It took less than a week for word to reach Shana about Tasia's 'mishap' during the invocation, and she made a beeline directly for Iris. She walked into the drawing room and found herself amused to discover Tasia reclining on a couch with a cloth over her eyes. The Apex of Chaos waved a hand toward a tray without even looking. "Have some coffee."
"I was expected," she said dryly. She knew full well that Tasia did not drink coffee.
"Do I look that much off my game?"
"No, you look a bit pale." She poured herself some coffee and then walked over to peer down at her friend. Tasia's beautiful skin offset to her color changing eyes and chaotic hair had more than once inspired Shana to cajole or blackmail her friend into posing in front of her camera. At the moment, however, her skin had clearly lost some pigment. "Let me see."
Tasia lifted the cloth off her eyes and looked up at Shana. Her one eye had darkened to chocolate in the darkness and now shifted back to caramel, but the other eye remained pale brown in color the entire time. A hard breath lodged in Shana's chest. "I know that eye," she said very softly. "I can't put my finger on it, but I'm sure I know it."
Tasia sat up and draped an arm across her knee. "Well, it feels familiar to me as well, so we've both met this person. She's very weak, though. If it wasn't for her anchor in my eyes, I suspect she wouldn't even have the will to hold onto me."
Shana sat down on the couch. "So it is a female spirit, then? And she needs you?"
"I think so. And here's another thing." She flipped her braid forward over her shoulder. "Theo cut my hair a few days ago. It's already grown another four inches, but it's definitely slower than it was. Tell me straight: do you know what this is? It seems . . . coincidental to me that all three Apexes would have long hair that they can't cut without it returning to a default floor length, and I know you two definitely had hair like mine that would grow in weird fits and starts before you evolved. Honestly that lent itself to me figuring out where I was headed, had been headed all along."
"Ah, there's that pattern master mind at work." Shana stretched out her legs and contemplated her toes. "Yeah, it's definitely an Apex thing though we've only really had speculation all along about what it means, and you're the oddball of us three. But I think your oddness may have finally made me figure this out. To go back a bit, I want to specifically note that in both of our lives, Siobhan and I had hair exactly like yours in that it went forever without growing and then would gain a few inches based on our power moving, but if we dared cut it—zoom! Right back to where it had started. In both lives, as soon as we had taken our lover for the first time, our hair hit floor length and stayed. Robert said it himself that first time, that my hair felt stronger to him, and that it felt as if he and Evan had stabilized me and Sayena."
"Well, that's why you're soul mated to each other in the way you are," Tasia said reasonably. "You and Sayena are made more powerful by having your opposing force as your mate, but you two couldn't be mated together—not if you were both to birth children—so Destiny gave you each a brother so alike to you that you could be twins, with personal cores barely removed from yours in strength. Just under the threshold to spark." Her eyes narrowed. "Hmm."
"And there she goes again, starting to see my point." Shana smiled. "We three Apexes are the filters of the very forces of the universe. We stand in open doorways to let our bodies and souls process the full force of Light or Dark or Chaos. To keep our bodies from being torn apart when our power is in fluctuation, it has to manifest in a way that won't be dangerous. Our hair is really the only part of our genetics that won't risk killing us. That said, you should not be fluctuating anymore now that you are both evolved and that you have your lover. Your power should only fluctuate when you do something to interfere with it, like cutting your hair and therefore unbalancing it. It started fluctuating before you cut it, and now you're stuck in a loop that just does not belong."
"Because I am not balanced. Chaos is one of just three Flower Elements that is its own opposite, meaning it can only be balanced by itself." She blew out a hard breath. "Rodi is not Chaos. He is True Shadow, the precursor to Chaos, and he just . . . hovers at the edge. Everyone has thought it, that he might be able to evolve to Chaos, but no one has ever asked outright. Unless he does, he cannot be a balance to me in any fashion."
"Ask him," Shana urged.
