Zodiac Academy 8: Sorrow and Starlight
Sorrow and Starlight: Chapter 71

The fall came to an abrupt end, the ground cracking beneath my feet as I landed. The smoke which I’d been plummeting through billowed out all around me as my arrival made it quake and race away, clearing some space for me to see.

Even the air here seemed to know why I had come.

The world around me was made up of nothing and everything at once. A barren wasteland everywhere I looked and yet life was sparking in my peripheral vision, like staring at it made it blink out of existence, but it could never truly be vanquished.

I knew what I was supposed to be facing here, and as if my thoughts alone conjured them, flames erupted before me, a doorway appearing in the heart of them, the view through it obscured in darkness.

The Fires of the Abyss.

The gateway between realms.

I stepped towards it, the weight of my pack growing as I closed in on the heat of the flames and for once, I didn’t feel the power of the fire sinking into my skin and feeding my Phoenix. Those were no normal flames. And I had the feeling that even my Order gifts wouldn’t be enough to grant me immunity from them.

I dropped my pack, pulling out the Book of Fire as if in a trance, my hands seeming to know what to do even before my mind had given thought to it.

I flicked through the pages and stopped on one, my finger pressing down on an image of a man whose body lay on a burning pyre, then my gaze shifted to the caption which went alongside it.

Only a sprit torn from its body may pass the burning gate, as was written by the stars themselves. But it has long been pondered that a spirit still tethered to its mortal flesh may slip by unnoticed on the back of another who faces their true passage.

I read the words over twice, wondering if I was going to need to summon a sacrifice to me somehow, some lowlife member of Lionel Acrux’s army who I wouldn’t mind killing in the name of what I needed. I wasn’t sure what it said about me that I was willing to consider that, but I’d walked too far down this path to turn back now, and I didn’t think there were many prices I wouldn’t pay.

But as I read over the words again, I wondered if they were more of a clue as to the next part of my plan than instructions for this, and I removed the scraps of my leather jacket which were left after my wings had punched through it and tossed it aside.

I already knew how I might get through the burning gate after all.

My pulse picked up as those thoughts began to twist through my mind and I snapped the Book of Fire shut before returning it to my pack and taking the decanter of my enemies’ blood from it instead.

I set it on the ground then took the bag of rock salt out next, followed by the five glass crystals I’d selected for this purpose.

I took a bound bunch of dried thyme from my bag and laid that down alongside the rest.

The burning gate flared like it knew what I was planning to do, the heat of the flames licking over my skin and making my flesh prickle from the intensity of it.

I picked up the bag of rock salt and began walking as I poured it, marking out a pentagram on the ground, the centre of which was big enough to contain my body. I murmured words in the ancient language of the runes, my finger painting out the symbols as I went, scoring the air with flames which fell to the ground, burning the runes into the rock on the pentagram’s outer edge.

When that was done, I gathered the five crystals, taking them into my fist one at a time and pressing my power into each of them before placing them at the points of the pentagram. One filled with swirling blue water magic, the next green earth magic, then blazing fire and purest air. Last of all, I reached into that untold well of power at the depths of my soul and summoned the ether forth.

It rose up within me like a wave of pure energy, my breath halting and organs stilling for several achingly long moments as I channelled it into the crystal and placed it at the head of the pentagram. It glowed like the others, but the heart of it was deepest black, more like a void of light than any colour my eyes could detect.

My fingers shook a little as I positioned it and I willed them to still, knowing I would need far more power than that before this was done.

I had faced my fears, faced my truth and now I would have to face the price this magic asked of me.

The light which had pierced the smoke to replace me at the bottom of this abyss flickered as I worked, a sound rattling through the world, a demand making the earth tremble, like the stars were screaming at me, raging at me as they perceived what I was doing.

“I cursed you,” I snarled, throwing my hand up towards the sky, ether tumbling from me as I bared my scarred palm to them, making the sky quake at the power I unleashed. “I made you a promise. And it is time you saw it come to pass.”

I moved into the centre of the pentagram, rallying my magic with every move I made, taking the bound thyme in my fist before cutting my arm open with the very dagger that had stolen the man I loved from this world.

My blood spilled hot and fast, ether dripping from me in every splash of red as I let it fall over the dried herbs. Thyme for communicating with the dead. A path cracking open and remaining so, for just long enough.

When the dried herbs were splattered with my blood, I threw the bunch from me, straight into the heart of that gate. The entrance roared in fury as I lashed my power around it and threw my will at it.

