Adamagika: The Spirit Within - 41. EPILOGUE

EPILOGUE

Victor Cross stared at the green flames rising high into the air before him. He watched as they slithered across the floor of that one massive room in the ancient castle, reserved for one purpose – a purpose that was, at that moment, being fulfilled.

Three pale, almost skeletal mages danced around a massive rune on the ground with wooden staves in their hands. The bright green rune itself seemed to be generating the violent flames that erupted from the stone floor. With each wave of their hands, a section of the fire would rise and turn a deep dark shade of blue or black before resting once again into the cold green that dominated the space. The whole room was bathed in green light except for four small sections that were being covered by the shadows of four thick pillars supporting the ceiling.

Decades ago, he would have wondered how they were still alive when every single one of them in that room should have been dead from the flames rising high into the ceiling, occupying half the room. There should not have been enough air to breathe if the scorching heat did not kill them first.

However, he did not wonder about such things anymore for they were no longer his concern. His thoughts those days were cloudy. They had always been for as long as he could remember, for as long as the voice allowed him to remember. He only knew and did what the voice allowed him to.

Besides, it was impossible to tell at that point the different between him and a corpse. He mused that he could very well have been dead and just hadn’t realized it yet.

She is coming, the voice he came to know as Lord Raezhul said.

“Leave us,” Victor said to the three mages.

Without any questions, the three waved the staves in their hands over their head and disappeared in a bright display of green light and blue smoke which slithered through open cracks and holes in the walls.

Victor raised his head as though to study the scorch marks on the ceiling. “You shouldn’t be here.”

A figure moved from the darkness behind one of the pillars. She blended so well with her surroundings that she could have been mistaken as a shadow dancing with the flames. As she came into the light, long, dark hair and a beautiful face was revealed. It was a woman he knew was once called Margaret Langsley, Jacob’s mother.

Of course it wasn’t really her. The real Margaret Langsley has been dead for many years.

“I came to see what progress you have,” she said.

“There is no need for you to witness this,” Victor said, his voice echoing as though two people were speaking at the same time.

Margaret seemed to ignore what was just said. “You’re still going through with it, then? I was under the impression that things did not go according to plan.”

“Yes,” Victor said. “It seems my old friend Edward is up to his old tricks again. The boy’s soul remains whole and all my attempts to break it have been quite... disappointing.”

“I still don’t understand why you just don’t kill the old man. Your host is not feeling sentimental now, is it?” she asked tauntingly. The green flames around the room flickered dangerously.

“Was it not you who told him what was to come? Perhaps you are to blame for him being a thorn on my side.”

Margaret scowled at him, marring the beautiful features of her face. “You know well enough that he would have seen right through any deception I tried. His gifts have always been quite troublesome. He would have known if I hid anything or had lied. Besides, he has been getting a lot of help. That, coupled with his control over the other boy and the events in Arantiva, has far greater consequences than my own actions. Even without my help, he would have thwarted your attempts at killing young Adam Lowry.”

“In truth, that was not his doing,” Victor said. “It seems the boy Jacob is far more powerful than I imagined. His affection for the other boy broke through my spell and he managed to free himself when his lover was at the edge of death. It appears he has a powerful gift of foresight which shall prove useful in time.”

“Why would you need him for that when you already have me?”

“It never hurts to have a surrogate.”

“You make it sound like you don’t trust my visions,” Margaret said with an unkind smile.

Victor turned to her, his thin lips grinning madly. “Did you not foresee several times that Adam would die? How many visions did you give me of his death? Three, was it not? And how many times did they not come to pass?”

Margaret paled in the green light. “I give you the future as I see it. I warned you that those paths were uncertain. Obviously, someone else who has the capacity to see the future is interfering, changing it as time goes by. Adam should have died during their training when you possessed that other boy to attack him. Yet Jacob interfered somehow and created a shield that saved him. Adam should have died in that assault against the humans yet that Brian brat interfered. He should never have gotten out of the crystal cavern alive yet something must have happened there that once again changed fate. Someone is prodding the people around him to interfere and I have no control over the changes they enact.”

“Indeed,” Victor mused and remained silent as he watched the green flames growing steadily higher. When he finally spoke again, the room grew colder although Margaret certainly did not seem to feel anything, “so tell me Seer, what do you see now?”

Margaret frowned. Clearly this question made her uncomfortable. She looked at the flames as though looking for answers within them. “Darkness still. Absolute darkness. Nothing has changed in the end. Something is about to happen to this world. Whatever it is can’t be good. It’s like the world before this, after she destroyed it. Everything is just… gone. I don’t know what will happen and that worries me.” She paused watching the flames. Sadness seemed to radiate from her features. “Are you certain what we’re doing is going stop whatever is coming?”

“Oh yes,” Victor said seriously. He was very good at hiding the amusement in his voice. “Quite certain of it.”

When Victor said nothing else, Margaret tilted her head to the side as though to study the flames. The shadows created by the green fire on her face made her look almost evil. “So, what is with the charade? Why prepare his body if we are unable to put him under our control?”

“There is more than one way to bend another to my will,” he said. He raised his hand over his chest and a small hole appeared in his black armor. Within seconds, a blackened crystal was protruding out until it escaped completely from his chest and floated in his open palm.

Margaret looked at the crystal curiously. Her eyes widened at the realization that dawned on her. “You cannot be serious.”

“I told you that you did not need to witness this,” Victor said.

