KALEEN
WHO KNOWS HOW LONG I REMAINED IN THAT DARKNESS? TIME MEANT nothing. My Seership trailed through the void, dangling from my hand, throbbing painfully against my skin. It was Agony. Watching the shadow-infested world was horrendous. Stars trailed around me, comets plummeting towards the horrific things I saw unfolding far below. Was it my doing? Had I been called to save them from myself? Or from themselves; from their own Dark Emotions?
How could I ever face any of them again, knowing now what I was?
The irony of it all. I had been given the Sacra Band, not wanting it in the first place, to rescue—to cleanse the world, to be more accurate. And in the end, it had destroyed me. It had fused my soul with the Kaleen of the past.
Was Coerce right? Was I just nothing more than a pawn in the Guides' plans?
But I chose this, I had to remind myself, my voice of reason just a small whisper in the great expanse of nothingness. I wanted to know how to use the Seer's key. I taught myself to Feel.
I actually believed I could save them.
The realization was devastating, as if every fiber in my being was being torn apart. I hefted up my Seership, grasping it with both hands because it felt like it had been turned to lead. The surface was slick with tears and droplets of blood. Everything I had endured to weave it, to become the Second Seer. Everything I had endured to learn how to Feel with the Sacra Band. How to cleanse.
All for nothing.
Feeling lost, I looked to the struggling world. With alarm, I Saw that Calladon was crumbling. Looking closer Showed me glimpses of those who were familiar to me, scattered through Calladon, battling. Fighting against those who had given in to their Darkness. Their Hopelessness.
And in Callorah, I Saw those I cared for more than life itself shining like beacons amid the Dark.
"I've failed you," I whispered, sinking to my knees. "I'm the one who has ruined you."
I felt so lost.
I needed the Guides.
"Snap out of it, won't you?"
My Seership throbbed as I whirled around, finding that the Guides stood before me alongside the Seer. The Dark coiled around them, almost shrinking from the glow surrounding them. They seemed fuzzy around the edges, like Jan did mid-way through shifting. Like they couldn't physically be here.
"Out of what?" I demanded, bewildered, beyond livid. My entire body shook. "You've known this all along. You know this is something I can't just snap myself out of!" I felt Anger flaring through me, dangerous and unwieldy. "How else would I react? I am Coerce!” I spun around, jutting a finger towards the struggling world. "I've destroyed them all! And you..." I nearly let out a sob. "You let me."
"You called us here, Kal," the Seer said softly, her eyes empathizing. "Which means you are willing to listen to what we have to say. Things are and are not as Coerce has told you."
"Meaning?"
"Everyone who has ever been born faces the dilemma of choosing what they become." Elyus's eyes were bright with an internal fire. "You are not facing anything original. Evil is the one part of a choice, good is the other. The only true battle out there in the world is facing yourself."
"Well, I failed miserably."
The First Guide stepped towards me, his red robes skimming below him. He stopped before me, his red eyes thoughtful. "Answer a few questions for me, will you? What did you learn from Coerce?"
They knew all of this already. Why was he asking?
"She said that I am her soul's half. That we were both originally the first Kaleen, the Nalii who you"—I nodded at the First Seer—"gave the Sacra Band to. Souls fused within souls."
"Coerce had no soul to begin with," Elyus corrected. "She likes to think she had that precious part of being to begin with, but she didn't. When Kaleen gave herself to the Dark, it claimed her soul as itself. And you, the pure half of that soul, were dispelled and entrapped into the Seer's key."
I nodded. I already knew this.
Elyus regarded me levelly. "My dear, did you just hear a word I said?"
I wrinkled my brow at him, confused. "Yes."
Now the Third Guide drew closer, garbed in blue, his eyes twinkling merrily. Such an amazing feat while being surrounded by Dark. "Tell us what you know of the Sacra Band."
"It purifies." I lifted a hand distractedly, nearly touching a flaming star as it flew by. "It responds to my will. I think that's more because of me than why it was actually created. And the markings on its surface allow me to move beyond Veils, entering other worlds."
"The Sacra Band was not originally made to purify the corrupted," the Third Guide told me. "It is because of your will that it is able to do so."
Well, now I was really lost. "Didn't I just say that?"
"Beloved one." He gave me a teasing smile. "Are you listening to me?"
Scrubbing my face with my hands tiredly, I thought, Sheesh, and here I had thought Elyus was difficult.
