Chapter 68 The Hybrid
The world snapped back with a whiplash. Daisy slammed into the far wall, the impact knocking breath and sense from her in a single, juddering pulse. The taste of copper, her own blood, coated her tongue, thick as syrup. Somewhere, Samuel shouted, but the words washed away under the avalanche of sound: the crystal device shrieking in three octaves, the chamber’s pillars screaming as their iron bands twisted and buckled.
Daisy got her bearings by instinct, not logic. She checked Maribel first. Her mother was sprawled at Daisy’s feet, one arm bent the wrong way, a bloom of blue bruising spreading up her neck. Daisy crawled to her, trying to block out the burning in her own limbs.
“Mom,” Daisy said, shaking her hard. “Stay with me.”
Maribel groaned. Her eyes flickered open, this time brown and human, though ringed with sickly blue. “Don’t let him back in,” she whispered. Her breath steamed in the freezing air.
Daisy nodded, then looked up.
Above the shattered crystal, the Ravensworth-phantom had not dissipated. It hung in the air, a haze of blue and black, amorphous but hungry, like a fog that wanted to be a storm. It watched Daisy. She felt it in her spine.
Samuel and Eleanora were moving, but not fast enough. The device was failing, but it was designed to fail. The light pulsed out of rhythm now, every beat a visible stutter that seemed to split the chamber into different versions of itself: one, intact and ageless; the next, blasted to cinders; the third, slick with a viscous red light that crawled up the walls.
Daisy called Xeris, only got static, then a jagged flash:
She saw the dragon stooping through clouds of fire, burning mages out of the sky with casual indifference. Below, the city was a maze of riots and running battles, magic clashing in quick, lethal bursts. Kids fought grown men in alleyways; groups of women with daggers and sigils faced off against armored enforcers—the smell of burning flesh, hot metal, and blood.
Xeris, roaring, lanced through the melee, clawing a pack of blue-robed mercs out of the air.
Daisy’s vision lurched back to the present. Her hands were shaking.
She reached into herself for the blood-magic, felt the spiral open, the scales on her arm splitting to let the power out. It answered her with a glee that bordered on malice.
She aimed at the Ravensworth fog.
Crimson tendrils lanced from her wrist, carving through the air, seeking, hungry for purchase. The blue-black shape recoiled at first, but then twisted, welcoming the contact, wrapping around her magic and drinking it in.
Daisy felt the pull, a thousand icy hands grabbing at her thoughts, her memories, trying to drag her under.
She focused on Maribel’s face, on the sound of her mother’s voice. “You are not him,” Daisy growled, sending another wave of blood-magic at the thing. “You never will be.”
For a second, it worked. The tendrils wrapped around the Ravensworth entity, squeezing, siphoning the blue out of it, drawing the poison away from Maribel and into the open air.
But just as Daisy felt the balance tip, the vision from Xeris hit her again: a building collapsing, Xeris yowling in pain as a barrage of warding spears pierced his wing. Daisy doubled over, the feedback so intense she almost bit through her tongue.
She lost focus for half a breath.
The blue fog snapped back, diving for Maribel. Daisy watched in slow motion, too slow to stop it: the cloud plunged into her mother’s mouth and nose, a suffocating reversal of life. Maribel’s back arched. The blue surged under her skin, tracing veins up her neck, across her face, into her eyes.
Daisy grabbed her mother by the shoulders, yanking her to her feet.
“Don’t let him…” Maribel gasped, then the words twisted.
“—interrupt, child,” said the voice, cold as ever. “You cannot separate what was always the same.”
Daisy howled, pouring every drop of blood-magic she could muster into her hands, into her mother’s chest. The room responded. Wards along the walls activated with a keen, almost musical, whine. Sigils burst into flame, running lines of fire up every crack and seam.
Samuel, eyes wide, started to run for them, but Eleanora tackled him, dragging him down behind a half-collapsed pillar.
“Daisy!” Samuel screamed. “Stop!”
Too late.
The crystalline device, desperate for relevance, went nuclear. Its color shifted from blue to a blinding, arterial red. The light was so bright it painted Daisy’s retinas, even with her eyes squeezed shut.
“You’ve triggered my contingency,” boomed the voice, not through Maribel, but through the very air. “You will see, at last, what destiny feels like.”
A chain reaction: the energy in the crystal drained straight into Maribel’s body, lifting her off the ground like a ragdoll caught in a hurricane. Her limbs convulsed, spasming so hard that Daisy heard bones crack. Her skin shifted, from blue to white to an ugly, marbled red. Her eyes snapped open, and this time both colors shone at once: brown and blue, locked in a spiral.
Ravensworth’s features crawled over her own, mouth stretching wider, teeth too white.
The magic built. Daisy felt the air get heavy, then heavier, until it threatened to break her spine. Blood oozed from the spiral on her wrist, soaking her fingers, but she couldn’t let go.
Maribel. No, the thing in Maribel raised a hand, and a bolt of red lightning shot from her palm, shattering the nearest pillar. The stone chunked away, nearly braining Eleanora, who dove with Samuel deeper into the rubble.
Daisy screamed, but the air was torn from her lungs. The next pulse of magic lifted her bodily and threw her against the wall. She hit hard, sliding to the floor with all the grace of a dropped meat sack.
She looked up, blinking blood out of her eye.
In the center of the room, Maribel floated, all four limbs outstretched, her body inflating grotesquely with the force channeled into her. Her nightdress split at the seams, flesh swelling beneath, the blue veins gone black and bulging. Her face stretched, skin peeling around the mouth as a too-large smile split her lips.
“Daisy,” said the voice, the word a harmony of Maribel’s gentle alto and Ravensworth’s rasp. “Come to me. Let me show you how the world ends.”
Daisy’s hands scrabbled for purchase. Her own blood dripped on the flagstones, puddling around her knees. She tried to shape it, to form a shield or a lance, but the spiral was all tangled, the lines blurred by too much power.
The hybrid, her mother, her uncle, both and neither, descended to the floor. Each step buckled the stone, magic radiating off her in sheets of force.
Daisy met the thing’s eyes. For one second, she saw Maribel in there: trapped, screaming, her own voice drowned by the noise. For another, she saw the dragon: Xeris, burning and battered, urging her to destroy the abomination, no matter the cost.
Daisy stood, bones grinding, and spat blood at the creature’s feet.
“You want me?” she growled. “Come and take it.”
The thing smiled, and the world cracked.