117. Of foxes, guilt and a little bit of power

Cassandra Pendragon

Fear, lingering anger and a good portion of self loathing threw my insides into turmoil. Had I just doomed them all because I hadn't been able to bring myself to kill an artificial construct? Had I sacrificed them just to keep my hands clean of something I didn't like? The storm of emotions culminated in a simple exclamation: "ouch".

My hip made a grinding sound as I came to rest against cold stone, Ahri still in my embrace. At least she was fine, cursing and spluttering, but definitely alive. With a thought I retracted my wings and ignored her muttering for the moment. I had to see with my own eyes what my arrogance had wrought. How ever you looked at it, the last explosion was on me, I should have known and if I hadn't, I shouldn't have experimented.

When my wings vanished, my jaw dropped open and Ahri fell silent immediately. I felt her draw in a breath of amazement, her chest expanding against my arms. The hall was devastated. Pillars broken, the ones closest to a pair of disintegrating wisps had even turned into rubble, the statue smashed and flickering lines on the walls were all that remained of the enchantments that had been cast upon this place ages ago. Gaps ran along the ceiling, dust and debris raining down from them, and a deep rumbling sound that seemed to come from everywhere at once told me that integral parts of the structure had been damaged. Sooner or later it would collapse, burying everything inside under tons of rock and broken spells and the best part, the exit had probably vanished as well, the runes it had been anchored to, obliterated by the blast.

That much, I had expected. The huge, spectral fox that protected most of my friends under its nine tails on the other hand… if I hadn't seen it, I wouldn't have believed it myself. The beast was beautiful, no doubt about it, its fur resembled woven moonlight and its eyes shone like stars. Its body was more real than a ghost but yet not fully fixed to this plane of existence, as if something as powerful couldn't truly manifest here. Silvery specks of light traveled across its body and its tails shone with a warm intensity that reminded me of a rising full moon. Tall as a hill it cowered over my friends, its sleek limbs and voluminous tails had kept them save from the explosion. When it turned its angular head, whiskers of starlight quivering in the air, its gaze fell upon me and I recognised her.

"Mom?" I whispered. A sad smile spread across her snout and I saw a tear of liquid silver roll from her eyes before she exhaled deeply, a continuous stream of glowing magic interwoven with silvery sparks flowing from her nostrils. While most of the energy dispersed into multicoloured dots of light, the silvery parts returned to me, covering my body with tiny stars for a moment and with them came some memories.

My mother had been in the middle of a complex spell, a conjuration that would have absorbed energy from all around her, which she then could have channel into an avatar, a battle form, for want of a better word, to protect her. During the final stages of the formation, the wisps had shattered and the sparks of my power in their core had been sucked into her. Maybe because she was my biological mother my magic had recognised her, or maybe its ravenous hunger had burned out beforehand, whatever the reason, she had survived and somehow had managed to incorporate the transcendent sparks into her casting without turning into a kitsune shaped torch. Instead she had transformed into the towering nine tailed fox I saw in front of me now, a being easily able to weather the storm of power and light the wisps had left behind.

But as always, spells like that came at a heavy price. Her mortal form couldn't support the immense construct for long, her life was waning before my eyes. Cracks appeared all over her silhouette, silvery light spilling forth like blood from a wound, and with a deep groan that reverberated through the hall, the glowing fox shattered and disappeared into a cloud of swirling energy that rushed back to me.

For a short moment the surge of power felt exhilarating but I pushed the feeling down, cold dread gnawing at my insides once again. "Mom," I screamed. I ignored the pulsing pain in my hip that intensified with every movement, shoved Ahri off of me and flashed across the hall in a streak of silver. I passed disoriented and shaken dwarfs, two dishevelled elves, my unconscious brother and a groaning dragoness before I came down next to my mother.

My leg couldn't yet take the impact and I dropped to my knees, hands already reaching for her. She was deathly pale, dark circles ran under her eyes and her healthy complexion had turned waxen, like conserved parchment. She was withering away, even while I watched, her breath becoming more shallow while deep wrinkles and dark spots spread across her skin. When I gently touched her cheek, she opened her dulling eyes and her dried up lips twitched with the echo of a smile.

"Cassy," she breathed, "you're unhurt. Thank the gods! I didn't know… did you save your girl? Is your brother alright?"

