Astarte's Wrath (Kythan Guardians 0.50)

I jump off the side of the barge before it’s fully docked. Storm past the colonnades and sphinx, my hands and arms snapping white-blue currents. They reach toward the limestone, marring the stone with black, smoldering veins.

Bracing my light-pulsing hands against the doors, I blast out my power. They fly open and off their hinges and clatter to the ground. The boom sounds through the palace. I hope Fadil hears it. I hope he knows I’m coming.

I want him to quake with fear.

I run, darting through the corridors with my Charge fully open. Phoenix follows close behind, but is wise enough not to try and stop me. When I reach the sorcerer’s chamber, I push down the handle. Locked. Oh, you foolish little man. I launch my foot into the door and it splinters open.

My gaze latches on to Fadil.

He turns around to face me, the high window to his back. “Guardian Astarte.” He says my name like he’s surprised I’m here. Like there’s no reason why he shouldn’t be. Why he’s unrestrained and wanders freely while all Council and those close to the late ruler are imprisoned.

Words would be wasted on this leach of a man. I raise my hands and send a snaking current of Charge into his stomach. He cries out as the blow takes him to the ground, his white head cracking against the window.

“You’re mistaken!” he pleads. “Octavian only allows me to roam free because—”

“Quiet,” I order, low and deep. The bulbous knob in his throat bobs up as he swallows. “You’re more powerful than you’ve lead us to believe. It was you who conspired with Octavian to create the Leymak. You who deceived your queen and Egypt. And now, you’re going to hand your power over to me.”

His gray eyebrows pull together. “I will not.” Fear laces his pale eyes, and I smile. It must be a fearful sight, because he backs farther against the window.

I reach down and jerk him up by his robe, then press his back to the glass. It cracks, webbing with the pressure. “Do it. Or die, sorcerer.”

He shakes his head. “Please.” He glances over his shoulder. “I’ll wither and become nothing—”

A scream unleashes from my mouth, and I smash his back into the shards of glass. Blood drips on to his blue robe. I place my palm on the fragmenting glass and help it along, widening the shattered hole. The wind stirs Fadil’s thin hair.

“Yes, guardian.” He nods shakily. “I’ll bestow my power.”

I release him. He drops to the floor with a grunt.

A hand clasps my shoulder and I freeze. “Don’t do this, Star. I won’t lose you to this. I’ll fight you if I—”

He’s silenced as I thrust out my field of Charge. Phoenix groans as he’s thrown into the corner. A twinge of guilt pulls at my stomach, but I shut it down quickly. “Power. Now, Fadil.”

Shakily, he rises to his feet and presses his palms to my temples, his rigid fingers curling around the crown of my head. I keep my gaze hard on him, ready to strike him down if he attempts to harm me. Pressure followed by a stabbing pain builds against my skull. Within minutes his murmured chant fades away, and my body begins to hum—to vibrate in sync with the ache.

I tremble and gasp. My head fills with too much at once—visions and knowledge too great to process—and I collapse to my knees, swaying. It feels as if hours pass before I can open my eyes, scared I’ve left this realm and have entered some dimension of Hades.

Only Fadil’s voice centers me. “One such as you cannot house the ultimate power,” he says, bitter mockery in his tone. “Kill me now if you must. Without my power, I’m already dead.” He looks down at his cracked and flaking hands. Then his pale, colorless eyes meet mine. “But you won’t be long behind me, slave.”

My body bounds up with ease, as if I simply think of standing and float to my feet—weightless yet embodied with the burden of power. I grab his stick of a neck and squeeze. “What have you done?”

Through my grip, he rasps, “What you asked.” I release him and admire the luminescent white blaze of my skin. Unlike the Leymak, this pure—no silver tinge—radiant. Fadil coughs. “I simply merged what was once whole. An ultimate power achieved by the joining of the two races’ power.” And I know what he speaks is truth. He doesn’t have to continue, because I already understand—the power within me whispers it.

It’s why the sorcerers instructed the Council only to place Kythan of the same race together for bonding. The combined power of the earth with the power of the sky—Flame and Charge, is—

“A violation of the magics,” Fadil finishes my thought. “No slave should wield that much power. It’s only intended for the sorcerers.” His lips spread into a crooked sneer.

“And it’s also the way you’ve kept us in binds,” I say, anger rising in my voice. “No one—not the sorcerers or the pharaohs—could command that powerful a race.”

He shrugs. “Regardless, that time is over. Seems the gods have decided the end of the magics is now.” He looks past the shattered glass of the window to the sky. “My power, the last of the ancients, will die with you—a slave. The only satisfaction that sad fact brings me is knowing you won’t be able to wield it for long before it claims you.”

“So be it.” I backhand the smug sorcerer and he crashes into the wall. “I don’t need long.”

Before I start toward the door, I glimpse a sleeping Phoenix in the corner. A sliver of shame creeps in. But I force it away as my body pulses with power and the need to destroy.

Octavian’s legions swarm the streets of Alexandria, fighting the very allies that helped them win the war just days before. The irony of this causes a small smile to curl on my lips, and I consider leaving them to destroy each other.

Only the wrongness of all that has been done demands justice. They deserve worse than a clean death at the end of a sword, or the absolute finality of burning to ash. No. They’ve earned slow and painful torture before they’re allowed to leave this plane.