Heir To The Nova (Book 3) (18 page)

“But if it does work?”

“I still don’t know what will happen; however, I am reasonably certain that there is not enough power to make you both full Novas. The likely result would be some sort of hybridization, leaving you mortal, but changed somehow; no longer human-like or elf, or even remotely like either.”

“What would happen if someone else pushed the keystone in?” I said, pressing for more information.

“Nothing good, they would be instantly vaporized and the magic would still not flow. The keystone can be removed by mortal hands, but not restored. Only you can rekindle the flow of magic to this world. Now I’ve already said more than I should.” He got up to leave, suddenly looking older and frailer than I had ever seen him.

“Father, wait! If I become a Nova, will I be able to stay on this world?”

“No, you would be mostly limited to these halls like we are.”

“And I wouldn’t be able to fight directly either?”

“That’s correct.”

“Then this world…”

His expression was one of pain and regret. “…and all life on it would fall, that is correct.” Without another word, he left the room.

For several long minutes I thought about what he had said, and I liked none of it, but I realized it was not entirely my decision to make.

“Winya, where is Maya?”

“On her way back to the keep, Alex.”

“Please have her meet me in the throne room.”

“Yes, Sir.”

A few minutes later, the big doors opened and a very concerned Maya slipped into the room, her eyes watching me steadily. “Alex, Winya said I needed to come right away; your thoughts are scaring her.”

I took both her hands in mine, marveling at how beautiful she was in that small black dress. “Maya, we need to talk about tomorrow.”

“Ok,” she said nervously.

“No, I mean really talk…no Winya, no cat, and no Rosa.”

Maya, without hesitation and without moving her eyes from mine, removed Winya’s bracelet form and set it aside on one of the thrones; her face reflecting total trust and confidence in me.

“Rosa, please do not listen in on my thoughts until I contact you.”

“You have my word, Alex,”
Rosa shot back, but I could sense the worry in her thoughts. I’m pretty sure she had sensed my distress and had been monitoring my conversation with my father.

Gently, I took my dark elf’s hands as we sat down on the steps leading up to the thrones. “Maya, tomorrow when the keystone is put back in place, it will restore the flow of magic to the planet. But there is another side effect that will impact both of us.” She nodded patiently, indicating I should continue. “Bluntly, if I touch the keystone alone, it will most likely turn me into a Nova and I will live forever, but I will lose you and the planet will fall to the Lifebane. If I don’t trigger the keystone, the magic will not be restored; and the entire group of magic creatures like Nia and Dawn and Dusk will die out. Again, ultimately the planet will fall.”

“I see,” she said, looking down, her throat working to remain calm. “Is there a third option?”

“Yes, the third option involves you and me together…I hold your hand while we trigger the keystone.”

“Ok, what happens then?”

“Father isn’t sure. There isn’t enough power to turn us both into Nova, so the most likely scenario is that we both die or end up remaining mortal but ‘changed’ somehow.”

“Meaning what?”

“No one apparently knows, but the chances are we would no longer be mostly human or elf, like we are now,” I said grimly.

“And what do you want to do, Alex?” she asked, her big eyes locked onto mine.

“Option three is the only scenario where the planet has a fighting chance. I have to think that we’ve gotten this far on that crazy prophecy, maybe we just need to play out the hand.”

My dark elf looked at me with a startled expression. “You would give up immortality to be chained here? To fight and die here? The chance to live like a god, have any woman you desire, visit untold worlds, never age or grow feeble?”

“Yes. I would. None of that matters to me, and I think you know why.”

Maya searched my face for any doubt. Finding none, she licked her dark lips and swallowed hard. “Alright then, Magic Boy, option three it is.”

“Are you sure, Maya? You could just as easily die tomorrow. I need you to think this over carefully before you decide.”

She reached up and placed a finger on my lips, silencing me. “Alex, for me this is an easy decision. My soul is bound to yours, I go where you go, even if that means we die side-by-side on the floor of that chamber tomorrow. I am a soldier, I can accept that. Death holds no fear for me as long as we’re together.”

I sighed. “Ok, but what if we end up as sea slugs on the bottom of the ocean?”

She smiled uneasily as a few tears began to run down her cheeks. “I’m not a big fan of the water, so I wouldn’t like that much. But I’d like to think I would still make a good sea slug wife to a certain clueless enchanter sea slug.”

