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And the energy of reality pulsed through it in waves of light, like the throbbing heart of the universe was pushing the force of life itself out from it to the roots beyond.
“You think to take this from me, pet?”
His words meant nothing.
“You think you’re strong enough to survive what I could do to you?”
Alaric’s hunger surged around me, his essence shedding any pretense at civility until he became nothing but the single-minded relentlessness of a predator so starved, so rabid, it would race itself straight off a cliff in pursuit of its prey.
He wanted to destroy that light out of pure offense that it could exist.
He wanted to consume it even though his hunger would never be satisfied.
And he wanted me to fear that he’d do the same to me.
The fool understood nothing.
My power and his struck the nexus at the same moment. Our darkness shattered the glowing surface of that tangled crisscross of light like a battering ram of pure night.
Ley lines snapped. Thrashed. Their energy spilled out into the earth like blood from torn veins.
A savagely hungry sound rolled through the darkness. Alaric’s power lashed out, intent upon catching the closest ley lines and draining them dry.
And ever so slightly, the crushing power of his presence around me slipped.
I lunged for the closest ley line. My essence wrapped around it.
And my entire self, everything I was or had ever been, screamed.
Existence came to an end. Entire realities lived and died. Realms burned, and whole civilizations passed in the blink of an eye.
Alaric’s voice returned, as sibilant and hissing as it’d been when first I heard him on that seashore. “You’re pathetic. You can’t even survive this.”
His dark power clawed through the blinding light of the ley line. He was nothingness. Emptiness. His essence wanted only to devour that light and me alike, erasing us both once and for all.
But I had advantages greater than he could dream.
He hated reality, but I was born of it. He longed to consume this power, but I’d already claimed it.
I’d reshaped the world while he was still trying to find a way through its door.
And I’d spent nineteen fucking years bending this place to my will.
The pure energy of reality poured through me, and my darkness tangled with its power. The hate that lived forever inside me erupted out to twist through the light like thorny, black vines, piercing the ley lines I’d claimed and sinking back into them, until both bent and coiled together, inseparable.
Alaric didn’t stand a chance.
He screamed as a wave of tangled darkness and light swept over him, swallowing him.
Drowning him.
Twisting him into my tangled tapestry of hate and creation until he became a part of me as well.
Distantly, I felt my lips curl up into a smile. Felt my arms drift down to my sides. Through the earth, my awareness rose on a wave of power, every sensation from my body growing stronger and more vivid until at last I surged up past the surface of the world and into my own body again.
Dust fell like snowflakes on my cheeks. Quivers rolled through the stones beneath my feet, only to go still when I opened my eyes.
As if even the castle was terrified of me now.
