She pointed her magic—not a curse any longer—at Eder.
At the rotting, stinking thing that roiled within Thali’s old veins.
Pain,she thought. The aura of pain…
And as she thought it, as she pushed it outwards with a scream, thinking of Soahm, thinking of the death he’d endured, the life he’d given so Karr could stand again…
Eder screamed.
Screamed, and that samepainSonara had imagined poured from him. The aura she’d come up with, had manipulated into existence.
Sorrow,she thought, pouring her own emotions into her magic, wanting to use it to turn it into something more.
Eder began to weep, his aura pouring with sorrow as he felt what Sonara wove with her magic, tangled up in the crushing sadness from the loss of Soahm.
“Azariah,” Sonara said, as she closed her eyes and imagined terror, the very same that the planet felt with Eder so near. “Get the blade.”
Sonara shoved that terror outwards, sent it soaring on shadow wings. As it went, she threw herself along with it, until she was seeing through her magic, the very same way she had when she’d once taken a sword and shoved it deep into Karr’s chest.
Into Eder’s open mouth her magic soared, down into his rotting core.
Sonara told her magic tosing,to scream terror into Eder’s very soul, and sing it did.
Terror, like Soahm’s scream in the night. Terror, like Duran leaping from the edge of a Soreian cliff. Like a whip lashing upon a girl’s open back, a kingdom full of people watching with hatred in their eyes.
Sonara laughed, as her magic sent Eder into the fetal position.
He curled himself up like a bug and trembled beneath the weight of the emotions she wove into him. Slowly, Karr called to the ground, widening the crack around Eder’s ankle.
Pulling Eder deeper and deeper into the earth, as if Eder was now a part of the golden amphitheater steps.
“You cannot stop this,” Eder growled, now only his face visible in the steps as they closed around him.
But Sonara told her magic to give him the aura ofterror, like a Soreian prince being stolen from a dark, once-silent shore.
Eder screamed beneath the manipulation.
Azariah joined Sonara’s side.
“Melt the sword,” Sonara said.
Because Eona’s words were coming back to her. The planet… it would wake. If given a chance, it would wake, if made whole again.
Azariah placed the sword on the cave floor. She pressed palms to it, and they began to glow. A soft blue at the start, then so hot they turned white. The sword, so powerful, so famed, should have melted beneath her magic.
And yet it remained.
Sonara dropped to her knees, her magic fizzling. Eder howled, thrashing against Karr’s entrapment. The ground began to crack around him. He got an arm free, a rotting arm that reached towards the heart as Eder screamed.
“I can’t hold him,” Karr ground out. “I can’t hold him, Sonara.”
“Melt it, Azariah!” Sonara yelled.
“I’m trying,” Azariah said.
She was sobbing as she pressed her hands to the sword, her power finally sapped.
Sonara sent another aura towards Eder, this time turning it into that blissful, beautiful glee she’d once felt, when Markam pressed his lips against hers. When all she wanted to do was sink into him, lay back, and do nothing but savor the moment.
