the doorway, she finally saw them, and understood.
Merrick, pale and calm was beside the Rossin. He had his hands buried in the fur of the Beast’s mane. They could have been a statue dedicated to wild beauty. Both of them were looking directly at Sorcha, ignoring everything around them. There was nothing else.
Three bodies, four minds in agreement. Sorcha smiled slowly. No, not four minds. Hundreds of minds. She still held humanity inside her, while Merrick held the grand Conclave lightly in his mind, as if he were a child with a string toy in one hand. Sorcha cradled the tiny sparks of the rest of humanity in her. As it had been in the ossuary, one of them was dying.
Gasping, choking on her own blood, Sorcha held out her hand. “Come.”
The minds enveloped her, the flesh followed, and once more they fell into the Merge.
The Beast made of everything was flayed into existence on the very doorstep of the Otherside, but it was not the same Beast as had been born in the White Palace. It had grown huge on so much power. Its tawny hide shifted and moved to the eddies of the runes and power within it. It was the lost children of Waikein. It was the desperate Deacons of the Enlightened. It was the hopeless Empress defending her people above. Each hurt and barb of the living made up its essence.
Sorcha, Raed, Merrick and even the mighty Rossin were merely tiny parts of this great creation. They might have caused it to come into existence, but they could never grasp what it was.
When it opened its eyes, they flared every color.
If there was to be a god in Arkaym, it would be the Living Beast, and it would be brief and glorious. Unlike the creature four souls had made in the darkness of the ossuary, this one was not proud. It was something else entirely; it was the beauty of life. And life was brief, but powerful.
The Maker of Ways still towered above it, the scion of the undead. Its tentacles had pushed aside the breach, and one of its clawed feet was already on the sand. It could not be allowed to enter.
The Living Beast sprang forward, but the sound that issued from its throat was not a roar—it was almost music. It struck the Maker with all the force of everything that made it: the life of the human realm. Its claws pierced the hide of the Beast, and the geistlord howled. Its tentacles tore at the Beast, but he could not pierce to the core of its being. Human realm and Otherside wrestled for control of the breach.
Runes flexed on the Living Beast’s hide as it drove the Maker of Ways backward, biting and clawing at it with all the determination of life trying to overcome death. It had only a moment to exist and triumph. It only had one purpose.
As its feet gouged deeply in the earth, it gained strength from the blood there. It pushed harder.
When the Maker of Ways fell, it lost everything, connection to the human realm and strength. It could not muster itself again. As the figure collapsed backward into the Otherside however, the Beast also fell.
It landed on the sand and burst for the same reasons the Maker had. Connection was lost. The living could not hold. The Living Beast let go of its brief existence, exploding into a shower of realities that would never again come together.
The Rossin, Merrick and Sorcha were left scattered on the floor. The Maker of Ways had been beaten back, but the breach was still closing, ever so slowly.
Sorcha, her body healed in the Meld, saw the geists racing to escape into the human world while they could. They had stopped the Maker, but there would still be hundreds of lives lost if these geists entered. The gift of the Wrayth flared in her, and Merrick felt her understand what she needed to do. Before he could stop her, she turned the connection she had with the humans on the undead.
She was right. With the breach sealing itself the power of the Ehtia was failing. Their flimsy forms were not like geists; they could not exist beyond the Otherside without bodies. They evaporated like so much mist in the sun.
Derodak smiled and raised his hands still burning with runes to strike.
The Rossin snarled and bunched. The Arch Abbot pointed at him as if he were a house pet. “You cannot even touch me Beast. Remember our pact.” His eyes fell on Merrick. “You will be the first to die, and with your blood we will begin again.”
The Sensitive was too weakened by the Meld to do anything but watch as Derodak drew a long hunting knife and approached.
The Rossin’s roar filled the cavern again, and it was not that of a defeated creature. “Only your blood can kill you,” he snarled, and then immediately sprang forward.
This day’s events had slowed the Arch Abbot down too. He could not get out of the way quickly enough.
The great pard threw himself toward Derodak, but in mid-leap his flesh changed. It was Raed Syndar Rossin that landed atop him, still full of the strength of the Beast. He bore Derodak to the ground with a guttural yell. The sound of the Ancient man’s neck snapping echoed in the chamber, but Raed did not stop there. He tore his head free and flung it away into the shadows. It was the most impressive physical feat Merrick had ever seen, and he was left breathless.
When he levered himself up, Raed was covered in his ancestor’s blood. “No,” he said to the corpse, “only your blood can take your blood. Not the Rossin. Just me.”
Then he turned to Merrick and helped him to his feet. They both looked to Sorcha.
She was burning, as if her whole body lit from within. Her partner shivered at the strength of the connections she was holding to the geists—to the whole Otherside.
“What’s happening?” Raed asked, shivering in his nakedness before the breach.
“We’re losing her,” Merrick replied, dropping to his knees beside his partner, “and gaining geists.” Nynnia had been right. If Sorcha held her connection to the geists, then the breach would never close, and they would not need the Maker of Ways to enter. She would be their eternal conduit.
“Do something then!” Raed demanded, and he could not really understand what he was asking.
Yet, Merrick knew what he had to do. The distressed face of Nynnia was close, but she did not press. They both knew what had to come. She had asked him once if he would have the strength to do this very thing.
In the halls of the initiate, in the quiet of the Sensitive training, Merrick had learned along with all his fellows the rune Ticat; the Final Rune. Actives thought it was another level of consciousness—which in a way it was. It was the rune of control, for when an Active became as Sorcha was now; a danger to the human realm.
Along the Bond, comprehension of what he was about to do flowed to his partner. She understood. Her partner felt that instantly. In all the chaos of the moment, there was an instant of clarity. In it, there was only the two of them and the Bond.
Her voice echoed in his head, cool and calm, but it held none of the passion he’d come to associate with Sorcha. The world was only her blue eyes and her acceptance. They’d both trained. They both knew the risks. However, Sorcha had to tell him this, and Merrick knew why: she didn’t want him to be haunted by guilt, and she wanted to make sure he didn’t hesitate.
Silver light flared along Merrick’s forehead, running along the Pattern, flooding his vision white. He dived down into Sorcha, became her for an instant. Then he took it from her, ripping away all that made her powerful. It was the cruelest thing to do to a Deacon—to take away all that made them who they were. He flayed the channels of the runes, burning everything out as he plunged through her.
The marks on his partner’s arms faded as Merrick wielded Ticat, and he made sure to take all that she had; she would be no conduit for geist or geistlord.
When Merrick opened his eyes, it was to look into Sorcha’s blue ones. The breach behind them was sealing with nothing to hold it open. However, in that instant all that mattered was each other.
Merrick had burned everything to nothing. Not just her power, but their connection. They were now just as two normal people who knew each other very well. No Bond lay between them. Not between them or between the
