Chapter 48

Godric!

My scream tears through the fabric of my sanity. Of the realms. Of anything and everything.

But he doesn’t come back.

He said it’s goodbye. He’ll transfer his Energy to me, then fall into a coma. Even if I use his mind-boggling gift right and manage to return, I’m no Princess Charming. I won’t be able to wake him up, with a kiss, or anything else.

Can I even live in a world where he doesn’t exist? Where he isn’t filling mine with his challenge and exasperation? Igniting me with his mixed signals and temptation? Fueling me with his ruthlessness and inspiration?

Can I go on without seeing his viridian eyes bleeding the lightning of wrath and desire? Without hearing his voice biting off orders or crooning provocation? Without his scent enveloping me in bliss, and his presence in unbridled life?

Can I bear knowing for certain I’ll never feel his touch?

No, to everything. No, I can’t. I can’t lose him. I can’t be without him.

And I start screaming my dread and despair again.

Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it. Don’t you dare make it goodbye. There’s another way. I will find it, you mule-headed madman! Come back here! Come back—please.Godric.

Suddenly I hear his voice again, but I can no longer see him.

You’re waking up every slumbering entity in existence, White.

I only shriek, loud enough to wake up even the dead stars.

Godric, you insane bastard! You scared the eternal shit out of me. Show yourself. Did you hear what I said?

I always hear you, White.

No, you don’t. You have noise-cancelling earbuds shoved in your ears half the time we’re together, so you won’t hear me.

I still hear you. I heard you across realms. I will always hear you.

You won’t if you’re in a hundred-year coma!

Even then, or even across the veil of death. Nothing will ever stop your voice from filling my mind.

He tells me this now? When he intends to deprive me of him for the rest of my life?

I sweep around, rabidly looking for his image, every spark of awareness inside me rioting with rage and fright.

Then hear this, you lunatic. I’m doing this. You keep your Energy inside that godly bod of yours, or I swear, I’m dragging your celestial butt into my void. Then we can be lost in there together.

You can’t do it, not alone, White. I made certain with a thousand computations. But you got your wish, after all. I can’t do it, either. I tried to transfer my Energy to you every way it has ever been done, and every way it has never been done—and nothing.

See? Even the multiverse agrees with me. It won’t let you do something that crazy.

Actually, you’re right, something is banning me, but it’s not the multiverse. It’s whatever controls the Trials, and the realm you’re in. After I managed to send you some Energy initially, it now knows my intention, and won’t let me help you. I tried every work-around, and failed.

This makes me more certain these Trials aren’t some cosmic dice being thrown at every Unitas. There’s a calculating, and malevolent, sentience controlling the whole thing. It plots and maneuvers, blocks and manipulates.

And because of my capricious void, we don’t have time to learn its complex chess game.

Now we’re both useless.

On our channel, I yell desperately.

What do we do now?

There’s only one thing left to do.

What?

You have to draw on your Unitas’ s Energy.

No!

Either that, or watch the black hole take them.

If it does, I’ll go with them.

You won’t. You will remain.

First you said I’ll be lost with them, now that I’ll remain. Why don’t I wait a bit more? You might change your mind again.

I didn’t change my mind. All those who got lost with their Unitas were nothing compared to you. There’s never been anyone like you, White. Only they will die.

But I can’t take their Energy, Godric. You said it’s connected to their Essence, their life force. I’ll kill them!

Do it, or lose your Sarah.

Low blow, Godawful. Your lowest yet. For the record, you’re a loathsome creature, and a lousy mentor.

I am indeed an abhorrent entity. But I’m not your mentor, White. I’m your molder, your keeper. Now do as I say.

What if…?

If you end up killing them, at least you tried. They’ll die anyway if you don’t try.

You can’t know that! Maybe this Trial is just testing our resourcefulness and cooperation. Maybe this is my test like Aela said, and if I don’t do something insane, like what you’re asking me to do, it will be over. Maybe this isn’t really a black hole, just something that will siphon us back into that Assembly Hall.

Are you willing to take a chance on that? When you and I feel this thing is real? The dangers of the Trials are always real, White. Cadets died by the thousands throughout the ages.

Now you tell me that?

Why do you think I tried everything to exempt you?

