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Lio held Eudias. His life. The thin young man was so light to carry, a precious, but by no means fragile burden. “You did it. I only helped you.”
“I…I don’t think he can hear me.” Eudias breathed a sigh, almost a sob. “I haven’t had a moment of peace like this since the Equinox Summit.”
“All your moments will be like this once we’ve freed you from him.”
“You are a powerful mind mage, and I know his secrets. Together, I think…I actually think we might be able to do that.”
“I have some understanding of the evil of possession, but you have surely learned much more during this experience. What knowledge can you grant me?”
“Possession and essential displacement are one and the same. Possession is displacing your essence into someone else. It is the same principle as displacing a person’s essence into you.”
“Then we must drive his essence from your own.”
“We cannot know the true extent of his magic. He has claimed too many other mages’ power. If you free my mind from him and he departs, he will try to take my magic with him, as he has done to all the others. He will attempt to tear my affinity from my mind, every last trace of my magic.”
No mage could survive that. “We won’t let him have it.”
Eudias looked out over the pool. The storm raged down, and the water churned. Dozens of lightning bolts roamed between the clouds and the pool, lashing out here, then there, as if hunting for their target.
“I must tell you something now…in case,” Eudias said. “The Collector knows everything his Overseers do. I’ve seen where they took the hostages. Skleros delivered them to Solorum. The rest of Chrysanthos’s war circle is keeping them in the catacombs of the Sun Temple.”
“Hespera and Anthros bless you. You have saved beloved lives with those words. You have our gratitude.”
“I have one request of you, not for myself, but on Ariadne’s behalf. If I don’t get a chance, tell her I…how much I admire her. She doesn’t know. I dared not return her…kindness. I couldn’t lethimanywhere near her.”
“You were protecting her.”
“She deserves the highest appreciation. She must think I have not shown it to her.”
“You will get the chance to tell her yourself.”
All around them, Eudias’s mind steadied with concentration. He closed his eyes and went still, his hand tightening on his charm. He made no elaborate gestures and muttered no incantations. His Will focused.
The Collector closed in around them. He was everywhere. He went on forever. There was nowhere to hide. The past was full of him. He ruled the future.
“Not our future,” Lio said.
Lio devoted all his Will to the mental defenses around him and Eudias. Their spells aligned, resonated, and grew louder than the storm. The lightning began to inch away from the boundaries of the pool and hover closer to the center.
The Collector was countless minds and countless magics. He was an army in one person. He was vast. The two of them were so small.
“I’ve fought your army before,” Lio reminded him.
Lio reached within himself for the power that had brought the heart hunters to their knees and the control that had kept them alive. Holding Eudias within his protections, he unleashed his thelemanteia upon the Collector.
His magic echoed out of him, deep into the void that clouded Eudias’s mind. Was there any end to it? But even as that echo died away, more magic came to Lio’s Will, and he shouted their defiance again.
Eudias shouted with him, and the many lightning bolts on the water snapped together into only a few.
The Collector did not shout back. He opened his maw.
“Try to take our magic!” Lio challenged. “You’ll bite off more than you can chew!”
Eudias clutched his chest, his face contorting in pain. But the lightning bolts hovered nearer and nearer each other, closer to the center of the pool.
Lio tried to brace himself for the Collector’s grasp. “I dare you to try to rip the Gift from me. Hespera’s path is beyond your reach.”
The assault on his essence never came. He kept pouring his magic out against that vast emptiness, and he found neither the other side of the chasm, nor the end of his own power.
