Page 260 of Swords of Soul and Shadow
Hallie wiped the sweat rolling down her face. The fire had dimmed. Not enough. Ben cursed. “What are we missing? The other Essences? Maybe if we give it the swords and our own powers? But we’d need the one Jagamot took, and Kase’s sword, too. It has Correa’s.”
Hallie pressed her palms to her eyes. She needed to think. Out of all her research and obsessive reading, she must have come across something,anythingthat could give her the answer.
She looked down at her hand, the one with Kase’s ring. The band glowed subtly. Odd. Was it merely reflecting the firelight? Or was it coming from within?
The ring was pure Zuprium, the gemstones little chips from the crystal clusters themselves. Ever since Kase had pressed it into her hand, it’d felt right—even after her rejection.
Kase’s goggles hadn’t survived saving Ben, but they hadn’t been her Relic to begin with. Her power craved freedom, but that would only lead to destruction—of what, whether that was herself or something else, she didn’t know.
But this ring. It had been given out of pure love, with all the promise of forever.
She couldn’t help the soft gasp that escaped her lips. It couldn’t be.
Saldr had said replacing a Relic was nearly impossible—but not completely.
This was the Relic she’d needed all along.
Shewouldfinally find it right when she was about to give her power up to save the world. But what now? How could she use the Essence within her to fix the Gate before her?
To control her power, she needed a Relic. Before Kase had given her the ring, she’d been lost in that power, burning like this Gate. What was the Gate’s Relic?
The swords. The other Gates needed those—the Nether and the Aurora. But this one? What had happened to its guardian? Had it ever had one?
She knew next to nothing about it, only that it had been ruined for as long as time immemorial. The state of the cathedral confirmed that.
“No!” Kase screamed.
Hallie looked up, heart in her throat, her hands filling with power. But that wall of flames Navara had thrown up earlier still held, keeping her and Ben from whatever was happening on the other side.
How long would it hold?
Could she get around it?
They needed to figure this out. Now.
What if the only way to fix the Gate and heal the soul of the god trapped inside was to give it a guardian, a Relic, whether that be find the original or create a new one? How did one do that? They didn’t have time to search for the original—hunting it down could take years. Could Hallie do something about that? Could she somehow reverse time and find the sword?
Her fingers tingled with the thought.
What were the consequences of using her power on that scale? Would doing that cause some other horrific fallout now, making any sacrifice she made worthless?
Would it be the same as resetting the Gate? She’d been against the Lord Elder’s plan because of the horrible ramifications it might cause. What if this did something worse?
“Hallie?” Ben asked, his voice interrupting her thought process.
But if she made a new sword…would the Gate even accept it?
“To fix this Gate, we have to recreate it, and we need a sword guardian! We don’t have time to find the old one—we’ll have to make one!” It was so loud in the cavern, she had to shout. The flames and energy and fight around them echoed off the walls.
Ben’s face paled. “How?”
Hallie wet her lips. “I can create Passages and heal. You can control the Gates. We can combine our powers to create aGate on top of this one, then create a sword guardian as the Gate’s Relic. Like you did in Myrrai.”
Ben swore loudly. “But we don’t have all the Essence powers!”
“We have to try.”
“It’s not going to work!”