You said it’s because you didn’t want the Trials to reveal what I really am!

Yes, this is a trial by fire to force your mettle to emerge. But it’s also a simulation of what the cadets will face, once they become Heaven’s soldiers. It’s an existence of a terrible scope. One without safety nets. Or happy endings.

Then why put them through it when they’re just starting their training? Why not after they graduate?

Because they can’t train without activating their Grace Powers. It always seemed like a Catch-22 to me, too.

But how do you know all that, when everyone insists they don’t know what happens in the Trials?

Your professors might not know specifics, but they know enough from the amount of mutilated and lost cadets throughout history.

Then they’re even more evil than I thought! They should have prepared us better for this.

There’s no preparing for the Trials. They’re never what you prepare for.

Yeah, cause it’s the perfect time to be vague. You should have at least told me everything you know before we were shoved in here.

I—couldn’t.

Why couldn’t you?

There’s silence for what feels like an eternity. In this halted-time zone, it might as well be.

But I know he won’t answer that question. Maybe even can’t, like he just said. So I ask more.

Does part of your knowledge come from going through the Trials yourself? And what happened to the rest of your Unitas? Aren’t these supposed to stay together, one way or another?

Another silence stretches, until I think he won’t answer again. I’m about to say something when he does.

I lost my Unitas.

The way he said that feels like a direct punch to my heart. I have a zillion questions about this momentous confession. But they all have to wait, since I need to know more pressing details.

But you said teams are lost whole, that I’m different, cause there’s never been anyone like me.

No one else. We’re both anomalies. That’s why there’s no one else in this universe who can handle you. That’s why the bucket stops with me.

That’s a revelation of Godric proportions. And the bastard tells me that now.

Well, I’m not losing my Unitas!

You will if you don’t do as I told you. Take their Energy and save their lives.

But their Energy can’t be as powerful as yours, even the fraction that would have reached me. I won’t risk killing them for nothing!

They were picked for you by the Choosing, because, while not on par with you, they’re powerful enough to complement you, to withstand you. Their Energy will be enough.

I have nothing more to counter with.

Even if the endless moment we’ve been stretching between doesn’t snap, my void will not protect them for much longer. I feel it. It has already resisted me, might be punishing me for keeping it suppressed, for wanting to harness it against its will. Even if time doesn’t resume for me, I feel it running out for them.

I have to act. Or everything will be lost. All of them will be.

Reaching a decision, I start to leave the Mindscape, under my own power for the first time.

Godric’s voice bellows in every fiber of my being. Then he’s back before me, his image gigantic, his wings black and blazing, like rivers of magma.

Don’t you dare exit the Mindscape!

I have to return to them.

No you don’t. You can sense their Energy and draw it inside you while you’re here.

Even if I can, I have to ask their permission.

A rumble of volcanic frustration shakes the non-existence cocooning us.

If you exit now, I won’t be able to reach you again. Or to guide you. Or to save you if things go wrong.

You said no matter what, I won’t die.

You won’t. If things go wrong, you’ll worse than die. You will remain where you are and be lost. You will be lost to me. And I will go insane for real, knowing I can’t reach you. Forever.

That’s one of the options I thought of before.But…

It won’t be forever. I’m still human. I’ll die within a week, tops.

If I can freeze time, I bet your void can, too. Once you’re weak enough, it might awaken.Then it will never let you die. It will preserve you in stasis, aware and at its service for as long as it exists. I think it has always existed, and always will.

Now you’re just pulling nightmarish scenarios out of your ass! You can’t know any of that. You don’t even know what this so-called void is.

Maybe not. But I have touched it. I know what a malevolent bitch it is.

Are you sure you weren’t sensing me?

You’re not malevolent, you fool. You’re the very opposite of malevolent. Why do you think it chose you to house it?

Okay, stop! Stop! You’ll say anything to get your way, won’t you?

To save you? Of course, I would. I won’t let you get lost because you’re too stupid to disregard some pathetic human ethics.

Ethics are not pathetic. And you didn’t get lost when you lost your Unitas.

Who says I didn’t?

A universe-full of desolation permeates his voice, and an eternity of loneliness stains his image.