Her friend smiled sadly. "I can't. I can't ask someone to do something they instinctively shy from. Shana, I don't think even you have realized just how ridiculously powerful my lover is. You all know he is the strongest alive in majik other than me, but he is so much more than anyone realizes—even him. He has six elements right now, and if he evolved, two of them would become Chaos, but he would gain another, still leaving him with six. He has two skills already, with a third starting to grow, and I can sense a fourth just hiding under the surface. It may well be because he is a Deactivated Ruler that he is so strong, that perhaps Aria in agreeing to let him keep his majik for me may well have . . . sloughed his former magic over to become majik, creating a fittingly chaotic tangle inside him."
"Given that majik can be converted to become magic, I could see the opposite being true as well," Shana mused. "Especially considering the circumstances. And kicking his majik that high pushes it to where it matches his rather equally ridiculous physical skill as well, and that combination is needed for Chaos. So why has he never evolved? He's hovered at the cusp of wizard his entire life. Anna is likely to evolve within this year. What is stopping him?"
"His own fear. It's terrifying to begin to realize there's more in you than you know, and that you may never know your own limits. You and I and Siobhan all understand that intimately. We just had no choice about accepting it." She fell over onto her back again and plopped the cloth over her eyes. She had the ability to see auras around everyone she met. Sadly, her 'new eye' didn't have the ability. It left her with a headache as her mind tried to balance between two different eyes and two different ability levels. "It is a choice that I will never take from him. And don't you dare ask him to do it for me!"
"You think you have the right to order me around?" the former High Queen asked idly.
"I think we both know I can kick your ass if you try anything."
"As my daughter would say, you have to catch me first." Shana gently brushed Tasia's hair out of her face. "I won't ask him, but you're going to have to do something unless you really do want to have haircuts every day."
Tasia made a rude gesture that summed up any words she might have used. Knowing she had needled her enough, Shana got to her feet and put her empty mug to the side. She stepped out of the room and was not surprised to find Rodi leaning against the wall outside the door. More than ever, his majikal presence seemed to loom large. He literally stood right on the thin edge of evolution. Of that Shana was sure.
"Well." Rodi's voice was very soft because he knew his wife had good ears.
"Well indeed." Her voice stayed equally soft. "The ball is in your court. She will never ask." She turned and headed down the hall without another word. There was nothing more she could do. Something else entirely loomed closer, and this was a critical point.
He walked into the drawing room and studied Tasia for long moments. He never tired of looking at her. They had known each other since the ages of five and six, when they had unintentionally met while astrally walking the Immortal Fields. He still remembered how it had felt to see the beautiful little girl sitting amid the flowers. She had dazzled him. They had been secret companions for another twenty years, always meeting in the Fields, saving each other's sanity without knowing. He had kept her insomnia at bay, and she had blocked evil from harming him. Even now, she only slept easily in his arms where the black poppy scent from his Seed could ease her never still mind and constant Sight.
The last nine years had only deepened their bonds, only drawn them closer. She was his everything. His dearest friend and closest companion, his eternal lover. He had lost count of the nights they had laid in bed and talked about anything and everything. Destiny had deliberately pushed them to correct mistakes made by their ancestors, but if they had been given the option of going back and changing anything, he would have turned it down instantly. Lovebirds, he remembered LeAnn once calling them. He believed it.
He quietly walked over and sat down beside Tasia. She lifted a hand without looking and he entwined their fingers together before bringing her hand to his cheek. "I love you," he told her intensely.
She just sighed. "How much of the conversation did you hear?"
"All of it." He skimmed his thumb over her cheek as he cupped her face with his other hand. "I'm not going to ask why you didn't tell me. I understand the reasons. And . . . I'm sorry."
She pulled the cloth off her eyes and looked up at him. The aura that surrounded him had always soothed her, and this time was not an exception. It would seem his was an aura that her new eye could see. "Don't be sorry." She sat up to frown at him. "How can you be sorry for something so reasonable and understandable?"
