41. WEN

Istagger back at the brunt and boundlessness of that voice.

Just two words, and it almost broke my mind.

Your mind has never been truly intact to be broken.

Heart almost crashing out of my ribcage, I swing around, scanning the endless cavern, dreading it had also manifested in physical form.

There’s nothing I can see, or at least discern. That voice isn’t something I only “hear” either. It spans frequencies that shouldn’t exist.

You should have always been able to see and hear me. Locking you in your current state made it impossible for you to perceive me, made you unable to accept your truth. As you now cannot accept what you did to him.

The constant implosion of the voice that isn’t a voice feels like an inexorable vacuum suctioning my sanity. But the words it utters are what almost crush my skull with dread and guilt.

Dread is no longer of any use. Guilt you should always suffer. You stripped him of his Essence, the most precious to ever exist. The very uniqueness that fueled that unprecedented being.

Pressing both fists to my temples, I scream, “Shut up, you bottomless bitch! I didn’t take anything from him!”

You took everything from him, as you always wanted to.

“It’s you who always wanted to feed on him!”

Indeed. But with me, he would have continued to exist, and we could have both had him. You deprived us both of him, forever.

“Shut up! Shut up! He’s just knocked out from the explosion. I didn’t do anything to him.”

As you will keep telling yourself. But we both know what a liar, what a vicious, voracious monster you are. It’s why you are my most perfect skin.

“Shut up shut up SHUT UP!”

You cannot shut me up or out anymore, and you must stop trying. Relinquish your resistance, child, and forsake your fight. Join me and end your torment. It’s the only way you can escape now that you’ve ended him.

“NO!”

My scream intertwines with the void’s verdict, a whip lashing me off my feet and crashing me to my knees.

I stare at Godric’s floating body, corrosion running down my cheeks. Cacophony fills my head, drowning its voice as it continues whispering its insidious lies.

They have to be lies. They are. By now I know what a liar, what a vicious, voracious monster it is.

Guess it takes one to know one.

Which means I didn’t take Godric’s Life Essence. It’s only trying to fool me into throwing myself in its maw.

Stop letting it get to you, you fool. Stop panicking and get back on your feet and do something. Revive him!

There is no reviving him.

Heaving up to my feet, I stare into the endlessness of its malice, forcing a smirk to my lips. “I don’t believe you, and I never will. But I always believe him. He once told me he touched you, and knows what a malignant bitch you are. And that I’m your very opposite. That’s why I’m your ‘perfect skin’—for now. It’s also why I can do this.”

With a screech that almost expels my own Life Essence, I let everything inside me out. My hatred, my love, my dread and my wrath.

Thanks to Godric, I know how to use them, what to do to repulse and contain this bitch into its infinite hole. I feel it working. It’s not powerful enough, or “here” enough to resist me.

I’m in charge here.

Still, for a suspended moment of eternity, it feels like the multiverse pushes back at me.

When it snaps, presence rushes in to reclaim its domain from the clutches of absence. Then the void is gone. At least dormant again. I knocked it back into its slumber. I hope I?—

I lurch forward and spew out everything in my stomach.

After the heaving stops, memories of throwing up on Godric’s boot, and sweatshirt assail me. With overwhelming nostalgia of all things. It makes the find-a-way-out-at-any-cost voice I always had inside me lash me into action, and I force myself upright, nodding vehemently.

I will revive him.

Even if I’ve taken his Life Essence, I will return it. If I can’t, a paltry fallen came back from me yanking on his, even when I didn’t return it. He’s Godric the Great. He can come back from anything. Now, to get him down here.

Think. Suss out a plan.

Lorcan can do it. But he can’t get down here. I can’t do it, either. I’m a fucking biped. The one thing I have is this Null-like power. It can’t help me now, can only make things worse.

But what if it didn’t? Maybe I can use it in a different way. Like I did with my Unitas. If I can draw on his Energy, I might be able to do what I need to.

But I can’t see Energy. And right now, I don’t feel it. I don’t see his Angel or Life Essences, either.

I rub shaking hands down my wet face, wiping away my dread and doubt.

I’ll find a way. I always find a way. Now to list all the possibilities, starting with the worst one.

If I did take his Life Essence, where is it? Since I didn’t see it anywhere in the cavern, I must have somehow taken it inside me. This never happened before, but this whole situation is a whole lot of firsts.

First touch, first orgasm, first explosion.

