Abolisher [Drothiker #2]

49.

She was falling.

Deeper and deeper and deeper.

Down and down and down.

Round and round and round.

The dark around her was not gnawing, and it was not fearsome.

This gloom ... she'd been here before. Time and again. Enough that even in her subconscious, she recognized the manner of her mejest.

The darkness that would, over the time, be consumed by that light she was nearing—she could just sight it from here, looking as small as stones found on streets.

That light—the gate of her mejest.

Her mejest would only grow with immortality until it sprawled all around and consumed the dark void.

She'd always been told it was endless, her mejest. Had been told to never cross that gate lest she wished for power to eradicate her someday.

But she'd never believed it—not truly. A part of her had always believed that that gate ... that brightness ... it was some sort of boundary. She'd thought her mejest concluded there. But ...

She wasn't falling.

No, she was burrowing—she pushed and pushed and pushed—towards that brightness nearing with a preternatural swiftness. As if a well coming to devour her.

It was that same gate, she knew. The gate she was never meant to open. Hexet and Raocete had warned her against it over and over and over again. But Drothiker lay somewhere beyond it, she felt it, and she must hunt it down. She must—

The approaching well swallowed her whole. She slammed into it—her mejest—her lightning and winds—like someone might into a mountain of powder.

She could have sworn her surroundings buzzed as power thrummed. Could have sworn something inside her—something in this void—cracked.

But she had no time to panic over that.

The brightness swallowed her whole. It chewed at her skin like tiny insects crawling across it. The surroundings shuddered—

She paused. Halted the burrowing.

Drothiker.

This brightness was no lightning—or winds.

Drothiker's barrier had been broken. It'd set itself free within her.

And only then did she notice the cracks in the eternal white—the power—enveloping her. The cracks ... the scars of a warrior ...

Her heart thundered, remembering the outburst she'd felt within herself mere minutes ago when she'd been with Felset. The eternal agony of utter power. Drothiker ... it'd undone itself at the sight of the queen ...

She felt her surroundings blistering—felt its presence then, as it grinned.

Starblood, it greeted.

Her blood went cold, its voice—a wretched existence of its own—seemed to have blazed the back of her neck.

What brings you back, Heir of Grinon?

Her hands fisted at her sides as the last images of her parents played in her mind—certainly felt like lashes of a whip. "How much longer, Drothiker? How much longer before you yield—"

Ah, it interrupted. I do not yield, Syrene of Lavestia.

Irritation and exhaustion nipped at her. "I tire of these mindless games, Drothiker." Her voice was little more than a broken whisper.