When the time came, I would do everything within my power to stop her. That thought stayed with me as I took her hand, making swirls of colorful magic ignite between us. My stomach lurched as the floor fell away beneath my feet. We rose above the floor, looking down. From the altar going outward, a burn pattern marred the floor, mingled with specks of blood. What remained of the egg glittered in bands of gold and black, its destruction threatening to overwhelm me again, forcing me to focus on my current task and not on the tremendous loss I would be forced to soon accept.
The room faded as we rose higher and higher, over the castle, above the jungles and wild lands, over Laurentia, and finally, over the clouds. We only stopped when we were floating above the planet.
Whether I was still in my body or not, I wasn’t sure, but since I was able to breathe where there was no atmosphere, and since my pain was gone, I realized we must have been caught up in a memory.
The goddess floated beside me. Sparks of lightning danced through her eyes and coursed through her arms like blood through her veins.
“Why have you taken me here?” I asked.
“Because it’s important for you to know where you come from. To do that, I must show you the beginning.” She glanced behind us. “Look.”
I followed her line of sight and saw a dark object moving toward the planet. As it neared us, I realized it was an asteroid. Fear took hold of me for a moment when I realized the asteroid was on a collision course for our world.
“This is the past,” the queen explained, “the first time I gave life to our worlds.”
As the asteroid entered the atmosphere, it flared in an orange glow, then plummeted for Earth’s surface, igniting the world in a blinding fire. Although the spell protected us and I knew this was only an image from the past, I still felt as if the heat singed my skin, a phantom pain that spanned eons of time. The explosion wrapped the planet, filling the world with a fire that engulfed an entire continent, then expanded to Earth’s oceans. As the world exploded, I watched it split into two realities—Earth and Faythander.
I wasn’t sure why Theht wanted to show me this. Perhaps as a display of her power, or maybe to show what she planned to do to the world again? Either way, watching the birth of Faythander was an experience I wasn’t prepared for. I’d read about it my entire life, but seeing it now, so close I could feel the breath of life as it filled both worlds, was enough to make tears spring into my eyes.
Two worlds as one. Two different realities. One with magic, the other without, both filled with life.
Magic blossomed on Faythander, glowing in radiant beams that wrapped the world. My home, I thought as I watched the magic unfold.
Theht’s voice intruded on my thoughts. The time has come, she said. You, Deathbringer, shall know the truth of your existence.
The truth? “I don’t understand,” I said.
“You will. Watch.”
A shadow emerged from behind the two planets. At first, I wondered if one world had eclipsed the other, blocking light from the sun to create the illusion of a third planet. But as I watched, my heart began to pound and I realized that I was seeing not a shadow, but another world all together.
“Dalgotha,” Theht said. “The world I inhabit.”
My mind tried to grasp her words, but it was too much. Could it be true?
“There is a third world, separate from Earth and Faythander, though born at the same time. A castoff. A world born in the shadows. A world of fire and death, where the atmosphere is damaged and cannot protect its inhabitants from the cosmic rays of the sun, where life exits only by taking energy from others.”
We moved away from Earth and Faythander to hover over Dalgotha. Although it was a planet, I felt the pain of the world—of its damaged atmosphere, of the plants barely able to survive, of the species living a truly horrific existence—and I felt people living there as well. Past the pain, I felt the fear and terror of the world’s lifeblood being siphoned away. It was an odd feeling that was hard to describe, though it felt as if anything living on the planet would have been forced to take energy from others—a place where death and murder would have run rampant. Is that what Theht meant about taking the energy from others?
“This is my world,” she said. “This is the place I have survived in for eons. It is my home. And it is my prison.”
“Is that why you want to come to Faythander?”
“Yes. My world is dying. It will support life for only a short time more. It is time for me to move to another home, but to fully do so, I must have the energy. I can only inhabit this body for a short time. To fully enter into your world, another event is needed.”
“Event? An event on an epic scale, you mean. Our world has to be destroyed, and you want me to do it.”
“It will be reborn, not destroyed. In order for me to fully cross, I will need enormous amounts of energy. It was attempted once by the brothers you call the Madralorde, but the energy was not focused enough, and so it settled in the place where the castle now stands, fueling its spell for eons.
“But the time has come again. You must use your energy to set another asteroid in motion in this plane, and you will be the one to bring it to the world. It will be a glorious day, Deathbringer.”
“But it will kill everything on Faythander!”
“It will eliminate most of the life, but not all. Just