She looked at Victor’s thin skeletal face. The lack of life in it didn’t seem to bother her so much as the crystal that was now floating in his hand. “Have you learned nothing from the past? From the failures of the last Demon Lord? It is forbidden for our kind to bend other spirits to our will in that manner. To do so would fuse your essence into this plane. You will lose your immortality. It is one thing to bend the host but this… this is madness.”

Victor smiled a grim smile. “Not even you know and see everything, Seer. Isn’t that what you just told me?”

“I will not help you do this,” Margaret said.

“Then leave,” Victor said as he once again looked at the green fire. “You have done your part.”

Margaret looked at first surprised at the dismissal then angry. “This is not what we agreed on. If you do this, this will be the end of you. I guarantee it.”

“Have you foreseen this?” he asked in an almost amused tone. “Or are you going to stop me? Are you going to release another wave of prophecies with the sole purpose of bringing about my end?” He laughed, his cold voice echoing in the lifeless stone. “Do what you have to. In the meantime, you are no longer welcome here.”

“Don’t you dare!” Margaret yelled. As she did, there was a sound somewhere overhead in another room. It sounded like thousands of glasses smashing and breaking at the same time. Margaret yelled in pain as white flames engulfed her.

“Curse you, Raezhul!” she flared as her fingers slowly melted away. “Your treachery shall not go unpunished. If it is the last thing I do, you shall pay! I swear you shall pay!” Her figure burst in a blinding blue light and nothing was left, not even dust.

“Should we be worried?” Victor asked the empty room.

No, Lord Raezhul’s voice echoed in Victor’s head. A powerful seer she is, she has not the power to affect another spirit, nor will she have the time to plot against us without giving herself away. We will take care of her. There will be time for that later. We shall destroy her even if we have to tear apart the Hallean Mountains piece by piece. For now, we must finish our task.

Victor watched the floating crystal, hovering over his open palm. He didn’t question the voice that spoke to him. It was no longer in his nature to question. He had given up all free will so long ago. Yet, he couldn’t help be disturbed – or perhaps the better word was curious. In all the years Victor had heard the voice of Lord Raezhul, it had never sounded uncertain. And that was exactly how the voice sounded just then.

Grasp the crystal, Lord Raezhul said, his voice just hinting with a small warning. Complete the cycle.

He grasped the item that he had pulled from within his body. No, not his body but the spirit of Lord Raezhul. He didn’t understand how such things worked but he knew that the crystal was more than a piece of rock. It was part of Lord Raezhul, a fragment of the spirit within him. As soon as he touched it, the black crystal released a light green glow from the very center of the stone. With the crystal in hand, Victor walked towards the wild fire that was burning in the center of the room.

The spirit of Lord Raezhul spent decades preparing for that moment and Victor delighted at the excitement coursing through his body. Dozens of the most powerful spirits and mages in the world were manipulated or killed so that the events of that day could be made possible. He has waited for the reincarnation of this particular spirit for centuries so that he can undo the damage she has wrought. Only she with the power to break us can restore us. Only Ho-o could possibly have the power to return their world and their very existence to the way it was.

At first, he was reluctant that his plan would work as her spirit was fractured between two hosts. Perhaps she even intended it, knowing he was up to something. Perhaps she knew of his plans after all. She did have some degree of foresight that constantly made him worry. It was the very reason he had to ally himself with the Seer, an alliance that was no longer necessary.

Though he sometimes doubted, he did not waver in his resolve in what must be done, what sacrifices must be made for his kind, for all spirits. He plotted and planned so that when the time came, her power would be united in one host. He knew that if her power was divided, if even the tiniest bit was absent from the containment he would placed, the repercussions could be great. The spells could unbind and he could end up creating something greater and worse than even he could possibly imagine. Something uncontrolled that would have all of Ho-o’s power as well as his own.

But he was certain that his plan had worked. The boy had played his part well. He felt the power pouring through from Adam to Jacob and even heard the connection between the two break. All that immense power and the very essence of Ho-o’s spirit in this world were contained within the boy he had manipulated. The integrity of his soul was irrelevant as long as the other spells held.

Yes, his plan will work.

Wherever he stepped, the flames would recede almost as though they were afraid. The fires moved back as Victor progressed over the rune, to be consumed within the massive green bonfire.

Inside, Victor knelt and the tongues of fire pulled back revealing a large black rock that was lying at the very center of the green rune. Victor looked down at the almost shapeless rock and smiled. With one swift motion, he thrust the jagged black crystal into the stone. The room exploded into fire as the green flames spread in every direction as if they were afraid and desperately trying to escape from Victor and the rock lying at his feet. The black crystal slowly sank into the rock and disappeared beneath its dark surface.

For a moment, nothing happened other than the continuous billowing of the flames around the room. And then the thing Victor had been anticipating for so long finally began with the rock’s movement. A section of it broke away from the rest attached only by a small segment no thicker than a boy’s arm. In fact, it could have been a boy’s arm because the very end opened up to the unmistakable shape of a hand. The rock slowly broke apart and revealed pale flesh underneath the charred stone.

Victor smiled as two eyes opened to look up at him. The cold green of his eyes looked with triumph at the palest blue that were gazing almost emptily back at him.

It is done, Lord Raezhul said.

“It is done,” repeated Victor Cross. He raised his hand over the stone and it exploded with an unearthly shriek. A naked body stretched itself out over the fiery rune as a boy’s anguished cry fused with the enraged howl of a wrathful spirit, their voices echoing throughout the castle, unheard by the living.

A thousand miles away, Adam Lowry woke with a scream.