"I just feel like I should have guessed the problem and moved to get rid of it." He lowered his forehead to hers. "I'm tired of running. Whatever you have to do to help me evolve, I want you to do it. I don't think I can do it by myself, not when we're talking about moving from True Shadow to Chaos. I can't shatter my soul the way you did, but you as High Priestess can surely do something."
"Are you sure?"
"Dead sure." He got to his feet and tugged her up with him. "Let's do it right now. I feel like we're wasting valuable time."
"Sorry." She winced. "Looks like my attempts to keep my premonition from entering your own mind failed." He had Present Sight of his own, and lovers who both had Sight always shared their visions almost instinctively. She had done her best to stop this one. "Also, I think you got a smidge of my Pattern Mastery on top of the Sensing."
His smile could only be called predatory. "It's not like there hasn't been a reason for me to absorb it from you." He lowered his head to press his lips hotly to the curve of her neck. "I'm just surprised I haven't gotten more considering how often we get our hands on each other."
Breathless, she said, "Imbalance in power. You've got two more potential skills inside you, and I don't know if I planted them there or you grew them yourself—so to speak."
"Which ones?" His voice seemed to be deliberately enticing, husky with his desire for her, and echoing with a soft power.
Her own laugh sounded sultry. "Well, hopefully not more powers in your voice. You're sexy enough, thanks." She sighed wryly. "I turned my twin into a Shaman, and both my brother and my lover into Virtuosos. I'd apologize, but you three enjoy it far too much."
Her head fell to the side weakly as he continued those wonderful kisses. Mates tended to share and absorb power with each other; even casual lovers sometimes could. After all their years as lovers, he had absorbed a bit of Sensing and Pattern Mastery alike. The vocal power change had come from the way he and LeAnn and Logan connected to her soul in some fashion. LeAnn's soul had a half identical to her own that overlapped, and Rodi had a half that interlocked to her. Logan . . . well, they still didn't know how he and Tasia had a soul bond but they did, and it had elements of both other sorts.
"Do I need to go away?" Anna asked a bit dryly from the doorway.
"No, your father can behave himself." Tasia pushed Rodi back with a smile. "I will never not be amused by the fact that you don't bat a lash at seeing us in a compromising position."
Anna smiled and hurried across the room to hug her tightly. "Why should it bother me? You two are happy. That's all that I want. Besides." Her smile turned impish. "You and Aunt Virginia sat me down when I was six and told me everything I needed to know. I look forward to having a soul mate of my own to be happy with."
"And that's how it should be!" She looked up at Rodi, and he nodded slightly. She turned back to their daughter. "Anna, do you remember when I unlocked Uncle Logan's majik? I'm going to do the same for your father. Do you want to watch?"
"Of course." Anna tilted her head as she followed her parents toward the stairs. "How come you're doing this anyway? You're already powerful, Dad."
"But I'm not at my full potential." His eyes met Tasia's. "I just want to be a better match for your mother. That's all."
If she didn't entirely believe him, Anna didn't say so. She knew there were some strange things happening again. The biggest was what had happened to Tasia. Her eye had turned a different shade of brown. Anna knew it wasn't a bad spirit. Thanks to her own Ghost Sight, she could see the very faint figure of the ghost's outline near Tasia and could tell it meant no harm. She just didn't know why it was there.
Everyone took off their shoes outside the attic and put them aside. The dragons had been sleeping but all three awoke at the appearance of their family and moved to a place that was a little more protected. Anna went over and joined them. Tasia and Rodi knelt in the middle of the circle drawn on the floor with chalk. A circle of blue-white majik flames cast itself around them safely. Because it came from Tasia's arcanistry this time, the base of the flames tinted rainbow-gray in a beautiful gradient.
