101. THE DEATH OF VOL KAROTH

Kihrin’s story

The ritual cave under Raenora Valley

After being given the power of the Eight

I hadn’t been prepared. I’d assumed—because it had been true in every other version of the timeline Xaltorath had tracked—that Relos Var intended to keep all the powers of the Eight for himself. That he was going to combine all that power and use it to ascend into something greater than the Eight. There’d been no reason to think Relos Var would deviate from that plan.

But he had.

If I’d thought the tenyé from Xaltorath was too much, it had nothing on this. I screamed as eight competing and in no way complementary conceptual frameworks tried to find a way to exist inside me simultaneously. Every fiber of my body was trying to fly apart, all at the same time. I had so much energy that I stopped pulling in new tenyé, new matter. I stopped disintegrating objects near me. I don’t think I could’ve disintegrated anything if I’d wanted to.

I dropped the sword.

I also started glowing.

I had the power of eight god-like beings, and it meant nothing—less than nothing—because I was spending every single crumb of that power to keep myself from exploding like a dying star. Only not metaphorically.

This hadn’t been part of the plan. Or rather, it hadn’t been part of ours.

I heard noises. Clashing metal. Janel, attacking Relos Var.

“One ritual down,” Relos Var said. “Now for the second. Really, C’indrol. I would think you’d like to watch this one, after everything the demons have done to you.”

As much as I couldn’t bear to watch, I also couldn’t bear to look away. I knew what was about to happen. I couldn’t stop it.

Tenyé vibrated through the floor as Relos Var activated the second ritual, the one that he would use to rid the world of demons forever, along with the vast majority of its human population. Janel stepped back, lowered her weapon, and stared at Relos Var with contempt in her eyes.

For a single instant of eternity, nothing happened.

It was only then that Relos Var glanced down at the ritual array itself. The smug look on his face vanished as he spotted the new configurations, the patterns shifted by a line here, a tiny addition there.

“What … what have you done?” he asked Janel.

“What you would have,” she told him, “if only you’d been smarter.”

Janel’s eyes rolled up in her head, and she slumped to the ground. Her corpse looked small. Petite and fragile in a way she never had while alive.

Janel had always taken up so much room.

A small, ugly sob escaped me. Foreknowledge had been no defense against the piercing grief. Somewhere in Marakor, a shadow demon named Jarith had just vanished. Demons all over the Twin Worlds were vanishing, a wave of ritual force spreading out over the planet as all that energy and power accumulated, not into the array that Relos Var had prepared but instead flowing to the Font of Souls. The ritual wouldn’t kill 99 percent of the population or half of the population or even 1 percent of the population.

It would kill none. Exactly none of the human population.

But it killed every demon. Including Jarith and Janel.

“What have you done?” Relos Var’s voice was barely higher than a whisper, but I heard him. When I looked up, I saw that he’d bent down to check Janel’s pulse. He rose, shaking his head.

“You stupid little fool.” He sounded angry. Relos Var looked back at me over his shoulder. “Where did she send the souls?”

I scoffed as best I could while literally holding the cells of my body together through pure force of will. “Not to the other side of the Nythrawl Wound, that’s for sure.” Which hardly made this easier. At least Janel would be reborn someday. I’d take comfort in that. “Oh no. That’s not what you were planning, is it? You were going to send all that power into me too.”

Relos Var squatted next to me, which is how I realized that I’d somehow ended up lying down on the floor.

“Yes,” Relos Var said gently. “If I had to. If it had proved necessary. But let me explain how this will work. I know you’re in a lot of pain right now, but it’s important that you focus through that. Because if you release any of that energy, it will be devastating. I suspect such an explosion will be stellar in scale. At best, you’ll take a sizable chunk of this planet with you. More likely, you’ll destroy the entire world.”

“You’ll die too,” I said through gritted teeth.

“No, I don’t think I will,” Relos Var mused. “But for the purposes of this discussion, all you need to know is that if you stay here, you’ll destroy everyone you love. You still have family, friends. Or…” Relos Var smiled. “You can be the hero. The ritual circle is right next you. All you need to do is take a step. I’ll finish connecting those two lines, activate it, and you’ll be transported to the other side of the Nythrawl Wound. Where you can explode to your heart’s content and harm no one but yourself. The Wound will be sealed, you’ll have saved everyone’s lives, and everyone you care about will live happily ever after. You can make the same sacrifice that Janel just did: your life for everyone’s. You know it’s a fair trade.”

I let out a laugh and tried to grab the man’s ankle, but Relos Var easily sidestepped. I found it hilarious that when I was theoretically at my absolute strongest—strong enough that I could destroy everyone—I was also at my weakest.

Perhaps hilarious was the wrong word.

I had to admire Relos Var’s brilliant gamble. Yes, he was in theory giving all the toys to his enemy, but it was too much. I would hardly have enough time to learn to use those toys. More so, the moment I went through the Wound between our universes, those conceptual umbilicals would sever. At which point, Relos Var would be free to gather them all up for himself once more. I was pretty sure he didn’t have my “problem” with power. He’d be able to handle all Eight.

He’d planned it that way.

I forced myself to rise to my feet. “That sounds like a great plan. Too bad for you. I’m not going to explode.”

I summoned my sword back into my grip and swung at him.