Page 26 of Angel in Absentia
Myken had been right. The Ashanas were the menace, and the darkness she sensed here was worse than any she’d encountered before, beyond the full extent of her own senses, but she’d had enough.
They all had.
Her body swelled and burned with ansra, and she felt all of those feelings that had been brewing inside her, her skin burning and crackling with them.
“We’re done,” she said, flashes of light searching across the enclosure, causing the dark vines to shrivel. The floor beneath her whipped into sparking waves, and it felt like her hands were on fire, eager to release a torrent of light. She would heal with everything in her, and the feeling was electric. It was the feeling she relished during each healing, akin to some kind of freedom in which she was a part of the world around her, completely released.
The smoking figure in front of her suddenly blasted into a wall of darkness, a mutated soul whose muscles coiled like a corded mountain. Her heart raced as its massive blue eyes opened, all three of them burning down on her as a rotting mouth opened to reveal rows of broken, infected teeth.
Standing before her was the soul of a Venennin beyond the likes she’d ever imagined. This was the shadow in the dark she’d feared, the possibility that had haunted her in her sleep.
But at last, they’d had enough. There was no more capacity to fear what came. The last century had been soaked in fear, and The Decline was indeed over.
She could hear Dae’s word echo in that proud confirmation, that readiness to break free from the oppression of The Decline and all it had represented.
Myken was right; they didn’t completely understand what was coming. But Clea had sensed it in her people, in every Veilin and human she’d healed: they were done living beneath the shadow of dark symbols.
The restlessness had been more than just her own. It had been her people’s. One victory was no longer enough.
This was war.
That proclamation echoed through her in a blast as she threw her hands out to heal the very air around her. Stripped of a body, her power felt boundless, and she extended herself beyond the reach of her hands as an orb of light wrapped itself around her.
The world burned, the rotten flesh seared away, the vines of pollution pushing sickness to its victims now breaking and unraveling, freeing Shambelin from the toils of this great monster lurking in the Ashanas Kingdom.
The massive beast threw its rotten claws around her, slamming with immense force into the orb of light that enveloped her body and crushed it in.
She shouted back, hands pushed to either side, energy like electricity crackling through the world. The rotten flesh burned,her light flickered, and she reached a point where she knew two things for certain.
The first was that she had powerfully shattered the makings of a dark stronghold.
The second was that at any moment, the crushing weight of this beast would reach her at her most vulnerable.
It happened quickly. She grasped her temples, slamming her eyes shut as she fought the dark tether that bound her here and strained to return to her body. In another moment, she flashed away from the scene, stumbling away from the pool and knocking the bell sideways as someone dragged her back from the water.
“Get him out!” a voice shouted from above her. She looked up to see Dae pulling her up, shaking her.
“Snap out of it!” he yelled.
“He’s alive!” one of her father’s guards shouted from the pool as they hoisted him out and covered him in a towel.
Clea checked her own body, thinking for a moment that she might very well have the curse on her again.
Her father choked water out of his lungs, collapsing onto the marble floor before even the guards backed away in amazement. The entire room looked at the man now, his body feeble but free.
“They used real souls to craft the curses,” Clea said, panting hard. “It wasn’t a normal curse. We couldn’t banish it because it was a human soul, twisted into a curse,” she explained as she processed the realization herself. She felt like she needed toshare as much information as she could, as if her time here was limited. “Javelin de Gal, he is their lord, I’m certain of it.”
She wasn’t sure if they’d heard her, wasn’t sure how much they cared, because as the group continued to stare, there was a profound wonder in the room.
Her father ran a hand over his bare chest.
“It’s gone!” Yvan exclaimed.
Her father was inspecting his skin. Even Catagard had an expression of shock on his face.
Clea had healed the plight that had long plagued her and her family. In murmurs and exchanges, others cheered. She tried to coax out her joy. Instead, she felt a small, subtle tug at the depths of her soul.
She paused, concerned as she slowly lifted a hand to her sternum. Another tug, stronger, like the insistent pull on a fishing line.
