Page 149 of Last Gift: Supernatural Battle

Not the stiffness in my body, nor the hunger gnawing at the walls of my stomach.

Wild opened his eyes, and we shared an acknowledgment and an awe.

“Whoa,” he whispered.

Whoa indeed.

Threads filled the room. They weren’t entirely foreign to me. I’d glimpsed them a few times, first of all while training in the battle center.

Their appearance had altered. Four very distinct energies now formed the threads—the red grimoire lattice, the black battle smoke, the white apothecary casing around the first two, and then a thick gray line that sat at the very center of the red lattice.

Divination.

I’d wondered at the threads, not recognizing them for what they were because they’d never led anywhere, nor tied anyone together.

Not like they did now.

The red lattice was knowledge, and not just my own. It was impossible knowledge from this coven and those I had connection to outside of the coven. I knew some of what they knew—enough for my grimoire affinity to unite with the robe cladding my back to make leaps and put patterns together.

Knowledge.

The black battle smoke provided the drive and fight to form pathways through the red lattice. The battle smoke presented the need for me to understand the map before me in a way that would allow me to defend and attack in the name of protecting those in this coven.

Fight.

The role of the white apothecary glow around the red and black had been obvious from the start. There was a need for my magic to work as one and not as four different entities funneled through four different relics. This was the role of the white.

Harmony

And lastly, divination.

The gray lines snaked in every which direction, but unlike when I’d first noticed the threads, each line had a destination. They poured from Wild for instance, and if I chose, then I could follow one to Sven, one to Corey, and one to almost every member in this coven. I could trace one to his parents and see all they’d shared. I could see Wild’s past and the paths available to him and where they may lead. Seeing all that would take time, and too far ahead, I had a feeling the pathways would grow murkier or fainter.

My divination magic gave form to the threads.

Direction.

A tear trickled from my eye to soak into the blankets. “It’s my quipu.”

“Yes, my love. Your magic never left.”

The physical form of my quipu was set alight. There had always been the potential to make a new quipu about some other difficulty that popped up in life down the track, but I’d never foreseen what the threads meant.

Perhaps my magic never would have given me this gift if not for how it interacted with Ryzika’s relics.

I pressed a shaking hand against my mouth. It wasn’t all gratefulness. I could see so much. It was overwhelming to an enormous degree.

Wild’s arms wrapped around me. “Pull it all in, my queen.”

No easy feat.

His magic wrapped around mine, protecting it. Wild helped to pull in my four affinities to our center. I listened to his steady breaths and focused on his warmth as my vision returned to show me the room itself without the lattice of threads present. The quipu was fainter but still here.

From now on, I’d walk through a three-dimensional version of the knots and braids that used to hang on my wall.

“This will be disorientating,” I whispered.

“This is… Tempest. Do you know what this means?” he hushed.

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