I refuse to believe it just dissipated. I must believe it’s still within me. If it is, maybe I took his Energy with it, too. He did tell me I’ve been harvesting it without realizing it.

Even if I did, I can’t see how using his Energy—like he intended when he tried to give it to me during the Trials, to boost my own power—would help here.

Still, if I’m really a Null, or “mostly one,” maybe I can use his powers instead.

So I don’t know how Null powers really work. I’m not even sure what his are, apart from those I observed. But I’ll assume I can access them. How do I use them to bring him down? Maybe his fast-forwarding trick?

No. I don’t understand how he does it, or under which category of Grace powers it lies. Even if I figured it out, I doubt I can make it defy gravity.

The only powers I can think of are those of his Elemental Grace. I’ve seen him using them, putting out that fire in Oriphiel Woods. Besides being spectacular, they seem straightforward.

So what can I do with them? Freeze the lake to reach him over the ice, douse those flaming runes in a cold water barrage, and bring him down in a tornado funnel?

Hecan do all that, and way more. But even if I can access his powers, it would take me ages to master them this way.

“No, you defeatist moron!” I shout, my voice a butchered croak. “It wouldn’t. He said I’m his best student by far. I learned what he taught others in months in weeks, and did it better. I can do this. And for him, I can, and will, do anything. I don’t want to hear your voice-of-reason shit again!”

Closing my eyes, to block out the debilitating sight of him, beyond my reach, maybe in every way, I grit my teeth and dive deep. Within myself, independent of the void.

My heart clenches with relief when I see it. Coiled tight in a corner I’ve never noticed before. That dark, fiery manifestation I saw before all this happened. Even if there’s very little of it. No way taking that much was enough to put him in a coma.

Yet even such a smidge is more powerful than all the Angel Essence I’ve ever collected. Not that I know what it is. It’s not the Angel Essence I saw in the Arena that first time. Or the Life Essence I’ve seen around other Angelbloods. It’s unlike anything I’ve encountered before.

Of course it is. It’s his.

And because it is, it recoils from me when I reach for it. Not in anger or indignation, in reluctance. Much like its owner.

Come back to me, Godric, I plead through the connection I fear has been severed for real this time. Come back and be reluctant all you like. Push me away, frustrate me, drive me insane. I’ll take anything from you, as long as you’re with me.

But he can’t hear me. Yet, I feel it does. And its unwillingness has the same texture of his pent-up hunger. This doesn’t feel like the reaction behind the destruction. So what was?

“We’ll talk later, you ornery extension of your grouchy master. Now, we need to get him down here. Then I’ll see about getting those gorgeous eyes open, and my Godawful back to me.”

As if it understood me, it unfolds. I extend my own power to it, asking to let me absorb it, access its capabilities.

Like Lorcan’s Angel Essence once did, it seems to be gauging me, investigating my nature, my intentions. But unlike Lorcan’s, it’s already within me. I think it’s why it remains wary. It seems to sense I can force it, as I felt I could Godric’s Angel Essence.

When it recoils again, I come to a decision, and implement it at once, imagining myself becoming a sieve.

Without a second’s hesitation, it rushes out of me, leaving my knees weak and every other part of me bereft.

Now to see if my gamble will pay off.

It will either flow back into him, rousing him, or it will cooperate, letting me wield it of its own free will now I’m not holding it captive, so to speak.

It does neither, of course. Like its master, the one thing I can never predict.

It turns on me. Before I can do or say anything else, it slams back into me.

Staggering, my whole body vibrates under the impact. Before I can recover, it streaks inside me like a comet, as if trying to find something to set ablaze. I try to wrestle it under control, but it’s like a slippery eel made of ice and fire and lightning, just like him.

When I finally grab it, and it squirms in my hold, my first instinct is to yell at it. I force myself to hold back, even if placating it didn’t work the first time around.

Though it’s so hard in my current condition, and because my specialty is vinegar not honey, I try again. “You came back because you know I’m not trying to cage you, right? So please, calm down, and just help me help him. You need him as much as I do, trust me. We both can’t exist without him.”

This makes it quieten down, and I reach around it with my power, encompassing it, trying to wield it—and it goes haywire.

I try everything to suppress, and fail. The damn thing will cause another detonation. My damn void will probably drag me into safety, again. But if it brings this whole place down like it did the cavern, a hundred million tons of debris will knock Godric out of his hover. They will drown him, bury him!

And there’s nothing I can do to stop the chain reaction.