The stone gods around him turned as one and began to walk through the Pleasure District. He followed them, pausing only when someone fired a shot at him. It was a brave young guard wearing a navy suit with sparkling gold buttons.
Elric reached into his own chest, where the shot should have hit his heart, and pulled the crushed bullet out. Black blood seeped through his fingers, but when the bullet clinked onto the ground, the man was already lifting the musket again.
“Don’t,” he said, pointing at the man with a clawed hand.
The guard started to squeeze the trigger, and Elric unleashed all the rage he’d been harboring for ages.
Shadows crawled free from his body. They scurried like rats up the man’s legs, biting into him with teeth and claws that shouldn’t exist on mere wisps of darkness. So many innocent souls watched in horror as they crawled into the man. Biting, gnashing, gnawing through his skin until they were visible lumps beneath his pale flesh, racing up his torso and arms, coming out of his throat in a wet gush of blood that sprayed onto the person standing next to him. The woman froze in shocked silence for a moment before releasing a bloodcurdling scream.
Good. Let her scream. They should all be terrified of what he could do and what he would continue doing if they failed to worship him as he deserved.
Anger still seethed underneath his skin. Some of these people had continued to worship his siblings, believing his siblings were more worthy. Even after centuries, it was still a bitter ache in his soul. Hewasworth their adoration. Far more than his brothers or sisters, because he was the only one who had ever fought for mortals.
As he strode through the streets, he allowed his shadows to disappear into the skin of anyone who tried to attack him. Witnesses cried out that a monster was in their midst and that he would be the death of them all. The end had come, and the god of death had returned.
These people hadn’t seen real magic in centuries. Now he was going to show them all just how powerful he was.
The town square was filled with people barely held back by the bubble of magic that surrounded his witches. Five of them, all seated cross-legged on the ground with their arms around each other. They swayed back and forth, chanting in a black tongue that had cast more curses than spells in its time. The runes etched into the ground around them were starting to wear thin from all the weapons that cracked against their magical shield.
With a flick of his fingers, he strengthened each of those runes, searing them into the ground so that no manner of cleaning would ever remove them.
Agnes looked up, and then Elissa. Both of their faces were streaked with dirt, and he could see Hugo looming behind them. It had likely taken every bit of self-control for him not to push people away from the circle, but the man had managed, knowing how important it was to demonstrate the strength of the coven’s magic. And for that, he would be rewarded just like all the others.
Elric looked up at the sky. Fluffy clouds surrounded a sun that merrily beat down on a scene straight out of a nightmare.
“My coven!” he shouted, and everyone who had been trying to get to the witches froze.
They turned to see a god with dark wings silhouetted by the sun itself. And then he let his wings spread ever wider, the grin on his face one of pure euphoria as he drew every ounce of bitterness from himself and lethis magic fly free. “Let us bring night to this cursed kingdom, and plunge it into unending darkness until the very world repents.”
Their chanting grew louder, filling the town square with an eerie song of witchcraft and madness as his shadows boiled above them to blot out the sun.
Sneaking through the streets felt wrong when she knew all the others were risking their lives. But finding Fortuna had taken time. Now, they knew where she was hiding out and they knew how to get to her. This back alley had seen better days. Water slicked the cobblestone streets, and it was the only area of the Pleasure District that didn’t sparkle even in the moonlight. But what a place to hide.
As they rounded the last corner, Jessamine felt the surge of power at the same time Sybil did. It was the first moment she’d felt connected to the coven. Usually, she relied on Sybil to know what was happening when it came to their powers, but right now, it was almost like she was the same as the others.
But anyone who knew what witchcraft felt like could tell what was happening in the Pleasure District. It raked down her body, sending claws down her spine that felt so good and so unnatural at the same time. She could feel the ends of her hair lifting, and had a sensation that she wasn’t alone.
Finally, she could feel it. There were so many other women just like her, and their calls and chants filled her entire being with reason. The family she had so hoped to find, and they were right here with her. A coven.
Sybil motioned to her, and together they lifted the hoods of their cloaks and slunk down the street. People were already whispering about the madness they had seen at the temple and beyond.
Gods had come back to life. Hysteria had descended upon the Pleasure District.
And then the world went dark.
Jessamine tilted her head up at the last second, risking being seen just so she could watch Elric’s powers float around her. The darkness that existed in him alone had expanded and blotted out the very sun. She couldn’t see anything at all. Just an undulating blanket of power that moved like waves of ink, not water. Then it seemed to peel off of itself, still dark but raining down featherlight motes of…
She caught one on her fingers and rubbed it between her thumb and pointer. “Ash,” she whispered, showing it to Sybil. “It’s raining ashes.”
Sybil grabbed her hand, staring down at the darkness smudged there. “What does it mean? What message is he trying to send?”
“What better way to show the entire world that he’s returned?”
They both shuddered before rushing forward again. After all, things were clearly in movement, and she had no intention of waiting to see what would happen next. She needed to keep going.
Alexander had told them that Fortuna had a safe house. Jessamine wasn’t entirely sure if she could trust Leon’s brother, but he seemed suitably shaken by the events of the party. Even if this was a trap, she was prepared to walk into it. After all that had happened, all that she lost, she would not fail herself again.
Fortuna had seen Jessamine at her weakest. She had trapped her when Jessamine had been stuck in her own mind. A part of her still wanted Fortuna to be the cousin she had known, the same person that Jessamine had always hoped she would become. And that sentimentality had cost her.
