The Crystals of Cyndriarr cut through the demons in front of Clea like sparkling amber scythes held by a multitude of tiny, invisible Deaths. They left a scarlet sheen on the floor and little else to show that the demons had ever existed, let alone threatened her. The whirling crystals, more orange than yellow now, continued along their deadly path, straight at Umar.
Clea saw her mother’s eyes narrow, and then she threw back her head and laughed. As she did so, she waved her arms in a swirl of green fabric, and the crystals dissolved into nothingness.
“Is that the best you have to offer, ‘Sorceress Supreme’?” Umar taunted, her arched brows pulling down into an ugly sneer. “Why don’t you let a true sorceress show you how it’s done?”
She raised her arms up high on either side, the long emerald sleeves of her gown fluttering about her with every arcane motion.
“By the blackness of space,
And its lack of all form,
May the Maelstrom of Madness,
Engulf you now in its storm!”
At her words, a rotating blue and gray whorl appeared in front of her, hovering there for a moment. Then she made a shoving motion, and the spinning mass shot toward Clea.
The spell as her mother used it was a glorified version of the Maze of Madness, and Clea knew if the spiraling colors touched her, she would be trapped in a web of distortion that stretched her body out in painful and impossible ways. Stephen had told her the maze spell would eventually reduce its target into a “nameless, shapeless nihility”. The maelstrom version would do the same, but it would take longer and hurt more. Its effects were also, unlike those of the lesser spell, irreversible.
Clea summoned the Winds of Watoomb about herself like a shield, although she knew they would not hold the maelstrom at bay for long. But she had just seen Ardina, apparently acting as Umar’s puppet, headbutt Elizabeth hard in the face and send the Tsuut’ina woman flying. If she hadn’t been the Talisman and imbued with magical power even without her coronet, the blow might well have broken her neck. As it was, Elizabeth had fetched up against a pillar and wasn’t moving. Clea could only hope she was alright, because she had no way of helping the other sorceress at the moment.
Even worse than any potential injury was the fact that Elizabeth no longer wore the Coronet of Power. Instead, Ardina held it in her hands and was even now bearing it like a gift up the dais stairs to Clea’s mother, who stood waiting before the Azure Throne.
Clea could only assume that the Dreamqueen had told Umar about the coronet and its mystical powers. If her mother had command of both the coronet’s power and Ardina’s, there might well be no force in the multiverse that could oppose her.
They couldn’t let Ardina give Umar the coronet. They had to stop her. But Elizabeth was only just now beginning to stir after her impact with both the stone pillar and Ardina’s head. And Margali and Holly were leaning heavily on each other as they prepared for a new onslaught of demon guards, covered in so much blood that Clea couldn’t tell what was theirs and what wasn’t.
That left her. But she was too far away and too busy fending off Umar’s storm to do anything herself – which was no doubt exactly what Umar had intended when she’d sent the maelstrom spell against her.
Correction.
She couldn’t do anything physically. But one trick Stephen had ensured that she mastered as his disciple was astral projection. And since it was often more a question of mental discipline than magical ability, leaving one’s body via ectoplasmic form was not a skill Umar had ever cared to study herself. So she might not be expecting it from someone else.
It wasn’t the best plan Clea had ever devised, nor one with a particularly high chance of success. Plus, she risked having Umar’s spell break through her own and ravage her physical body before she could get back to it. But Ardina had only a few more steps to go before placing the coronet in Umar’s outstretched hand, so there was no time to come up with something better.
It was this, or nothing, and it was now, or never.
Clea closed her eyes and centered herself. She tried not to think about the winds losing strength around her as she withdrew her focus from them. They would hold long enough. They had to.
“In the name of the All-Seeing, in the name of the All-Spawning,
In the name of the All-Freeing, let my astral self be borning.”
Clea felt an immediate lightness as she emerged from the bondage of her physical form and rose above it. Floating over the chaos of battle both magic and mundane, and momentarily removed from it, Clea had to suppress the fleeting urge to do loop-the-loops to revel in the feeling of pure freedom.
But it would be a short-lived freedom and one that no one else would enjoy again if she didn’t do what she’d come here to do and stop her mother. With that goal firmly in mind, her astral form darted over to hover above Ardina. Then, with a mental apology to the golden woman, Clea dove into her body and mind and took possession of her.
Ardina fought her at first, of course; Clea had expected her to. But Ardina’s mind was not controlled by Umar, merely muzzled, and once she recognized Clea, she willingly relinquished dominion of her physical form. Clea settled into her shining skin and fully inhabited the other woman’s body.
Just in time to snatch the Coronet of Power away from her mother’s grasping fingers and quickly twist to hurl it, frisbee-like, toward Elizabeth with a shouted, “Catch!”
Then she turned back to Umar and smiled. And as recognition dawned on Umar’s face, Clea took a page from Elizabeth’s book and used all Ardina’s strength to punch her mother full in the face.
The force of Clea-Ardina’s blow was so strong that Umar reeled backward into the Azure Throne, overbalancing it. Both goddess and throne tumbled backward off the dais to land with an echoing crash against the flagstones below.
Clea spoke into the shocked silence that followed as Umar’s spells failed and her soldiers hesitated.
“No, Mother. That is how it’s done.”