My body was shaking so madly I had to clench my jaw to keep from biting my tongue. Holding the beat of power, Ireachedback up to the circle, where I sat and... tapped the energy of the witch circle’s underside. A different kind of power reached out to me. Witch power. And it let me take it in my hands. The energies were hot and cold, the movement of falling water, the massive strength of tides, the pull of the moon, airless and merciless. The might of stone. The cold of glaciers. The green, green, intensegreenof living things. The heartbeat of all life. Keeping my place in the rhythm ofInfinitio, I pulled the magic that had been gathered in the circle down and down and over. And out. Like a net. A trap. A cage.
When I had the witch’s circle centered, I opened my mouth to tell them I was ready.
Something grabbed me. Yanked me down.
Into the dark. Cold. Breathless, deathless, nothingness.
On the surface of the earth, something followed my own energies up and broke through the ground. Slid and slipped, wrapping around my wrists, pinning my palms flat to the earth. Slithered around my ankles and knees, gluey, sliming, adhering to me. And twisting into my skin. Tighter. Pulling. Wrenching me down. My skin split. Blood hit the ground, just above the witch circle. And slime mold sprouted from the earth. Slid over me. Over my head and eyes. Down over my nose and mouth. As if it was trying to drown me.
A heartbeat later, the ground beneath each witch in the circle erupted. Dark stems of slime pushed up and through. And over them. Entangling them. Holding them still. Pinned. Trapped. All but one.
The slime slithered down my cheeks. I couldn’t get my eyes open to see who was still safe from attack. And therefore who was most likely involved with the culprits we already had in custody.
I took what might be my last breath.
And heard the overlapping words, as if from a distance, “Now, now, now, now!”T. Laine.Panicked. Afraid. Though she and Soul were on a rock, safe.
In the yawning, profound lightless below me, I felt the vibration on the ley line–based thin skin of the Old One increase, a bass drum of might and command.InfinitioandUnendlich.Waking the Old One.
The two workings were no longer separate. Whatever the multiple sabotages had begun as, they were one, a blended magic so seamless I hadn’t perceived it until now. Deep in the earth, the blended working of theInfinitio/Unendlichhad become a curse, and the curse sensed me. Faster than lightning, it blasted out and caught me, twisting my own magic. Seizing my magic for itself.
Fighting the witch magic all around me. Knotting witch circle power against them.Infinitioadding it to the working that had become its own purpose.
On the surface, the slime was trying to cover me, to pull me into the ground. Me, and the witches as well. All of us. Or were trying to cut us to slivers so they could have my blood and the witches’ power. And my power to feed the earth.Oh... yes. That is whatInfinitiowants. What it was designed to do. To take and use and store power. More power than anything ever in the history of humans or witches. AndUnendlichhad melded in, the two becoming one. Not two workings with aBreakable joining, but one seamless spell.
I heard the words, “Son of a witch on a switch. We’re going to have to do this the hard way.” Taryn, realizing what had happened with the melding of the workings.
The sabotage had given the working focus, a single-mindedness that was almost alive. It would take all power, all life, for itself. Around me I felt the grass wither and die and crumble into ash. The trees at the edge of the field died and fell apart. My magic to feed the land was under the control of another force. The fields on the other side of the ridge died. Below on the downhill slope. They died.
The tremor beating on the Old One grew harder. Faster. My power was being directed down, adding to the vigorous pounding, fierce and brutal, onto the Old One. I wrenched my body, trying to free myself. Twisted. Pulled. Pain beat at me, distanced by the muffling of the earth. My blood spread throughthe ground, life-giving. Potent. A sacrifice taken by the conjoined working.
Infinitio/Unendlichknew my blood, knew it from the pond and the piney trees, and... it wanted my blood. Wanted me. Because my magic could make it more than it was now. My magic could give it true life.
I couldn’t breathe.
A new vibration reached me, bright and blue and shining, yellow as the sun, silver like the moon, the tones of the rainbow against a storm-tossed sky.“Aperta.”The words sang into my bones and blood. So much blood pooling into the ground.
Break. This was theBreakspell.
The vibration grew and grew. Dozens of slimes spilled over me. Mutated. Dug into my belly, tearing my skin. My blood splattered. My abdomen ruptured, the roots from within me erupting out. Fighting the power ofInfinitio. Fighting being pulled into the earth. Battling against the slime from the ground. But slime was genetically different from other plants, much more mutagenic. Easily melding with and being altered by other life-forms. Like me...
TheInfinitio/Unendlichwere using the slime molds to explore the world above. To find the form they would take on the surface.
Flows, flows, flows. Pools, pools, pools.The power pushed into me.
I could sense the original working circle created by the witches at LuseCo. The triangle of power below the ground, across the city. The infinity loop that sang the words of the working created by the witches, dancing, singing of its purpose.Flows, flows, flows. Pools, pools, pools.To create its own life. Tobe.
“...Fractura.” Breakslammed down, down, down. Disrupting. Tearing. Shattering.Ending.
I screamed.
The circle ofInfinitio/Unendlichlost cohesiveness. Shadows appeared. The mutating working... tilted. The three bright triangle points on its surface shook and slid to the side. They slammed together. As if released by a slingshot, the triangle of power whirled into the distance. Far, far, and far away, deep in the earth, I felt/saw their combined energies skip across a frothing pool of liquid stone,magma, heat inconceivable. Skip. Skip.Like a stone on a volcanic lake. The last skip spun them up, directly into the empty ley line. They hit. Slid inside. Ricocheted through the empty pathways. A blast of energies detonated, erupting. The ley lines sparked and snapped like a whip. Power roiled through them. The magnetic-electro-magical energies of the Earth cracked like lightning, stretched, and settled.
My pain quivered through the earth and back at me.“Aperta pro fractura.”The vibrations of the words beat against me.
The absorption of the power trembled through me, through the slimes.Aperta pro fracturasliced through the earth.Breaking.Ending.Infinitioscreamed in... horror. Shock. Fear.Fracturasmashed through the nascent life below us, the roots and veins and trunks of life that had been damaged by our working. Through the bodies of the molds and fungi and slimes and their odd, malleable, genetic structures.
Endingeverything that was not meant to be.
