Chapter Seventeen: Unison

Willia.

Willia was alive.

Tacenda tried to rush into the room to embrace her sister, but Davriel seized her by the shoulder, his grip strong and firm. And...something was wrong with Willia. The way she glowed, the power Tacenda felt emanating from her. She wasn’t a geist.

She...she was the one controlling them.

“Willia?” Tacenda pled. “What have you done?”

Willia stood up, wearing her white burial dress. “They put me down here, you know. Guarding the stone is one of the duties they give the new acolytes. I made them give me duty during the days, because I didn’t want to be down in this place of death when the pure darkness took me. You know that darkness, don’t you, Tacenda?”

Willia stared into the stone’s shifting light. “It spoke to me,” she whispered. “Told me of power that I held, that we held. Power to stop the darkness. I just had to make it whole. Find the other pieces scattered through the people of the Approaches. Each one with a little sliver...”

That sweet voice was so familiar. And yet, the edge to it—the rawness—was so terribly wrong. “Willia,” Tacenda whispered. “What did you do to our parents?”

Willia finally looked up at her. And she could see. It was night, but she could see? For the first time in her life, Tacenda looked into her sister’s eyes and Willia looked back.

“I didn’t mean to take them, Tacenda,” Willia said. “They were carrying offerings to the Bog—what I thought was a false god. I yelled, and argued, but I didn’t mean to kill them. But the power I’d taken from the stone, it combined with my power, and cried out for more. In the end, I let it loose on them, and...and it just happened.”

“You killed them.”

“Not killed. Reclaimed.” Willia stepped forward, the Seelenstone’s shifting colors reflected in her eyes. “At first, I thought the voice in the Seelenstone was her, you know. The Angel? I thought she was the one whispering to me. I didn’t know then that she was already dead.”

Crunchgnar slipped carefully into the room. Davriel kept hold of Tacenda, blocking the way out of the small chamber, Miss Highwater standing just behind him. Tacenda’s worry spiked as she noted Crunchgnar easing his sword from its sheath.

“No!” Tacenda said. “Stop. Willia, Lord Cane can restore the souls to their bodies if you release them. It’s going to be all right. We can fix this.”

“You assume I want to.” Willia eyed Crunchgnar, then tipped the Seelenstone off its pedestal, sending it to the ground, where it smashed apart. “I don’t have to hide from the darkness any more, Tacenda. I don’t have to cower behind your song.” She raised her hands, and a deep, powerful glow began to rise within her. “It is time that the darkness feared me.”

§

Davriel had heard enough. He struck, piercing the young woman’s mind, digging for her talent. Perhaps she was new enough to her powers that he could reach inside, pluck the Entity she held, and—

Davriel slammed into something. An impossible force, even more vast than what he’d found in Tacenda.

Willia rebuffed Davriel with an almost indifferent stroke. He was forced back into his own mind with a grunt, a terrible headache stabbing him right behind his eyes. And then, Willia released a column of green-white energy, so bright it painted the walls of the room iridescent.

NO!

Davriel summoned the remnants of the power he’d taken from Tacenda—the protection ward. Pain split his head as he used it, raising the power like a shield. The glowing green barrier he created blocked Willia’s incredible bolt of light, forming a bubble of safety in which Davriel sheltered the surprised Miss Highwater.

Crunchgnar, however, was vaporized in the blink of an eye. The demon’s sword—which he’d been raising to strike at Willia—clanged to the floor. Tacenda screamed and fell to her knees, but this power was like a condensed, raw version of her Warding Song. It wouldn’t harm a human like her.

Bits of ash from Crunchgnar’s corpse blew around Davriel, who grunted, holding his protective ward firm. The Warding Light beat against his shield like a physical force, spraying around him like a river, filling the corridor behind him. Only the little space just behind him was safe from it.

“Hellfire!” Miss Highwater said, pulling against him as her finger touched the flow of light and was burned. “Dav?”

“I believe,” he said with effort, “I may have misjudged our opponent’s strength.” He stumbled beneath the force of the warding light. His shield was made of the same power, but was far, far weaker.

Here we are at last, the Entity said in his mind, sounding satisfied. The fight as I promised you. Here, we prove ourselves, and claim a second strength as our own.

Davriel grunted, sweat streaming down the sides of his face as he squeezed every ounce of strength from the shielding ward. It wasn’t going to be enough; he could see that easily.

Use me, the Entity said. Use me now. As you did once before.

No! Davriel thought.

Why? Why do you resist? This is your moment! Seize it!

Davriel turned, with effort, to regard Miss Highwater. She huddled close to him as his magical shield frayed. The two of them stood in the doorway into the room, the corridor behind them completely flooded with light. There was nowhere for her to run. If he let the shield fall, she’d be vaporized.

“I still have the dismissal spell,” he whispered to her. “A little of it. It should work on you, as a creature of magic.”

“I...” She looked at his green shield of force, which was crumbling at the edges.

“You should re-form, like the geists,” Davriel said. “The dismissal was a temporary effect for them.” He looked into her deep red eyes, sweat dripping down his face. “It’s all I have.”

She nodded. “Do it.”

He prepared the spell, the power gathering, the room tinting blue as his eyes flooded with it.

Miss Highwater grabbed his shirt just beneath the collar, then pulled her face up close to his. “Don’t you die, Davriel Cane,” she whispered. “I’m not done with you yet.”

He smiled, then grunted again beneath the force. “Remember. I wanted. To stay. Inside for the evening.”

He used the dismissal spell. A piece of him cracked as her grey skin melted away to black smoke, her ledger dropping to the ground as she vanished.

Davriel screamed as his ward shattered, then light washed over him. It blinded him, tugged faintly at his soul like a child pulling on his cloak. But it didn’t harm him.

He was, even still, human.

The light finally faded, but left him blind. Davriel stumbled to his feet, turning, blinking and trying to recover his vision. Seeing only white, he activated his weapon-summoning spell, to at least have a sword.

The object that formed in his hand, however, was of an awkward wooden shape. That blasted viol again. Hellfire. Why did the magic consider it a weapon?

Willia didn’t attack him in his moment of weakness, though he heard her whispering. Orders? Distant whispers sounded in the catacomb halls, echoing her voice.

She was bringing those geists down for him. As proven with the priests, they could claim souls of outsiders as easily as they did Approachers. With the Entity powering such abilities, how long would it be before this entire plane was occupied with nothing more than terrible green spirits whispering to one another?

You will never defeat another Entity on your own, the Entity said inside his mind. She will destroy you. Unless you destroy her first and take the power for yourself.

A hand grasped Davriel’s.

“This way,” Tacenda said. In the moment, he’d almost forgotten her. The young woman towed him away from the room, and—still blinded by the light—he turned and fled with her.