Majik began to ripple through the air with silver-gold color from Tasia and pure gold from Rodi. Silver denoted being closer to the Goddess, and gold denoted being closer to the God. Tasia, being beloved to both, had both colors. Shadows gathered in the corners where black and white lightning flickered. Chaotic power began to bounce off the walls but Anna felt no fear. She had never feared Chaos power. In fact, it deeply comforted her. Her mother was Chaos itself. How could that be frightening?
Tasia shed the illusory spell called a Coda to revert her from her deceptively human appearance to one more in line with her dragon genes. Scale birthmarks rushed down her body, and her pupils went from round to diamond. She then shifted further as she reached more toward her Apex form—her true self—and her braid unraveled in the waves of Chaos power welling around her. Her clothes dissolved into a swirl of Chaos shadows with black and white lightning interspersed with rainbow-gray iris blossoms. Gray wings opened on her back and glowed softly as her Mark's crown appeared on her forehead.
For the first time, Anna saw a real difference between Chaos shadows and the True Shadow element derived from Chaos. Chaos shadows looked denser and swirled and churned harder amid their lightning, like particularly grumpy storm clouds. True Shadow-based shadows were soft and serene and more like a gentle fog. She also saw something else as Tasia's eyes opened: her right eye had returned to normal. Anna looked around quickly and spotted the spirit being driven back. Somehow, she just knew she would be gone forever if she left. She reached out quickly and grabbed the spirit's hand to anchor her into the room. The spirit looked at her, and Anna saw her face for the first time. It was an oddly familiar face, but she couldn't place where she knew it from. She just smiled and held onto the spirit's hand. "It's okay," she said softly.
Tasia had discovered through experimentation on her willing but bemused friends that she could actually see the individual threads of majik that tied up aspects of a person's existence. Literal threads that looked like stitching when she viewed them. Location denoted a particular skill, and elements translated into what looked like little embroidered patches affixed in random places. She had looked into a mirror at herself once and seen her entire body covered in stitches with patches everywhere. All stitches had crackled with the sparks of Chaos. It had been unnerving to say the least.
Inside Rodi, she now found stitches in his left hand to denote his Conjuring skill, and stitches at his center of balance to denote his Finding one. Sight, being non-majikal, did not manifest, but she did spy a sole stitch in his mind that denoted where he had absorbed her Pattern Mastery. Stitches near his ear spoke of his Sensing skill, and now she could see for sure that while he had initially absorbed it from her, he had taken command of it for his own. Likewise for the stitches growing near his heart: Physical Healing. Of course. He had wanted forever to be able to heal her as badly as Anna had, and the thought made her smile at the similarity in father and daughter. Sensing had been the third she felt growing, and Physical Healing had been the fourth under the surface. They would both reach full fruition here.
Elementally, she spied patches for True Shadow, Light, Dark, Air, Fire, and Nature. At the least, fully developed patches for them. What could be an Illusion Flower Element also existed, as she had thought. She found nothing she had not expected, and she could see the Light and Dark patches constantly moving over his soul, running into each other like two magnets pulling together only to release violent sparks and repel apart. And then it repeated.
It was actually harder to awaken someone who had never used majik than to help evolve someone with years of training and control. She calmly split open the stitches to release his true potential and then grabbed the Light and Dark elements to forcefully fuse them. They resisted, and she felt inside Rodi as his emotions rose up hot and wild and terribly volatile. That was all she had needed, and she yanked the two opposing forces back together where they released a wild surge of power and sparks.
The power spilled into the physical realm in a wild torrent. It flooded the room and shook the ceiling. It rattled the furniture and battered against the door. Some stones on the table exploded. New elemental majik began to fill Rodi as the Light/Dark patches disappeared to be replaced by one of Chaos, and Illusion fully formed. Something, some instinct, had him reaching out for Tasia as she had reached for him. Chaos met Chaos . . . and fused.
