Midnight Magic Read online

  The magic, however, remained. It was all about her, but not the thick, choking fog that it had been the first time, more like the smoke trailing away from a recently-snuffed candle. Still irritating and visible, but easy enough to wave away. Below her however, it was far more tangible, a boiling vat she was very conscious of not wanting to fall into again.

  Kalinostrafal, bastard that he was, had been smart to never teach Aurelai how to fly. It had made an entire dimension to his cage a trifle, and removed the possibility of anyone overhead being snared and crashing into it on accident. Visually, however, it was just as effective as if Vimika had been inside it. Though she'd been here before, nothing was familiar beside the sticky sense of dread that permeated the whole area.

  Except the border of shadow, she realized.

  Viewed from above, it was really an arc. Unwilling to trust her Sight when it came to anything Kalinostrafal had a hand in while airborne, she could just make out the circle it described with the naked eye. With a little yip of triumph, she shot up again to hover directly over where the center should be. But with no sign of anything other than more trees, she cursed. Peeking out through one eye, she risked a quick look with unfiltered Sight.

  Sure enough, a blazing white star of animata pulsed directly below her, orbited by a dimmer planet.

  The allure of being so close, combined with the driving need for recompense drew Vimika down.

  "Aurelai!" she shouted. "Can you hear me? Aurelai, I'm sorry! I-"

  The star moved, but no sound came up to meet her.

  "I'm coming! Just... hold on!"

  So close to the trees now she could have reached down and touched them, Vimika skimmed the Forest in frantic search of some crack, some fracture or break in the magical field she could pry open, or if she was feeling more reckless, try to dive through. But it had sealed itself perfectly. Only Aurelai and Oliver gave away anything was abnormal, and that, Vimika suspected, was only because she already knew they were there. There had been no sign of anything save Oliver's trail the first time, and now they were as obvious as the mountains.

  What wasn't was how she was going to reach them. She could risk a blind plunge, but the illusions could easily trick her into thinking the ground was farther away than it was, or overwhelm her magic again mid-air, which would end poorly.

  But she had to get back. She couldn't leave Aurelai…

  Ever.

  The thought came so suddenly and so clearly it occupied the entirety of Vimika's mind. It wasn't about the place, or what she was, or anything resembling an objective argument about what might happen, and she wanted to cry out at her own stupidity for how she'd reacted.

  She wanted to be with Aurelai, the Aurelai she knew, the Aurelai that was, regardless of what she was made of our how. Aurelai the woman was all Vimika had ever known, and all she ever wanted to know. The Aurelai she had vowed to show the world, to see it with, to share it with.

  And what was stopping Vimika?

  Her own stupidity, and Aurelai's dead father.

  The first she could do something about, the latter, however…

  A second thunderbolt struck Vimika square in the brain. With Aurelai the sum total of her thoughts, they were flowing as freely and clearly as they had when they'd connected in the library, and were coming so quickly she could barely work out how to apply them before another one came along to shove it out of the way.

  Vimika had talked to herself.

  In the forest below, there was that ephemeral strand of animata. From above, it was even more obvious, weaving the patchwork of spells together in a web-like pattern, appropriate for ensnaring anyone who wandered into it. The one that could have turned her around, scared her even worse than it already had or just never let her out at all, letting her die of exposure or starvation. But it hadn't.

  "You are unworthy," Vimika whispered.

  With sudden decisiveness, Vimika wheeled the door around. "Aurelai! I'm coming for you! I'll be back soon!" she shouted, and shot away north until she found where her door had spent the winter.

  She set down on the snow and stared into the trees.

  This time, what lay beyond was more than money, more than intrigue. It was the other half of her heart, and nothing would keep her from making it whole again.

  Selfish witch.

  It wasn't about Vimika's heart. It was about Aurelai's. She was the one in true pain, through no fault of her own. She was the one robbed of choice her entire life. She was the one who needed to be made solid after living an entire lifetime as a shadow. She was the one who deserved to be loved for who she was, and not what.

  She was the one.

  Vimika turned north.

  Out there, just over the horizon, they were waiting. Tarsebaum, her wizard, the other house wizards of Durn, and beyond them the whole of Atvalia. They would find her. Sooner than later, they would come, and they would take her. Tear her apart to see how she worked, experimenting, testing, then howling about what an abomination she was and killing her. She had to get away. Now.

  After so long in an artificial spring, the bite of winter's breath on Vimika's face was sharper than ever, whipping at her robes, tugging at her hat. It stung her eyes, made them tear up, but for all that she could see more clearly than ever. Without direction for so long beyond away, she could now look towards.

  Towards the south, to See the Shadowbridge Forest awash in the green of mana, with that eerie single thread of white animata weaving through it. Above was blue. Bluer than the most perfect sky, more intense than any feeling could ever be. The high magic, left over from the birth of the universe.

  The alumita called to her. The eternal temptation of every wizard, and the last, to all who answered. It was said to be the power of the gods themselves, not meant for mortal wizards.

  But Aurelai wasn't mortal. She would outlive Vimika, and deserved to do so free and unharmed. The moment Vimika had agreed to find Oliver, she'd all but signed her own death warrant anyway. Or at least condemned what years remained her to a kind of indentured servitude, which was the same thing.

