Devotia Ch. 24: Fury

The Magister sinks her fingertips into her forearms and bears forth the threadbeams tattooed onto them. Sizzling whips of light blind the courtyard, suddenly wrenching it out of darkness and into a cacophony of searing sparks.

The first whip lashes out at Callie's ankles, quickly wiping the smile from her face, and she responds almost fast enough. From her palms leaps forth a spiraling glass shield, condensing the mirror drops into a hasty defense. The beam crashes into the base of the shield, bursting into light and steam and sending heat all across Callie's form. The air around it scorches in the night.

She hardly notices the pain until the second whip is leaping towards her as well. The first beam sliced across her calf, cutting it open and cauterizing the exposed flesh.

Callie drops to the floor as its sister beam smashes into the shield. The force of the impact knocks Callie square onto her ass, legs and arms skidding against the cobblestones underfoot. She ignores the scraping sting and hustles onto her feet once more, tossing as much strength into the shield as she can to prepare for the next strike.

Inside her arms and chest, her skin may as well be a flowing river. Cool power dances through her veins, sliding forth from the reservoir in her sternum. She'd slowly grown used to the unnatural cold of Yala's magic within her, that fluid sensation, and now she extends its ability past anything she's attempted before.

And that's simply to survive the next blow.

Don't contest force, contest strategy, Hamada advised her.

So Callie doesn't force the issue. She uses the shield to deflect the next whip down into the ground, then reshapes it over top of it. The mirror drops bend and flatten against the stone, wrestling the whip into motionlessness, but exposing Callie to the next attack.

She leaps bodily to the left, dodging the second whip by a hair and crashing down hard into the courtyard. Her shoulder screams from the impact, her sternum tight with pressure from holding the whip at bay. She rolls onto her feet, and lifts her arms to the sky, foolishly shutting her eyes to concentrate.

If Velena was trying to kill Callie, she could've now. But she wasn't just trying to defeat her, she was trying to make a show of it.

The second whip latches onto Callie's left wrist and burns it, yanking her down onto her knees and interrupting her focus. It takes all of her might not to abandon the shield and succumb to the pain. Each second the beam digs deeper into her skin, until suddenly it doesn't hurt beyond the splashing embers sparking across her body.

Callie accepts the pain, knows it's the only way forward. Rather than try and remove the whip, she knows that they're now both out of commission - one bound to the stone and the other occupied with her. She raises her hands to the sky once more, gasping for air as her breath heaves inside of her.

Hamada and Baris accepted the hypothesis of her spell, sure, but neither reached consensus on how to actually use it. The brief demonstration of its concept against Paladin Kyrian was one thing - to scale it up to this level... well, it may not be Velena who kills her.

It can only be removed by the person who threaded it, or an incredibly powerful mage.

That's what Mykah had told Callie when he'd done her threading. Those beams, woven into her skin, would become too deeply ingrained to be separable. To undo a threading would have required Mykah to painstakingly recognize the signature of his own work and methodically remove the beams. A mage, perhaps to the power of someone like Velena or Hamada, could theoretically attempt the same.

But Callie had realized something against Kyrian. Those very same beams held enormous power - her body was even more potent than threadstone. It'd take Mykah to remove it without unleashing that power... but if she was willing to accept the risk, she could remove it and branish that power.

So Callie shuts her eyes once more and turns her attention to her form, that crafted and contentious thing. That body which she'd finally grown used to, that holy thing Mykah gifted her with.

What was she willing to lose to protect her city?

I will protect you.

With a shaking inhale, her focus maps out the beams inside of her like nerves pulsing. She feels the warmth of them contrasting with the frigid comfort of Yala's magic. Sun and moon within her, their magics dancing and entangling and fighting over her.

And with a breath caught in her throat, frantically choking down her fear, Callie expels the sun.

All goes quiet.

Then - everything explodes.

Callie feels herself burst like a supernova, blinding light shooting from every part of her and casting away any darkness of the night. Heat consumes her, flames lick across her flesh.

Her feet leave the ground - whether she's flying or falling she can't tell. The air whips around her, screaming into her ears and deafening everything. She realizes she's screaming from the pain in her throat rather than the sound.

Everything leaves her - her flesh, her bones, her threads, it all unravels.

Then, the power condenses into something uncontrollable. A frantic power fights against her, and Callie suddenly realizes Velena is trying to enclose her into a ward, trying to contain the explosion.

Callie allows her. The heat and fury condense and compact as the ward tries to hold them in, attempting to prevent the damage from reaching her.

But it only increases the pressure. The exchange of pure energy and power from her threads fight back, a building tightness like prison of the spirit.

And Callie, existing as though a concept alone, descends upon the idea of her captivity in death and is life. She fights back, refuses to accept the limitations upon her, refuses to give in to the demands of anything upon her heart.

Velena wishes for an empire? Callie resolves to bestow upon her an empire of ruin - the final blessing of a Devotia.

The ward shatters, and Callie pours forth every contentious thing from within her. Every pain of her life, every time she's run and fled, every time she's been forced to deny her heart and soul.

And just as the threads which comprise her life unravel and fade into the night, so too does the most powerful Magister alive. Velena leaves her form as a warden being cast out, banished from the place of their control.

Callie feels nothing as what's left of her body finds the ground. Her eyes, if they still remain, gaze up into the sky upon the night. The stars find her. The moon holds her gaze.

She breathes, victorious, as she can only hope.

All the threads within give out, replaced only by the cool, flowing comfort of Yala.

I will protect you.