Aidon crossed to Nina and put an arm protectively around her. "It takes significant energy to maintain our barriers. It doesn’t leave much to fight her."
That explained why they suddenly all looked like they were trying to solve advanced calculus while getting root canals. Without anesthesia. It also explained why I felt like I was being snacked on by a magical vampire with a serious case of the munchies.
"The supernatural communities across three continents will be feeling this drain," Asterion observed. "Her actions are essentially starving the entire magical network to feed her transformation."
"Clever bitch knows how to limit my resources," I muttered as I fought the urge to have one of them teleport me to the siteregardless of what I said. "Drain the competition before they can mount an effective defense. It's like she read the Evil Overlord Handbook and actually paid attention."
"The question is," Artemis said slowly, "how long can she keep drawing like this without destabilizing the entire magical ecosystem? Just because she isn’t drawing directly from the ley lines anymore doesn’t mean she can’t cause a major collapse."
"Based on these readings," Jean-Marc said, his fingers dancing across his keyboard, "not long. The power fluctuations are already causing feedback loops in the ley line network.”
“If she keeps this up, she's going to cause magical earthquakes," Nyx added.
"What the hell is a magical earthquake?" Nina asked, looking between the gods.
"They make regular earthquakes look like a gentle massage," Aidon replied dryly. "Trust me, kiddo, you don't want to experience one."
The babies decided to join the conversation then, in the most dramatic way possible. Heat blazed across my abdomen, and their magic erupted outward. It made the air around me shimmer with raw power. But this wasn't the gentle warmth of their usual defensive barrier that I'd grown accustomed to. It was almost like someone had cranked a radio to full volume and broadcast directly into my nervous system.
"Jesus Christ on a pogo stick," I gasped, pressing both hands to my belly as the sensation intensified. The heat spread up my spine and down my legs, making my entire body feel like a tuning fork that had just been struck. "They're conducting a magical orchestra in there. With a full percussion section and a really enthusiastic brass ensemble."
"What are they trying to tell you?" Artemis asked, moving closer with the kind of fascination usually reserved fordiscovering a new species. Her silver eyes were practically glowing with interest.
"Give me a second," I said through gritted teeth, trying to focus on the chaotic symphony of sensation and emotion flooding through me. "They're... excited? No, that's not right. I have no idea. All I can say is that the sensations are urgent."
Through Lyra’s parasitic connection to the babies, I saw her standing in the center of a ritual chamber carved from black coral. The walls pulsed with veins of stolen power. It was a macabre version of a circulatory system. She was wearing jewelry that held some of her stolen power. There was more than one necklace around her neck. Dozens of bracelets ringed her wrists. And every finger had a ring on it. She was also wearing a crown. The pieces were beautiful in the way that poisonous flowers were beautiful. Gorgeous, mesmerizing, and absolutely deadly.
"Those artifacts," Artemis barked, making me realize the babies were showing everyone what I was seeing. "I haven't seen them since the original Pleiades were stripped of their celestial status. Those are fragments of the sisters' essence."
"She's literally wearing pieces of their souls." Asterion’s words made me want to vomit. "That's not just theft. That's desecration of the highest order."
"Classy lady," I muttered sarcastically. "Really knows how to accessorize for world domination. I bet she gets her fashion advice from the same place she gets her moral guidance. Straight from the depths of hell. No offense," I told Aidon.
What made my stomach drop into my shoes wasn't the stolen artifacts, disturbing as they were. It was seeing the dozen other witches arranged around the chamber's perimeter. They had their hands raised as they channeled their power into Lyra's ritual. She wasn't acting alone anymore.
"Your children are conducting magical surveillance through the Earth itself,” Artemis blurted. “They're using the cleansed ley lines as a scrying network. It’s brilliant."
"It's not theoretically possible," Thalia murmured as she watched with awe.
I turned wide eyes from her to Artemis, but it was Nyx who replied. "Divine children don't follow normal rules," Nyx replied matter-of-factly. "Especially not when they're motivated by the need to protect their family."
"Great," I muttered. "I'm going to give birth to magical super-spies. That's going to make bedtime stories interesting."
The emotional feedback through the connection was nauseating. It felt like swimming through someone else's psyche. It wasn’t my babies. This one was full of broken glass and poisonous snakes. Pure ambition mixed with decades of resentment was wrapped around a core of desperate loneliness. Inexplicably, it made my chest ache with unexpected sympathy.
"She's terrified," I announced, surprised by the revelation. "Under all that power and rage, she's absolutely terrified of being alone again. It feels like she's a scared kid hiding behind a mask made of stolen magic."
"Don’t let that soften you. Fear makes people unpredictable," Nyx advised. "Although if we understand what she fears most, we can use that against her."
"What exactly does she fear most?" Artemis asked, leaning forward with obvious tactical interest.
With a shrug, I closed my eyes and let myself sink deeper into the emotional feedback. It wasn’t easy because every instinct was screaming at me to disconnect from the psychic sewage flowing through the connection. "All I can see is being left behind and forgotten. Everyone she's ever cared about has either died or abandoned her, so now she's convinced that the only wayto never be alone is to have enough power that she'll never need anyone again."
"That is almost disappointing in how mundane it is," Asterion said with the kind of clinical detachment that came from millennia of observing human behavior at its worst. "She’s used emotional isolation as a defense mechanism against further loss."
"It doesn't excuse what she's doing," I said firmly, opening my eyes to glare at the projection. "Plenty of people have abandonment issues without deciding to steal magical power and murder innocent people."
"Agreed," Artemis said. "Her motivations excuse nothing."
