57: THE RITUAL GONE WRONG

(Kihrin’s memories)

The sunlight is shining through the university great hall windows. The colors are wrong, though, washed out, faded. All the hues have been leached away, leaving only dull grays. The room should smell like warm leather and oranges, but even that smell has been purged, until all I have left is the knowledge of what should be, and how wrong the dull, numb air feels. From edges of my vision, I see reality itself flake off, peel away, the universe ending just outside my memory of this hall.

But like being trapped in a dream, I’m powerless to stop events. I feel Vol Karoth, but this doesn’t feel like his condensed storm of hatred, despair, and hunger. This feels like someone reading from a sheet of paper, retelling a story. A rote recitation of a memorized script.

The tables and chairs have been pushed to the side, blockades set up down the hall to keep students from intruding at the wrong moment. In fact, the entire building has been emptied, faculty and students both given the day off. A wrong intrusion at the wrong moment will be worse than fatal.

I trace the pattern on the ground, bemused as I study the sigils. I don’t quite follow all the markings, and it has been a while—centuries—since I last stood in a similar circle. It feels like looking at advanced mathematical formula before I’ve taken the right class. I almost understand it. Enough to recognize the calls to power, the binding to concepts, the same steps that took eight normal people and turned us into channels for something primal. Archetypes. This isn’t the same ritual, however. This one will do something more.

If we’re lucky, it’ll be enough to finally defeat the demons.

I find myself wishing I could study my brother’s notes. See exactly what he’s trying to do. But that would mean admitting I’m interested and undo millennia’s work. I’ve spent an eon pretending to be the pretty, stupid brother for the sake of Rev’arric’s vanity.

I love my brother, but dear stars, is he ever insecure.

“You’re not doing this by yourself, are you? Where’s that no-good brother of yours?” I smile at the indignant tone in Argas’s voice. Then again, he’s never gotten along with Rev’arric. Usually, Argas keeps his disdain better hidden.

He’s not alone. The rest of the my companions have arrived as well. Taja steps forward and gives me a quick hug, ruffling my hair. “Stop that,” I mutter to her, which only makes her grin impishly. She obeys my orders on the battlefield and absolutely nowhere else.

“Argas has a point, though,” Tya says. “Where is Rev’arric?” Her voice catches at the end of Rev, but she covers smoothly. Only someone who knows her well would realize she almost called my brother by his personal name.

Which means we all caught the slip. We may have started off as strangers, but we’ve been together for so long, we’re better and worse than blood kin now. We love and hate each other, can hurt each other as only family and loved ones ever can. We try to keep all manner of secrets from each other and mostly fail. Everyone knows about Tya and Rev’arric, for example, and politely ignores how much Rol’amar looks like his father.

“He’s preparing the others,” I say. “They’ll all be back in a moment.”

Galava raises her head from where she’s nestled against Ompher’s side. “Where’s everyone else, though? I expected to see Valathea.”

“Valathea was called away by a last-minute Assembly meeting,” Rev’arric says as he enters the room, with everyone else following. He looks tired, with drawn circles under his eyes. “She asked for this to be postponed, but it’s quite impossible. And the rest of you must leave as well.”

Thaena straightens. “What? Why?”

Khored crosses his arms over his chest and glares.

Rev’arric rolls his eyes toward the heavens. “Would you lot kindly consider the possibility your presence just possibly might affect what we’re trying to do? There is an issue of sympathetic dissonance. Haven’t you been paying attention at all?”

Khored’s brother, Morios, snorts from behind Rev’arric. “We’ve got this handled. Go fight some demons or something.”

Argas opens his mouth and starts to say something I know I’ll regret. Argas is utterly loyal on the battlefield—I can and have entrusted him with my life—but in social situations? Hopeless. It doesn’t help that my brother thinks Argas is an idiot and has never shied from expressing that opinion. They’re not friends.

“It’s fine,” I say quickly. “We’ll let you know as soon as the ritual’s finished. You can bask in my radiance when this is over.” That earns me the expected groans and rude gestures, because that particular joke has yet to grow old. At least not for me.

I find Aeyan’arric in the crowd behind her uncle and wink at her, but frown when she doesn’t smile back. She looks tense, anxious. I remind myself what we’re about to do is not without risk, and my daughter’s smart enough to know it. Which reminds me of the other person who should be here and isn’t.

Even with an emergency Assembly meeting, C’indrol would be here. This is their district, after all, and as a Preceptor, their right. Unfortunately, I can’t—don’t dare—ask why they’re absent. Because C’indrol and I are a secret we have managed to keep. Even from the rest of the Guardians, especially from my brother. Taja suspects but doesn’t care. Rev’arric would care a great deal.

Aeyan’arric doesn’t even know. She thinks C’indrol’s nothing more than an old family friend.

Ompher chuckles in a way that only shakes the ground a little. “Fine, fine. We’ll go fight some demons or something.” He points to his son, Baelosh. “Be good.”

Baelosh gives his father a terse nod and a tight-lipped smile. He seems tense too.

I start to wonder if Revas has told them something I don’t know. Is this ritual riskier than my brother has let on? I realize it’s the first time we’ve tried this, but even so …

“Still want to be here,” Argas grumbles, “in case something goes wrong.”