I was already busy trying to heal her and was only listening with half of my attention but her tone stopped me dead in my tracks. The stupid woman was dying and she was actually worried for me and Ahri? Heat spread from my centre and for a moment I thought I was about to get angry with her but when my vision blurred, I realised that I was shedding tears, fuelled by grief, not fury.

My mother was dying and I couldn't stop it. Every time I tried to connect to her energies, I felt nothing, a widening, uncrossable chasm that swallowed my senses and blocked my way. Whatever I tried, I couldn't get past. Death had already put his claim on her. My throat constricted and it took every last ounce of self control I could muster to keep myself from sobbing openly, the hot tears that ran down my cheeks and sprinkled her face were bad enough.

"I did… he's fine, a little shaken but still in one piece. You saved him, you saved them all… Thank you," I replied hoarsely. What else was I supposed to say? Her smile widened and she appeared to relax, ready to move on, now that she knew her children would survive.

"I love you, Cassy. Don't forget that…" I had trouble understanding her now, her speech was getting slurry and there were long pauses between the words, as if she had to struggle to remember what she wanted to say. "I love you too, mom." She exhaled deeply, a shudder traveled along her limbs and then she became still. It felt like my blood froze in my veins, my heart skipped a beat and I felt dissociated. It couldn't be true, it simply couldn't. Not again… I couldn't hold the emotions in anymore and my body started to shake violently while my tears flowed more freely. In a way, I had killed her and even though I felt more guilty than I could have imagined, I wasn't sorry. I'd make the same decision again in a heartbeat.

Should I have listened to Ahri and simply left with her, days ago? Was being close to me truly a curse? What would I tell Mordred, when he woke up? Or Arthur? A myriad of questions raced through my mind but they were quickly drowned in a sea of desperation, as the strength seeped out of me and my vision collapsed until all I could see was my mother's face. I felt numb.

The next thing I knew, I had pulled her head into my lap, similar to how she had held me when I had woken up, and was now gently caressing her cheek, as if she were just asleep. Some of the dwarfs had gotten up and were standing around us, head bowed in respect, but I didn't spare them a glance. I had trouble coming to terms with what laid before my eyes, the bigger part of me still believed that she would wake up any moment now, there was no way she was actually dead.

"She doesn't have to be," a deep, double layered voice whispered. I didn't really hear it, it was coming from within, form my core. My head snapped up and I looked around. To my surprise everything seemed frozen, the beards of the dwarfs, Ahri, who was just now climbing to her feet, Viyara, Erya, all of them were completely still and even the dust hung motionless in the air. Directly in front of me, the last two wisps, their brethren had been destroyed in the final explosion, floated in the air, the light that shone from their centre much stronger than it had been before.

"She is carrying the last sparks of her spell in her heart. The nine tailed fox is still alive. We can animate the magic and she will live, in a transformed body and as our host, but she will live."

Hope was a fickle thing, precious and beautiful but also dangerous and the source of fear. If I allowed myself to hope even for a second that there would be a way to save her, I didn't know how I'd take the blow in case it turned out to be false and how far I'd go to make it work. Of course there was nothing to do but try and I was grateful for the chance to believe that she might come back, but even now I felt doubts that were oil on the fire of my fear. She might survive, which meant I might fail her, again. Still… enough of the pity party.

I wiped my eyes, my wings swirling around the wisps, tasting for a trace of the spider's magic or the taint of the other realm, but they were pure, undiluted parts of my energy. Somehow those two had managed to survive the explosion of their disintegrating brothers and even absorbed a large part of its power, burning off every foreign part in the process.

"Why?" I asked.

"Because we can't survive on our own. Even now we are failing, the energy that gave us life is too volatile to be controlled by pure thought alone and even though we have a small part of the memories of all those we have touched, it's not enough. We need a body, an anchor and she needs us to feed her what she lacks. But we need your help. You have to nourish us once it's done, the magic she used demands its payment and we don't have the strength. We can provide enough of a spark that you can reach her once again, but the rest is up to you."

"Then… what will she become? Will she still be my mother?" I added quietly.

"Yes, but reborn as the creature she conjured. We'll stay with her as the heart of her magic."

"Like my core?"

