Abolisher

Syrene told Kefaas everything as he led her into an arena. All the hitches and blockades—about Eliver and his knowledge. He listened intently, and pondered on it silently with a deep furrow between his brows.

They sneaked in without many efforts—the guards, exhausted, weren’t much vigilant at this hour. And Kefaas, to his credit, seemed to have much experience in sneaking in and out of this place—the man seemed to have the whole map engraved in his mind.

“You have to filch these luxuries when you’re poor, kid,” he’d said when caught her gaping at him. “Good thing your position as a duce doesn’t really equal a queen.”

Syrene didn’t know what she’d expected to feel when she entered the arena—nothing, perhaps?—but a rush of anxiety hadn’t been it. Needles of images piercing in her mind hadn’t been it. For the instant she stepped out of the hallway and open air greeted her, she was faced with an assault of baeselk memories so fierce that Syrene gasped, falling a step back.

There, at the heart of the platform, a mirror of her lay bleeding in the sand as otherworldly monsters came at her in chorus. There, in the balcony above the seats knelt a prince, blood cascading from his back, dripping from the edge of the floor—a firebreather and a jaguar flanking him, dresteen-tipped whips held tight in their hands. And there, at the end of the platform, stood Deisn Rainfang, lips twisted in a spine-chilling grin, foul darkness rippling around her.

Syrene’s heart was beating out of her ribcage, her throat tight.

“Everything good?” Kefaas was already standing at the platform, waiting for her to descend.

But Syrene … she couldn’t move. The floor seemed to remold in on itself and strap her feet, her legs. Her neck throbbed where she’d been bitten a year ago—where her new skin was still pink beneath the zegruks.

She saw, so vividly, as a mirror of her screamed and rolled around the floor, ducking the swift attacks with all she was left with. Saw as the prince never took his silver eyes off her.

She’d died here.

She’d died, and returned as a monster.

She’d died—

She’d died.

She’d felt life leaving her and she’d grabbed onto it as a cat might to a fish. She’d felt as one by one a piece of her tore away, her grip on the rope of life peeling off—

“Syrene!” Kefaas shouted from the platform. “Today, kid.”

Syrene couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t breathe—

The screams and the growls and the hisses of that … that darkness towering Deisn were too riotous.

Syrene shut her ears, turned—unable to watch as those baeselk tore at her flesh, sucked at her life—and curled in a crouch.

What was happening—what was happening—

She’d fought past this a year ago, she’d beaten her demons and escaped. Then why this impulse, why did her heart agitate? Why did she feel weak again?

“Hey, kid.”

Cold air grazed her soaked cheeks as she lifted her head to Kefaas towering her.

“Bad experience with arenas?” he asked, pity on his face.

Pity. Hadn’t she grown past this? Hadn’t she proved that she didn’t need their pity? Why was she back in this state—this weakness?

His hand came for her shoulder and Syrene shoved it away—more rudely than she’d intended. She lifted to her feet and descended to the platform, ignoring the illusions casted by memories at the corner of her eye.

Kefaas led her to the center of it. Cold wind howled around her and seeped into her skin, Syrene allowed it. And shook herself.

“How do we start?” she asked, not daring to show the weakness she felt when the man stepped before her.

His hands were held back. “Call your lightning.”

Syrene didn’t question. Lightning crackled in her hand, bright and lively—taunting and biting. A bright beating heart midst the darkness. It was so beautiful that sometimes when Syrene slid into those melancholy days when desolation would dig a deeper hole in her chest, she would bring out her lightning and stare at it for hours to find serenity.

It was one thing that was truly, completely hers.

“No,” Kefaas pondered. “Hurl out your lightning.”

“What.”

He considered. “You have suppressed Drothiker, Syrene.” He knew the consequences better than even Eliver—of course he knew—hadn’t he been the one who’d told her how to freeze it in the first place? “From all you’ve told me, you seem to have buried all the power in a cocoon of your own mejest.”

Syrene didn’t like where this was going.

“You need to diminish that cocoon and let the power rise to surface. Mejest is sea, Syrene—where you Plunge in to cut the Thread of Mortality and emerge immortal. That is, of course, if you emerge at all. But yours is a sea no more—not only a sea, to be precise. Drothiker is any mejest you wish it to be, any power you desire to summon. And in great amount. You’ve suppressed Drothiker somewhere inside your sea—hidden inside a barrier constructed by your mejest. You must bring that out.”

