10 Chapter 9: A Bitter Price

Lily felt fear for the first time since the Witch Hunters had been chasing her. It was a quiet fear that seeped in the bones and made the body shake in despair. She hated the way it felt, like hot nails tearing burning cuts down her stomach. It made her feel frail, sapping her power from her limbs. Hardly four paces away, she saw a monstrosity with a mindless rage that stood in stark contrast to her own weakness.

"Blood and bones!" she swore as it shattered through her first ward with a singleminded determination. It was a fitting curse, really, given the demon's current state of affairs. Blood sprayed wildly from its chest, some wounds given from her, others self-inflicted in crazed derangement. There was a shattering in the air as mutilated bone cracked with each successive impact. But it was the mindless ferocity that was the most terrifying, the utterly feral battle lust that brought a single phrase to mind: blood rage.

The girl had known of the blood rage from the stories that recounted times of old. There were demons that had walked Altaros in the past, perhaps best known in the tales as terrors when in their battle throes. They lost their sanity when they fell under the thrall of the blood rage, under its rampant madness. It started with pain and rage that fed upon themselves in an endless loop, the insatiable bloodlust driving the demon to insanity and destroying their sense of reason. They became nothing more than beasts, lashing out at everything in psychotic mania. They felt no injuries in their frenzied state, nor did they retreat in face on any foe, with their physical prowess growing tenfold as they sought nothing more than to kill all standing before their shadowed path.

In hindsight, perhaps fighting it had been a poor choice.

She had seen the demon burn under her flames, watched as its flesh was consumed by the unrelenting blaze. She had been certain of its death, yet before her eyes it had stifled her fire in mere moments. The power that she had seen was not the purple of mahji, of pure magic, but rather the white of vahma, of the spirit. It was a spell nonetheless, but the demon had used its own spirit to quench the fire—or so it seemed. She knew the dangers that came with doing so, she had tasted vahma's power. It still lingered, sweet in her memory, yet deadly as a poison.

There were a host of reasons why the old professor had forbade the use of the spirit. Where mahji failed in its pact, perhaps being insufficient in quantity, vahma would take the backlash, as she had experienced firsthand when she had cast the time-slowing spell. The spirit—the soul—would be consumed to make up for where the first was lacking. The blood price was substantial, but at least it offered a failsafe. Where vahma was first used, failure meant death. It drew directly upon the soul, and when it ran out of fuel there was no alternative. Even it one survived the spell, the soul was irreparably damaged, the intricate latticework disrupted. Much as a rope, once cut, would inevitably begin to fray at the ends, so to would the soul unravel until it was nothing more.

The second was the one she was most familiar with: the power was addictive. Even now, after having used vahma to heal herself, she could still hear its seductive whispers. To use even a trickle was to start down a slope only a few degrees from being called a cliff. Knowing this, she could not help but admire the demon's audacity—or perhaps its ignorance.

It was likely that the two could be found in equal measure.

She had never seen the blood rage before, and she had never heard of a demon that could use vahma. It seemed that it was a day for firsts; she could only hope that her death would not be joining the list. Nevertheless, she had not expected for the demon to this powerful, nor for it to be this ruthless and feral. It had devolved so quickly into its bloodthirsty state that she hardly had any time to react.

With a sudden start, the young street rat shook herself from her dangerous trance, brushing some loose hairs out of her eyes. The fear had taken root in her bones, and she had to breathe in slowly to lessen its grip. The demon still had to break through her second ward; luckily she had poured it prior to her spellcasting, else the liquid on the ground would her blood instead of potion sluice.

Slowly, she began contemplating her options. Reminded of those black claws and the strips of meat in the cellar, she refused to even debate physical combat. Yet if she were to use magic, her options were depressingly small. She had already used all of the mahji from the magic crystals with her previous attack, thus she would need to use vahma—much as the demon just had. She smiled bitterly at the irony of her sudden mimicry.

She remarked loudly, "How'd you learn that little trick? Would you like me to show you some of my own?" Her words had not seemed to distract the frenzied demon, who was still slamming into the ward with an idiotic determination.

Biting down any further retorts, she began to chant once more. This time she reached into herself instead of grabbing the strands around her. It was just as she had done to heal herself not moments before, only this time she would be trying to kill someone with the same thing. Curious how often that happened.

Even though she had planned to end it in one strike with her first lance of flame, she had still taken precautions. The ward she had conjured was strong enough to hold back a mountain, or so the vendor had boasted. She had her doubts, although admittedly it was withholding the demon's assault without complaint so far. Still, each time the creature slammed into the ward it sapped her of her power substantially, draining her stamina and disturbing the channeling of her pact. If her spell failed prematurely, then she would suffer from repercussions that would kill her surely as any other wound.

Already, hairline fractures had begun to spiderweb through the latticework of the ward. She had to hurry with her incantation—any further damage to the ward would leave her without enough magic to finish the spell. The backlash would kill her, plain and simple.