"In a way. But you and it are one, we won't be. We'll be a half forgotten dream, but we will exist and maybe, one day, we can truly be free and live without the aid of others." With my wings still dancing around them, I caught glimpses of memories and scenes from their short life, fear, pain, suppression and the burning wish to simply be, a desire that had kept them together while the rest of them had vanished. I believed them. I had to.

"Thank you. You can't imagine what this means to me. I won't forget it."

"There is no need. We stand to gain even more than you and we are grateful. A chance to live is not to be taken lightly. Good luck, Cassandra. For all our sakes, we hope your strength won't falter." Their light pulsed once, before they shrank until two tiny dots of silver entered my mother's closed eyes. A touch of colour returned to her face and she gasped for air, once. I didn't hesitate.

I can't put into words what happened next. Concepts like language, used to simplify reality so we can understand and categorise it, failed me, but I'll give it a try never the less. At first, there was nothing, the same deep chasm, infinite in every direction loomed before me. And then there was light, a tiny spark, a sliver of hope somewhere in the darkness, the minuscule thing all I could focus on in this place of loss. As soon as I saw it, it grew, or maybe I moved closer, revealing three separated… shapes which swirled around each other like fish in a bowl.

Two of them were bright and powerful but somehow hallow, incomplete, while the third seemed perfect, except that it was flickering on the brink of extinguishing. With every revolution they got closer to each other, their forms intertwining in such complex patterns that I couldn't tell them apart anymore. Their speed increased but instead of lighting up, they slowly dimmed, as if a tear had opened within one of them and now it was sucking their essence dry, like a ravenous beast whose hunger couldn't be satisfied. I intended to put it to the test. With a thought, I willed myself forward, it was easy enough now that I had a target to focus on.

My wings appeared longer, more substantial like liquefied crystals, as they danced around the swirling silhouettes, mirroring their rhythm. Let there be light! When I allowed my energy to flow unhindered form my core and through my wings, I felt like a straw, with an entire ocean trying to push through. There was nothing around me anymore but the glare of unleashed power, a whirlwind strong enough to rend space and shatter time, a maelstrom of energy that tore through reality itself. For a few moments I was nothing but a vessel, carried away on an irresistible current but to my surprise, it wasn't enough. In the eye of the storm, a black hole swallowed up everything around it. Whatever I had to give was devoured and consumed, transcendent forces changed and channeled to feed the beast, literally.

My mom's spell had created an avatar with sparks of my energy and that had made it real. She had already turned into a creature, the nine tailed fox, but there was no way in heaven or hell that anything other than an immortal could feed it enough power to truly make it come alive and allow her to survive. The wisps had provided me with a link and a focus, but I had to supply the strength to make the brith of a new, partly transcendent being possible. Despite the changes to my body, it nearly killed me.

It wasn't as simple as it had been with Viyara. With her, I had shared a drop of my energy and she had transformed. This time there was already a template, created from my mom's believes and intentions when she had cast the spell and fuelled by the taste of eternity she had experienced when my power had mixed with hers. And I had to fill every last nook and cranny or she wouldn't be able to live, her new from cannibalising itself in an attempt to come alive.

I learned two things, one, there was apparently no limit to my supply of energy and two, I was still a far cry away from actually making use of it. At first, I felt just fine. My meridians held and even though I was channeling more power than I ever had before, at least in this life, I thought I'd be able to keep it up for quite a while. I wasn't. My body started to deteriorate after only a few moments, supercharged light erupting along the base of my wings and from my eyes. The sheer magnitude of the forces at play was starting to effect my soul, my life force, all of me. I wasn't bending or circumventing the rules of the cosmos anymore, I was straight up shattering them. Before my latest transformation I would have burned up in a heartbeat, as much able to withstand the cataclysm as a squirrel was able to move a mountain. Now, I was being poisoned, energy seeped through me and was bound to parts that weren't ready yet.

Once again, it all came down to whether or not I could hold on long enough to fill the darkness with light. Time didn't matter, its flow was warped around me and in a heartbeat or an hour I would either have failed or my mom would live. Like drops of water on a stone, I chipped away at the impenetrable nothingness, pulse after pulse raced from my core but with every spark I managed to ignite, a part of me was carried away on the torrent of power. While my mom came back to life, I lost myself, but I never stopped. Not until she shone brightly and I fell into darkness.