All the excess power battering inside her found a new outlet and surged into him. As it did, it changed him eternally. He tumbled over the precipice of evolution to become the wizard he had always been meant to be, and new stitches—fully developed ones—formed across all of his skills.
He felt Tasia slipping away and fiercely tied her to him with ribbons of Chaos majik. Are you sure, her voice breathed into his mind. It sounded musical and rich with her arcanistry. To stitch us together majikally will be . . . different. We will literally share the same breaths. It will not merely be that we cannot exist alone—whatever last breath one of us takes, the other will take at the same moment. You seek to fuse not just our souls, our Seeds, but our very cores, my love.
I will never let you go, Anastasia, and I want nothing more than to be bound to you in every fashion I can be bound. What do I have without you? You are my everything.
Tears filled her eyes against her control. He had always been her everything as well. We may also be able to save each other through this, and given you are a most terrible Caretaker who has nearly died to protect me, I will accept the risk for the gain in being able to not as easily lose you. She reached for him with matching ribbons of Chaos power and tied him to her as tightly as he had tied her to him. The moment she suddenly felt his breath enter her lungs and vice-versa, a new premonition arose. Their complete and utter fusion to levels beyond any other in existence would be . . . critical. Somehow.
Everything finally began to settle in the room around them as he came under control of his majik anew, and she pulled her power back in. She returned to normal and let out a little breath. She cut the ring open to dissolve it and then got carefully to her feet. She turned toward where Anna was sitting and held out a hand. Anna let go of the spirit and it floated back to Tasia. Their fingers meshed and the spirit disappeared as Tasia closed her eyes. When she opened her eyes again, one was caramel and the other was pale brown. She let out a little breath and turned to look at her husband. "Are you okay?"
"A little lightheaded." He shook his head but the dizziness didn't fade. "And did you know that your soul literally gives off music? I don't remember hearing it like this before."
She coughed. "I'm a Mystic. We do that. Thankfully it doesn't echo in the air unless something is affecting my soul. You're just stuck with a permanent background soundtrack because of how you tied us together. Sorry."
"Don't be. I sort of like it." He got to his feet and let out a breath as he studied her. He had always been conscious of her, had felt her close by emotionally and magically, but now he could all but feel the blood running in her veins. The sparks under his own skin felt . . . soothing now. Familiar. Comfortable. He held out his hand, and hers linked with it, and sparks flew between their skin as always but now . . . somehow more controlled. The irony of Chaos; the more chaotic you became, the more control you gained over your own power.
Tasia released him and reached for her hair to pull it forward over her shoulder. It had grown again and was once more to her ankles. However, the tingling in her scalp had gone away. Her hair should finally stay where it belonged. She certainly felt more stable than she ever had before in her life. "No more daily haircuts!"
"Yay!" Anna hopped to her feet and ran over to hug both her parents tightly. "You look really handsome now, Dad," she told Rodi. "I mean more than before. You match Mom." She giggled. "Uncle Logan's going to harass you more though."
He grinned and scooped her up and tossed her high in the air to make her laugh. "That's okay. I can kick his ass." He cuddled her close. "You did pretty good, baby. Calmly watching all that, and protecting our guest."
She put her head on his shoulder. "Why should I be afraid of either of you?" She looked at Tasia. "What is different now inside Dad as a wizard?"
"Perhaps anticlimactically, not much." Tasia smiled as she said it. "His primary Flower Element in both his Seed as well as his majik has changed from True Shadow to Chaos, meaning that he could likely not be re-Activated as a Ruler for Aria, but that's negligible. He still has True Shadow as an element, though, as part of his repertoire as a wizard. He traded Light/Dark to Chaos, but also still has Air, Fire, and Nature, and now he has gained Illusion. He has also added full Sensing and Physical Healing to his skillset. Having Chaos majik means he can do just about anything he did with Light and Dark, and he now has majikal skills and spells specifically related to the function of emotions. Also other spells not elementally dependent might be slightly different but otherwise the same. So he basically traded two elements for two others and gained two skills. Sort of normal for evolving to a wizard, despite the circumstances."