By this time I was crying too, as we just scooted closer and held each other for a long time. Finally, we pulled apart and she put her cool hands on the sides of my face, her eyes softly, trustingly, gazing into mine.

“Alex, I do have one request.”

“What’s that?”

“If my choices tomorrow are death or sea slug, I want my last night as a woman to be spent as a woman. Are you catching my drift, Magic Boy?”

“But what about…?”

She silenced me with a long delving kiss and then whispered, “This is a limited time offer. Are you going to take me upstairs or not?”

Breathlessly, I scooped her up off the steps, carrying her easily in my arms. We paused briefly to dip down so she could grab Winya off the throne then I ran up the stairs two at a time. When we got to our room, I reached down and opened the door while she clung to me with her lovely green eyes closed.

“Maya, sweetheart, are you sure?”

“Alex, you can touch my ears now,” she whispered huskily, as I closed and locked the door behind us.

We woke up to a polite tapping at our door and Dusk’s voice, “Mistress, everyone is assembled in the Crystal Room when you are ready.”

I looked down at my dark elf lover, her head rising and falling where it rested on my chest, her hands clutched around my arm. I knew she was awake and heard the dragon at the door, but she was just enjoying being lazy in bed for a few moments longer.

I nudged her softly. “Maya, we need to get up; it is show time, I guess.”

She stretched and opened her deep emerald eyes languidly and smiled a contented cat’s smile. “And here I thought last night was show time, Magic Boy.”

I kissed her long and hard, trying to imprint the memory firmly in my brain. Finally, reluctantly, I broke it off and threw my feet out from under the covers and onto the floor. “I think we have time for a quick bath.”

“Oooh, that could be fun!” She giggled.

“Yeah, well, we don’t have that much time; the others are already waiting for us.”

Her lovely face twisted into a pout, but she slid off the bed and swaggered to the bath chamber, looking over her shoulder to make sure I watched her leave. And I did, a big foolish smile plastered on my face. Grabbing a robe, I opened the door and fled across the hall and cleaned up there.

Thirty minutes later, we met out in the hallway. I had dressed in a fresh enchanter’s robe, and Maya was wearing the white sparring outfit she had received from my father when we first came to Sky Raven.

I must have raised my eyebrows, because she responded firmly, “This is who I am, Alex, a fighter. I will not go on to the next life dressed in a ball gown or some other frivolous outfit. I see you are in your enchanter’s robes; for the same reason, I suspect?”

I nodded and took her arm as we started down the hall. “Maya, I…”

“Hush, Alex,” she interrupted, stopping and running a hand along my face. “Everything that needed saying was said last night, and I will treasure it forever. But unless we put on our brave front right now, we’re going to show up looking like a pair of blubbering idiots downstairs, and we don’t want to be remembered that way. I do have a question for you, however. What was the first thing that came to your mind when you saw me this morning?”

“I think I growled a little ‘Mine! Only mine!’” I responded without thinking. But thinking about it now, it did seem like a pretty primal response on my part. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that she was my mate, and I would defend her against all challengers; even if it meant my own death.

“That is exactly the right answer,” she sighed gratefully and smiled. When I tilted my head in confusion, she explained, “It shows our mating bond is complete, our soul strands fused, and even death will not sever our bond. I have no fear of what awaits us downstairs, my love.”

It didn’t take very long to get down to the Crystal Room. The doors opened up quite easily and everyone was there waiting for us. It wasn’t a large room and it was almost filled with my parents, Rosa, Dawn, Dusk, and of course, Nia; but she doesn’t take up much space.

Mother was there smiling excitedly as she handed me a now completed three-part key stone. My father was still looking rather gloomy.

“Alright, everyone.” My mother clapped her hands animatedly. “You all need to take as many steps back as you can. Alex, dear, all you need to do is place the stone in the slot.”

Father continued for her, “It won’t go all the way in, so you will have to give it a good push to lock it in place. If you were going to do something, that would be the time.”

I nodded and placed the stone carefully in the slot. And as Father said, it stopped a few inches out.

“Hurry up and push it in,” my mother commanded breathlessly. I shook my head and offered my hand to Maya. She took it, along with a deep cleansing breath, and joined me in front of the crystal.

