Page 28 of Drawn into Oblivion

He looked up at her. “She said she did. While I was asleep.”

“Good,” she said, giving him a reassuring smile. “Would you like to see some magic?”

Oka pulled back, his expression brightening. “Very much!”

“Then stand by your sister,” she bade.

He nodded and walked back to the empress. The high general stood on Shumei’s other side, their hands intertwined.

“Are you ready, Elder Mai?” Kyoko asked, voice carrying well on the brisk morning air. Autumn wasn’t all that far away, and the change in seasons would soon be marked by the upcoming festival.

Mai looked back at Rosuke, who wore a lopsided smile and nodded at her. “As ready as I’ll ever be,” she said, nodding back.

She approached a large area of the roof that had been scrubbed to gleaming perfection. Here was where she would create and invoke her circle. She shed her shoes and socks before stepping into a ring drawn with charcoal. Its precise measurements would ensure the circle she drew would be no bigger than twelve feet across. If she drew it any larger another person would need to feed magic into it to properly activate it.

Kyoko brought the case over, and Mai opened the lid. Inside was a long thick wooden tube with a stiff-bristled brush on one end and a tightly bound leather cap on the other. The tube had been filled with animal blood less than an hour ago. She took it carefully from the case and was surprised by how warm it still was.

“Thank you,” she said to Kyoko, who then moved away.

The ball of magic inside her, already wound up from her kissing Rosuke, bounced around as she knelt to begin drawing the circle. The sensation made her a bit nauseous, but she had never drawn a circle before, so perhaps her magic’s eagerness was normal.

Satisfied everyone was far enough away, she set the tip of the brush to the wood. Her arm moved without hesitation as the circle’s pattern formed itself out of whichever pocket of her mind it had been deposited in. She breathed a soft sigh of relief, having worried she wouldn’t know the pattern she was to draw. The empress had assured her she would know when the time came, but the anxiety had been there all the same.

The circle for the genesis spell was quite strict—and likely legendary in the old court. It had to be completed before the blood dried, so she had only a few minutes. The caster also had to use a single writing instrument, typically meaning only one person drew the circle, and they could not lift the implement after they’d begun, so one had to know the pattern well. The dimensions of the swirls, frills, and jagged lines had to be proportionally exact, though the size of the circle could vary. A larger circle had a larger effect. What that effect was—at any size—she didn’t know. It seemed no one did.

Her heart was racing by the time she neared where she’d started. She tried to keep calm with slow, deep breaths, but she was scared—of messing up and of the wash of magic rolling up and down her body, tingling, tickling, and snapping against her skin. Her magic was shuddering inside her, swelling. It reached out with metaphysical arms to touch the circle, as if checking its accuracy.

A loud crack resounded in the air above as she completed the last line of the circle. Though she flinched, she thankfully didn’t smear the pattern. She heard gasps and worried murmurs, then a rumble of thunder. Her magic was already feeding power into the circle. She stood and stretched her arm to give the brush back to Kyoko, who took it silently. The roll of thunder lingered, and she realized the sound was in her head.

With a sweeping glance, she took in the faces of those who had come to witness. Their expressions were rapt, their breaths held. No one seemed to be nearly as anxious as she felt. She turned away and looked out over the sleeping city. Almost half of it had been burned, some of it down to piles of ash, and even the fields beyond the distant city wall were still black weeks after the intense fire that had destroyed them. To wreak so much havoc, and for what?

“Watakushi wa sakura-ke no kachou. Haru no daihyou. Watakushi no kotoba wo yoku okiki.” A gasp was all but ripped from her throat as her magic exploded inside her, expanding so quickly her vision shimmered. I am the Matriarch of House Sakura. I am the Elder of Spring. Heed my words.

Panting, she winced as power poured out of her through the soles of her feet into the blank inner circle where she stood, filling it with a green glow. It grew in brightness with every passing second, pulsing in time to the pump of her magic. Her lips and fingers tingled as though going numb—as though even her blood was being drawn downward. Everything was collecting at her feet.

“Haru wa saisei no kisetsu. Kotoba wo yoku okiki.” Spring is the season of rebirth. Heed my words. She was slurring. Her brain felt cold and exposed. Her lips cracked. She was drying up like a lake in a drought. “Watakushi wa haru de ari, saisei nano. Kotoba wo yoku okiki.” I am spring. I am rebirth. Heed my words.

The glow drastically intensified, so bright she had to close her eyes, and still she saw the circle behind her eyelids, its pattern burned into her retina. Her magic spun, churned, boiled in her gut. She floated above herself, almost entirely numb.

“Souseiki,” she whispered. Genesis.

A colossal rumbling rose from the depths of the earth. The building beneath her trembled, which she felt only because it rattled the push and pull of air through her lungs. She heard cries of alarm, Kyoko and one of the guards. The growling, cracking boom rolled out and back across the land, washing over the city in great waves.

Carefully, she opened her eyes and watched as the bright green glow that had collected in the center slowly filled in the lines of her circle. Relieved, she waited for her strength to return, glad the circle would not take from her as much as what the empress had expended to shield human cities.

But her magic spun without stopping, pumping power through her feet. She would have swayed and stumbled, but the soles of her feet were stuck fast to the roof as though part of it, and she ended up losing her balance. Unable to pick up her feet, she put her hands back to brace her fall and sat down hard. Then she screamed as the circle burned her palms, sucking even more power from her. She could hardly breathe. Her muscles spasmed, and her bones ached. Something was wrong.

“Mai,” Rosuke shouted. The same panic she felt was in his voice.

“Look at that,” Vallen said with awe. Mai could barely hear the high general over the hum of her magic and the great rumbling.

“No, Rosuke! You mustn’t touch her,” Shumei implored. There were sounds of a struggle. Rosuke begged to be let go.

Mai would have cried if she’d had the strength. She was terrified and overwhelmed, but she wasn’t going to give up. She was going to endure the spell until the very end.

“Over there,” Oka shouted. Mai cracked her eyes open, only able to see the green glow all about her. She tried to lift her head, desperate to see what was happening, but breathing was all she could do.

“It’s killing her! Stop this,” Rosuke shouted. “Let me go, Vallen.”