  Craning her face to the cloudless sky, she Saw her chance to set it all right at once. Her friends and family would be safe, Malivia and her greed thwarted, and above all, Aurelai would be free.

  When Vimika's work was done, there wouldn't be enough evidence left to find her with.

  ~

  Calling on the alumita wasn't that different than calling on mana, it was the discharging of it that exploded you. A wizard's body made a decent enough receptacle for magic with enough training, but a terrible conduit for it to actually move through. There was a reason forest fires started with lightning, and it wasn't because the tree that was struck kept all the energy neatly contained.

  Standing in the snowfield apart from the forest, Vimika felt very much like a lightning rod, only one that was chanting the words that would guarantee a strike. All around her the air itself was conveying twisted shapes and unnameable colors as the light passing through it bent.

  Ironically, power of the type Vimika was calling on didn't leave much of a wake. There was no howling wind, no flurries of snow kicked up, no scattering of birds or baying of dogs, because everything was changing together, all at once. From an external viewpoint, alumita barely interacted with the physical world at all. From Vimika's, it was twisting its very fabric.

  As the energies built, she saw thunder and tasted lightning, while all she could smell was the color blue. Her long wizard ears heard nothing, as the air could no longer move fast enough to convey sound.

  It would have been fascinating if it weren't so incredibly painful.

  She grit her teeth to near bursting, tears and drool running freely down her face. She'd long ago lost any sense of her body, every ounce of her having been replaced with arcane fire. But she couldn't scream or budge while she was siphoning, that would risk early and catastrophic discharge. The latter was always going to be true no matter what she did, but the former would make the entire en
terprise pointless.

  She had no idea how much she would need to destroy the illusion field, so she took as much as she could handle and still maintain the ability to think. It wasn't like she was going to get another chance. Besides, the universe would never run out of alumita, making it impossible to waste.

  Whatever the final amount, it had to be enough.

  Every inch of her burned with the strain, but still she called it down, and she began to feel the first inkling of what it was like to be a god. She could do anything with this kind of power. Unmake the illusions? She could unmake the world!

  As the power grew, the more light bent around her, and blackness closed in.

  Surrounded by it, sheathed in it, it whispered against her.

  Like Aurelai's hair.

  Her bottomless eyes.

  With a single barked command, the flow of alumita ceased, and light returned. The world straightened itself again, only now it tasted blue.

  But she couldn't dwell on it. Without knowing what kind of range she was going to get, she had to reach the heart of the forest to shatter the illusions from the inside without getting too close to Aurelai when she did.

  Each step was agony as her body tried to reshape the near-divine power within her to match the movement of her very mortal arms and legs, but it was sheer bloody determination that led her to charge over the shadow line without slowing down, kicking up clumps of snow behind her as she stalked it like a predator. When the silence descended, she didn't flinch. She pressed a hand to her neck, encouraged by her heartbeat and the raw energy coursing through her. They were signs of life, the reassurance that she could still make things right. Aurelai would be free of this place whether the ghost who called it home allowed it or not.

  "Show yourself!" Vimika shouted, the words surging under her fingers as strongly as they had sounded in her mind. "If you're going to try to stop me, do it or get out of my way!"

  Without waiting for a response, she forged ahead. She knew where the house was without question, guided by the blazing star of Aurelai straight ahead. There was no magic of any kind that could steal that light away now. Vimika locked on to it, held it in her mind's eye, her Sight, her soul, holding it tightly and threading it through the piece of Aurelai lodged in her own heart.

  No matter how this ended, she would not lose it again.

  As though approaching from a distance, the sound of her own footsteps began to grow gradually louder, the hushed whisper of the wind through the trees closer to that of the rush of water. The call of birds returned, the crush of fallen needles beneath her feet, the crisp, clean light reflecting off the snow in the boughs, a blanket adding an extra kind of white to crystals of ice that had yet to melt.

  When the silence lifted completely, a shadow fell across her path.

  "I was right about you. The moment you had the means, you fled," Not-Vimika said.

  "And returned." Vimika's voice had been squeezed into a frog-like croak from being strangled by the fundamental energies that had birthed the universe. Managing to speak at all was a good effort, she thought.

  "Indeed. Why?"

  Even without the alumita to help pierce it, the artifice skinning Not-Vimika was as thin as paper now, the face it wore just a veneer over something altogether not Vimika. Beneath was the entire thread of animata. Concentrated into a space the size and shape of a young female wizard, it Looked more like molded fog than anything solid, but a glance around confirmed that's all there was.

  "Show me your face, Azrabaleth. Your real face. I want to know what kind of man does this to his own daughter. Daughters, I should say."

  "My real face is rotted to dust by now. Far more efficient to pluck one from your memory. Why have you returned, Malakandronon?"

  "For Aurelai. To make sure that she knows there was one person in the world who cared about what she wanted. And to say I'm sorry, which is more than you've ever done for her," Vimika said. She could barely stand to look at herself through the pain, but whatever he was now, she was going to look him in the eye.

