“I’m all too aware. But the way you’re going about handling that is worsening it all. I’m here to offer you an alternative, toshowyou an alternative.”
“All right, let’s talk,” Raquel agreed.
“Great,” Sylas said.
And then he staggered over to them—like, right in the middle of the battlefield.
People moved out of the way, looking both worried and stunned, as they inched back a bit on all sides.
Sylas stopped, then looked out at them, breathing heavily. “One of you mind conjuring a chair, a bench, something along those lines?”
A sorcerer with spiky purple hair in a fancy silver suit—yeah, a suit on a battlefield… whatever—twirled his hand, tangerine power sparking as he conjured a crimson leather chair. I smiled to myself. The crimson was a nod to Sylas’ power, the guy kind of showing his respect in the process, despite the whole Temperance rhetoric. Well, it was a complex shitshow.
“Much appreciated,” Sylas told him. He sank down on it, still gripping the cane. “Motherfucker, yeah, that’s better.” He held up his free hand that wasn’t holding the cane, and it was trembling. “Just to be clear, if any of you are considering using this as an opportunity to summon yourNihilumbracreation tosubdue me, in my current state, it’s likely it would actually kill me. Not sure the fallout of that would be conducive to keeping you all safe.”
“We’re not going to do that,” Raquel assured him. “We agreed to talk, so we’ll honor that. We’re not unreasonable.”
“Just deeply traumatized.” Off their looks, he smiled sadly. “Me too.”
He sighed heavily. “It’s a real bitch of a thing, isn’t it? Something you can never truly escape, something you have to fight not to keep at the forefront and influence all that you do. And trauma that stems from others more powerful delivering harm… that adds further complexity. It eats at you. It hardens you. It makes you hypervigilant. It can lead to decisions being tainted by the past, rather than the present state of things.” He rested his head back against the chair. “I’ve spent my life fighting against that, giving those not strong enough to protect themselves power and protection from me. I’ve been tortured mentally and physically, had my magic stripped from me, watched Morien almost murder those I love, watched him actually murder my mother and my sister, I’ve died because of what he enacted, I’ve had him almost take my body and my power as his.” His gaze hardened as he looked out at them. “And yet. I’m not only my trauma. I don’t pull that into high-level decision-making that affects so many. I don’t let what was done to me dictate who I am now, how I act.”
Fuck. Me.
That wasa lot. The things he’d suffered through… I didn’t even know about a lot of that, meaning maybe Win didn’t either.
No wonder. It was beyond brutal.
I saw Vax wincing and Evira staring sadly out at him.
And a haunted silence fell over the battlefield.
“You’d never allow your son to be the personification of all of that,” Raquel surmised as the reason Sylas had revealed all of that.
It was more than that. He was humanizing himself, yeah. But not just in the sense of showing them that he wasn’t just supreme power—just a thing representing that. It seemed he was demonstrating that he understood so deeply the trauma that had caused these reactions and actions in them. There was a whole bunch wrapped up in it. And it was genius, once again. But also deeply fucking sad.
“You’re telling us he’s not ever gonna be the second-coming of Morien,” Hale said, in that blunt and harsh way he kept putting out there. “Because of how you raised him in light of what happened to you?”
“He’s not onlymyson. He was raised by Velra, Cassius, and Lazriel, all who were persecuted—just for what they are. Like what you’re doing to Winter now.” He shook his head. “The line between you and Puritas is growing thinner and thinner. And we need to see to that before you cross it. That begins with me asking for your help.” He shifted in the chair, and I could see it cost him to move to the edge and sit up straight as he looked out at them all. “Ruxnoth has twenty necromancers down in Sanctus with him. They’re significantly supporting the construct and keeping it undetectable. And they’re also shielding him personally. There are two ways for me to breach that shield, but I won’t be doing either. Because one way involves me siphoning them all—some who hold power sets close to mine. To break the protection permanently, I’d need to pull from all twenty at once. I do that, I will die, which will screw you all over and destabilize the balance. And my son—the one you all hate and fear—has pleaded with me to try to spare them, give them a chance, rather than just wiping out a threat. The second way…” He took a beat,then revealed hauntingly, “It involves using Risen Reckoning on them—on the living.”
“Wait,” Hale said. “You know you could use that fucked-up spell to break through it and get to your boy, but you’re agreeing not to do it?”
“That‘fucked-up spell’was never designed to be used on the living. Its purpose was only ever to return the illicitly risen dead back to proper death state. Anything else is a huge violation being perpetrated by anyone who performs it, and to the balance of nature and death. I’d imagine it would put you at ease to know that I’ve found a way to prevent it from ever being used on the living again. But to pull that off, I need Winter’s contribution.”
“You could really do that? After all this time?”
“Winter hadn’t come into his power before on his necromantic side. Now he has, we can undo the very spell that strikes fear into the hearts of all of you. Once I see to that, it would only be able to be used to return the risen dead to the Valley.”
“What about the death-touched?” a vampire asked.
“Vampires are onlytouchedby death. The same with Wraiths, Shadowmancers. Their ‘living’ aspect would protect them. They can’t be read as true death state. That’s not how it works.” He shifted his grip on the cane. “Now the help I require from you involves using a variant of your creation,Nihilumbra,to see to the necromancers. To subdue them. I use the word ‘variant’, because I’d need you to develop a version that would grant me immunity—temporarily, so relax, I know you feel you must keep it as a fail-safe against me—so I can ‘attach’ it to all twenty of them, which I’d need my magic active and not compromised to be able to do.”
“And what about Winter’s place in all of this?” Hale asked. “Ruxnoth explained through those holoscreens that—”
“He explained nothing!” I called over.
Sylas eyed me, his lips quirking. Then he told Hale and Raquel, “He fed you a narrative. Ruxnoth intends to use Winter to power Sanctus eternally. Ruxnoth is straining to maintain it himself. He also wants to bring his construct onto the mortal plane and then do what all power-hungry fuckers dream of—to reign supreme over us all. I suspect he’ll use the power he’ll then have at his disposal again when he forces Winter to carry the weight of Sanctus in his stead, to bring that about.”
I saw Sylas’ fingers dig into the chair as he had to explain Ruxnoth’s sickening plan to use Win that way. Not just using his power, which was bad enough, but to do something that would hurt others.