“And yet you’ll still leave,” Rev’arric says.

“Looks like we’re not getting our way.” Khored turns to go.

“No one is,” Taja says softly. “Not today.” She gives me a sad look I feel in my souls just before she vanishes. Dread sweeps through me, matching the bitterness I suddenly taste in my throat.

Argas makes a face. “I hate it when she does that. Makes it sound like she can see the future. I swear she does it to just mess with me.”

I know it’s a sore point. A few of Taja’s jokes have gone the wrong way over the years. Like the time she convinced Argas she could see the future, for instance.

Galava takes Argas’s arm. “There now, it’s fine. You know she’s always like that.” She turns back to us. “We’ll see you all later.” They vanish. The rest leave a second later.

I walk up to my brother. “What aren’t you telling me?”

His eyes widen. “I’ve no idea what you mean.”

I grab his arm and pull him toward me. “I mean, what aren’t you telling me? Spit it out, or I walk.”

He stares flatly at me for tense seconds, then sighs and surreptitiously glances around. “Valathea isn’t here,” he whispers, “because she thinks the ritual is happening two days from now. She’s going to revoke my clearance tomorrow. She’s shutting the project down.”

“What?” The news is so unexpected, I can only stare. “Why?”

“She doesn’t believe my findings. She wants her own people to look over my notes, analyze what I’m doing, debate it in the damn Assembly like a new trade agreement. It’ll take years.” Rev’arric visibly grinds his teeth. “As if we have all the time in the world.” My brother gives me a wary glance. “What we’re doing is technically not illegal—if we do it today. If we do it now. Or else—” He shrugs.

So that’s why C’indrol isn’t here. Because they don’t know this is happening.

“All right,” I say. “Thanks for being honest. Let’s do this.”

Rev’arric looks surprised for a split second, then nods and turns toward the others. All Eight Guardians’ relatives, to provide a sympathetic link to the universal forces we’re trying to tap for a second time. He claps his hands. “Everyone to places! Let us begin.”

I take the center point and help set up, although the sigils are already in place. I hear my brother’s voice, chanting, but then it pauses unexpectedly.

“I’m sorry,” Rev’arric whispers.

The warning comes too late. The sword is already sliding into my back, through my chest, bursting out the front in a splatter of gore. The blade feels like ice but does nothing to quench my sundered flesh’s burning. My first reaction is dull shock, then incredulity that not only has my brother done this, he’s done it with intention. He had to have crafted this sword especially for this task. A normal weapon wouldn’t hurt me. My daughter cries out my name. I hear the horror in her voice and realize Revas must not have told her his plans.

Then my brother screams in pain, the horrified cries of eight other voices quickly distorted beyond recognition into something deep, guttural, elemental.

The light in me goes out; darkness takes its place. The sun tries to correct the imbalance.

The world turns white.

That bright flash is the sun manifesting its energy in a single ray. It punches through the atmosphere, slams to the ground centered on me. The area immediately around us survives miraculously intact, but beyond its boundaries, the world is fire. The explosion is so vast, it melts the countryside and then spreads out, a death wave covering half a continent.

But all I know is darkness. Darkness and hunger.

I pull the sword from my body and hurl it, as hard as I can, into the maelstrom. It’s an act of impulse and anger. The moment the blade leaves me, I discover it took something of me with it, our natures twined.

Ah well. I’ll have to hunt it down again.

Where my brother once stood, where all of them once stood, nine serpentine forms twist, warping, wrestling with massive distortions of tenyé, the guardian ritual gone horribly wrong. They’re in pain, digging into themselves with distorting limbs as if the agony can be excised. When it can’t, they run, crawl, crash through the walls or, in one case, dive through the actual doors. I can feel them—feel their minds, feel the insane fractal energy of their tenyé and their souls.

So these too are tools I’ll reclaim later.

There are whispers around me. So many whispers. A circle of voices glow from the energy they’ve consumed to keep this hall intact, all whispering the same thing over and over, a chant or prayer.

Vol Karoth. Vol Karoth. Vol Karoth.

It’s a title: King of Demons.

Voices break off the chanting, take nebulous form, and I realize that’s exactly what they are: demons.

**FOR SO LONG, WE WATCHED,** they say. **WE WHISPERED, WE PLAYED ON YOUR BROTHER’S FEARS. ALL HAS COME TO THIS. THEY HAD THEIR AVATARS, AND NOW WE SHALL HAVE OURS TOO. THEY MADE GUARDIANS, BUT WE HAVE MADE A GOD. LEAD US, OUR KING. LEAD US TO VICTORY, VOL KAROTH.**

The demons did this? Somehow, yes. An act of espionage, to counter an escalation in weapons. We were arrogant fools to think they wouldn’t fight back after we’d created the Guardians.

I can’t find it in me to care. I don’t even mind the name. Vol Karoth works as well as any other. I feel only … hatred. So much hatred. Enough hatred for everyone in the Twin Worlds. And enough hunger.

I laugh. I had wanted a better way to kill demons, hadn’t I?

Well. I can do that.

I grab a monster and feast.