“Me.”
She’s a daemonic version of myself. Not older, per se, but unleashed, unbridled. Someone I might have become without my mother’s guidance. A physical manifestation of the monster within.
Cygnus looks toward me in utter confusion. “No, I was going to sayme.”
I blink, looking back at the figure. She is unchanged, watching us with those cold, austere eyes that seem to look out of a cadaver into the world of the living.
“I think we’re seeing what the spell wants us to see, Cygnus.”
This is powerful magic. Ancient spellcraft. I stand trembling as I behold this twisted version of myself, both knowing and not knowing that she’s an illusion. I see what the magic wants me to see. The spellcraft wants me to fear myself. It wants me to doubt.
I can’t let it win.
Before I can gather my senses, the daemon Lyria comes alive, startling me. She gestures for me to follow her and then begins walking toward the mountains. Her robes trail over the water.
“We’re being told to follow,” offers Cygnus.
I take a long breath. Everything in me wants to turn around, but today I’m choosing courage.
“Then by all means.” I step ahead.
The figure leads us over the lake for what feels like ten or twenty minutes, until we spot something looming in the distance. Two gates. Or archways, really. They are carved from gray marble, perhaps the same stone that forms the jagged mountain peaks in front of us.
The nightmare version of myself stops when she is between them, then turns around slowly. She holds out her hands, palms upward, indicating both directions.
“Which one?” Cygnus grunts.
“Right?”
“Everybody probably chooses right.”
I could pummel him. “Left, then?”
We approach the left archway, but the figure steps into our path, shaking her head. Again, she holds out two hands—in opposite directions.
“I think she—orthey—want us to split up,” I murmur.
“I think you’re right,” says Cygnus.
We glance at each other. I can read the reluctance in his eyes, mirroring mine.
“This might be the end,” he admits.
I nod. I can feel it, too. We’ve come to the end of the line.
The final gate.
I look at Cygnus, and an odd weight presses down on my throat. I’m not sure I can untangle all the complex feelings I have toward him right now—all themanyvaried things I’ve felt toward him since we met. I don’t know what the future holds, but I’m grateful to have known him.
I step toward the gateway on the right. Words scroll up and over the crumbling ruins, and I translate at record speed:
“‘I enter at the breaking point, my price revealed within; some truths are only found in time, seen solely at the end.’”
As I approach, I see that the entry point shimmers with iridescent mist. Distorted rainbows fracture against the swirls as oil spills over the murky water. I reach out to touch the mist. It isn’t solid like the lake water, but it is freezing cold. I look sidelong at Cygnus. He watches me. So does the bone-chilling figure.
Old energy hangs over this place, an odd tension in the atmosphere that seems to harmonize with my Talent, like the echo of an old song. If something is to be found in here, something needs to be yielded as well.
“Here goes nothing,” I say, sounding much braver than I feel. Then I step into the mist.
