Page 117 of Season Warriors & Wolves

“And godly interference hasn't been trying enough already?”

“You think you can take on a fight with her?” Mal asked, tapping a nervous finger on the table.

“Yes. Then all we need to do is kill my father to free the Octa Virga from his command. From there I can handle the rest.”

Kill her, was what she meant. “You keep forgetting that she is not alone,” I said. “We will take on a fight with her.”

Snow sneaked a hand on my thigh. “If we have to.”

“There is us as well,” Thora added, giving her sister a smile.

“That doesn’t console me much, Rora.”

Mal flicked the bow tied around her hair and then pulled it loose, letting the silky rose ribbon slide off and onto his grasp before stuffing it in his pocket. “No soldier of mine had ever worn a pink bow to a fight.”

She reached for the bow. “Am no soldier of yours, Malik.”

My brother grunted. “You are being trained by me, you are my soldier.”

She huffed. “Trained? Sitting and breathing with my eyes closed all day does not count for training.”

“It counts for most of our training,” I explained. “If you wish to learn how he creates tugs of magic on the shadows and the dead he summons, meditation will be the hardest part of your training. Connecting the physical to the spiritual. You have to imagine the threads, envision where they are and your mind along with your mana will bring them to life.”

“That is something she can do?” Nia asked, finally abandoning her study.

“Considering what she is, with some effort—easily.”

Nia’s eyes were slightly wider than normal. “So, if she were to summon, let's say, an army of ice soldiers—”

“Depending on the tug she has on her magic, a solid battalion.”

“Only a battalion?”

“Easy, Nia,” Mal said. “At best a battalion.”

“I saw you raise more than a battalion in the battle at Highwall.”

His finger tapped quicker. “If I wanted, I would have raised more.”

“But?”

“But it consumes parts of us,” I added. “Darkness consumes as it grows. Death too. Shadows too. For us to grow our magic, we have to bargain for something else. Like elementals rely on their mana, we rely on the strengths of—”

“Our soul.”

“Not exactly,” Mal explained. “Kil and I have mastered control over it. For it to consume us entirely would take a while. But, yes, it does consume parts of it. Any part. If you are unlucky, it could consume your empathy and therefore your entire ability to understand emotion let alone control it. But for an elemental, they would have to fragment their own magic into tiny threads to extend out of them which will leave less mana in their bodies to do normal things like breathe. An easy case with Thora since she has an unlimited source of it. And so far in our training, we’ve yet to find what tax she will pay for it.” He lifted a piece of paper with the Esmeray inscriptions on it. “What exactly are we looking for?”

“Vas,” Snow said quickly. “Details on Aurora and her one flaw, anything I can use against them.”

My brother cocked his head back. “How about lightning? Quicker and more efficient than this bullshit.”

She shook her head. “Vas cannot be killed, that is his curse. What I can do is kill my father, command her back to the sceptre, and trap Vas. To do all that, I have to know their weaknesses.”

“Trap?”

“She means inside his mind,” Visha spoke from the table next to ours, still busy reading her grimoire. “That would be me. And Kilian.”

My brother’s attention returned to me. “How would my brother do that?”