Guys… I wasn’t expecting this to happen so soon after the last one was posted, but…
It’s been hot today. So hot that I almost didn’t notice a weird current of warm air brushing over my skin. I did, eventually, and I thought it was weird… We don’t open the windows in this house, so the bugs don’t get in. And I definitely don’t open mine. But my room was where the breeze came from, and when I came in I could see the tome floating in midair. Needless to say I had to take a moment not to panic!! Good thing my door had only been slightly open, or someone might have seen. But that’s not important. What is important is what was written… Super faintly, but I transcribed it as best as I could
Knatz heard glass shatter in the middle of the night and found Wyckstrand in the basement, dead. Starved, withered, his bare feet nearly worn to the bone. We found blood all over the back walls of the manor garden. He’d been clawing against the protections for what looked like weeks. And he finally got in. The Joradians had failed. Maybe just the manor. Maybe everywhere. Maybe not completely. But enough. There was no way of knowing given what little time we now had to act.
Endri, Knatz, and I buried him in the garden without waking anyone. Endri asked me to meet her in the library to go over the particulars of the Determiner one more time. I sat with her in the dark, in the middle of what’s become her base of operations. She slid a cracked hand mirror across the book-crowded table.
Of course she knew.
It’s not just dreams, the woman with the claws. She’s been trying to reach me. Reach into me. I could hear her, looking for ways past the protections. It started when Wyckstrand first came to the door, and I answered. She must’ve been inside him, and sensed me, reached out for me. I could feel hints of her, hear her whispers, and now that we’re exposed, there would be nothing to stop her from coming for me. She wants something, needs something. She’s desperate, and she believes either the monarchs, the mountaineers, or both can help her get whatever it is she’s hunting.
She knew why I lied. Everything we’ve tried to do here, every potential solution we have at our disposal, it will all shatter if their leader falls to the Silver. I made them trust me. Reassured them. I told her I never let on that my storm-wracked mind could be especially ripe for manipulation. Maybe I never really believed it myself. I should’ve planned for this. After all the '94s, after Augernon, I should’ve known.
All I wanted was to guide them, find our way to the top of the mountain. But I was a liability to them now, for no other reason than answering the door. Simple as that, and it’s all done. The ring I brought back is powerless. It’s a lie to reassure them, and Endri knew it from the moment I brought it up. The last lie I’ll tell them. The last truth I hide.
I thought she might try to fight me, try and come up with an alternative to me performing the spell, knowing it will kill me, but she knows how dark the path we’re climbing is about to become, and one weak link could destroy us all.
We agreed. The spell has to be cast, to give them all a chance at making something of the new age. And I can’t be on this side of the wall given what I know, or how well I can hide and lie and convince. I’ll compromise everything. And it just so happens that someone has to cast a spell that kills. It has to be me.
Endri had one request. If the spell starts to fail, if anything goes wrong, she wants me to focus on the mountaineers and the Guide to Magiq as the determiner. Given the chaotic nature of the spell, any number of things could go wrong and not splitting my focus between the manor and the mountaineers could be the key to it working, if it works at all. I didn’t have to ask who would protect everyone else. She will. She has become more of a leader than I ever was. Brave and just, but also compassionate and honest in a way I was always too afraid to be.
I don’t want to go. I don’t want to leave without ever having seen a magical world realized, without ever having met my daughter. But I can’t risk whoever is out there getting in and destroying it all. I’ve been touched by the Storm itself, but I have never felt a darkness like the shadow in the mirror — the shadow in me.
I wanted to sit there for hours. Share stories and secrets. Talk about old friends. Everyone we lost. There was so much more to say. So much I wanted to do.
But it was time to go — one last bit of magic. A final climb, and then —
And that’s how it ended. Can’t say I’m not thoroughly freaked out by the whole thing… This was not what I expected to spend my afternoon reading, that’s for sure…
