Together, I thought, as I pushed myself to my feet. If it had to be a question of force, then we had to leverage our own strengths. We were multiple mages, and we could bear down on the vulnerability of one – never mind that we didn’t even know if Agatha had any weak spots.
“We have to try,” Vanitas said in my mind. “We don’t just surrender.”
He zinged from out of the darkness, flying like a cross made out of green and gold towards Agatha Black. The sound of Vanitas slicing through the air was just the battlecry we needed. Bolts of energy flew across the Boneyard, colliding into the invisible bubble of force around Agatha. The line of her mouth was thin, flat. She looked disapproving. Almost bored.
But I did find a glimmer of emotion in her face, once – something like fear, when spells from several different mages happened to strike all at once. The air around her gleamed, exposing her protective sphere for a fraction of a second. I thought I caught a glimpse of little cracks, tiny fractures. Maybe, with enough power, we could break through.
And maybe Gil was going to be our chance. Fully transformed into a werewolf, he launched himself at Agatha. And just as she’d deflected Vanitas, all the lioness had to do was wave her hand. It was as if Gil had been struck in the jaw by a hammer. He flew off his feet, then fell heavily to the floor, skidding across it, his furred body twitching, then going still.
“No,” Prudence screamed, disengaging from the fight and rushing to his side. “No, no. This wasn’t supposed to happen.” From where I stood, I could see her tears. Something in my chest twisted.
She was right. This wasn’t supposed to happen. None of this was. But we, all of us, had to work with what we were given, whether they were gifts or curses. Even the Great Beasts themselves knew. Shunned by humanity, Tiamat said, and shunned by the gods. Still they embraced their roles as the enders of the world, as the arbiters of the apocalypse.
My insides burned. Here was a true catalyst for the end times, a woman who bore the power of the Eldest themselves, yet not even one of the Great Beasts would stoop to help us. Tiamat’s voice rang clearly in my mind, how she said that humanity could never hope to wield true fire the way she could, as both goddess and dragon – the sort of flame that could both create and destroy.
But maybe I could wield a different kind of fire.
Agatha Black held her ground under the endless hail of magic. We were going to exhaust our arcane essence eventually. I had to try something. Anything. I reached out to tap into the Dark Room’s powers. From inside the chamber, I could sense its denizens stirring, lifting their heads as they heard my summons.
Perfect. With Agatha distracted, I had a chance. Still, something felt different. Something in my chest burned, where once I only felt the manifestations of fire in the palms of my hands, between my fingers, or dancing along my skin. This time, it was in my heart.
I mumbled a silent apology to my friends as I sank into my own shadow, followed by a silent promise to return. But instantly I felt the difference in the quality of the Dark Room’s air. It was meant to be thin, and cold. Now it was warm, close enough to being uncomfortably hot, and most of all, stifling.
As I opened my eyes to the contents of the Dark Room, I saw why. It was on fire.
Chapter 31
The flames licked at the tips of my fingers, the way that the shapes lurking within the shadows once would, like little beasts, little creatures yearning for my approval, my attention. The fires burned hotter, brighter, but the longer I spent standing there, the more I became accustomed to their heat. I breathed in, expecting the air to be thinner, consumed by the flames, but I only felt empowered. Stronger.
“This is impossible,” I murmured, so fascinated by the spectacle that I only then noticed I was smiling. For once I didn’t sprint through the Dark Room – now gone brilliant and bright with heat – and I ran my fingers across the dancing edges of the flames as I walked. The fire didn’t burn me. It loved me. In voices that crackled with ancient wisdom, with the white hot secrets of both creation and destruction, from smith to sword, it told me of its affection. The darkness did the same, curling wisps of thick, smoky night around my ankles, stroking at my wrists with the touch of an old friend, of a lover.
I raised my hand, and the flames licked higher. I raised my other hand, and the fires followed. I laughed at the simplicity of it all, the liberating, sudden knowledge that in the Dark Room, these strange, new fires would heed my call. In the Dark Room, the seat of my power, I could make miracles happen. This fire was different. I could feel it raging inside me, within my chest, inside my very soul. I hated to admit it, but in some ways, Agatha was right. I knew then that I had to repay her for her advice, for her wisdom. The Dark would always be home to me, where I would be at the height of my arcane strength. All I needed to do was bring these flames out into reality.
This wasn’t exactly what Bastion had taught me – or maybe it was. By sheathing his magical fire in bubbles of pure force, he’d managed to build roaring infernos within tiny spaces, crafting tiny, powerful grenades. Like a storm in a bottle, like lightning in a jar. The Dark Room was the vessel to contain the magic, and I could let the fires build and dance and grow, as tall as I wanted, as hot as I liked, until I could take it no more, until I had no other choice but to open the door and unleash the blasting furnace of both flame and shadow.
I stood in place, bathing in the conflagration, turning my head and gaining a sense for where I stood relative to reality, where Agatha Black might be positioned within the real world. I stepped to that place within the Dark Room, finding the pinpoint of light I would need to follow to leave the chamber, to confront Agatha once more. As I walked, both the fires and the darkness followed, twisting and snaking at my feet, at my limbs, running desperate, hungry wisps and tendrils at my skin.
“Come,” I said to them, with the gentle promise of a lover. “Follow.”
We stepped closer to the light, my children and I, and I stood at the threshold. I could feel the blaze tickling the ends of my hair, little sparks running across my skin. Behind me the inferno surged, the small voices of so many tiny flames gathered into a great chorus, into something t
hat sounded very much like a long, building, terrible bellow. Tiamat could keep her fire. I had a fire of my own.
I opened the Dark Room’s door. The only thing louder than the roar of fire was my laughter. Flames spiraled out of the Dark Room in one massive, ecstatic rush, framed by spines and blades of shadow that curved as cruel and as sharp as fangs. To anyone else, it must have seemed like the maw of a great black dragon, one shaped from darkness.
And I stood at the heart of it, my body the vessel, chamber, and conduit for the swirling forces of shadow and flame, the throat of the dragon. I didn’t need a sword of shadow if I could channel something imbued with this much rage, this much destruction. Tiamat would never know, but she gave me a gift. This was true terror. This was my Nightmare.
Somewhere within the torrent of fire and fear was a sound like glass shattering. Agatha Black’s force field was down. The next thing I heard was her screaming.
The swell of power humming through my body dispersed with the last of the fires and shadows. The amulet around my neck – my mother’s amulet – had stayed cool throughout. Perhaps it approved, or perhaps what was left of its enchantment had truly faded. Agatha was on her knees, her skin and hair charred and burned, but it wasn’t a time for triumph. She glared at me from out of her ruined skull, her teeth bared in fury. Her lips were gone, but I could tell she was smiling.
Agatha’s body was reconstituting itself, muscle knitting and reforming over her skeleton, new, unburnt skin creeping across her exposed flesh. I watched in horror as she put herself back together again, as the mane of proud gray hair grew out of her scalp, as those same gray eyes pierced me with their anger.
She lifted a finger at me, and spoke a single word.
“Break.”
I screamed in agony. My bones felt as if they were all moving in opposite directions, stretching away from the center of my body, like my skeleton was fighting to free itself of my skin. The numb, dull ache of bone turned into searing, splitting pain as a series of cracks and pops told me what was happening to my insides.