“What do you hope to do?” Conquest asks. “We can’t break free from his hold. What do you think we can even accomplish?”
“I’m going to bind him to this realm.”
“How? How could you find the strength to do so?”
“There’s a way.”
Conquest seems to get a look at what I’m writing, and his face pales. “No! You can’t do that. You can’t. You don’t know what doing this will unleash.”
“If I lose myself, I need you to kill me.”
“You know I’m not strong enough. You can’t do this.”
“If I fail to kill him, I will at least lock him in this realm. It’s already been ravaged. There’s nothing left to it. He can live out his eternity here.”
“If you fail… there’s no hope, Brother.”
“You act as if there was hope to begin with. Where is our sister?”
“She wanders. It’s hard to reach her anymore, even when she’s standing right in front of us. We’ve already lost her. He’s fed her hope of repairing a life taken. Her love for the goddess is too strong. We’re supposed to be superior beings yet here we are, being dragged down by the very same things humans are:love, greed, envy…” He sighs. “If you do this and fail, you know it’ll mark the end, right?”
“I won’t fail.”
The scene abruptly changes, and I’m in the middle of a field, gasping, like I need air to breathe. There’s something dark crawling down my body as I drop to my knees and watch while the life is sapped from the ground. It drains life from the very plants that once bloomed beautifully. As my body absorbs the life from this world, I feel it collide and clash with the magic already inside of me.
“Sigma, I fear I’ve toed the line and fallen over it,” I whisper as my fingers dig into the dirt.
The horse presses his head against mine before I hear something coming. I stagger and fall into the horse’s leg, hugging it while I turn my head and look at the life coming toward me. A god and his followers. So much life. So much to take.
“Sigma, I need to leave. Sigma, now!” I scream as I scramble up so the horse can take me away, but once I’m seated in that saddle, the magic inside of me collides, ripping through me, twisting inside me. I know I need to flee. I’ve taken enough from this world. I’ve stolen the life from their land. In time, the god can repair it. If I steal life from each land that I know can be repaired, I can?—
I gasp when the darkness swirls around me, my eyes fixated on the life in front of me… I would suffer so much less if I just took the life being handed to me.
No, no. I cannot kill them. I cannot?—
“Sigma, get me away,” I beg, but it’s as though the darkness that’s rooted inside me is wrapping around my horse. I’m unsure where it’s coming from, but it’s prepared to consume every part of me.
I pull the medallion out, knowing that this might be my last opportunity to comprehend how to use it. I wrap my hand tightly around it while I push the magic I’d acquired from draining life from this land down into it. It’s not enough. It’ll only stall him. I needed so much more, but it’s consuming me.
“Sigma, get me away,” I beg, but the horse is connected to my mind. The darkness consumes him as much as me, and when he moves toward the army of men, part of me feels excitement.
“No,” I plead while my mind seems to blur. “That cursed god did something to me, didn’t he? He gets to have the last laugh. I stepped far too close to the edge, my dear friend.”
And then I urge the horse forward, away from the Door. Away from the war I was trying to fight, and toward destruction.
I jerk back from the horse and hit the ground on my ass, not wanting to see more. Not wanting to live through what I’d done. I’m breathing heavily while I try to process what I saw.
“I destroyed it all,” I whisper as I crawl over to the horse. “I destroyed all of it.”
“What are you doing out here?” Torin asks, walking up. “As soon as I saw you wandering off, I knew you’d be up to no good.”
I set my forehead against the horse’s leg, feeling mentally exhausted.
“You’ve sure bonded quickly with him. An hour ago, you were confident he was going to squash you,” Torin teases.
“He can squash me. I deserve it.”
Torin kneels down next to me. “I somehow don’t think you do.”