“Alex? What are you doing?” My mother’s fear was all I could hear in her voice. “Alex, if you do that, you will die!” She tried to reach out for me but Father wrapped an arm around her and held her back with a hug.

“No, Oreale. Do what you need to do, Alex,” he said as tears started to run down his own face.

I looked at Rosa and she, too, was crying. She knew what I was about to do and was sending me thoughts of comfort and support. Nia was sitting on Rosa’s shoulder and big pixie tears were falling like rain. Finally, I could take no more, and I fixed my sight on the most beautiful thing in my world–Maya’s deep green eyes.

“Ready?” I asked quietly. She gave me a single head bob of agreement and placed her hand on top of mine on the stone surface, her other hand gripped me fiercely, and we intertwined them together as if to never let go.

“I love you,” our voices harmonized as we pushed the stone in place with a flash of light.

I don’t really have the words for what happened, but it wasn’t pleasant. It felt like my soul was being ripped out of my body with blacksmith’s tongs. When I opened my eyes, all I could see was gray–gray floor–gray walls–gray ceiling. The problem is that this was a familiar gray. I recognized it as the place I collected Winya from!

“Damn,” I gasped shakily, “and I was so looking forward to being a sea slug.” I heard Maya utter a few words of elvish dismay and then she rolled toward me, her eyes still clamped shut in deep pain. With a lot of effort, I finally got up off of what passed for a floor in the afterlife. Reaching down, I lifted my shaken dark elf girl to her feet. Finally clearing her head, she looked around curiously.

“Oh, that’s just great; I’m back here again,” complained a familiar voice from behind us. We spun around to see the vision of Winya that I remembered from the dream weaver’s illusion standing there wearing the same party dress and smiling gently.

“Winya, is that really you?” Maya cried, running into the larger woman’s arms and letting herself be crushed in the ensuing embrace. “Yep, in the flesh, so-to-speak,” Winya answered happily. “You didn’t think I would let you go through this alone, did you? I promised Alex I would defend you for all time, and here I am.” She looked over at me and winked.

Maya dusted herself off. “So where are we? Are we really dead then? And why are you wearing my dress?”

Winya blushed. “Oops…I kind of grew to like it for sentimental reasons. Anyway, to answer your first question…”

“No, you are not dead,” boomed a voice from all around us. We all instinctively took a few steps back as a strange blue light formed in front of us. Slowly, the light scintillated lazily before it began to take the ghostly outline of a person.

“Wow, this guy again,” Winya whispered. “He greeted me when I came here the first time, but never spoke to me again. Kind of creepy if you ask me.”

“So…we’re not dead then?” Maya asked hopefully, addressing the blue light.

“No.”

“But I am?” Winya grinned cockily.

“Yes, of course, you are dead. Stone cold dead. You don’t even have a body anymore, Winya, so why are you talking?” The blue light shook irritably.

“Hmm…rude and has a twisted sense of humor, too. Perfect,” Winya chuckled, not in the least bit daunted by the presence. But then if you’ve been dead for four hundred years, there probably isn’t much that frightens you anymore.

Maya shot a look of minor annoyance at her friend and pressed for more information. “So if we aren’t dead, then where are we?”

“Inside me,” it responded.

“Well, that’s just gross,” Winya commented.

“Ok, why are we here then?”

“Because I wished you to be here. I am glad to see you both. There were some of my brethren who feared you would choose to become a full-blown Nova, Alex. They believed that humankind would never attain the nobility to sacrifice its own self-interests for a greater good. I am gratified that they were proven wrong. Now, down to business. Time is short and we have much to discuss.”

“You still haven’t told us why we are here,” Maya reminded him.

The being brushed off her question. “Alex, we have been watching you all your life in the hope that one day you would be standing here now. I would introduce myself, but names have no meaning for my kind. But you have seen my worldly form before; I am the crystal in the room where your current corporeal bodies reside.”

“You are a living crystal?”

“I am what you would call an elemental, but not like the one you name Reggie. I am an elemental of pure magic, unbound and unrestrained. A limitless supply of arcane power, if you will, and one that only the Nova can control.”

“What do you mean?”

