I half-expected them to spring out of the body they possessed from memory and attack me as a unified trio.
“Can’t attack,” the light-lilted voice said. “Not enough power,” said the raspy-voiced sister. “Seems you ended us,” said the stern voice, adding a sour glare from the face they shared in the body they’d stolen.
“Then how are you here?”
“We are but a fragment,” the stern voice explained. “The tiniest of specs trickling in the recesses of our coven. A safety measure.”
The same as how Finn had broken off a piece of his magic and locked it away inside my mind. The same way another piece had been broken off and trapped inside the mind of the chimera.
“If you think you can challenge me—”
The Sisters Three cackled. “Challenge you? No, no, no. You killed us fair and square. With little effort too, if the recollection dancing on the surface is truth and not conjecture.”
“Then what the fuck are you doing?”
“You wish to see the truth, learn the history.” They pointed at me, tracing the air. “Our memories are too broken to examine, huh?”
I didn’t respond, merely glowered, and channeled psychic energy.
“The memory is true, but we don’t know all the details. Amara was born long before our time, when the gods were cruel and selfish. Not like us. We want to give back to all. Those who came before only sought to rule. Rule without raining down gifts to their lessers. We give to all. Sacrifice so the world can have magic.”
“Aside from the Greek backdrop, what’s Amara supposed to be doing in this moment of history?”
“She’s opening the Gate to Hell,” The Sisters Three responded casually as if that were some random tidbit. “The gods hoarded power, locking away magic for themselves. By opening the gate, Amara unleashed magic for everyone.”
“You’re lying.”
If Amara had done that, the world would be overrun with demons.
“It was,” The Sisters Three said, not hiding their weak link to my thoughts. “Those demons raged through the world, unleashed in mass, and desperate for magic.”
Images of golden silhouettes fighting off shadows from every direction flowed through my mind.
“The gods of old were overrun by the demon hordes. Demons and devils danced on the corpses of the old gods, the false gods, the dead gods.”
Gold silhouettes fizzled out one by one, devoured by the gnawing shadows, replaced by splatters of blood until it pooled in every direction.
“I was born in an era where demons stormed across the lands.” The Sisters Three steered me from the sea of blood. “My village was surrounded by harpy hunting grounds. The neighboring city made regular sacrifices to the krakens of the sea and the minotaur who burrowed tunnels through the streets. Demons dwelled everywhere, insatiable in their need for magic.”
They made it seem as if all the myths and legends that we now knew to be demons actually walked side by side with people.
“They did. They hunted and devoured the best of the witches, consuming our magic and raining down chaos upon the earth.” The Sisters Three’s voice got soft—almost somber. “Magic finally belonged to us all, but Amara couldn’t protect the world when it was infested with demons. So she founded the Celestial Coven. She sealed the Gate to Hell—banishing every demon once again but locking away all of the magic along with it.”
Flashes of Amara, The Sisters Three, Lazarus, and Grim chanting a spell as the rest of their coven fought off hordes of demons played in my mind. One by one, their members were slaughtered until demons surrounded the four pillars. A bright light sprang from each of their eyes, burning away the demonic energy in every direction.
“In order to save the world, we had to strip it of the cancerous magic that lured demons in such destructive stampedes.”
That was how magic vanished. The era of nothing, where we lost our connection entirely. That was because of the Celestial Coven.
The lights surrounding Amara and the other pillars curved and looped around them, wrapping each of them in a cocoon of magic before vanishing altogether.
“We fell into the astral realms between worlds, we slept and we cast protections until eventually the world was ready.”
“Ready for what?”
“For when we finally returned,” The Sisters Three said. “When we finally awoke after the centuries of slumber, we brought magic with us, magic for all with no need for demons to roam. The Gate of Hell remained sealed, but when we returned, we cracked the outer layer of the dimension just enough to give everyone a taste of magic.”
“A taste?”
