Eight
Hands wrapped around me and I clutched Siret’s shirt tightly. “What’s happening?” I tried to scream at him, but no sounds emerged at all. It was like the energy from Cyrus, only significantly more oppressive, as though I was physically trying to stop my face from smashing into the ground. Air started to swirl across my body, its touch icier than even the snow that had fallen on me. Was this something to do with Staviti? Were we under attack from the Creator?
Or … was it me?
As much as I wanted to blame this on someone else, I sensed that I’d done something really bad. I’d been thinking about Jeffrey and I’d pulled that thought to me … My hands clenched tightly in a natural response to panic.Had I pulled Jeffrey to me?
Was the darkness filled with the souls? With the …wraiths?
I was lifted off my feet before I could let that thought settle, and I had no idea how Siret knew where he was going, but within a few clicks we were with Yael and Rome. Another few clicks later and Aros’s and Coen’s energy joined us. I reached out blindly, desperate to touch them. Knowing they were all safe was important. It gave me some clarity, and I decided to see if I could fix whatever I’d caused. Closing my eyes, I imagined the land filled with light again, but when I opened my eyes, it was to complete darkness. My Creation couldn’t penetrate this sort of dark.
What the hell could I do then?I could hear the crowd beginning to panic, and Cyrus’s voice booming over them, cautioning them all not to use any pockets until the darkness had lifted.
Maybe if I couldn’t break the darkness, I might be able toshiftit instead.
I focussed with as much strength as I could, channelling my thoughts to the time I’d had to lift the long curtains in one of the houses in the village. They were heavy, designed to block out all light, but I’d persevered, pushing and pushing until eventually I got them rolled up, allowing the light to flow through the windows once more. Of course, I found out later that the light was blocked like that because the little girl I was visiting had a mother allergic to sunlight. I caused quite a lot of stress in that household and was subsequently banned from entering ever again. But the point was, persistence won in that situation, and I could be persistent again.
I imagined the darkness as a thick curtain and started to roll it up. At first it was easy, but the more I rolled, the harder it got.
“Willa.” Aros’s voice sounded from close behind me. “Are you lifting the darkness?”
I nodded but didn’t open my eyes. I was almost done: the cloak of oppression was visibly reduced. Finally, with a long release of air, I managed to roll that last little section that I could feel with my energy. Hands wrapped around my arms, pulling me closer to them, and when I opened my eyes again I understood why.
I’d lifted the veil of darkness, but it was still above us, swirling, filled with sparks of colour and light. “What the hell is that?” I asked, relieved to finally be able to talk again? “Staviti?”
I was grasping, but I really didn’t want to be the one causing the world’s newest disaster.
“It’s not Staviti,” Coen said darkly, staring up, his eyes following the mass that swirled around us.
Gods everywhere did the same thing. None moved. They all just stared up and watched the darkness like it was the last thing they would ever see.
“Do you have a theory about what you did, Willa-toy?” Yael asked, somehow picking up on the tendrils of panic that were weaving through my thoughts.
“Uh,” I started. “I might have possibly …freedallthewraithsfromthebanishementcave.” My words were a fast rush, but they all understood me.
When they looked up this time, it was with a completely different expression across their faces.Fear.I’d never seen the Abcurses look afraid, not truly afraid, but I could tell that they feared what I might have done.
My nervousness had me starting to babble, because I was uncomfortable with all of the silence. “I was thinking about Jeffrey for some reason and then I held on to the thought of her tightly but instead I think I held on to Jeffrey’s wraith and yanked it here … along with all the other wraiths that had been trapped in there.”
I had broken the seal on the banishment cave, releasing that destruction into the world.
“Well, that was one thing on your to-do list,” Siret said, his expression was more relaxed than his brother’s.
“What do we do?” I whispered.
The sky above seemed to grow angrier by the click, and a loud crash rang across the land, almost knocking us to the ground. The gods broke free from whatever shock had held them and they turned to me almost in a single movement. It was probably the scariest thing that had ever happened to me, and considering recent events in my life, that was really saying something. I knew that this was the moment in which I had to make a choice. Did I cower and beg for forgiveness, or did I stand up and admit to what I had done? That this was something necessary to balance out the worlds? On one hand, I wasn’t even sure that what I had donewasnecessary for the balance of the worlds, but on the other, I couldn’t think of any other reason why I would have been spurred to do it. There had to be a reason.
That last thought seemed to come out of nowhere, but it felt right as soon as I acknowledged it. Trapping whatever remnants of soul that the servers possessed in the cave—binding them there and turning them into lost wraiths—was one of Staviti’s larger atrocities. Ithadto be contributing to the imbalance: souls didn’t belong trapped in a cave, not even partial souls. I’d wanted to free them the first time I’d landed amongst them, but the Abcurses had warned me that in doing so, it would release their destructive force upon the worlds.
“What have you done?” a tall brunette goddess asked.
She wore robes of lilac and had the largest blue eyes I think I’d ever seen. It was almost comical, but she still somehow pulled it off without looking like a bug.
“I have freed the banished servers,” I said, my voice much louder than usual, even though I hadn’t actively tried to project it. “The broken souls that were rejected and sent away by Staviti, by all ofyou. The souls that should never have been stolen in the first place.”
“Why would you do that?” a dark-skinned man in bright cerulean robes demanded. “You have brought about the end of the worlds.”
I cleared my throat a little, stepping away from the protection of my guys, standing as tall as I could in a small patch of grass.
