As Nicci ignited the spell, the backwash levitated her into the air. Glowing lines grew and lengthened, crisscrossing to form a cylinder around her, as if a two-dimensional spell-form had become three-dimensional in order to be viable in such an extreme circumstance. With a roaring sound that reverberated across the flat expanse of the island, those patterns of lines, angles, and arcs continued to grow outward, extending away from the cylindrical spell-form. Lines of light raced through the air to support triangles and intersections. While orange light spiraled outward, the lines of power braced complex angles of pure white.
Nathan staggered backward, shielding his eyes with the sleeve of his frayed ruffled shirt. The lightning bolt had been powerful, but it was no more than a whisper compared to the constructed spell she had just triggered. The magic continued to grow.
As the lines expanded and branched ever outward, thorns of light sprouted in needle-sharp points. Their patterns and flow interacted and connected, giving the entire web of lines their intended purpose—to open the torn veil wide enough so the Keeper could seize all the long-overdue souls and drag them to where they belonged.
Life to the living. Death to the dead.
After Nicci set the constructed spell in motion, the routines continued to grow through a rhythm of intersections and routes that arced out in all directions. Suspended within the web, lifted off the ground, she felt each new line as if some cosmic needle were taking a stitch through her soul to draw the thread of light out of her and into the fabric of the spell. She experienced profound pain and pleasure at the same time.
The spell would encompass General Utros and the entire ancient army.
Nathan watched the unfolding, increasing lines of power, knowing that this was beyond anything he could do. Richard had created the spell, but Nicci was the engine driving all the destruction. Encased in her web of expanding, invincible magic, the beautiful sorceress wheeled in the air.
Utros’s escort soldiers screamed and backed away. Their horses reared in panic. Ava and Ruva cried out in challenge and terror, trying to defend against what Nicci had unleashed. The general strained to stagger forward, struggling to lift his sword so he could kill Nicci, but the weapon seemed as heavy as a mountain.
Bannon and Lila were buffeted by the surging power. They tried to stand their ground, holding their swords to defend against powers they could not imagine. Halsband Island shook and shuddered, and the settling rubble underfoot made the ground unsteady, while Nicci hung suspended in the air as light showered around her.
With impossible speed, the dazzling lines spiraled across the landscape and rolled past the island, beyond the bridges to the lowtown, then across the harbor. The spell raced like an ill wind through all the districts of the city to the outlying hills and beyond. Unstoppable, it swept up tens of thousands of the invading army. The underworld was now open and ravenous, demanding to have these souls.
Men in ancient armor screamed as the glowing green lines overran them, netting some, while impaling others on the thorns of orange light, slicing others with razor black energy.
Tendrils flew out beyond Tanimura, far down the coast, racing across the Old World to reclaim all the souls of the ancient army, wherever they had been dispatched. The very line between life and death was at stake, now torn open.
As the veil to the underworld tore to allow passage of all those souls, Nathan felt his heart rip as well. The darkness within him hammered outward, struggling, trying to hold on. He clutched his chest as pain exploded like a battering ram inside him. He had not experienced agony like this since Fleshmancer Andre had split open his breastbone to pull out his old, weak heart.
Now the remnants of Ivan strained and struggled. That evil man’s spirit resisted, but the raging constructed spell demanded every scrap of his tainted soul as well. Searing green light blazed around Nathan’s eyes, inside his mind, and he used his own gift to push the hated presence out of him.
With a last dull saw blade of pain, the poisonous vestige of Ivan slipped out of him and fluttered away like scattered raven’s wings. The chief handler’s spirit was sucked down with all the other screaming souls as the world and the underworld yawned open.
Nathan realized he was at last free.
Green mist swirled like a sudden fog, rising from a world that did not belong to the living. Across the battlefield in the hills and the city streets, the ground shuddered open. Countless ancient soldiers were yanked screaming into the underworld, their souls reclaimed, their centuries-old bodies crumbling to dust.
From the center of the storm of magic, Nicci realized that elements of the spell patterns were themselves in the language of Creation, a design that transitioned into an elemental language that hummed with the rhythm of life itself and also called to the dead.
Ava’s shimmering spirit tried to flee, pulling against the invisible claws of destiny. Her intangible form stretched and tangled, then was whisked away with a fading shriek. Leaping after her dead sister, trying to catch her, Ruva struggled with the limitations of her physical form. Their connection was too strong, and the Keeper demanded them both. Ruva’s soul tore away, inexorably following her twin to the underworld. Empty, her body dropped lifeless, disintegrating into grains of dust and fragments of yellowed bones.
Suspended in the air as the magical holocaust continued, Nicci knew that this spell-form was complex beyond her comprehension. She gazed in awe at the network of light woven into a fabric of forms around her, motifs and unfathomable emblems. She was not surprised that Richard had been able to conceive such power. Caught in her own web and also shielded by it, she watched the very stuff of creation and annihilation.
By using the interior perspective of the constructed spell, by being the initiating element, Nicci was more than an observer, but also a participant. It was her very will, her fury, her nature that became an empowering element to annihilate the vast invading force in one stroke. It was Nicci herself who laid waste to the ancient army and cast them tumbling into the world of the dead.
Strong and defiant, General Utros resisted until the last minute, but even the legendary commander could not withstand the call of the Keeper, the obdurate demands of mortality. As he shuddered and struggled against the pull of the constructed spell, the gold mask fell off to show his stripped face.
Knowing he could not win, Utros raised one gauntleted fist, shouting a final vow. “Now I can conquer the whole underworld!” His massive body disintegrated as his spirit vanished into the whirlwind of green mist.
As the spell finally wound through to its terminus, its task accomplished, Nicci felt more alive than she had ever been. Embraced by Richard’s spell, she had dealt out death, once again becoming Death’s Mistress. Richard had written the message for her in the language of Creation on the bone box. In that moment, neither world—the world of the living nor the world of the dead—seemed entirely real to her. She was the Grace. She was life. She was death.
Only then was Nicci released from her prison of light, exhausted and exhilarated by the experience. She drifted back to the ground and slumped in the rubble of the Palace of the Prophets.
More than ever, she ached for Richard. It was bliss to have been held in the embrace of his spell, but now it was gone. That moment of love and protection evaporated as the last few lines of light went dark.