Anna cocked her head. "So when I eventually evolve, I'll gain skills and elements?"
"Plausibly," Rodi agreed on a smile. "You've already got Ice, Nature, and Fire, as well as both Healing, so there are plenty of options if you want them." He put her down and nudged her toward the door. "Now, go play with your brother for a while. Make sure he hasn't conjured more frogs."
"The chef is threatening to learn to make frog legs and make us eat them," Tasia agreed on a grimace. "So please do hurry. We'll be back soon. We have a quick Cultivator meeting we need to attend, so mind Renee." Renee was head of the household staff and often looked after the young prince and princess as needed.
"Okay!" Anna hurried down out of the tower.
Rodi glanced at his watch and winced. "We're almost late for the meeting actually."
"I know." Tasia tossed her hair back over her shoulder. "Honestly, I had almost forgotten we were having another meeting to discuss that premonition hovering in the air until a few seconds ago." She headed down the stairs and went right to their room. Both he and the dragons followed, and she was more aware of him following her than she had ever been before.
"What's your style?" he asked as he changed out of the more formal clothes he had been wearing. He too preferred the casual wear of Cultivator meetings.
"Style?" She looked up from pulling on a pair of denim shorts.
"Your hair." He smiled. "Siobhan wears lots of braids. Shana wears her hair completely loose. So what about you?"
"I'm a big believer in sticking with what works." She pulled on her top and then quickly brushed out her hair. She piled it up into its normal ponytail and added its normal gray bow. "I think maybe I always knew," she decided. "I had long ago settled on a style that would make long hair manageable, even before my hair was so long it needed to be managed."
He grinned. "It is perfect for you. Feminine and sassy and strong."
"That's what Beth said when she saw me do it the first time, and Aunt Desiree echoed it after meeting me. I trust my trained stylists more than anyone else, really. Now let's get going. No need for us to be late again."
They arrived right on time, luckily, and everyone else assembled within the next half hour. It took little time to establish that of all those with Sight, only Shana and Tasia had been privy to the terrible premonition of imminent catastrophe.
"I don't like it!" Siobhan said vehemently. "I never like it when a premonition skips the rest of us and goes right to the strongest here!" She had suffered being unable to help Shana weather her Sight more than once, and Tasia had proven no better. Siobhan loved Tasia nearly as much as Shana did, honestly. "That stupid unwritten rule that only those who can handle it will see things!"
Next to Tasia and Shana, Rocky had the most powerful Sight of anyone present, yet he all too often did not have the same visions they did. When something truly terrible was to occur, only the ones who could handle seeing it were the ones privy to it. Only the two Apexes who had shattered their own souls had the strength of will to endure seeing the worst of it all.
. . . coming.
Tasia's entire body jerked and she looked around sharply as she heard the voice in her mind. "Did you hear that?"
. . . Shanae . . .
The low sibilant hiss in her mind had Shana shooting to her feet as chills roughened her skin. It was a voice she had never forgotten for it had been buried deep in her blood like a nightmare. It was a voice she had prayed she would never hear again. "No . . ."
. . . Accursed . . . Apex . . . of Light . . .
The cup of tea in Siobhan's hands fell onto the ground and sent liquid flying. She froze with shock as she stared sightlessly across the room. Memories of her first war as a Defender in her second life, the one where she had willingly paid the price of her birth, burned themselves into her brain.
"Oh shit," LeAnn said under her breath. She grabbed Tasia's shoulders to give her a little shake, but her twin's eyes stared past her. "Tasi! Tasi!"
. . . coming. They're coming . . . !
Tasia's eyes went solidly gray and lightning flickered. "Chaos is crying." The lethal stillness of her mystical voice echoed eerily in the quiet room.
