As I had done numerous times over the past few days, I floated in one of the shallow pools at the foot of the falls. Its warm waters reminded me of Ecliptis. They quieted my chaotic mind while the healing magic soothed my aching body.
The second sun had risen at Hidden Springs, casting most of the chambers in the customary deep indigo hue as the planet’s red, evening sun mixed with the blue glow of the magical waters.
Most of the crew remained on the ship or partook of the Everwyld’s generosity to stay in one of the guest accommodations. I’d opted for another dip at The Falls. We planned to complete Dick’s binding ritual the following day, and then our crew would be seeking lodgings closer to the city.
Despite failing miserably in our first assault on Slack-Jaw, our objectives remained the same. We would deal with him, while also executing our plan on Catalysis, but this time we were doing it the smart way. Those were thoughts for another day, however. At the moment, I was content to drift aimlessly in the pools and soak my remaining aches and pains away.
Clearing my mind, I practiced calming, meditative breathing techniques the healers among the Everwylds had taught me. Sloooooow, deeeeeep breath in...relaxed, even exhale.
Rain drops began falling softly all around me.
That’s odd.
I’d never heard of it raining in this desert or in the springs. I opened my eyes slowly, careful not to disturb the serene water. Turning my head slightly, I saw the image of something majestic kneeling at the far edge of the pool. In it’s arms, a sobbing Light cuddled gently on its lap.
A being of ethereal beauty and ancient power, her form was delicate in stature but formidable in power, a fusion of grace and wildness. She was taller than a human, more like the height of a Centauri. Wisps of long, glowing hair cascaded around her, some floating supernaturally in the air, others drifting in the pools like pale lavender wisps of smoke.
A tangle of antlers sprouted from the crown of her head like a ceremonial headdress, weaving gracefully behind her in a magnificent display that seemed to defy gravity. Flora and fauna common to the underground oasis nestled among its curved branches.
She was draped in an iridescent gown flowing around her like mist. Its fabric shifted and shimmered as if alive, reflecting the hues of the surrounding pools.
This is his mother.
Even without the obvious visual signs, I felt it to be true. The surety of it permeated the waters surrounding me.
She seemed like a specter. As the Ancient mother embraced her child, the underground oasis pulsed with life. Water droplets fell like tears from stalactites, nourishing the soil. It was as if the atmosphere itself wept with joy. Flowers bloomed along the shore where the droplets fell. The tranquil hum of their reunion echoed through the caverns, whispering the fulfilment of a promise made eons before.
Nestled in his mother's arms, Light’s face radiated wonder and innocence, projecting a sense of belonging that could only come from an eternal embrace.
The child began to glow warmly. His luminescence grew brighter and brighter until it was painful to look at. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them again, the duo were standing beside the pool, Light’s tiny hand clasped in her long graceful one.
His mother looked different now, less like a specter and more corporeal. She placed a soft hand under the little boy’s chin and smiled. The look on Light’s face, a boundless expression of joy and excitement bestowed with such childlike abandon, might have been the purest thing I’d ever beheld.
Then the child began to transform. Slowly, he faded into a tiny ball of light that coalesced in the Ancient woman’s hand as a single, pure-white pearl.
Suddenly, the cavern pulsed all around me with new energy as my vision blurred, and I sank beneath the water’s surface.
I burst from the pool gasping, not from terror but from a lack of air. How long had I been underneath the water? Looking around, I noted there was no trace of Light or his mother, though I could feel something warm tickling the palm of my hand. My fist was clenched by my side, so I brought it up out of the water and slowly opened my hand, palm up to inspect it.
A tiny, white pearl shimmered in my hand briefly before turning into luminescent energy and zooming away. I stared after it for a long time, questioning what I’d just experienced.
As I waded back toward the shore of the shallow pool, I mulled over this latest vision. I’d never had a waking vision before. Was it a sign that things were changing again? Or was it an effect of being caught up in a supernatural event?
“That’s a new one,” Emery said, stepping out of the soft shadow of a rock close to the pool’s edge. She came closer to the pool and offered me a hand up.
“What did you see?” I asked, hoisting myself out of the pool with her aid.
“I never told you this, but I tend to watch over you while you’re floating in the pools,” Emery said, eliciting a sharp, questioning look from me.
