the fact that he had found it told them all that they were on the right path.
All of the days they searched, they found monsters coming after them. More elemental variances on the Ice or Airwings, and other creatures that looked more horrific and misshapen as if they had been torn from the depths of Evil. Despite their best efforts to minimize their ability to be tracked, or to put up some sort of majikal protection, the monsters still found them.
Storm's brain kept moving at a million miles a minute as he analyzed everything and looked for the answer to why. He was missing something. Some small thing that would make sense of the pattern. It would help with his concentration, though, if his scar hadn't kept aching. The almost lightning-patterned scar went down his right shoulder blade as a remnant of the accident—attack—that had frozen his Seed.
He stopped dead in his tracks, which made the others stop. "Stormy?" Emily asked. "You look odd. Are you okay?"
"I think I finally figured something out! We all have scars, don't we? From those 'accidents' we had that froze our Seeds. Are they aching for you whenever we run into trouble?" Heads nodded, though all looked confused. "Shit. I knew it." He rubbed his throbbing head. Unraveling patterns that came on fast could be brutal to him. "I even bloody said it. That there was something evil inside us still. Look at your scars, and if you have to get naked to do so, I don't care. Just look!"
Full nudity was not necessary, though Beth did have to strip to her bra and Theo down to his undershirt. On Raine, the scar crossed her lower right arm and looked eerily like her three-headed spear. Theo's scar, which looked very like a burn scar, sat on his left ribcage. Beth had a ragged-edged scar that ran under the strap of her bra on her front right shoulder. Ryan's sat just above his pants on his hip and looked an odd swirling shape. Emily could not see hers because it was on the back of her head and partially covered by hair, but when Rachel looked for her, she found a scar that looked rather like a cloud.
"What's the point of this, Storm?" Raine asked.
"The king put a damn spell on us. A locator spell! The scars on us are freaking beacons! That's how the monsters can find us and how he knew when we gathered!" Fury lit his brown eyes as more understanding came. "That's why Tasia got it worst. He knew she was our Lead! The rest of us did not come nearly as close to dying as she did, because he did not care one way or another. But her? He did. He deliberately tried to murder her!" His hands curled into fists. "Though one could argue he succeeded, because she did die and was revived, and more than once!" And he now felt fairly confident that Aria may have done that miraculous reviving. "That's it. That bit of evil in us that has meant we could never heal these scars, that has kept trying to smother Tasia . . . that keeps leading those monsters right to us."
"Son-of-a-bitch!" Raine slapped a hand over Beth's scar. "Pardon my getting personal, Bethany."
"Please, there is no personal space in this group, and that's how it should be, really." She winced as the scar began to burn. "Ouch. Damn. Are you trying to reverse the spell?"
"I am, now that I know it is one." Satisfaction filled her voice. "And I wish we'd realized sooner. This is the most piss-poor excuse for a curse I've ever seen. He knows nothing about majik, clearly!"
Romalia had been observing quietly, but that made her smile. It had cut deep to learn how far her brother's corruption had spread—and hearing he had tried to kill Tasia had made her feel sick—but the utter derision in Raine's voice now brought back amusement. Armand had no idea what he was doing in more ways than one.
The scar cleared up from Beth's skin, and she took a sharp breath. "Oh, damn. I don't think I realized how much that was affecting me." She pulled her shirt and jacket back on as Raine moved to Storm next. "I'm glad we figured it out, but damn. Now we positively have to find Tasia and Leslie, because we have to get that out of Tasia's lungs!"
It took only a short time to remove the scars from everyone who had them, and Ryan removed Raine's with some quick and relatively easy tutelage. He bore no ill effects, but Raine ended up more than a little drained majikally from exerting that much effort overall. Storm gave some Metal majik to her to help compensate, but she still needed to rest. They camped early that day, and Raine slept off the exhaustion. She woke to find both Rhya and Storm cuddling her though, and that made her smile. They had no reason to worry about her that much, but it felt nice that they did.
They had finally begun to approach a village that Romalia had said housed her best friend—and technically former lady-in-waiting—when they unexpectedly got stopped in their tracks by a shockwave of magikry and more that knocked half them off their feet and gave everyone goosebumps in passing.
Rhya slowly got back up with Ryan's help. "Th-that felt like . . ."
"Tasia!" Theo shook his head hard. "You guys can't hear it?"
"Hear what?" Emily asked.
"Damn, maybe just me then. Never mind. It's not important until I'm sure. Come on!"
Raine led the way with Rhya close on her heels, and they ran as a group through the brush until they found a road at the end of which they could see what looked like a relatively intact village. Not quite big enough to be a full city, but sprawling enough. They had stayed enough under radar to avoid being outright destroyed; they just had to fight back against the decay itself.
They skidded into the village limits just as Tasia and Leslie emerged from a building that had a restaurant sign in front. All Cultivators stopped dead in their tracks as Tasia looked directly at them. Something had happened. Their leader . . . burned. She had accepted her warrior side before. She had accepted her witch side before. It seemed, then, as if she had embraced them wholly and fused them into a single glowing force that made her more beautiful than any of them remembered.
"Sorceress," Romalia breathed.
Even at a distance, they could see the proof of it. Inside her eyes swirled the depths of infinity in a raw and unconfined tumble of shadows. The power burned and smoldered with the fury of her untamed soul. She was no longer just Light, nor was she just Dark. She was Gray.
True Shadow.
©Stacy J. Garrett. Do not reprint or redistribute without permission.
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