Page 87 of Morning's Light

You called. I answered. Step forward in challenge, little witch, for now the fun begins.

Aisanna recognized the delight a split second before Darkness enveloped her body. Her feet left the ground and brought her higher. She was dimly aware of a weight at her back before she shot upward into the clouds.

All sense of time abandoned her. Wrapped in nightmarish pitch, she had no recognition of where she went. Up or down, forward or back.

Stop fighting, love. This will go easier for us both if you simply give in.

The voice cooed from somewhere inside of her. She felt the tendrils of cold at the twang and reverberation of each syllable. It chilled her blood. Cracked her bones. Took her to the brink of what her body could physically tolerate.

Her throat contracted to form words, although no sound escaped. An eternity passed by in that span of time, and for a brief moment, Aisanna caught a glimpse of the universe. It stretched before her, infinite and deep. A glow of galaxies, universes beyond her comprehension, billions of stars each hosting their own warmth and life.

Her vision tunneled and narrowed on a single point in space, nothingness, void. Somewhere in the dark, unswept corners of her mind, Aisanna knew she was about to die.

Suddenly it was as if she had been dropped, falling fast. She slammed into the ground with enough force to take her breath and snap her arm. An excruciating pain heralded the return of feeling and she howled when it ripped her in two like a nuclear blast. She could barely make out two similar thuds across from her. Astix and Karsia.

After a few moments, she was able to push the pain aside, rising up on her good arm. Though the edges of her vision blurred, she tried hard to focus and block out the pain watering her eyes. There was darkness, but also faint light as her eyes became accustomed to her surroundings and she realized they were no longer in the clearing. Was this…a cave?

“Astix,” she managed. “Karsia?”

An inhuman howl echoed off the walls of the empty cavern. It shook the ground until her body hummed like a human tuning fork.

A single shaft of unbroken moonlight pierced through an opening in the ceiling and illuminated pools of stagnant water. Stalactites and stalagmites fought for supremacy, lancing through the space like teeth ready to gnash together.

Dominating the cavern was a rock formation unlike any she’d ever seen. The bottom half appeared to be made of the blackest obsidian, polished to a sheen with edges sharp enough to cut. The top half jutted toward the moon in unbroken white with crystals dotting its surface.

Pulsing with power. Beautiful.

Aisanna drew to her feet, felt an overwhelming desire to touch, to take. To consume the stone for what it represented.

She shook her head to clear it and then noticed her hair standing on end as though she’d stuck her finger in an electrical socket.

Darkness coalesced in front of her, riotous ribbons of pure evil racing on an invisible breeze before enfolding around a too human shape. There, in the dim light of a waxing moon, Cecilia stepped forward.

She was as Aisanna remembered from the reflection in the mirror. Bountiful yellow hair cascaded down the tall, willowy frame and settled around full hips, her beauty perfection from her snake-like eyes to the deadly smile.

Though her mouth remained closed, she spoke to them, her voice scratching the inside of their skulls.

This stone is where it began, my daughters. Can you not feel it?

Cecilia raised her arms to the sky and power glowed along her fingertips. Unearthly power. She floated above the floor with luminous feet skimming inches from the earth.

I needed a way. The magic was too wild. Too uncontainable. My people were dying, but I found the way. I became the way. I give you a chance to do the same.

At last, Aisanna found the will to speak. “I’d rather not, if you don’t mind. I find I’m quite done with you.” She hissed, raising a hand to her throat. “We know who you are. The only thing I need to know now is how to kill you.”

Despite her brain screaming for retreat, Aisanna reached out a hand until she and Cecilia nearly touched. The ethereal woman met her eyes.

Their fingertips drew ever nearer, one cloaked in light and the other gloom. Aisanna ignored the agony of her broken arm, the myriad bruises and scrapes from her drop to the cavern floor, her attention focused on the woman in front of her.

I cannot be killed. Let me show you.

Aisanna wanted to touch the thing, to let go and, if only for a moment, feel the light Cecilia emitted. It glowed and pushed logic and reason from her until she ached to give in. To let her worries slide away and bask in a blankness of someone else’s making.

“Don’t touch her!”

Astix broke the impending contact, crawling over to place her body in front of Aisanna. “You fucking monster. You think a little trip to la-la land will help bend us to your will? You think you can agonize and alienate my sister after I didn’t play along with your dog and pony show? I see you for what you are.” Her finger whipped up and pointed at the stone. “And I know what that is.”

It was ancient. Astix recognized the saturation of emotion attached to the stone. Sadness and betrayal, fear and excitement. And above that, power. Raw, unadulterated power. It wasn’t from their world.

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