He froze.
Mind growing still, he huddled over Lilith, cradling the skull. There was enough death magic around him to rival the veil, and he opened his inner vision to the chaos around him.
Morana glowed to his inner vision, almost impossibly bright, brighter than she had when she slept.
She was a goddess, after all.
She wasn’t the only goddess, though. And thanks to another goddess, he already knew how to heal a mortal wound, and maybe that was enough.
He had no idea how to restore a living body to a nearly dead goddess, but he knew how to heal mortal wounds. Maybe all he needed to do was heal the gash in the bone from the sword, and Morana could restore herself.
End the paradox.
He could do that.
Mentally batting aside the rivers of cobalt-blue energy that circled the skull, Ezra reached out and seized a rivulet of death magic, peeling it off from the ouroboros and pulling it to himself. He then sent his awareness into the skull, to the gash in the bone, struggling to maintain his focus, body shivering. He wassuddenly colder than he ever had been before, and he trembled but made himself keep going.
Exactly as he had with Lilith and Monica, he focused on the cause of death, the mortal wounding, and he saw in the edges of the sword strike, a baleful glimmer of magic that did not belong to Morana. It was faint to his senses, and yet it was as stubborn as glitter as he tried to remove it from the bone.
If it was the Dainsleif that struck Morana, the sword was crafted by Dain, a god himself, one of the dwarves of Norse legend. A divine relic made the wound. It might be beyond him to heal it.
The walls of the hangar shook, hard enough to make the hard floor under Ezra’s knees shake with the force of the winds.
He mentally pried at the glittering residue, sweat beading on his brow and hairline, and he gasped at the effort.
There was enough death magic around him to restore a million dying humans, but the problem was that he was mortal—he had limits. Powerful he may be, but perhaps breaking the paradox was something beyond his personal ability to manage.
The ground shook, and a part of him felt the gathering snow on his hair, his shoulders, coating the reliquary.
Morana’s voice was now a constant scream that echoed off the ceiling and walls, full of desperation and what he thought might be terror. He understood that, he truly did. To be trapped as she was was a nightmare. She might be about to destroy a large city in her attempt to live, but he could sympathize.
He tried again to remove the mark left by the sword, and a tiny corner of the foreign magic peeled up, but clung stubbornly to the bone. He gasped for air, and tried again. And again.
He wasn’t strong enough. He should have waited longer to recover from burnout.
Ezra clutched the skull in fingers gone numb from the cold, and decided that trying again would merely drain his stamina fornaught. It took power to wield power and he was running to the end of his. There had to be a solution.
“You are too stubborn, my necromancer,” a voice cut through the cacophony of the nascent storm, and it was one he knew. Years since he heard it last, but he knew that voice.
“Hecate,” he whispered.
Time stopped.
Quiet reigned supreme and he shook, cold and covered in melting snow. He looked up, blinking water and sweat from his eyes.
She stood beside him, clothed in shadow and hellfire-green flame. Tall and lithe, with a lean build and grace in every movement. She took a final step, Her sandaled feet covered by the hem of Her rough-spun black robe. Her hair was long, reaching past Her bare shoulders to Her waist, an ashy brown that held flecks of hellfire as it moved across Her body. Her skin was grave-pale but shadowed, as if She stood in the depths of a cave and firelight barely defined Her edges.
She held a long dagger in Her left hand, and around Her waist coiled a dark serpent, which She wore like a belt, the serpent’s tongue flickering as it tasted the air. Around Her neck hung a simple leather cord, and a large silver key was tied to the end.
Darkness moved behind Her, and he tried to make sense of what he saw as shadows dripped and fell to the floor when She moved. He thought he saw figures behind Her, but they shifted too quickly for him to see details. One second the silhouettes of two more people stood behind Her, and the next, huge black dogs with hellfire-green eyes. He tore his gaze away and looked Her in the eyes.
She smiled at him, a small twitch of Her full lips that spoke of good humor and patience. Her eyes were a rich, vibrant hazel,green and brown in distinct hues that blended together into hellfire-green pupils that glittered like emeralds.
“My necromancer,” She said, and he froze as She reached out, brushing hair off his forehead and out of his eyes. “You’ve come such a long way, from healing a kitten to healing a goddess. What stops you now?”
“I don’t have the strength to heal her.” Ezra gasped out. “Forgive me, I did not mean to call you.”
She waved that away with a graceful flick of her wrist. “I felt the awakening of Morana and when I turned my eye to her, I sensed you in her shadows. She dares to threaten one of mine.” She reached out and ran her fingers over the gash in the skull. “Such a mess. End the paradox and set her free, young one.”
