“We added the dark magic, just as you instructed, Mistress. I’d just finished the last of the spell when King Karnavious entered the area, moving through it, seemingly oblivious to our presence. I grabbed his wrist, and the moment I did, another witch sent her magic rushing through us with what I assumed to be a warning that he wasn’t to be touched. It would have ended there, but her magic unraveled the grid’s power, and something happened to the souls.”
Ilsa tipped her head, turning to look over her shoulder as power pulsed faster and harder through the room. Anger and pain rose in my throat, and I forced it down with a veneer, giving nothing away that would show the fear and trepidation that arose. The anxiety of what was to come wrapped around my heart, tightening my throat with emotion.
“You said she took the power of the grid, easily? You allowed her to cast without guarding the grid?” she snapped, her spittle spraying over Kalan’s face.
“It was unlike anything we’d ever felt. I figured it was more important to return to you and report back with what we had found first and foremost.”
“You thought wrong,” Ilsa growled. Her hands unclenched as she stepped aside, moving back to the window that overlooked the grid.
“We have failed you, Mistress,” Kalan whispered, her obsidian eyes narrowing to slits as Ilsa turned toward the shadows once more, tilting her head as if she could hear something that none of the rest of us could. “We will move to attack another town and finish the grid.”
“No, you will not.”
Dark magic rushed through the room, causing nausea to swirl within me. My body clenched, and I fought to keep from spewing up what little food had been given to me as one of Ilsa’s disciples. My attention moved to the witches, noting the eerie, utter silence that filled the air as panic and disbelief crossed Kalan’s expression.
Kalan’s hands lifted before her, and her mouth opened as blood expelled from her lungs. My body trembled with the atrocity of horrors unfolding before me. Hands became ashes, black lines spread through them as flesh turned to flecks of embers that flowed through the room. Ilsa opened the window, moments before Kalan’s fiery parts slid past us to escape upon the wind.
One witch from Kalan’s group howled, her body a mass of glowing lines that looked as if she’d drunk lava, and it was escaping through her veins.
A witch beside me screamed, her fear overriding her need to survive. Everyone in line stepped back to reveal the guilty party in our ranks. The witch who’d shown her fear, jerked forward by invisible hands, her body making odd scrunching noises before it dropped to the floor, ripped apart as her deafening scream echoed in my ears.
I didn’t move or even blink as Ilsa watched us from her vantage point beside the window. My fingers remained flat at my sides, showing no reaction. No emotion whispered through me, or any outward sign of the screaming echoing through my head as the body before me continued to bend until only the crunching of broken bones sounded. The screams died away, and then Ilsa moved, slowly walking to stand directly in front of me as the scent of burning, rotted flesh singed my nose.
“Fearless, and yet so beautiful,” she whispered.
Blackened fingertips touched my chin, forcing my heart to thunder in my chest. I held it together, praying for my heart to slow to a steady beat. I thought of the meadows where I’d once played with my sisters.
We’d spent hours on our backs, gazing up at the sky, guessing the shapes that each of us could find within the puffy clouds that filled the blue skies. The rapid beating tapered off, slowly returning to a steady beat as Ilsa’s lips curved into a smile. The scent of decay and death caused my eyes to burn as the stink from her heated breath fanned my face.
“What is your name?”
“It is whatever you wish it to be, Mistress,” I announced, standing statuesque straight.
“I didn’t ask you what I wanted to name you. I asked you what name your mother graced you with, Witch.”
“Soraya, Mistress,” I stated without looking into her eyes. I looked through her, knowing she hated it when her acolytes looked into her decaying form.
“Tell me, Soraya, what do you see out there?”
She smiled at me as more power entered the room, jerking our bodies from the sheer force of magic to find that Ilsa had removed the dead witches from the room, adding them to the power grid outside. Ilsa grabbed my hand, forcing me to the window as my heart jackhammered against my ribs, worried about her intentions.
Oily shadows appeared around the victims comprising the grid. We called them The Dark Ones. They were creatures completely consumed by dark magic that had taken control of them in life, flowing through them in death. Venomous clouds of magic oozed around them, poisoning the air as they moved the corpses around, connecting hands or other body parts to the next in line.
It wasn’t just a toxic cloud surrounding them, though. Damned souls and the souls of those added to the grid lived inside the clouds of mist. Revenants created the macabre fog with the dead’s graying faces, reaching toward the witches tending the human power grid. To those of us close enough to the darkness, we knew what crawled within the blackened cloud.
The Dark Ones had nearly captured me once. Their twisted gray corpses with poisonous teeth and long, grasping claws were created to capture the living. The dead’s withered husk had seized my leg, leaving poison that seeped into my pores, fighting to subdue me so the dead, mindless beasts could feast upon my living cells.
The condemned souls of The Dark Ones exist trapped within perverse, dark magic, forming swirls and wisps that drift in the thickening fog, reaching out toward their victims like smoky fingers. Still, I could hear the unholy eeriness of their voices as they screamed and cried out for us to join them in their void of nothingness.
Witches that had displeased Ilsa wore coverings over their faces to hide bits of bones revealed from the boiling of their flesh. Their punishment was to stand close to the revenants, allowing the wispy fingers to caress their skin. Bile pushed against my throat, burning. I fought to conceal my weakness so I wouldn’t become her next victim, adding my magic to her power grid.
The odor released from the cloud surrounding The Dark Ones consisted of death and rotten flesh that clung to their souls in the afterlife, of which they could never escape or know peace, so long as Ilsa lived. That was the fate given to the acolytes who had displeased her, no matter how minor the offense.
These witches thought they served Ilsa well, but revenants would consume them in that unholy mist if they displeased her again. Their corpses spat out and added to her power grid, making the ultimate sacrifice, forced to serve her for eternity.
Many others had displeased her or failed to answer her summons to give in to the dark magic. Ilsa slaughtered them for their unwillingness to take what she so freely offered. You helped the mistress either by becoming a dark witch or by adding your power to her grid.
Focusing on the scene below, I saw that the grid spread out miles beyond the horizon, further than my eyes could see. Bodies covered the ground in circular patterns, even where the sun rose over the mountain, and in the sweeping valley that settled into a wide-mouthed gorge. All the grids were directing power to the Palace of Magic, no longer called the Palace of Light, once Ilsa had assumed control. No light reached these walls, shrouding the palace in darkness and offering only a cold, restless death.