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TAMAS WAS EVEN MORE TERRIFYING WHEN HE WAS UNCONSCIOUS.
Lying in front of Auran, the vulture was spread out in the shape of a cross. If one stood far enough, the boy gathered, one could have mistaken Tamas for a martyr. It would be ironic, really.
Auran couldn't feel it himself, but he'd heard Rynaezel and Marie talk about the strange, dark power that radiated from the vultures.
So he imagined it now, the way it would look.
He closed his eyes and he pictured that blackness leaking out through invisible slashes in Tamas's pearly white skin. Cascading down his arms like black vapor, swallowing the tips of his fingers as it flowed out of him. Endless, ruthless, crushing.
Auran gasped, shuddering.
"You have to focus, Auran," someone hissed next to him and the boy felt the bones of Rynaezel's hand dig into his own. "Picture your energies merging."
Auran's face twisted into a frown. They've been sitting in a circle around Tamas for a long time, hand in hand, waiting for the moment when Auran would finally be able to find the link the vultures claimed existed between him and Tamas.
You have to imagine it, feel it before you know it's real, Sattvas had told him.
But to do that, Auran had to picture his own energy tangled in Tamas's, and he couldn't do it. Not because he lacked imagination, no. It was because he could never picture his own power.
For a long time, he was convinced that the more he practiced magic, the more simple spells he could cast, the more potions he could brew, the easier it would get to see it in his mind. But, as nothing changed over the years, as the dark, hollow void he saw everytime he thought about what little magic he was capable of only grew, he realized that, perhaps, there was simply nothing for him to imagine.
"I can't," he breathed out, pulling his hand out of Rynaezel's as he opened his eyes. Rajas, who sat across from Auran next to his brother, rolled his eyes hard enough for them to show clear white.
"Listen, it's not a matter of can or can't," he drawled, the lines of his face were outlined by the fire still glowing behind them, "I can't stand sitting here, waiting for you to do the easiest thing in this damn world. But I have to. Because a witch who thought too much of herself drove Tamas out of the body connecting him to this land. And the only link he has left to it lies in you," he pointed a long, threatening finger at Auran.
"I don't know why or how or when it happened, maybe he'll tell you when he wakes up. But now, it's not a can't, Auran," Rajas dragged out the syllables in his name until they tasted like hot blood on Auran's tongue, "It's a have to."
The boy felt a rush of mixed feelings gallop through him. There was anger and fear and terrible pride which tasted like bile, all directed at Rajas, and all not his own. He glanced over at Rynaezel, who sat with her eyes glued to the vulture.