Time itself stopped for a moment. A rumbling began to shake the air, and the world itself screamed so loudly that Shana, Edgar, and LeAnn all clamped their hands over their ears in agony. Pain detonated inside Tyson's head, and he fell forward off the couch. Kellie and Uwe had to grab him before he hit the floor, and Sam hastily moved closer to help. "What's wrong?" he asked sharply. "Tyson!"
"There's . . . something . . ." Tyson swallowed hard before he lost his breakfast. "Dimension walls . . ."
He had, for whatever reason, an incredibly powerful connection to time-space that meant he often suffered if someone used Memory or Time Flower Element magic. Siobhan had managed to put a sort of preemptive healing on him that meant most minor pains went away the moment they happened, but they had discovered during the last war that anything pushing through dimension walls—something made of time-space power—could be pretty terrible for him.
A terrifying cracking noise split the air. Tyson went limp in Kellie and Uwe's grip, and his skin began to lose color. His heart began to slow under Kellie's hand. "No!" She grabbed for every bit of her healing magic as Raine and Siobhan scrambled across the room and offered their power to help. "You're not leaving me!" Kellie vowed fiercely. "What is going on?!"
. . . It's coming . . . ! Get out! Get out! Please, get out!
Tasia shook her head sharply. "We need to get out! Now! We have to get out of here! Aunt Virginia, we need to evacuate!"
Virginia did not ask why. She merely grabbed Tasia's hand, and they jointly accessed a skill only Lead Defenders had that allowed them to forcefully retreat an ally to a magically-enforced safety bunker hidden on Protea in a secret location. It had not been used in millennia, not since the fall of the original kingdoms. The two Leads retreated the entirety of the room, including themselves and the three dragons present, and they landed in the bunker. It felt cold, and dark, and Reagan swiftly lit the lamps using Illusion majik as it would not burn out nor risk burning anything else.
Tyson was not breathing. Rocky scrambled closer and covered Siobhan's hands. "Take my magic!" he snapped at his sister. "I have a small healing gift! Use it with yours. I'll do anything to save my Commander!"
Even for an Apex, yanking somebody back from the literal last breath before death was damned hard. Only Siobhan or Tasia could even do such a thing for their magic was infinite, but Siobhan had millennia of actual doctor training on top of her magic that gave her an edge over her fellow Apex. Her arcanery welled around her as she drew on Rocky, Raine, and Kellie alike, distributing the burden among them all. Everyone held their breath in terror, and only when Tyson took a sudden sharp breath did everyone else begin to breathe again, too.
His heart beat too slowly under Kellie's hand, but the color had returned to his face. "It's too dangerous for him to be connected the way he is!" She shook her head hard. "He's too sensitive! Please disconnect him!" she pleaded with Tasia. "I know you can do it!"
Tasia shook her head. "Actually, that is a duty for the Librarian to the Hall of Records." She looked at Racine. "A duty for Racine."
"Racine!" Siobhan looked up sharply. "When did that happen?"
"Just the other day. We were going to tell everyone today." Racine walked over and knelt next to Tyson. "No one noticed, not even Tyson, because Tasia perfectly controlled the transfer between Mom and me." She held a hand over Tyson's face and looked into him for where he had been connected to time-space. "I still don't know how or why he ended up so sensitive, to where he nearly got Sensing, but it is long overdue for removing." She neatly nipped the connection and removed all traces of it. "That's one issue down, but his soul is badly damaged.
"Let me see what I can do." Ryan's primary skill was Spiritual Healing with a very small Physical Healing one, and like all healers, he had limits based on his strength. He took one look at Tyson's soul and grimaced. "Someone conjure me a bucket." The unpleasant statement spoke volumes to the unpleasant state inside Tyson. Ryan took care of healing what he could, but, "He's been gutted in places. I can't touch those. We need Anna. She is far more powerful than I. However, Uncle Tyson will be fine for now until we can get him to her for advanced care."
