Zodiac Academy 8.5: Beyond The Veil

“What am I searching for?” I demanded.

Mordra tiptoed from her rock, her wraith-like body undulating like a flickering flame as she began to circle me, a finger pressed to her withered lips.

“The answers you seek slip closer,” she breathed.

I opened my mouth to demand them again, but her hand landed on my chest, the force of her shove enough to shatter bone if I’d had a body left to break. I gasped as she flung me against The Veil once more.

“Eyes open, wits sharp,” Mordra hissed, nothing but a voice among the endless forest I found myself in.

I hunted for Roxy between the stillness of the Damned Forest, the bone white bark of the trees creating pockets of utter darkness between them, the black leafed canopy overhead impossible to see beyond.

“Roxy?!” I yelled, taking a step forward and something caught on the toe of my boot.

I crouched down, inspecting the ruby necklace which lay there on the utterly barren earth, the only spot of colour in this entire place.

Something felt different here, The Veil seeming thinner than ever before. The power of the winter solstice mixing with the dark presence of the cursed trees lured me towards life in a way that felt so easily surmountable, yet something still rooted me in death.

The screams of a child set a chill racing down my spine and I jerked around, looking through the woodland for any sign of them, or of my wife whose presence seemed shrouded in shadow.

I tried to take a step, but I couldn’t move beyond the ruby pendant, its power anchoring me here while those screams rattled on.

I cursed, lurching back towards Mordra’s cavern, whirling on her where she perched on the tip of her boulder once more.

“Enough with these games. I came here for an answer. I fought off the shackles of death and accepted what I am here and now. So tell me how I return.”

Mordra sighed, waving a hand. I found myself stumbling as I pressed against The Veil once more, my friends and family appearing before me one after another, various perils closing in on them.

“The door opens for one thing only,” Mordra whispered. “And your power swells for the love of those you cherish.”

“So what?” I barked.

“Ether is a balance. A push and a pull. A transaction. So what do all transactions require?” she purred, her fingers trailing down my cheek as she appeared before me, those hollow eyes scouring my soul.

“Payment,” I breathed, an icy sensation dripping through my veins.

The Damned Forest appeared around me again, my breath catching in my lungs as I found Roxy there, racing for me as fast as she could run, panic blazing in her eyes as something hounded her steps from behind.

I couldn’t make sense of what it was, its shape twisting and flickering between the trunks of the trees which separated her from it, but its malignance tainted the air itself as it gave chase.

“Run!” I bellowed, reaching for my wife. Still, she sprinted for me, her eyes on the ruby pendant which still lay in the dirt at my feet.

I dropped to my knees once more, placing my hand over it, lending it what power I could, and urging her closer as that terrible force closed in. The truth of Mordra’s words were sinking into me, the pain of their truth shattering every last drop of hope I’d been clinging to. I felt Roxy closer than I had since the moment of my death, The Veil so thin here I could almost believe it didn’t exist at all.

She threw herself towards me, snatching the ruby pendant from the ground, hurrying to fasten it around her throat, our connection deepening as she did.

My presence thickened as that connection to her was restored, my power flooding across the divide between realms like a breath of wind stirring the air around her.

I reached for her, running my hand down her arm, taking hold of her wrist and tightening my grip. I willed her to feel it, willed her to realise what was racing ever closer at her back.

She shut her eyes, leaning into me like she could feel me there, the seconds slipping past while she wasted them on a man who was already dead and gone.

“Come on, Roxy,” I growled, using my power to try and tug on her arm, encouraging her to move.

“Run,” I hissed.

Her eyes snapped open, and she spun around, whipping her sword from her sheath just as the horrors behind her converged, becoming a young girl who just had to be Roxy herself.

The child version of my wife stood between two of the towering trunks, a bright scar ringing her throat, blood dripping down to stain her white nightgown.

“You killed him,” the girl snarled in accusation. “You were the reason he fought in that battle. You were the reason he was so desperate to defeat his father. He’d been planning to challenge him long before you came and uprooted his entire life. He’d been waiting until he was ready to win. You made him strike too soon. You. Killed. Him.”

“No,” I snapped, reaching for Roxy again, willing her to feel the lies in those words, to know the truth. Nothing would have kept me from that battle, nothing would have changed this fate. It was on me, not her.

Roxy began to tremble, those words cutting her deeply as she failed to see the truth of it.

“I didn’t kill him,” she whispered raising her sword slowly again and pride swelled within me as she fought off the despair and came out swinging like always. “But I will keep my promise to avenge him.”

The thing that appeared as a girl widened her eyes the second Roxy charged her, her arms widening, almost accepting of this end. She did nothing to avoid Roxy’s blade which pierced her heart, a crack resounding throughout the entire forest as her body split and sundered.

Roxy jerked her blade back, watching as the scars on the child’s skin began to glow with an inner light, the corners of her lips lifting at her demise.