Syrene swallowed. “So I—”

“No bounds,” he cut in before she could complete. “You have to wholly let it out—you have to drain your mejest, that would give Drothiker an opening to surface.”

“It’s just a theory.”

He smirked. “Just a theory.”

“What if it doesn’t work?”

He considered for a moment. Then, “As long as life goes, there’s always an opening left for one last fight. Because the true end comes only with death.” He watched her with those shrill brown eyes as if her alarm and uncertainty were painted on her face. “If this doesn’t work, Syrene, we’ll find another opening.”

She looked about the arena. “I will bring this place to ashes.”

Kefaas drawled, “Then it’s a good thing we didn’t pay for it.”

Despite herself, she couldn’t help the small smile.

Syrene knew how to do this—how to spiral down in her mejest and burrow out even the last bits of power. The Prime of Wolves and the former Duce of Tribes had trained her with each aspect of her mejest so well that the training was carved in her blood and bones.

She didn’t mind bringing down the arena either.

But she hesitated. Why?

Light flashed at the corner of her eye and Syrene whirled, alert, the Deathraze sliding in her palm with a careless ease.

She stilled. The tip of the Deathraze’s blade bit into her skin.

Her twin lay on the ground in the sand, still bleeding from everywhere—Windsong wedged in her chest. She felt the extinguishing pain, the diminishing life. Felt the ghostly assault of obliteration she’d felt that day.

A few steps away the prince was limping towards her fallen form, his torso caked in red and olive-green liquid—baeselk lay whimpering at his feet. Utter helplessness plastered on his face. Then he swept to his knees, as if the weight of his body was too much to bear, and uttered what Syrene had thought to be a wild dream, a gameplay of the death beckoning around her.

“Please.”

The world stilled.

At first, she didn’t trust her eyes.

Didn’t believe that Prince Azryle Wintershade, the last ripper, the Pall Moira, had begged on his knees for her.

Something in Syrene’s chest twisted viciously.

You’re my freedom, Syrene.

She’d fled. She’d left him—

“Everything good?” Kefaas asked behind her.

But Syrene barely heard it as the images before her shifted—one by one they flashed before her. And then they paused.

Horror cleaved her gut open at what displayed before her. Syrene fell a step back, as if she could escape this—or she hoped the movement would make the image waver and then disappear, hoped she wouldn’t have to witness this. For this was no memory, no seed hidden in her mind. Instead, the arena around her rippled. A moment later, the image unfolded all around like white ink spreading across a cloth, until a bright, empty room traded with the arena.

Syrene cringed at the sheer discomfort that crept into her skin. But her throat burned at what her eyes perceived.

There was Deisn.

Young, beautiful Deisn. Scrawny, terrified Deisn.

She sat hugging her legs against the white wall, golden-brown hair pasted to her sweat-slick forehead, dusky skin sickly ashen. She was shaking violently, the utter dread in her eyes had Syrene’s breath hitching. She tried to move, but her limbs seemed to have been fettered with invisible chains.

“Deisn,” she whispered, but no sound escaped her throat.

It was only when Deisn lifted a trembling hand to it did the bandage at her neck materialize. Obscuring a pipe, which was, Syrene could imagine, pierced in the thick vein of her neck pulsing beneath. The other end of the thin pipe was attached to a cylinder lavish with olive-green liquid—embedded in the white wall right above her head. Both her arms were bandaged, too—though no pipe snaked out from them. Syrene didn’t want to think about what was done to them, didn’t want to consider.

Deisn’s lilac eyes—more human than Syrene had ever seen them—flicked to the wall to her right as steps clicked to the tiles down the hallway outside, faint murmurs echoed in the room as they approached. If Syrene had thought Deisn had reached the limit of terror a human could feel … how wrong she’d been. For the horror that entered her friend’s eyes didn’t even seem earthly—that emotion seemed too extreme, too paranormal for a human.

Hide, Syrene almost screamed—before she remembered the futility of it.

The stainless wall split open and gave way to the guards—clad in pristine white—looming on the other side. Shoulders squared, chins high. All armed, alert. Devoid of any thought, any emotion of their own. Living dead.

