Page 51 of Dark Fae's Destiny

“Push your Light harder, Lucca,” Quinn’s gaze sparks. “Ariana, brighten yours, and I’ll do the same. Let’s shine like diamonds in this place… and see what we’re actually standing on.”

“Done,” I say, as I raise my power to the max.

I’m burning up into a towering flame of Light, as I feel Ariana and Quinn do the same. As our power brightens a hundredfold, the mist goes rolling back all around us.

It shows us we stand upon a broken, golden road now, high upon an upthrust piece of rock, like a promontory. We push our power harder; suddenly in the near distance, we see the glimmer of an ancient city through the mist. It’s only there for an instant before the mist swirls in, taking it back.

As if incensed we tried to push at it, however, I feel the mist swirl in harder now. It rises like a leviathan, pushing back against our power and swamping our boots as it surges back towards us.

It takes everything we have to keep it off us.

“Balls!” I glance at Quinn, fast. “It’s responding to our Light, Quinn! Getting stronger…!”

“Stop! Stop your Light, Lucca—quickly! Ariana, you too,” Quinn says. Trusting his instinct, I shut my power off with a snap, though everything inside me roars to do it. Ariana does, as well. As we’re drowned only in Quinn’s Night magic now, which he’s holding carefully free of his Fae fire, I see the mist ease, dissipating. At last, everything nearby is free of that ancient, diabolical sea.

Showing us a golden path.

“Follow the yellow brick road,” Ariana says wryly now as we regard it, and the strange resonance of magic that occurs in this place. “Why did raising your Night magic work when our Light failed?”

“I don’t know.” Quinn glances around; I see him predict which direction of the road would most likely take us to that nearby city, as he nods at it. “I think we need to head this way, though. Whatever is in that city, I feel it calling to me, like a beacon in my Night. I think we’ll need both Light and Night, however, to solve this labyrinth. Staphylogenes may not have been stranded here upon this overlook by not having his Light; it may be further along that we’ll need ours. Standby, Lucca, with your power. Ariana… do the same.”

As we nod, Quinn takes point. We slowly make our way along the pitted, ruined road in the direction of the nearby city.

I see now that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of golden phrases scroll across the road, giving it its ancient shine. It’s actually a road of white stone, as we tread carefully upon its broken, upheaved flagstones.

But it was so thoroughly inscribed with these golden sigils, which I still see scrolling through over and over in what looks like ancient Archangelic magic, that it looked gold at first glance, rather than white.

Most of it is ruined, the magic it once had now gone. There is enough, however, to keep us grounded, tethered to reality here in this nowhere space as more strange oddities, buildings, even a bleating goat pass by.

We see nothing like the enormous manticore-bull again, though. Until we come to a sundered archway of that same marble-white stone and infinite gold, shining all through with haunting panes and pinnacles of broken glass.

They whisper to me now as we gaze up at it.

“There is Light magic here,” I say to Quinn and Ariana as I peruse it. “May I?”

“Do it.” Quinn nods.

Risking the mist’s retribution, I raise my power; slowly, the surrounding area brightens until I’m flooding it with the vast light of day. Gradually, hidden sigils in those ancient, broken panes and pinnacles of glass in the archway come to life. They scroll through with power; though the road and this arch were broken ages ago, nothing could break the Light inside those ancient pieces of glass.

They speak to me now—flooding my mind and heart with information. I stand very still as that ancient speech inundates me.

I know it, yet I don’t; like the most ancient Fae dialect, it somehow makes sense, even though it doesn’t. My power understands it, however; I feel Ariana and even Quinn being flooded with echoes of that most ancient language now as their Light magic gets some, too.

I have the most Light in our trio, however, and it’s me those ancient sigil-phrases speak to.

As I’m flooded with radiance—before it suddenly flashes out.

“This was a city of Ascendants.” I am amazed as I come out of my trance and look at Ariana and Quinn. “This was a place they once made their High Seat, as physical immortals after their initial Fall. It was from here that they built countless worlds to which they could travel, enjoy, and create upon their whims. This was their starting-point—their origin in the flesh, so to speak. But they ruined it, somehow. This gateway is a warning to any who might tread within; that evil still taints this place. And for any with the brightest Light… to stay away.”

“Which is why the mist tried to push us back the way we came,” Quinn understands as I see his dark eyes clear. “This mist is a failsafe, put here by the ancients who made this place after it was broken. So no one with Light would ever come here. And be ruined by the evil that still exists in this place.”

“Apparently,” I say, though it’s Ariana I look to now. She’s been quiet for so long. Quinn looks at her, too, as she frowns harder than I think I’ve ever seen her.

As the truth-reading energy inside her churns.

“Ariana?” Quinn goes to her. He’s dropped his Night magic a little, and the archway is once again swallowed up by mist as I step to them and we all draw close.

“I don’t think we should go any further,” she says. I see her swallow as an alarm goes off inside me now, and I take her hand.

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