But it isn’t time to dwell on that now.

Time is running out for them, Godric. I feel it. I have to get out. I will not gamble with their lives without their consent.

They won’t mind once you save them. And if you do what I tell you, you will.

You don’t know that. Not in absolute certainty. Because nothing in existence is certain.

There is one certainty, White. That you were made to torment me.

The way he said that…

Later, Wen. Later.

Now make sure there’s a later.

Back at you, pal. But it’s their lives, and only they can decide to risk them. I won’t play god. I’m not you, Godric.

There’s a silence as absolute as the vastness of the realms I see him across, surrounded by a lightning storm of obsidian fury and frustration.

If he could stop me, he would. He would leash the hell out of me and yank me to his side. He wouldn’t care about my consent.

But he knows he can’t force me this time.

When I hear him again, his voice is a tumult of emotions that unravels my very essence.

Do it then, my Hell-sent bane. Follow your moronic code. But do one thing for me.

What?

Come back to me.

Before his words sink in, he fades.

I snap back into my conscious mind, to the feel of Sarah sobbing beneath me, shaking me. And we’re almost at the vortex, only a few thousand feet left. At least my void is still protecting them.

“I tried, guys,” I yell over the deafening wind. “There’s only one way this might work. You have to give me your Energy so I can snare it, and you, into whatever’s holding me back. Or use it to amplify my power. Whichever works best to stop the black hole from sucking you in!”

“What’s that energy?” Sarah asks raggedly.

“Grace Energy, the fount of our powers,” Aela rasps.

“I need your consent to this plan,” I yell.

“You have it, dammit!” Aela growls.

“How do we give it to you?” Cara pants, barely clinging to my legs by her fingertips.

I feel I can take it, as Godric wanted me to. But I don’t know how they can give it to me of their own free will.

But whatever’s inside me knows. It whispers the answer in my head, using me as a mouthpiece to repeat the coaxing of its sinister seduction.

“Just open yourselves to the idea, to me. Don’t resist. I’ll do the rest.”

To my surprise, the first one whose Energy flows into me is Aela. I know because it—tastes of her, like a spicy chai latte with a spoonful of the heart of a star. Even though she already consented, I thought she’d be the one to hold off till last.

“Hurry up, will you?” Aela yells. “I’m not ready to die this pointlessly!”

Sarah grabs my hand tighter. “Take what you need, Wen. Always.”

My eyes burn and my chest tightens. She’s everything to me, my whole family. I have to do this for her. So she can continue living in this new world she loves so much.

Her Energy flares inside me. This proves that she has a Supernatural component to her. What it is, we need to survive to find out. It’s bright and breathtaking, and completely untamed. It’s totally unlike Aela’s, which was scorching, devastating even, yet fully leashed. It swirls around me like a hug, permeating me with all the colors and scents of her generosity and trust.

Trust. Seems she was right, and this test really is about trust. Me, trusting Godric. And them, trusting me.

“I don’t know what you can take from me,” Jinny pants beneath me, her face mashed into the nebulous medium below. “I’ve been told I have no soul, and my powers come from unadulterated evil—but help yourself.”

I have no time to tell her what Godric told me about Energy being universal to Supernaturals, before hers passes through me.

It shocks me to my very core, like touching a high-voltage wire with wet, bare hands. It veers away into the void inside me, as if from a like charge it cannot approach, before settling in an orbit around it’s non-existent heart, like an asteroid belt made of blazing sin.

I feel we’re almost there, but not yet. Something’s still missing.

“Cara?” I look down at the girl digging her fingers like talons in my calves.

“What-what if we can’t get our Energy back?” she whimpers.

Before I can say anything, not that I have the words to reassure her, Aela slaps her upside the head. “Do it, or I’ll kick you into the black hole myself!”

Cara squeezes her eyes and her Energy surges inside me, a braided rope of hues, and I can hear each and every fiber. Like a serpent, it winds itself tight around the others’ Energy, gathering them, binding them.

And it’s done. It’s complete. We are.

The void inside me sniffs all around the amalgamated Energy before it shudders in appreciation. Then, it rises from one edge of forever, crests like an existence-sized tidal wave. Its hunger spans eternity before it crashes, obliterating everything.