And amidst them stood the Queen of Cleystein. Syrene couldn’t help the wave of nauseating fury that overcame her, reddened her vision, at the sight of the Enchanted Queen.

She looked so small, so perishable, between the towering men. But Syrene knew she had their strings wrapped around her finger.

The wall remolded itself block by block soon after Felset crossed the threshold, leaving the guards on the other side. There was a small smile drawn on her lips, which grew more pitiful with each step towards Deisn.

Deisn shrunk back, hugging her legs tighter, as if she could melt into the wall and disappear, as the queen crouched before her. Felset almost tentatively lifted a hand to the bandages at Deisn’s neck—the tips of her fingers grazed the white fabric as if it were ethereal.

“It hurts?” she asked in a motherly-soft voice.

Which, strangely, had Syrene’s very blood boiling. Get away from her, she urged, though no words rose to her lips.

Deisn nodded slowly, as if she hadn’t the strength to move her mouth.

Felset’s fingers rose to Deisn’s cheek. “It will be over, soon, darling.”

Deisn’s shaking worsened as if that were a bad thing.

“Of all the experiments, you’re the only one who hasn’t failed me, Deisn.” She tucked a curly strand of hair behind Deisn’s ear. “You and I—we shall bring my people homeward. You will help me get my revenge, won’t you, Deisn?”

The sorceress remained motionless.

Felset sighed. “You think I’m cruel—of course you do. Because you humans are so horribly weak … you let fear yank at your reins. Let it guide you. I know it—he knows it. And cruel is too soft a word to describe him. The Darkness you dread so much bows to him, and the light you worship fears him. You humans wouldn’t be able to survive him; he knows that, too. So you understand why I need to bring him down? If he grasps Lavestia too, he will bring Darkness here, he will ruin another world—he can’t help it. The Darkness beats within him the way a human heart does. And if he brings it here, there will be no home for my people.”

Deisn remained staring at the queen—listening.

“Lavestia is what this world is called,” Felset clarified, as if Deisn had voiced a question.

“Just get this over with,” Deisn whispered weakly.

Syrene’s chest tightened to the point of pain.

Felset heaved out another exasperated breath before lifting to her feet. Then she turned to Syrene.

Her heart paused dead.

But the queen wasn’t looking at her, no …

Syrene turned.

And stilled. Her eyes widened.

Baeselk—trapped in manifold glass chambers, hissing soundlessly and hammering misshaped hands at the glass to no avail. Olive-green fog filled the chambers, as if an otherworldly air for them to breathe. But that was no air—Syrene knew.

Poison. Unearthly. Noxious.

Then a sharp noise filled the room as the glass doors began lifting.

Her heart thundered. No, no, no—

But the fog spilled out into the room and the baeselk stepped back from the glass as it rose higher, higher—

Then they were all careering out, hissing and growling.

Syrene tried to move, to duck as they came on, but they all went through her, and she couldn’t move.

She turned back to the queen, but the white wall she’d walked in from was already remolding with Felset on the other side.

Her bronze eyes fixed on Syrene. A death-promise in them.

And then she was gone.

Deisn’s scream had Syrene whirling on her.

But the world was shifting around her again. Syrene tried to fight, to stay and just help her friend this once, but the bright white walls gave way to dark stone walls. The world darkened and she slammed to her knees, silent sobs dying in her throat.

Cold stone bit into her skin.

It was quiet here, so quiet that it was the raspy shallow breaths that had Syrene’s head lifting.

Her heart strained. She was in dungeons.

Azryle sat before her. Young and broken. Shoulders slumped, silver eyes devoid of anything but pain and slaughtering misery.

Blood—there was so much blood in the cell, beneath his stretched-out legs. All of it flowing from his back where he’d just been whipped; she could tell from merely his breaths, only now calming down.

And his hands … they were not shackled to any wall. Rather there was a pipe pierced brutally in a vein at his wrist. The other end was connected to a cylinder filled with olive liquid.

No. No, no, no.

No, please, she pled, fighting the invisible shackles restraining her.

But the queen entered the cell—Syrene hadn’t even noticed she’d been standing outside, speaking. She strolled straight to Azryle—there was no motherly serenity on her face this time, but a devouring wrath Syrene had never seen. Felset always kept her face calm, amused. But this … this terrified Syrene.