"You know..." Elyus drew my attention, and I found he was leaning against his walking stick, white robes glowing slightly, looking towards the world. "It's not quite as bright as I remember."
"Perhaps because it's being smothered in shadows?" I offered, rather grumpily.
He looked at me across the expanse of space we resided in. "I think you should bring Light. Tell me about your Seership."
"What's left to say?" I shrugged, looking to the thing. Feeling guilty about dragging it around the nothingness, I draped it over my shoulders. "It weaves its threads with every Emotion I come to understand. I can Feel what others are feeling. It can ward off Dark Emotions."
Elyus nodded. "Darkness cannot withstand against Light. Those Emotions that weave your Seership are Light. If they are stronger than the Dark, shadows will vanish."
I folded my arms. "Are you going to ask if I'm listening to you again?"
He raised one fuzzy eyebrow. "Well? Are you?"
"You have a Seership," I said to Iryn. "What has he said that I haven't caught yet?"
"My Light is fading," she replied. A vibrant green showed through the swirls within her eyes. "Yours is brightening."
Blowing out my breath in frustration, I looked to Elyus. "I don't have a clue what you—" I paused, then lifted a hand to point. "Why are there stars here, in Coerce's mind?" Why hadn't I questioned that before?
A smile slowly curled his mouth, growing until he was grinning widely. "Why indeed?"
My Seership pulsed with my heartbeat.
"We're surrounded by Dark. And Coerce is full of Dark. Her mind would be too. There's nothing here. No mind-song. Nothing. But..." A star zipped by, and I watched it go. "My mind, on the other hand..."
My Seership glowed.
"This Dark is Black Emotions," I realized, feeling my eyes fly wide. "And these stars—they're Light Emotions. They're from my mind."
Elyus looked ridiculously happy, as if he had just been offered a duplicate of Nate and Joxie's hats.
I pulled off my hastily draped Seership, shaking it out. It thrummed with power, golden markings shimmering along its length. I hadn't taken notice before, always thinking of it as a scrap of fabric I would tie around my waist or shoulders, but it was now a robe. Unfinished at its hems with the star-like light that marked its surface, but still a robe. I looked to the world, suffocating underneath shadows.
"My Seership has the Light.” My pulse was racing madly. "My Sacra Band purifies because I will it to—and my Seership has the Light it needs to cleanse the Dark!"
I pulled on my Seership, letting it fall around me.
Something exploded through my veins, so forcefully I burned with Light as the Guides did; a pure, untainted white fire.
Hope.
"It doesn't matter that Coerce and I are halves of the same whole. It's just as you said, Elyus—everyone faces themselves someday. You just..." I looked to my hands, where swirling white flames danced across my skin. "You just have to make the Choice between Light and Dark."
"Some choose not to fight against the Dark," Elyus said, looking to the world sadly.
"Why would someone make that decision?" I shook my head. "If you choose evil, you're a slave like Coerce. If you choose good, you're..."
Elyus leaned on his walking stick. "A defender."
"A defender of what?"
"Now, really." The Third Guide waggled his eyebrows at me. "You don't honestly think that countless worlds could form itself, birth life, and not have a meaning for its existence?"
"What gives it purpose?"
"We do. We all do," Elyus declared solemnly. More seriously than I had ever thought him capable of. Was this the same guy who stomped around, swinging his stick, proclaiming dirt was made for walking on?
"We choose." Irene's emerald eyes burned as her Seership glowed. "Purpose comes from facing ourselves and deciding what we will make of our souls. Each one of us has Light and Dark. Each one of us must decide. This is the Choice that defines every soul, which Coerce is trying to take away. Without Choice, there are no outcomes, and consequences are what build eternity."
The Guides put a hand on either of my shoulders and my head.
"You have made your Choice. Now you bear the consequences," they said together.
Looking to the dying world, I whispered, "I choose to save them."
"Then you are free of this Dark," Elyus stated calmly. The Guides and the First Seer rushed towards the world, one moment themselves, the next resembling falling stars. They blazed away in a brilliancy that forced me to shield my eyes.
Then I was back to being alone in Coerce's mind.
I looked to the ravaged world. I willed the flames around me, the Light that carried my Seership's Emotions, towards the void.
The Dark buckled like a shockwave. Writhing. As if I had hit a wall of glass, fragments laced through the shadows, glittering like a candle. Indomitable, I wove those flames under and over and through those shadows, dissolving them. Letting the white fire around my fist fill my veins.
My veins that held blue human blood instead of red Naliian blood, but that was all that mattered.