“Not in a weird stalker-y way,” she hastened to assure with a laugh. “More like a standing guard so you don’t accidently pass out and drown yourself way.”
I shrugged. “That’s fair, I suppose. Why are you telling me this?”
“Because this is the first time I’ve seen your eyes pop open and glow like some magically possessed conduit,” she stated pointedly.
“They did?” I asked rhetorically. “I think...”
I stared down at my open palm, remembering the warmth of the pearl clutched in my hand.
“I think I met Light’s mother.”
“While you were meditating? I figured it was just some Zodian power-up thing you were doing.”
Quieting my mind, I sat cross-legged and concentrated on the latent magical energy around me. The response was immediate and impactful. It was like a once-dry well suddenly burgeoning with water. What had once been a trickle was now a raging river of cosmic energy flooding the area around us.
“Can you feel that?” I asked Emery without opening my eyes.
“I could, all the way in the main chamber.” I spun around in surprise to see Dick picking his way down the pathway to our location by the pool.
“That makes sense,” I mused. “You’re probably more attuned to it than most.”
“What happened?” he asked, glancing at Emery. She just shrugged.
“Skye was doing her best impression of an energy coil while meditating in the pool,” Emery said, further confusing Dick.
“I was having a dream—no, a vision?” I shook my head as if it would help clear the foggy memory into crystal clear relief. It did not. “I’m not sure what it was, but in it, I saw Light with...well someone I am certain was his mother.”
“How do you know that’s who it was?” Dick questioned. “Did she look like Light?”
“Slightly,” I answered. “Mostly, I just felt it. Plus, they were so happy together.”
I tried, with little success, to describe the being I had seen in my vision. Emery scrunched her forehead as I spoke.
“That’s kind of what you looked like while your eyes were glowing,” she said. “Your hair was spread out like it was floating on air, I couldn’t see most of you because it was like you were wrapped in mist. And then there was the glowing eyes thing.”
“I was holding the pearl when I woke up...” I said softly, contemplatively.
“The pearl in the vision? Light? The one his mother was holding?”
I looked up sharply at Dick. “Do you think I channeled her somehow? Or did her essence use me as a vessel to meet with Light?”
“It seems...not impossible,” Dick said, equally struggling to make sense of it all.
“Why now?” Emery said. “Skye has been here for weeks. She’s been floating in the pools a lot lately.”
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence this happens right as we’re about to perform a highly experimental binding ritual on Dick,” I pointed out. “Maybe it was Light reaching out to his mother’s essence.”
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“Whatever he did reenergized the entire cavern system’s latent magic levels,” Emery said. “How can he accomplish something like that?”
“Skye thinks the mother grieved herself to death here over the loss of her child,” Dick reasoned. “Her essence lingers here, but, according to you, Emery, it has grown faint with the passage of time. Maybe contacting Light has re-invigorated her spirit and the magic associated with it.”
“I don’t think you understand what this means for the Everwylds,” Emery said. “We have not felt energy levels like this from the caves since my father was a child. Assuming this confluence lasts, Light has turned back the clock for my people nearly a century.”
“For the Everwylds’ sake, I hope it lasts,” I said, moving to stand up. Dick placed a hand beneath my elbow and helped me stand. I flashed him a grateful smile. “And hopefully it gives you time to find a permanent solution.”
Emery nodded, deep in thought as she stared at the luminescent pool. The water here now appeared to glow as if a bright light lit it up from deep below the surface.
Dick and I turned to walk back up the path toward the cabins located close to the pool. I had been recovering in one of them during my stay.
“Now,” he said, his tone lighter. “Can we talk about the real elephant in the room?”
I raised an inquisitive brow.
“What’s all this about extremely experimental binding rituals? You said I was going to be fine.” Dick’s expression was a comical mix of trepidation and suspicion.
“Of course, you’re going to be fine,” I reassured a little too hurriedly. Now his expression radiated disbelief.
“Of course,” I reiterated, but he didn’t seem convinced.
Finally, I shrugged. “Probably.”
* * *
The following day Vomero, Emery and the Everwyld’s most skilled druids arrived early at The Falls to draw out the ritual circle using crushed crystals mined from the cavern. The pattern within boasted an intricate swirl of symbols I couldn’t read.
Dick, Cash, Ryuuk, and I stood to the side, far enough away that we could observe without interfering with their work. Light had emerged from whatever secluded place he had been resting and sat cross-legged at Dick’s feet with one arm wrapped around his calf.