  "I couldn't lose her. Not again," Azrabaleth-as-Vimika said.

  Vimika huffed both in discomfort and disappointment at such a weak defense. "Why? Why did you do this to her? She didn't do anything to deserve what she's been through!"

  "As I said, I couldn't lose her again."

  "Stop talking around it! She's your daughter!" It was getting harder to form words. Vimika's tongue felt like it had been coated in grease made of acid.

  "Yes," Azrabaleth-as-Vimika said. "And no. I was a grieving old man who couldn't bear to look upon that face and see anyone but who I'd lost. Aurelai exists because I couldn't accept that loss. First her mother, then our daughter… I couldn't. Wouldn't."

  Vimika had to tamp down the urge to be sick. "What happened to your first daughter?"

  "Her name was Greldefara. We sought refuge here from our persecution, but she soon took ill. I was no apothecary, and breaking the defenses to seek out a healer would have killed us both. This place is rich in metals, so when the time came, I did what I could with what I had. But when the girl on the slab opened her eyes, it was not Greldefara looking out from them."

  "That's not her fault!" The need to discharge the alumita was making every word explosive, she had to shout everything now just to vent what pressure she could.

  Azrabaleth-as-Vimika shook her head. "No. Nothing personal to my Grelde survived the process. I didn't see Aurelai as my daughter, only as a creation. One so dangerous she needed to be locked away forever. Only in death did I realize what I had truly done, but then it was too late."

  "So let her go!"

  And talk faster!

  "Where? Into a world that would see her destroyed? Pulled apart and inspected like a broken timepiece?"

  "Because of you! You're the whole reason any of this happened in the first place!"

  "Do you think those first contracts just appeared from nowhere, Vimikathritas? That I expended all that time and energy on a whim? I did what I did because there was a demand for it. I did it in concert with the people who later turned on us. It was the mages who had no scruples, and no business attempting the process that doomed us, not my perfecting of it. I gave people what they wanted! I made confessions of undying love genuinely possible.... something I promised to my wife the day I married her. But she was taken from me. I kept it for Grelde."

  Fire and pain lanced Vimika's insides, which meant they were either liquifying or she was going to start shitting lightning. "Where was Aurelai's promise of undying love?!"

  "I've confessed my mistake already, Vimikathritas. What of yours? I was right to call you unworthy, and you dare speak to me of promises made to my daughter? You broke her heart as thoroughly as I did, so tell me why I should let you near her again."

  "Because I'm still alive to make up for it!" Vimika bore down on the foreign magic churning within her, forcing it to let her speak long enough that he would know why his (after)life's work was about to be undone. "I was a afraid. And a fool. I'm neither of those things anymore, and you are not going to stop me from seeing her again. I will keep my promise, and she will know she is loved the way she deserves to be loved."

  "And if I continue to believe you unworthy, then what?"

  A small comfort fluttered through Vimika's torment. He couldn't sense the alumita. He was no longer a real wizard. Fragments of images danced on the corners of her vision, but the illusions had no hope against the power ravaging her body. Standing before her was a ghost, and those were easy enough to walk through when you didn't believe in them anymore.

  The animata was all here, tied directly into the patchwork of the entire field. It was all connected, centered not an arm's reach away.

  It all seemed so simple now.

  "Then I will prove myself worthy."

  Vimika reached a glowing blue hand to her animata facsimile, placing it over her heart.

  Azrabaleth-as-Vimika cocked its head as realization dawned. "You'll die."


  "Probably. But Aurelai will live."

  The power of heaven exploded the world a blinding blue.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THERE ARE MULTIPLE destinations wizards believe lie beyond death, most of them a hell of some type. Unlike the conception of many human belief systems, the hells weren't necessarily for punishment, merely a place where the soul could be... laundered. Life lessons collated and pondered, rewards and punishments doled out depending on how one lived their life, all manner of things to make it ready to return to the world of the living in another form. This, wizards believed, was the source of good and evil. Good people had learned, bad people hadn't.

  Then there was the one Heaven, a place of true enlightenment accessed after millennia of incremental improvements have made the soul ready for even attempting conversation with the gods, sometimes even to become gods themselves.

  Or, it was possible to remain in the world as a benign spirit, communing with people who would never be believed, assisting in ways that they would never completely understand. Intuition, conscience, premonition.

  Wizards who died violent deaths by their own hand became wraiths, magically-charged entities always on the edge of tangibility. A torment that would never end until they were exorcised or the world ended, as punishment for the abuse of their gifts.

  Vimika had never felt particularly enlightened, so she was fully prepared to be scooped up, fed into some kind of interminable queue and made to fill out paperwork of some kind. She hadn't been terribly responsible with her body after all, which probably meant she would have to sign for it. Then she remembered why she was having these thoughts, and suddenly having a familiar sky above her made a lot more sense. She looked down at her hand to see something black and smoke-like wafting around it.

  "Oh," she said.

  Maybe being a wraith wouldn't be so bad. She could float around, pass through walls, and... what? Keep an eye on the world, but have no power to interact with it? Condemned to remember what it was like to eat, drink and make love... forever?