Page 110 of Mother of Death and Dawn

I sat up and looked down at myself.

Ascended fucking above.

I was still covered in tattoos, but what had once been endless circles were now fragments of black. The Stratagrams had been shattered, as if someone had reached into my flesh and taken a hammer to each one, leaving the ink lines in broken shards rather than closed circles.

“We couldn’t remove the ink,” Blif said. “But the Stratagrams, and the magic beneath them, are now severed.”

“How do you feel?” Tisaanah asked.

Like I’ve been run over by a horse, I wanted to say, until I took a moment to actually think about the answer to that question. I was dizzy and sore, but as the pain and shock continued to subside, I realized that something was just… gone, too. A certain weight I hadn’t known I was carrying had disappeared.

I allowed myself to hope.

“It will take some time before—” Klasto started.

I extended my hand. A flame unfurled in my palm.

My face broke into a smile. Beside me, Tisaanah drew in a sharp breath.

I whispered to my magic, and for the first time in so long, it listened to me. I made the fire larger, reaching it up to the ceiling in twirling dances, then pulled it back to me in a perfect sphere between my palms.

I hadn’t realized how much I’d missed this—how deep a part of me it was. I felt like a bird who had been restored flight.

My gaze flicked to Tisaanah. She was grinning. The sight made my chest clench. The flame intensified, casting a stronger orange light across her face.

I was capable of more than this—so much more. I reached for every lantern in the room, spoke to those flames—

For a moment, they brightened, and—

Fuck.

Control slipped from my grasp. The thread of connection between me and my magic snapped. I tried to grab for it again, only to be met with an impassable wall.

The lanterns fizzled back to normal. The flame in my palm disappeared into a puff of smoke. My glimmer of freedom snuffed out.

“It’s alright,” Tisaanah murmured. “Try again.”

I did. The flame in my palm was smaller this time. When I tried to push it, once again control evaded me.

I tried again, again, and again, my frustration rising with each failed attempt.

I’d been so fucking close, and now I was being shoved back into that room of stone.

“Something is wrong here,” I bit out. “You missed something. I could do so much more than this.”

Klasto and Blif looked at each other, as if having a silent conversation.

“I told you,” Blif said.

Klasto rolled his eyes before turning back to me. “The Stratagrams were only part of the problem.”

Only part of the problem? I’d had every inch of my Ascended-damned skin covered in my own imprisonment and that wasonly part of the problem?

“You are having similar challenges, darling, yes?” Klasto said to Tisaanah.

“It is inconsistent. Sometimes, I can use it, a little bit. Other times, nothing. There are no rules to it. No consistency.”

Blif scoffed. “Rules. Ridiculous.”

---