The queen harshly took Ryle’s face in her hand, brutally digging her fingers into his cheeks. “You’ve caused me enough trouble, boy. Don’t think for even a second that I won’t be sending you to where all the others have been examined.”

Azryle remained unspeaking, unmoving. He didn’t care.

Syrene followed where his eyes were fixed on, and sucked in a shuddering, horrified breath.

A head sat in the corner of the cell, slowly rotting away. His mother’s.

She looked away, fighting back the anguish gnawing at her, threatening to seize her.

Three sentries had appeared at the cell bars and ducked in—Syrene hadn’t even heard Felset calling for them. Two took Azryle’s arms and hauled him to his feet—his eyes still fixed on the head, as if letting the image burn into his mind. The third sentry yanked out the cylinder from the wall and held it near Ryle so the pipe wouldn’t wrench out.

“We shall prepare the making place,” the queen purred, a cruel smile blooming at her lips as she remained looking at the tortured prince. “Let’s give you a special treatment, Prince.”

Syrene somehow knew this was worse than Deisn’s, knew it in her bones that Azryle would fight to the end and take every torment conferred. But she was still jerking against the bounds restraining her, fighting as they led the ripper out of the cell.

The making place.

“No,” Syrene pled, then began screaming, “Please!”

But they didn’t listen—her voice didn’t comply. Neither did the confines as she thrashed against them, finding any way to just move—

The cell began tearing away all around her as a void filled her chest.

Something in her came undone.

Something in her was burning—her insides were blazing—

Everything in her sight turned red when Syrene returned to the arena. Everything hurt. She was being burned so thoroughly that even the air caused pain when it came in contact with her skin.

Syrene swept to her knees as pain claimed her, tipped her head back and roared, hurling out the destruction taking place inside her.

The sky thundered frantically as cold wind established around her. Turned into a deadly storm soon enough.

Lightning looped her limbs, her heart. It whizzed in her veins, granting her the power now coursing through her, pounded in her skull, plucked at her bit by bit.

Destiny Incarnate, they called her. Doom or salvation.

Peace or destruction.

Goddess or monster.

Which one was she, really?

None?

All?

Images flashed before her.

Brother Adlae. Her home. Hexet Evreyan. Blood. A dark tower. Flesh. A cell. Jegvr. Whips. Deisn. Lucran. Kessian. And then, in the end, Navy grinning mischievously. The one she’d put in danger. The one she must protect at any cost. Friend. Family.

Syrene screamed louder and the storm grew stronger, vaster. Immortal. Fetal.

This wasn’t even the entire power she bore, this was just a hint of the real beast she had yet to face. A beast that was hers to command, hers to wield.

Hers.

Perhaps she was doom and she was destruction. But she will be peace, for she was already a goddess and a monster.

One last time, Syrene cried out the last of her mejest, her agony.

The world paused.

Pain lanced through her veins and Syrene welcomed it. She lifted to her feet.

There was no power greater than she. She needn’t fear anything in the world. Not the Enchanted Queen, not the otherworldly beasts that wandered the streets.

They ought to fear her.

As if another beast come loose inside her, Syrene’s roar, inhuman even to her own ears, shook the ground.

She heard the tearing, the breaking, the crumpling. Heard the arena protest. But in that moment, the moment liberal with power, she knew no mercy.

She didn’t know where time began, and where it ended, lost all sense of reality, but Syrene felt her mejest draining—and only then did actuality come rushing to her.

She’d done it. She’d done it—

She lowered her hands and the storm began dwindling.

And when it turned into a wind, silence crashed into her.

She panted hard.

Sand flying around her draped her sight—she saw nothing beyond.

She hadn’t realized there was no ground beneath her until her winds vanished entirely and she was falling, snatched by a yawning hole she’d brought about.

She landed on rocks a few feet below.

Syrene groaned. Everything hurt. Fatigue like she’d never felt before scraped against her bones.

But she was on her feet, the Deathraze slid into her hand, when a shadow emerged in the raining sand.

Kefaas …? She tried to speak, but no sound greeted her burning throat.

But she could make out the female curves as the shadow advanced.

Her heart pounded.

The figure cleared. Syrene’s whole body seemed to go numb as Navy paused at the bank of the hole.

For moments, they just stared at each other as Syrene watched Navy’s eyes go from wide to narrow. Then her friend simply placed her hands on her hips.

“I apparently need to learn a lot about Grestel.”