"Bucket." Logan shoved one in front of him and then winced and helped support Ryan as the shorter male doubled over sick. The elder witch had become adept at supporting sick healers given that he had been supporting Tasia since childhood. The soul-siblings not only acted like twins most of the time, but even looked like twins. Same height, hair color, and eye color—though his eyes stayed caramel at all times. He also had a slightly lighter mocha toned skin. Like the other two soul-sibling sets, they even shared the same age for a short time every year, though unlike the other two, they were not actually brother and sister. At most, they were distant cousins sharing their lineage. "Tasi," he demanded, "what is going on?"
It's here.
Tasia lifted her hands and Illusion majik welled to show what happened outside the bunker. The sky had gone black as malevolent clouds began to gather and devour the sun and sky alike. The sun itself, for as long as it could be seen, was visibly being consumed in the same clouds. The air seemed to rip open over the top of the Protea Kingdom and necrotic power gathered at a focal point. Before anyone could say a word, the power impacted the palace . . . and decimated it.
The shockwave explosion ripped outward and laid waste to the city around the palace. It ripped on and continued to destroy everything in its path. No one could breathe as they watched the images, and Edgar put a hand on the dirt wall to try to look through Protea's eyes. All he got were glimpses of destruction and devastation. Not a single city had been spared. The entire world had been torn to pieces. Worse, they could not expect it to be only Protea; if it happened here, it had surely happened to the other worlds of their galaxy.
The shockwave suddenly smashed into the bunker and rattled it hard. It had been designed to stand up to any power, but this wave threatened its very integrity. Shana and Siobhan swiftly used their arcanery together and formed an impenetrable shield that reinforced the walls. The wave finally began to ebb, and they lowered the shield again.
Shana and Tasia looked at each other and then Shana pushed open the heavy door closing the bunker. They all emerged into a space far from Protea Kingdom, but still able to see it. It looked worse in person than in the illusory viewer. As an unsteady silence fell, Tasia's communications mask lit up with silver and green. She removed it from her bracelet and said, "Vincent?"
"Tasia!" The voice indeed belonged to Vincent Laurie, the Lead Defender for the team of Alurian Defenders who lived on the world of Aluria in another dimension. After the last war, he and Tasia had made sure to link their communications masks so they could easily get in touch in the case of trouble. "What just happened?! Our kingdoms were just blown apart, and the Leylines have been fractured! Aluria has been all but decimated!"
Tasia looked at Racine who nodded slowly in agreement. "The dimensional walls have been ripped apart," Tasia said bluntly. "Protea was just blasted too. I strongly suspect all the worlds have been devastated the same way."
"Not just the worlds," Gail said suddenly. Her voice was tight. "Silas and I can't feel the Realm of the Gods anymore. It's been entirely sealed off. It's like it isn't even there."
"Shit." Tasia pressed her fingers to her eyes as she felt the throbbing pain of a headache starting.
Shana took the mask from her. "Vince, it's Shana. Gather the other Alurian Defenders and anybody who 'needs to know' and bring them to Protea. We have one safe place that no evil could ever touch. We'll all meet there once we've calculated the damage to our worlds."
"We'll be there," Vincent promised.
Shana handed the mask back as it stopped glowing. "Everyone head for your kingdom. Establish the level of destruction and find our missing younger generation. When you're sure, come to the manor in the mountains where I, Rocky, Siobhan, and Edgar live. Nothing could touch that place."
"What's going on?" Kari asked quietly.
"I don't know yet," she said softly. She picked up Striker and Haeth, both who looked terribly shaken by the events. But then, Haeth had seen this before, and like the Elders, felt the echo of the past repeating painfully. Blessedly, Anira, given her young age, may not ever have to remember these new events. "But it's something that's been in the making for millions of years. If everything isn't perfectly in place, there won't be anything of this universe left to save."
©Stacy J. Garrett. Do not reprint or redistribute without permission.