“Everything is going to be fine,” Dick assured the group, but it felt like he was trying to convince himself more than anyone.”
“You’re attempting to control an eons-old curse using a modern binding ritual, which Vomero cooked up in a cave with a bunch of tree-huggers,” Cash pointed out sarcastically.
“They’re animal lovers not tree huggers,” Dick countered, “also mostly vegans. So if anyone knows about controlling dark urges, it’s got to be them, right?”
Cash looked thoughtfully to the side, then shrugged and nodded, conceding the point.
Only the druids, myself, and Light needed to be present for healing purposes, but the entire team chose to stand by in solidarity with Dick and intervene if things got out of hand.
“So, they’re gonna hog-tie yer spirit to yer body, then rip it apart?” Ryuuk sounded confused.
“No, they’re not going to rip it apart!” Dick argued. “They’re going to rip the Lycan’s consciousness out.”
“The one who’s part of yer body?” Ryuuk seemed even more confused. “Ain’t we just sayin’ the same thing?”
“No!” Dick countered. “They’re not ripping anything. More like extracting his soul from my soul, leaving me the sole proprietor of my soul.”
Ryuuk just stared blankly at Dick following this explanation.
“I’m just explaining it wrong,” Dick said. “It was way more convincing when Skye explained it.”
He turned in my direction, “Skye, tell them how it’s completely safe and definitely going to work again...”
I pulled my attention away from the intricate details of the magic the Everwylds were conducting back to my companions.
“We’re ripping Dick’s consciousness apart and hoping the less feral half sticks,” I said bluntly.
“Dammit, Skye!” Dick swore under his breath. “Wait...what do you mean the less feral part? I’m not feral!”
I just shrugged and turned back to the circle-making, ignoring him.
I’d already explained three times that day how the ritual worked. There were two phases of the binding ritual, which was proving to be kind of a misnomer. Calling it a “binding ritual” made it seem like we were attempting to imprison the Lycan’s spirit within Dick. In fact, the druid’s eldest and most experienced ritual magic user, Taikon, had suggested a more efficient, permanent solution.
The ritual consisted of two parts. Phase 1 was the trickiest step. We had to tether Dick’s soul firmly to his body, but in order to do that, he had to subvert himself over the will of the Lycan. That would normally be impossible, given that he hadn’t been able to do that up to this point. The Lycan usually subverted Dick’s consciousness. We expected the Lycan to emerge and try to defend its hold over Dick. That was the dangerous part.
Light was normally the thing keeping the beast in check, and, while the ambient Ancient magic in the cave certainly helped, we didn’t anticipate it being enough to keep the Lycan completely dormant. It would be a battle of wills, but the point of the ritual was to make it easier for Dick to win. Once he did, however, his consciousness would be “bound” as the dominant one over his body. Light couldn’t risk being inside the circle to help with this when it activated because of Phase 2.
Taikon advocated for erasing rather than binding the Lycan’s consciousness so that it could never re-emerge. He'd made it clear that such an untamable spirit would be most likely to break through most binding rituals. His theory was that the Lycan accepted the original binding ritual provided by Volungus because it carried the wolf god’s imprint. That would not be the case here.
So, Phase 2 would extricate the Lycan consciousness from Dick’s and dissolve it. It was magical surgery, essentially.
After conferring with the druids, Emery, Vomero and I were confident the binding ritual would work. The main question, and the reason for conducting it at The Falls, was whether or not Dick would survive the process.
“Hmmm...” Cash continued to taunt Dick. “Ripping your consciousness apart doesn’t sound anything like ‘completely safe’ and ‘definitely going to work’ does it, Ryuuk?”
“Naw. Sounds like yer goin’ to explode like a meat bubble,” the Avian added.
Dick scoffed. “That’s stupid. There’s no way that’s happening. Vomero and Skye assured me it was going to work.”
“Should it work? Yes,” Vomero commented as he approached our group. “Whether it will work is up to you really, Dick. We also used the words dangerous and painful.”
“See...” Dick concluded, his higher pitch conveying considerably less confidence than before. “What can go wrong?”
A collective groan emerged from everyone standing in our group.
“I know he didn’t just...”
“Way to jinx it you...”
“I’m gonna go stand waaaay over yonder,” Ryuuk added. “Ya know, cause I work better from a distance.”