Chanting furiously, the sloane reached inside of herself, feeling the strength, the vahma that lay raveled inside of her being. She drew the latent power into her core, wrapping white strands tight around each other to give them shape and strength. It burned with quiet heat that pulsed through her very being.

"Rehva, rehvera, rehvarai." the street rat intoned dully, repeating the chant mindlessly as she directed the flow of her spirit to surround her. The words themselves held no meaning, only intent. With that intent, she shaped her spell. She had always been fond of fire. She would burn him with soulfire until the skies rained him as ash.

Lily could feel the magic in the air around her; she could feel its power as it crackled in the air, sparks dancing off her hair. The raw energy flowed through her, driving euphoria through her veins as she channeled it through her arms to the tips of her fingers. As her spell gathered, so too did her confidence. She would burn the demon in flame, roast it alive with crackling fire. She had seen how close to death it had come with her previous spell; it surely lacked the strength to resist another. The magic unraveled into thin strands that filled the air, words of her spell sparking the flame to life. Ribbons of fire danced in the air around her, hot against her skin.

It was foolish to think the gods would let her confidence go unchecked.

As Lily continued chanting to give further shape to her spell, the demon slammed itself into the ward yet again, and this time the very walls of the cave rumbled with the force of the blow. In front of her eyes, a massive fracture ran straight through the only thing keeping a feral beast from her beating heart. Another shock rippled through her body and she felt her power slip away as the magic of her ward ate away the last of her reserves. It was as if a string that she had been clutching was suddenly yanked out of her grasp so quickly that the skin was torn ragged with a cut.

A ward by nature demands a supply of magic to sustain itself, lest it would fall apart. With her supply of mahji exhausted, she had been using vahma to compensate with the hope that it would be enough to protect her until she finished her conjury.

And yet, the demon's last strike with sheer muscle and claw had greatly damaged the barrier. As it fell apart, the ward struggled to uphold its pact, siphoning more and more vahma from her until she had reacted and cut it off. Unfortunately, distracted as she was by her spell, the foolish girl had been too slow in her actions.

She had failed in her spell. Now she would die.

The spell demanded power, like a bottomless vacuum that she could not satiate. Having cut off her flow of vahma, where the sloane was once drawing on power, she was now drawing on nothing. Yet still the spell demanded more from her, she had no more to give. Sudden flares of pain shot through her body, muscles convulsing as her spirit ran dry. The pain struck deep inside her, like a cord that had been tugging gently on her heart suddenly grew taut.

With nothing to uphold her end of the pact, the spell went wild in backlash.

The brilliant tongues of yellow-red flame dancing around her figure suddenly flickered before surging a bright blue, drawing fuel from her body and vigor to burn even hotter. Quickly cutting the chant, she spasmed madly, the ribbons of fire dying as the spell fell apart, backlash imminent. But it was slow—still far too slow. The damage to her lifespan was irreversible, the gluttonous flame of her pact devouring the candle wick of her vitality.

She felt her stomach clench, bile rising up her throat. Metallic blood and hot bile filled her mouth and she coughed out a puddle of vomit on the floor of the cave in front of her. Her arms clenched against her chest as tears streamed down her face. Her body felt like it was being torn apart, her insides like they were being shredded with a thousand knives.

Before she could recover, the demon charged into the ward a final time with a roar. Without her vahma to uphold it, the ward was stopping the beast in name only. In its current meager state, it could fall apart from a too-strong wind. There was a gleam of victory in its eyes as the demon gave a swipe of its claws, breaking the ward utterly and turning Lily's vision black as the shattered pieces of her salvation shimmered and dispersed into fine purple powder.

Her sparkling wit and indescribable charm left her in this moment, deserting her the way that she had come to expect from her life. The bitter retorts that she loved so much had died somewhere in her throat, or perhaps it was just the blood that gushed forth so freely that it stopped her from breathing.

Pain racked her body as the broken magic from the ward and her failed spell raked wounds across her skin. She could not even see—the blood and tears blurred her vision and tinged everything in a deep red. Deliriously, she wondered if this was what it felt like to be in a blood rage. It almost did not feel that bad, save for the mind-wrenching agony and imminent death.

"Damnit." she cursed, her tongue numb and useless in her mouth. "Thrice-damned piece—" was all she managed before her body refused to listen any further.

Pain, nausea, and ruined magic was all she could feel. Her legs trembled violently before the muscles gave out. She collapsed onto the floor, a hot bolt of agony running up her legs to the base of her head. There was a sudden sharp heat under her ribs, a sudden tearing feeling.

Something inside her gave.

Everything turned to white. The last thing that she saw was the demon about to pounce, claws in the air, fangs bared. As her body collapsed, a fleeting thought flashed through her mind—nonsensical and irrelevant. It was what the demon had said to her, the thing that had shocked her so much. Just one word.

Memories flashed through her head, memories of a girl that had given her the warmth of family. There was a madness that came with them, an inescapable lunatical mania as she relived her moment of trauma over and over. Blood, screams, and agonizing pain. That was what the demon had given her with just a single word.

It had called her Sister.