It wasn’t intended to be a passageway, merely the heart of the flames in this world, a link to every flame in every Fae who possessed that Element. But I didn’t care. I wasn’t interested in the design the stars had laid out for it or for anything else, and as I tethered the gate to my will, I felt a crack shudder through the foundations of the earth itself.

“Surrender,” I hissed, digging my heels into the dirt as the ether roiled within me, trying to become a leash on me instead of the gate.

I threw my hands out, Elemental magic blasting from me and erupting at the four points of the pentagram dedicated to them.

Fire sprang to life beside the fire crystal, a rotating ball of water next, then a swirling orb of air magic and a flourishing glade of green grass. Between the gate and me, only the crystal filled with ether remained, and as I dug into the depths of my power, summoning the heart of that most ancient magic, a girl of pure light broke from it.

I fell to my knees as the power needed to summon her ripped from me, panting as I stared up at the figure whose features were entirely obscured by that blinding light. She planted her feet before me as my connection to the gate tried to pull on me once again, and I bared my teeth in a grim smile as she drew a staff of golden energy and threw a tendril of dark ether straight at the flames.

I was knocked back onto my ass as the pull of the gate snapped suddenly, my grip on it becoming iron, my will its will and my lips pulled up as I realised what I’d achieved.

My breaths were ragged, and the cut on my arm throbbed painfully, but I wasn’t done, and I couldn’t spare a moment to rest.

I scrambled for the decanter of blood, looking at the deep red of the liquid as it swirled within the glass, remembering the way I’d siphoned it from myself after I’d woken in my room, the blood of my enemies which had covered my body now a weapon ready for me to wield.

I took the lid from the decanter and dipped two fingers into the blood, a deep breath filling my lungs. I positioned myself in the very centre of the pentagram and focused on the magic which began to rise to my call.

I painted runes onto my own skin while drawing the ether into myself, filling my body with it like I was a vessel for it and nothing more.

As the ether met with the runes I’d drawn onto myself, it grabbed hold of them, the power burning through them and making me grit my teeth as they branded my body one after another.

I cursed as the pain drove into me relentlessly, the magic burning all the way to my bones as it carved through my body, passing over me like flesh held little meaning to it and it was seeking the real prize of my soul.

The scream that erupted from me as I fell to the ground was un-fucking-ending, and didn’t come close to aligning with the reality of the pain which ripped through me as my soul was set alight within that power.

Everything was ripped from me, my Phoenix crying out as my connection to it was lost, my hold on my power guttering as it was taken from my control, falling into the depths of the magic I’d begun to wield and no longer held in my grasp.

The spell was like a living being, its own wants and needs a terrible thing to behold as it looked upon the world with a hunger unmatched by any other. It wanted to use me to that end, to destroy, to obliterate, to devour.

My grip on myself flickered as its hunger almost consumed me, but as I was swept along on the tide of its catastrophic desires, a glimmer of my own needs called to me, the golden eyes of my damnation and the reason for all of this. The man I had chosen for myself, despite every reason I’d had to reject him, despite the stars pushing and pulling at us, despite the Veil which had closed between us. He was mine and I was his and I had come here to return him to my side.

With a flare of power that burst from the last recesses of my being, I ripped control of the ether back into my grasp and forced it to fall to my will.

“Open a path,” I hissed, my fists clenching, blood squeezing between my fingers and my spine arching against the rock beneath me.

The universe rebelled at my demand, but I refused to back down, every beat of power I owned, every bit I could claim and steal from the world surrounding me, buckled and bent as I forced my will over it.

I had come here to see him, and I refused to let death have me before I did.

Everything surrounding me shuddered and heaved, the laws of nature themselves working to deny me this one request, but I only pushed more power into my command, only called on more of the ether and bound it to my will until a great, rending boom filled the air and the world around me shimmered like oil.

The power ebbed and flowed, releasing me from the agony of wielding it and allowing me to roll onto my front as I fought to stop the haunting ache in my soul.

I pushed to my feet, limbs trembling with exertion and my breaths coming in shallow pants as I took in the gap between realms which I’d forced into being, hanging there, contained within the gate of flames.

My feet stumbled over each other as I moved towards it, the rest of the world seeming to melt away until there was nothing but that tear in the fabric of the universe itself, that ethereal light blinding me from whatever lingered beyond it.

I didn’t pause as I staggered closer, my heart thundering, proving to me and all who might hear it that I still lived. Even as I took that final step and walked into death itself.