“This shouldn’t be so difficult,” Amara said as she rushed around in her pink lab coat with a mortar and pestle. She huffed and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “Goddesses shouldn’t need to sweat in order to make something out of the ordinary happen.”
Pax smiled as she looked up from her Babylonian instruction manual. “That’s what we get for being mostly human. I bet our ancestors could have done this type of thing with a sneeze.”
“Of course,” Amara said as she dusted a powder into a small bowl, “and it takes me days just to gather and prepare the materials. Deuterium? Pyroelectric crystals? Classic! Had to be the only things I didn’t have in my lab.”
“You had the palladium,” Pax reminded her. “Frankly, this place is so well-stocked that I’d be shocked if there was anything you didn’t have. I’m just about finished with this translation.”
“There better not be a single other ingredient…”
“Nope. And once we activate the process once, we won’t need any ingredients. Just the incantation and our own prana.”
“Well, that’s swell. That’s just peachy. That’s ten kinds of…”
“Nervous, Mara?” Pax asked with a chuckle. She gently closed the old volume and picking up her translation, moved over to sit cross-legged before the bowl.
“I won’t lie. I’m having second thoughts.” Amara’s eyes darted nervously to the materials that were spread out over their workspace.
Pax pulled her lips into a grim line. “Well, I can’t do this without you. You can’t do this without me. So decide.”
Visualizing Asher’s smiling face, Amara quickly dropped into a seated position on the other side of the bowl. “Go. Do it now before I change my mind.”
Pax nodded and began to peel off her leather gloves. She never removed her gloves. Not even when she slept. She felt naked without the layer of security and feeling of normalcy they provided—they served much the same purpose her lengthy locks had. When the grotesque scar tissue of her burned palms were uncovered, she extended them outward.
“This may take a few tries to get it right,” she told Amara. “You’ll have to touch my hands.”
Amara shuddered at the thought.
Pax noticed the subtle motion. “Look, I’m trying not to whine about it, but imagine how I feel. Your brother was probably the only person strong enough to bear my touch.”
“Oh, Paxie.”
“Stop calling me that, and do this damn spell with me,” Pax barked, repulsed by the pitying tone.
Amara nodded, reaching out hesitantly. “Are you sure about this?”
“No,” Pax said, “but I don’t have anything to lose. Do you?”
She thought of Asher again and sighed. “I suppose not.”
“If you want to back out, do it now,” Pax advised sternly. The dark-haired woman began to chant softly as she extended her fingertips above the bowl. A dark magenta glow began to emit from her palms. It ignited the powder in a small inferno of energy.
“Shit, Pax! That’s powerful. I thought you said you haven’t been practicing!”
I haven’t been. Pax communicated telepathically as she rhythmically continued chanting. You can thank Thorn for this—it’s like he awakened something primeval in me. The rage has me constantly throbbing with energy. My insides are ablaze and I feel like I’m going to disintegrate. I need to do this, Amara. I need to channel it outward. I can’t live with this smoldering inside of me anymore.
Then let’s do it, the blonde woman responded purposefully. Amara gritted her teeth before extending her own hands into the magenta glow until her fingertips barely brushed against Pax’s. She flinched, feeling the hotness rapidly travel through her until it burned her core. Instantly, empathy overwhelmed her at the glimpse of what her childhood friend was feeling. She felt guilty for burdening Pax with taking care of her, when the younger woman was obviously dealing with her own demons.
She had not touched Pax’s hands in over a decade, and now she remembered why. The heat was too intense. She could smell her own skin singeing, and wanted to withdraw her neatly-manicured fingers to save them from being scalded. But she couldn’t. For along with terrible tremors of fear, the vivid magenta flames sent the delicious thrill of power through her. It reminded her of something she had known long ago, and something she had long since forgotten.
The fuchsia glow began to gradually spread from their knuckles to their wrists. Amara was trying to be strong, but she could see that even the tough Pax was grimacing at the pain. The energy was moving along inch by inch, and when their hands were fully engulfed by the radiant blaze, Amara began to hyperventilate. It seemed that the whole basement laboratory under her house was rumbling with the newly invoked power. Amara visualized her beautiful house crumbling into ruins around them.
“We shouldn’t be doing this!” Amara shouted. She cringed at the sensation of her perfect skin beginning to bubble under the high temperature.
“Silence!” Pax hissed in a dark voice that sounded nothing like her own. She immediately resumed chanting. The magenta fire was spreading steadily to their elbows.
“Is my skin going to be boiled too?” Amara screamed over the thundering sound of the energy. She could no longer feel her hands and forearms. There was only heat. She imagined losing her limbs altogether and how awful she would look in a sleeveless dress as an amputee. If Ash hadn’t wanted her before…
Maybe. Pax continued chanting, swept away in the magicks and paying no attention to her friend’s fear. She naturally transitioned to chanting in English, her voice mounting to a furor as the air fizzed with crackling energy around them, electrifying their skin. Pax repeated the chant with such passion that Amara felt nausea. The words were so sharp that they penetrated her body:
Be
in me. Be of me. Be with me.
Only but fragments, let us be whole.
Seamlessly we unite, soul to soul;
My heart is half yours, this half hour.
“I can’t do this,” Amara moaned as her body trembled. “It’s killing me. It’s killing me!”
“You said you’d pay any price,” Pax spat upon finishing her chant. She tightened her grip on Amara’s hands, interlocking their fingers. “Be strong.”
“I’m not cut out for this! I’m not a goddess! My dad and brother might have power, but not me. The god genes must have skipped me—Pax! Stop! Stop this!” Amara tried to rip her hands away from the inferno as it approached her face. She could not move. “It’s too hot!”
“It’s not heat,” Pax whispered. “It’s life”
Amara was surprised that she could hear her friend’s voice over the crashing of what was surely her house collapsing. “Life! Where’s it coming from? Whose life?”
“Mine. Ours. The prana surrounding you is coming from me, and the prana surrounding me is coming from you,” Pax was shaking from the strength of the spell. “It’s part of the coalescence process.”
“Why is the life killing me?” Amara gasped.
“Life and death are one. The same force which creates also destroys. Can you feel it?”
“Yes! I don’t want to feel my life outside of my body.” Amara began to sob as the energy began to surround her chest. “Paxie! I’m being turned inside out.”
“That’s right. It’s so good!” Pax threw her head back and allowed the magenta flames to wash over her. Her jaggedly-cut short hair was tossed around in the violent maelstrom of energy. Her eyes turned upward, and her usually dark irises began glowing golden.
“Pax!” Amara screamed, seeing that her friend had lost control. As their bodies became completely engulfed with energy she tried desperately to pull away, but it was futile. She felt the atmosphere suddenly become very pressurized, and she instinctively knew that there would be an explosion. Pax felt this too and turned her golden eyes down toward Amara’s frightened blue ones.
For a quiet moment, the two women exchanged an alarmed look. As debris floated all around them, frozen in suspension, they shared the same terrified thought. They knew that they had gone too far and destroyed themselves by channeling mystical forces beyond their capability for control.
But it was not the last thought they would share.