I knelt beside him, understanding flooding through me like a warm tide. "You think you're too small to help," I said quietly. "Too fragile, too dependent. But you want to protect us anyway." He was already going to open the portal for us. He didn't realize he was the reason we could do this.
Horrace's colors brightened to gold and blue, his tentacles reaching out to wrap gently around my wrist. Through our bond, I felt his love, his loyalty, his desperate need to be useful rather than protected.
"You're not small," I whispered, placing my hand on his feathered head.
Blue magic flickered from my fingertips, responding to my emotional connection with the little creature who'd become so much more than a magical pet. The prophecy marks on my arms pulsed in harmony, and suddenly power flowed between us like electricity.
Horrace convulsed.
His small form began to expand, bones cracking and reforming with sounds that made several nearby agents step back in alarm. Feathers sprouted, then lengthened into something more like scales. His twelve eyes blazed with silver light as his body stretched upward, outward, becoming something magnificent and terrible.
"What the hell!" Someone shouted, but their voice was lost in the sound of transformation.
Agents throughout the room backed away as Horrace grew. And grew. And grew.
His cute, pet-sized form exploded into something massive and primal. Eight feet tall at the shoulder, with a wingspan that stretched nearly twenty feet when fully extended. His tentacles had become powerful appendages tipped with silver light, andhis once-innocent chirps had deepened into sounds that made the windows vibrate.
But it was his eyes that held me transfixed. Still twelve of them, but now they swirled with galaxies, with the same cosmic depth I'd seen in the Oracle. Ancient. Knowing. Powerful beyond measure.
The room fell silent, every supernatural being suddenly aware that they were in the presence of something that existed on a completely different level than they did.
Horrace, still recognizably Horrace despite his transformation, looked down at me and made a sound like wind chimes in a cathedral. Then, with grace that defied his new size, he lowered himself beside me, his massive head coming to rest near my feet.
Waiting. Patient. Ready to follow me into hell itself.
"Well," Fenric's voice cracked slightly. "I suppose I'll need to revise the mission parameters."
Several agents laughed nervously. A few applauded. One witch near the back fainted.
But through it all, I felt the bonds connecting me to my four Keys pulse with renewed strength. The blue markings on my skin blazed brighter, responding not just to the transformation but to the love and loyalty radiating from everyone around me.
Around us, agents checked their weapons one final time. Some were praying to gods I hoped were still listening. Others were making peace with whatever they'd left behind in the normal world.
"Are you ready to make the portal, Horrace?" I pet the top of his head. Horrace trilled out, his music deep, bone aching as he stood, stretched his wings and his magic poured into the room.
The portal materialized in the center of the room, a tear in space that looked like black glass cracking open to reveal moving stars underneath. The sight of it made my stomach lurch. Notbecause it was frightening, though it was, but because looking at it felt like looking at infected skin, reality wounded and struggling to heal.
As the portal stabilized, whispers began to echo from beyond it. Not voices, exactly, but something that bypassed the ears and spoke directly to the parts of the brain that still remembered being prey animals.
Several agents began to bleed from their noses. The room's clocks stopped, their hands frozen at different times. The overhead lights flickered, but instead of dimming, they seemed to flicker backward, shadows moving in reverse.
And through it all, I heard something that made the Oracle's mark burn cold against my forehead.
"Chalice," a voice whispered from beyond the torn reality. Not the Oracle's voice, or even the Harbingers'. Something else. Something that had been waiting.
Something that knew I was coming.
The power itself.
Horrace's massive form shifted beside me, his twelve eyes tracking the portal with predatory focus. One of his appendages reached out to touch my shoulder gently, a reminder that whatever waited for us in the space between worlds, I wouldn't face it alone.
The portal pulsed, ready for passage.
The war was about to begin.
Bring it.
Chapter