Roxy threw a hand up to shield her face, the thing that appeared as a child exploding into blazing light, golden flames arcing from her before splitting apart and dispersing, fading into nothing and leaving us in the silence of the forest once more.

Roxy was panting, trembling, and clearly exhausted, but there was no sign of her slowing down as she raised her chin and began to hunt for her bag.

“You see it, don’t you?” Mordra hissed in my ear. “How closely she tiptoes near death, how thin The Veil is around her, how easily you could reach across and pull-”

“No,” I barked, the truth she’d been hiding becoming all too clear.

“So after swearing on all you were to return to the land of the living, you balk at the price which needs paying?” Mordra scoffed. “Love fades. It is only useful while it’s potent. Took me too long to realise. I had none left who cared for me enough by the time I did. But you have her. Or if not her, so many others…”

I saw them again, the Heirs, my brother, Lance, everyone I cared for. I could see fates spiralling before them which offered death, and I could see how I might reach out and tug them closer to it, wedging my foot between the door which opened in The Veil as I did so, forcing it to part so that I might slip back through.

“It would take just one of their deaths in exchange for your soul’s return to the land of the living,” she purred.

“Never,” I spat, swiping a hand which banished all of them from my view, expelling Mordra with them and leaving me in the Damned Forest with the warrior who I had taken for my bride.

Roxy closed her fist around the scar which bound her to the promise she’d made to change our fate, and the pain that rose in me at the motion was more than I could bear.

“I’m coming,” she told me, somehow knowing I was close, as she strode to the tree she’d been using for the next part of her plan and summoned fire to ignite on her fingertip.

“Roxy,” I breathed, that word a broken plea.

I moved up beside her, trying to take her hand, but she didn’t feel me there anymore, her focus too fixed on her destination, the truth of what lay before her too hard to accept.

The tree screamed as she used her flames to carve the Elemental symbol for water into its bark followed by a flame and a Dragon. The one greatest desire of her heart.

It broke me to know that. That I had her heart so completely in my grasp and that our time together had been so painfully short.

My lips parted on all the things I wanted to say to her, on all the reasons why she should stop heading down this path, on warnings over what I’d learned, the truth of it too hard to ignore.

The price of a life was a death. And perhaps I could have chosen that path if I could have chosen a soul worthy of death to take my place. But to pick between the ones I loved? To use the power of their love and grief for me to force a trade in our places? It was an impossible choice, and one I could never even consider making. I wouldn’t be the man she’d fallen in love with if I was capable of that. But not being capable of it meant this divide between us was eternal for however long she had in the living realm.

What if Radcliff was right? What if she found love with another? What would become of me if I was forced to watch that unfold? Or would it be worse if she never did? If her love for me never faded and she was in this pain for the rest of her life instead?

A rumble started up in the ground beneath our feet the moment Roxy slit the scar on her palm open with her dagger, blood trickling between her fingers as she called on ether and it rose to her summons.

The power she invoked was incredible, stirring the essence of the world, offering up her own blood in payment for its cooperation.

Roxy slammed her bloody palm against the bone white trunk of the still screaming tree, and the power which erupted from her sent a shockwave tumbling out into the forest as the tree was ripped from the ground.

I threw all that I was around Roxy, trying to protect her from the vile magic of the damned tree as it fell, its screams piercing the air. A groan loud enough to be heard for miles around followed before the echoing boom of it crashing to the forest floor consumed all else.

The tree’s screams cut off sharply and Roxy threw her arms up to shield her face. The curse which had been bound to it shattered, the ether vibrating with the power of its end.

Roxy stood on the smooth bark of the fallen tree trunk, her Bridge to the Beyond stretching out ahead of her, leading her towards me. She was coming. She was going to walk into death and there was no stopping her, the force of her power too immense for even the stars to refuse.

“I’ll be waiting, baby,” I swore to her, pain scoring through my chest. Because I knew I wouldn’t be waiting to return to her anymore. I couldn’t pay the price required to do so, no matter how desperately I wished I could. So I would simply wait for her to come to me then I would give her the goodbye she deserved.

Roxy started walking, her gaze fixed ahead as whispers started up either side of the tree, the passage she’d created between the realms making her vulnerable to all manner of foul things, but she never once looked their way.

I stayed in her shadow, snarling at any who moved too close to her, warning them off with fire and fury. Then I hounded her closer to death, knowing she would find a way to cross over, but that I had no way to cross back.

“A soul for a soul,” Mordra urged, her voice my bane.

“I won’t,” I growled.

“Then you shall be cursed just like the rest of us,” she spat furiously. “There is only one way to truly cross The Veil and that is in death. All other passages are fleeting, ghosts at best, no bodies to house them. It all awaits you and yet you scorn the gift you might claim.”

“I scorn nothing but the stars,” I replied bitterly. “And you’re no better than them.”