Chapter 22

We stood at the crossroads of four ecosystems laid out in a perfect grid, each one beautiful, each one dangerous. I wasn't sure how I knew that dangers lurked inside those gorgeous natural environments, but I did. Danger lurked there. And death.

In front of me, in the grid's upper-left quadrant, lay a field of flowers. Sweet-smelling, colorful flowers. They were all different—and yet all sang notes of the same melody. The flowers and notes blended together in a superlative, seductive song. The song, combined with the gentle breeze and warm sunlight, made me feel kind of drowsy.

A dark forest covered the grid's upper-right quadrant. Though it was daytime just next door, here it was night. Darkness reigned supreme. I heard the foreboding, bewitching melody of animals inside the forest. Brightly-colored, poisonous spiders perched on gigantic webs strung between the trees.

The crossroads point was small—barely large enough to fit me, Nero, and Arina—so I turned carefully on the spot to get a better look at the two quadrants behind us.

The lower-left quadrant was a sunny meadow. There was no grass, and there were no trees or bushes here. Mushrooms were all that I saw. Mushrooms in every conceivable color and pattern. I stared at them, transfixed. And the longer I stared at them, the more transfixed I became. I couldn't look away. My vision blurred. I thought I saw one of the mushrooms change into a bunny, then it started hopping around.

"Careful," Nero said.

He'd caught me as I'd swayed.

I smiled at him. "Thanks."

When I looked back at the meadow, the bunny wasn't there.

"That area seems to have hallucinogenic qualities," Nero observed.

That explained the bunny. I decided not to stare at the mushrooms too much longer, in case I started seeing more things that weren't actually there.

I turned my attention to the final quadrant. The ecosystem in the lower-right area of the grid was dark. Very dark. Brightly colored fuzz that looked like some kind of bacteria had covered some of the darkness like a layer of moss on a tree. I felt a very weird, very irresistible urge to touch the foul stuff. I reached out. The multicolored fuzz spread toward my hand.

I retracted my hand. "Ow!" I'd felt a surge of pain where it had touched my fingers.

"What are you doing, Leda?" Nero asked me.

"Looking before I leap again, apparently," I said sheepishly.

"You really need to stop doing that." Nero looked my hand over. "I don't see anything. Does it still hurt?"

"No, the pain is gone now, but that was really weird. This whole place is weird. Where are we anyway? This isn't a memory or a vision. It's something else entirely."

"I believe this isn't a real place at all," he said. "It's a metaphor."

"A metaphor?"

"A symbolic representation."

"Yeah, I know what a metaphor is," I chuckled. "But what's this place a metaphor of?"

"Magic. I believe we are looking at the four quadrants of magic." He pointed to the field of flowers in the grid's upper-left quadrant. "Active light magic, the magic of the gods." He pointed out the blossoming flowers. "The magic of Nectar."

He indicated the dark forest in the grid's upper-right quadrant. "Dark active magic. The magic of the demons." He looked up at the venomous spiders in the webs. "The magic of Venom."

He turned with me and indicated the sunny meadow with all the hallucinogenic mushrooms in the lower-left quadrant. "Light passive magic."

"The magic of the spirits," Arina chimed in. She indicated the mushrooms. "The magic of Elixir."

"Spirits? Elixir?" I asked her.

"The spirits are like gods or demons," she explained. "They're another kind of deity, a deity with passive light magic. And Elixir is like Nectar or Venom."

I turned to the final quadrant, the one with the multicolored, biting fuzz. "Then that makes this area the representation of dark passive magic."

"Yes," Arina said. "The magic of the eidolons. And Blight."

I guessed the eidolons were the passive dark magic deity, and that Blight was their equivalent of Nectar or Venom.

There was a flash, and then my brother and three sisters were suddenly there, each one standing in a different quadrant. Zane was inside the active light magic field. Bella was in the active dark magic forest. Tessa was in the passive light magic meadow. And, finally, Gin was in the passive dark magic quadrant.

"I think the Vault is trying to tell us something," I said,

"How very observant of you."

I turned toward the voice—and found Gaius Knight. He stood beside me in the tiny crossroads square, which had meanwhile grown larger to accommodate his presence.

"Are you part of this metaphor?" I asked him.

"No, he's actually here, talking to us," Arina told me.

Gaius smiled. "Correct."

"In fact, he's the one who enchanted your parchment in the first place," Arina said. "The clue to Thea's grimoire. And he put my picture on that page."

"Mostly correct." Gaius didn't clarify further.

"Somehow he's found a way to tap into the visions from wherever he is." Arina poked him with her finger. Her hand didn't go right through him.

"Then he's the one who can give us the answers we need." I turned and faced the man. "Why did you send me all these visions? And what is this magical metaphor all about? Light, dark, active, passive. What is the meaning of showing me this?"

"Passive magic. That's what the Immortals named it when they catalogued all of magic."

That wasn't an answer to the question I'd asked, but Gaius didn't seem to care. In fact, he looked perfectly content to speak about whatever he had already planned to speak about.

"The Immortals called it ‘passive magic' because they thought ‘eating magic' sounded too dangerous, too threatening."

"Very interesting." I had a feeling he would eventually come to the point, but I had no idea how long that would take.

"But passive magic didn't sound too dangerous or too threatening," Gaius continued. "It sounded amenable. It sounded like something that wasn't vile, something that wasn't a threat."

"Indeed." What else was I supposed to say?

"Some other people out there still called it eating magic," Gaius said. "Because the magic that the passive magic users wield comes from channeling magic that exists outside themselves."

So the Immortals had tried their hand at rebranding magic.

"This is all very interesting," I told him. "But what does it have to do with what you're showing me here?"

"The bonds of siblings are strong, when they grow up properly."

I felt like I was talking to a fortune cookie.

"And Callista made just the right environment for you all to bond. She created the right recipe." He sounded like he was talking about baking, not family. "Look at your brother and sisters."

So I looked.

"They are your four horsemen, one from each quadrant of magic. Together, they encompass the four kinds of magic. And here you are, Leda Pandora, standing right at the middle of it all."

"So you meant for my brother and sisters to protect me?" I asked.

Like Ava had wanted Bella to protect me. Come to think of it, where did Ava's plans fit in to all of this? I was about to ask that question when Gaius dropped the biggest bombshell of them all.

"They're meant to protect not only you, but also the child you carry. Your daughter is the future. And you are standing at the crossroads, Leda. Light magic. Dark magic. Active magic. Eating magic."

"Light, dark, active, eating," I muttered, repeating his words.

I didn't like the order, so I changed it. "Light, eating, dark, active. LEDA." I gaped at him. "Leda. It's me."