Page 31 of The Endless One

The storm had indeed gotten worse. Although now he hesitated to even call it a storm. It stretched like fingers across the sea, claws that were reaching for something in the distance that he couldn’t quite make out.

“No,” Jessamine whispered as she staggered forward.

He followed her right up to the edge of the sea, with waves licking their feet. “Where is it going?” he asked.

“That’s Inverholm.”

Oh.

Oh.

“Pain,” he muttered. “So that’s what he’s doing.”

“Elric?” Jessamine asked.

“There is nothing more painful for a person than having their soul torn out of their living body. Pain gives him power, and souls can be trapped. I suspect that’s what Leon has done. He trapped all those people and tortured the souls to bring Ajax back.” He paced, walking back and forth on the sands as he slowly unraveled his brother’s plan. “But that must mean Ajax needs more energy. He’s weak now, and likely seeking more souls to torment. The more people he kills, the more magic he has access to.”

“An infinite amount of energy,” Jessamine whispered.

“All he needs is enough souls and then, yes, an infinite amount of power. But a god like him is thirsty. He will need more souls than you can imagine to bring him back to what he once was. I’m sure dealing with us also was very, very tiring for him.”

Elric flexed his hands. It had been tiring for him as well. Most of the magic that he’d had was gone already. If he was this exhausted, then Ajax had to be much worse. He’d been expending a significant amount of energy to bring the Huntress into Jessamine’s body, and all of that had been wasted.

He looked at the electrical storm brewing on the horizon as it stretched clawed fingers toward Jessamine’s home. “How many people are currently living in Inverholm?”

“I don’t know.”

“Take a guess.”

“Tens of thousands?” she threw out. “There are multiple districts, and each of them lost significant numbers to the infected. I don’t think there is any way for us to know an exact number. That plague was difficult on my entire kingdom.”

“How many, Jessamine?” He looked her in the eyes, trying to stress how important this was. “Give me a number.”

“Thirteen thousand, most likely.” She reached for him, grabbing onto his hand and squeezing it hard. “What is he going to do?”

“He’s going to take all of their souls. Every single one of them. Your kingdom, it will be nothing more than a kingdom of the infected. No one will be able to return to it.”

One of the witches let out a choked “My sister!”

Another whimpered the name of a man.

Then they were all saying names. All at the same time. Words and names and people who were left behind. And there was nothing any of them could do.

They stood there, the smallest coven he’d ever had, watching as the lightning claws reached for Inverholm. It was a slow process for the spell to cross the sea, and he hadn’t the faintest idea where his brother was getting all this energy from.

The spell crawled, and then suddenly it was there. Jagged bolts reached the shore first. Each home in the Water District lit up. Even from this distance, he could see the shape of the windows, the buildings, as they glowed with a blue radiance that was as unnatural as it was beautiful. The icy coloring followed to the Pleasure District, the nobility’s homes, the Merchant District, continuing on and on as it rose all the way up to the castle. Though he couldn’t imagine there were many people left in the castle at all, it still blazed with light.

Jessamine’s home. Every home, every building, every part of that kingdom was a memory for her. He knew it, because he had seen them all. In the shards of her soul that he still kept safe, he’d watched her grow.

Even if those people had eventually betrayed her, Jessamine was still that little girl who loved them dearly. She was still the young woman who had needed them to show her how to grow and how to live. But now she was also the woman who had to watch them all die.

Elric turned his gaze away from the glowing city to look at her.

He wasn’t the only one. Many people in the coven were looking to their gravesinger to understand what they should be doing. Should they be angry? Should they weep? They were all losing so many of their loved ones in this instant. But Jessamine was frozen.

Still and cold as a lake in the dead of winter, she stoically watched her entire kingdom be attacked while she was too far away to do anything about it.

“Jessamine,” he said quietly, trying to make her stop. “You don’t have to watch this.”