Page 112 of Rose and Shadows
“You were amazing, you know that?”
“No. It is you who performed the truly amazing feat.”
She grinned. “I know, right? I can’t believe it.”
“I can. And so will Lazriel and Sylas.”
Her eyes widened. “They’re gonna be furious when they find out about the stakes of this, that I was struck, that you were incapacitated.”
“Sylas must be inside the pocket dimension with Remnant and Victor still. Unlike Lazriel who wouldn’t have been able to feel even Celestial power being in play because of the heavy illusion your parents cast, Sylas does have the means to see through it, to feel through it. The fact he didn’t blast his way in here points to him being completely unaware, outside sensory boundaries of this realm.”
“Well, as soon as I get you to Ketheron, we’ll reach out to both him and Lazriel.”
“Very good.”
She beamed at me, then swept us up in a rush of teleportation, her purple power enveloping us.
A great deal had been accomplished here today.
And between the four of us we would continue in that vein until all threats were nullified.
Then we would exist in wellness and peace together, our child able to be born into a safe and happy life.
All would finally be well.
19
~Sylas~
It was making me anxious.
I’d gone from one pocket dimension wherein Remnant and I had dealt with Victor Halrow, to another one here and now where the despicableGenexiswas located.
Meaning it had put me out of touch and beyond reach of Velra, Cassius, and Lazriel.
For longer than I was comfortable with.
Especially with the threats out there.
Especially with our child in the picture, Velra pregnant.
And not to mention, I needed to be reachable in general—to everyone.
I was also still fucking waiting on hearing back from Ambrose. He’d become a key path toward finding my father, so I could stop that madman before further damage occurred.
Damage like the hybrid massacre he’d performed at that CRS facility using a twisted version of Risen Reckoning.
And damage like this that I was witnessing here and now.
This fucking extermination facility. Built to take the lives of hybrids just because of what they were, as perPuritasrhetoric.
The actual structure was a decaying gothic monastery, the only thing within the pocket dimension, all the rest just an empty, gray space, even devoid of any sort of grounding base—soil, rocks, grass, even water—except that which the monastery sat upon.
I sank against the cold brick wall of one of thefinishing roomsas we’d discoveredPuritascalled them. They referred to the mentally and physically breaking of hybrid beings for sport and punishment before they then killed them.
One of the rooms had beenin sessionwhen we’d arrived. It had taken me, Ryker, and two dozen Guardian Movement members time to break through the place, to dispose of the guards, run through every fucking room, before reaching these four at the farthest corner of the facility. Three had consisted of beings murdered many days ago, still lining the floors, some even still strapped to the magical torture chairs. But this one room, when Ryker and I had burst in, ten beings in it had only just been killed by a mixture of magical desiccation and internal implosion.
As a necromancer, I had the ability to pull the freshly dead back into the living world without harming the integrity of the Valley of the Dead or upsetting the balance. It had been within that brief and fragile window.