“We are a power source only, incapable of movement or extending our reach beyond our own shells. But even a power source has needs, and we created the first Nova for one reason only; to harness our power and create all that could be created. We are both their creators and their servants in many ways. The universes are very vast and in the creation process, the Nova found many more of my kind; and they, in turn, created more Nova. Over eons of time, as with any large group of powerful individuals, disagreements cropped up. And over more time, the disagreements turned to polarizing hatred, leading to two distinct sides, the light and the dark. My brothers and I are of the light, and we have upheld our laws for more time than you can comprehend. But this is a war we cannot win. The Nova were designed to create, and they do their jobs wonderfully. But for every world they create, two are lost or destroyed. To respond to this, the Nova created the nebulia, but even they are too limited by our rules to be effective. Our opponents, the dark, follow no rules so they have a free hand to mete out destruction wantonly.”

“Can’t the Nova just step in?”

“The Nova are well respected and have served us well, but they are flawed. Their long life span has made them opposed to change, made them inflexible and, ultimately, ineffective. Often times, a Nova’s solution to combating the evil is just to destroy the world and remake it anew; this is wasteful and inefficient. A new force must be created to combat this evil, something with the power to fight using the inherent resources of the world itself. Think of it like your body fighting off an infection. We need someone capable of not only fighting for good, but becoming a galvanizing force that draws the inhabitants of the planet together to fight off the darkness…someone like you two.”

“Us?” we both repeated.

“Yes. Alex, your father has always been the most open-minded of the Nova, and that is why he has your mother, and why we have enlisted him for our work. But you, we did not foresee. We didn’t even know that two Nova could bear a child; yet here you are. Alex, you are the perfect mix of mortal and Nova. When your powers are shared with your soul mate, the synergy created will forge a new class of beings.”

“What do you mean ‘new’? Will we not be Nova?” Maya asked.

“No, not Nova. That is the beauty of it; you will be something entirely different. Ultimately mortal, but very powerful. But that will not even be your greatest weapon. You will have mortal weaknesses to be sure, but you will also have free will and the ability to draw others to your banner, like you have already done with your host of unusual friends. The darkness has no such weapon, and never will.”

“Ok, I have to ask, is this really the afterlife?” Winya interrupted impatiently.

I swear the being sighed and then replied. “No, this is not. As I said before, you are all currently inside me. Everyone who spends time within these walls, and especially those who die defending the fortress, become changed by it; more precisely, changed by me. This Mark of Sky Raven, as I think of it, allows me to call out to those souls who have served and died for me. You, Winya, are one such person.”

“But why? Why keep me or any of us here?”

“It is a complicated question, but the simple answer is that I still had need of you. Worry not; I have created this place to exactly match the real afterlife so that none are robbed of their peace. And those of you who leave this place as you did, Winya, do so only by their own choice. You will recall that your sisters moved on and you had the opportunity to do so as well, but you had your own destiny to wait for.” Winya grew very quiet. “And while we are on that topic, I can safely tell you that Alex never had the ability to reach into the afterlife as you all thought. All the younger version of Alex did was request that the door be opened for him. Of course, I had to make sure none of you really remembered too much so I altered your memories slightly.”

“So Alex doesn’t have the ability to contact the dead?” Maya asked.

“No, he has the ability to travel here; and soon, convey from here.”

“What does that mean?”

“All will become clear in time, but right now, you need to go and face the changes that lie before you. But before I send you away, I have one last question for Winya. I offer you the chance to stay here and rejoin your sisters if you wish. You will be free to move on and join them in paradise.”

Maya looked at her friend in fear and sadness and Winya looked at her in the same way. Not taking her eyes away from Maya, she said, “I thank you for the offer; please tell my sisters that I love them and I am sorry, but this is my destiny now and I will stay here.” A small tear ran down Maya’s face as she hugged her friend.

“Very well, I will pass along your message. I pray I will not see you three again until the day you walk these halls for the last time. Oh, and I am sorry but this might sting a bit. Goodbye.”

With another flash of light, we were back in the real world, our hands still on the stone before us. Maya looked at me in confusion and then suddenly started to scream in agony. Before I knew what was happening, something hit me in the back. It felt like two red hot daggers stabbing me right between the shoulder blades. I heard more screaming and shouting from what sounded like Mother and Rosa before I fell to the floor, and all went dark and quiet.