Somehow, instead of a cloudy expanse of light, we were back in Oemis.
“I was the one that worked out the way to do it,” he said, looking back over the plaza, to the dais, where the massive statues of the Great Wolves stood. “I was so in love with Branwen, even though she barely gave me the time of day. I wanted her to. I wanted her to see me.”
The plaza filled suddenly with heaps of people, all cheering and singing, the crystals humming in response. Then they stepped up, Fearn and Branwen, prepared to relinquish their power.
Except they weren’t.
“Lonan, there was something so…magnetic about him. No one could say no to him, not even the gods themselves.”
We watched Jaya and Lonan be led towards the dais, ready for the transfer of power. Fearn went first and there was an extra element to the customary ritual. He reached into himself, bringing out a handful of light, the one we all carried within us gifted to him by the god, this one a flickering red, but when Lonan stepped up, when Fearn offered it to him, I could see there was so much more to that. He literally gave Lonan his heart, his body weakening, shaking, cries coming from the crowd as they saw the former conduit begin to falter, then fail. He gave too much, something Lonan saw with a feral smile, knowing what effect he had on others and welcoming the other man’s sacrifice. He took it, everything Fearn had to give and then some, glutting himself on the other man’s power, then stepping over the other man’s body to take his place on the dais.
“Every single one of us are conduits for our Tirians,” Shade explained. “But some of us are conduits for so much more. How did the Tirian come to be in our world? Where did the crystals come from? Why did they contain our spirits? No one’s ever been able to answer that, but I wanted to. I spent forever, plumbing the depths of the Oemian libraries, reading every account, every theory as to how we came to be, how our twin souls inhabit those stones. My working theory was that the gods were just a more evolved, stronger version of the pure Tirian spirit, that by detaching ourselves from the limitations of our human forms, by using the power of the crystals, we could amplify what we were and become gods ourselves.”
We watched Jaya hesitate, then step forward when everyone looked at her expectantly, and while a green light surged in Branwen’s chest, she did not hold it out for the other woman. Instead, she lured her onto the dais, then closer and closer, as the crystals, the crowd began to sing, the light growing and growing, an answering white one flaring in Jaya’s chest, ready to accept the goddess’ grace.
But there was no grace in Branwen, no sense of something more than herself, except perhaps her selfish need for Lonan. She craved him like a drug, her focus split between Jaya’s mate, now triumphant and standing on his dais, the red light there flaring deeper, darker, more intensely scarlet with each step Jaya took. He stared across at the other dais, ostensibly watching the ascension of his mate, but which mate? Jaya grew suspicious, frowning as Branwen made no move to come closer, just standing there, pulsing with stolen power, a power she had every intention of keeping.
And augmenting with Jaya’s.
Jaya stopped just short of Branwen, the ritual she’d practised so long not going to plan while the eyes of the whole city were on her. Then Branwen had smiled, that beatific smile of a goddess, and Jaya had felt a flush of relief. It would be all right, everything would work out, they just had to get through this, and then she could get her head around becoming the conduit, Lonan at her side.
There, that last flare of power that came with that certainty, that was what Branwen had been waiting for. Her hand snapped out, not to give Jaya her power, but to take the other woman’s. That grin turned into something toothy and vicious as Branwen’s hand slapped down over Jaya’s chest, and the green light in Branwen’s turned dark as she appeared to suck the power from the other woman.
“I didn’t know,” Shade said. “Or that’s what I told myself. They were so beautiful, so vital, it didn’t fit with our beliefs that either of them could look as they did, carry such power, and misuse it. Oemis had been a utopia, a sanctuary…” His eyes met mine as we both saw the echoes of the past in how Sanctuary had been created. “But that creates a vulnerability. Everyone can choose to be good or evil, to abuse or to raise up. Walking around seeing only peace and love or only evil blinds you to everything else.”
We turned back, saw the moment Jaya fell to the floor in what felt like slow motion, the crowd much slower to react. They began to gasp and chatter, surging forward, but not too close, unwilling to disturb the sanctity of the ritual, even as it was turned into a mockery of its true purpose. That was what sealed their fate—that reticence.
“The crystals are the purest form of conduits,” Shade said. “No ego, no desire. They just reroute power where it needs to go, act as a receptacle for souls. We had them everywhere, in every part of the city, as a means to transfer the power we used every day, and that reliance resulted in the end of Oemis.”
The song of the crystals changed now, from a song to a discordant scream, perhaps because they did. It was slow to start with, the many crystals around the plaza throwing out a web of light beams, and each time someone got in the way, they crumpled to the floor, their power and their essences being sucked away. Which frightened the others, but the use of crystals was so extensive that there was nowhere to run. Crystals in the mosaic floor lit up, shards on the top of the low walls send out multiple beams. The sound got louder and louder, the lights brighter and brighter, until it all fell away, the song abruptly dying off.
Branwen fell to the ground, her human body no use to her now she had become a being of pure power, and so did Lonan. But at what cost? The plaza, the city was a morgue now.
I blinked as the room reasserted itself, just staring at Shade until he moved closer, wrapping me in a hug, seeming to know I needed that deep bodily pressure to bring me back to the room, to them.
“That’s not us,” I whispered.
“No, that’s the magic with each reincarnation. We become something new each time. Sometimes we find each other and sometimes we don’t, but always, always, something new. I think we’ll be better at it now.”
It was that sentiment that I carried with me as I pulled away from Shade, pressing my lips to his as I went. He held me for just a moment, then let me go, knowing where I needed to be.
“Fuck…” Ethan said, the fear back in his expression, but my hands went to his hair, stroking it back off his face.
“You’re not him. You’re a mechanic.” He nodded slowly at that. “You like to hang out with your mates, have a beer or two.” The nod grew stronger then. “
You’re a good friend.”
“A hot lover,” Axel supplied.
“You’re a good bloke,” Shaun said. “Cocky, full of shit, but there’s nothing mean in you.”
“You’re who you want to be,” Shade said last, and then finally, one last nod from Ethan.
“Who do you want to be, Ethan?” I asked.
“Yours,” he replied, without question. “Absolutely and utterly yours. I’ve felt the pull since the first time you stumbled into the garage, and that’s never changed.” He took my hand in his. “I don’t want it to change. I don’t want to cause the end of a fucking civilisation either, dying for a bloke who never even loved me.”
“So don’t,” I replied. “We’ll make a pact. No dying for people who don’t love us, no decline of Western civilisation.”