He turned and sauntered off a few feet from our group, preparing to take flight. “Definitely not because yer gonna explode like a meat bubble...” His voice faded as he soared to a distant ledge near the edge of the cavern.
“It’s ready when you are,” the old druid Taikon said from his position around the circle.
With a deep breath, Dick plastered on a smirk he clearly didn’t feel and winked at me as he stepped inside the circle. As he steadied himself at the center and focused, I saw his eyes meet meaningfully with Cash’s. The two men nodded in acknowledgement of some unspoken agreement I wasn’t privy to.
The rest of us stepped up to encircle him. This included Emery and her winged lion companion, Kiara.
“It knows what we’re trying to do,” Dick said. “I can feel it thrashing around. Wanting control.”
This was the dangerous part. Dick would have to fight to maintain control or his soul couldn’t be permanently tethered to his body.
As the druids began the binding ritual chant, the ambient magic around us visibly shifted. Electricity seemed to spark and charge the air throughout The Falls. Despite the bright mid-day sun, the light inside the cavern darkened.
“What happens when the Lycan tries to take over and he leaves the circle?” Cash asked quietly, his voice barely audible over the roar of wind whipping through the cavern.
“The circle is designed to keep him inside,” I said, never taking my eyes off Dick standing in the center of the 10-foot circle. “As long as it holds, the ritual will remain active and do its job.”
The increased magic levels of Hidden Springs would likely be the difference maker. Last night’s turn of events drastically increased the magical resources powering the ritual. A stronger ritual meant Dick would have an easier time overcoming the Lycan, not to mention surviving the process.
I looked over at Light who crouched as close to the circle as possible, looking up at Dick. Somehow, the young Ancient had known what was needed and how to provide it. Was it instinct? Or intelligence? Light often came off as having the maturity of a toddler, but given what we already knew about Ancients, toddler versions of their race could outstrip normal humanoid races in magic ability and acuity by decades.
Dick started to thrash wildly in place, clutching his head as if in pain.
“Is that normal?” Cash called out to no one in particular.
“What part of highly experimental is so hard to comprehend?” Vomero replied. “It’s probably normal, as normal as a person waging war with the remnants of a primeval curse lodged in their subconscious can be.”
As we watched, Dick’s body suddenly burst into his Lycan form. It wasn’t the slow transformation of before but a violent, destructive shift. The sinew and bones of his body protested at such a rapid transition, popping and tearing audibly and leaving the Lycan body looking grotesquely disfigured.
Disfigurement did not equal debilitation, however, as the Lycan soon proved by hurling it’s mangled form viciously toward the druids chanting the spell. As he hit the edge, a shimmering wall of energy coalesced into visible form, blocking him in.
Further enraged, the Lycan threw its battered body at the surrounding energy barrier over and over, snarling in frustration. At one point, it hurled itself from the far end of the circle, directly against the opposite side, hitting the barrier a few feet from Cash.
This time the barrier visibly “cracked” beneath the blow. It wasn’t enough to break through but was a sure sign that the ritual’s defenses were proving less effective the longer it took for Dick to regain control.
I glanced at Cash, meeting his concerned gaze silently as the cacophony of magic storm and thrashing monster raged around us.
“I’m not the expert,” he said, taking a more defensive stance, “but that doesn’t seem like a good sign.”
“Dick needs to get control before the magic of the circle is spent,” Vomero called. “It seems like the longer this takes, the more powerful the Lycan becomes. We didn’t really anticipate that happening.”
He had barely completed this assessment when the thrashing suddenly subsided. The magic storm didn’t cease entirely but calmed considerably.
The Lycan lay in the center of the circle, seemingly spent. Then, its form began to transition back to Dick’s human appearance. Taikon directed the druids to continue chanting their ritual as Dick slowly pushed to his feet. His clothes were in tatters, his body looking bruised and damaged.
Slowly, Dick raised his head, a chilling laugh reverberating from deep within his chest as he did so. His features had taken on a malevolent, feral appearance, the type of malicious sneer you never wanted to see peering back at you from out of the dark.
He closed his eyes slowly, a look of pure euphoria on his face as he drew in a deep breath and held it briefly before exhaling. As he spoke, his voice slithered venomously through the air, echoing all around us.
“Ahhhh....Delicious.”