Page 85 of A Spot of Tea and Sorcery: Vol. 6

And Nigel, driving the trowel deeper, snarled, “Fate’s my bitch.”

Nigel.

Luna could feel him. Through the storm of twisting darkness in her head. Through the surging power of that foreign entity, seeking to overwhelm her. She wrapped all the green light in her being around herself, pulling it close, pushing against that darkness, and . . .

He was there.

His lips were on hers, a desperate kiss. A connection of body and soul.

Oh, Nigel!

She tried to reach back to him, tried to let him know that she was still present, that she had not been wholly reduced. Could he feel her? Did he realize? Did he know?

And then—

A quake rocked through her essential being, shaking it down to the very foundations of selfhood. She didn’t experience it as pain. She was far too separated from her own body just then for such sensations. But she certainly sensed Jastira’s reaction all around her, the explosive hurricane of raw and writhing spirit.Darkness, agony, horror, rage. Battering her awareness, until Luna could do nothing but duck away from it, shielding herself in green light.

What have you done?Jastira’s voice echoed through the caverns of her soul.What have you done, you traitorous, whoreson dog!

It was quite a respectable slur. Archaic but effective. Even Auntie Aurora would have approved that one, surely.

A force like a blow seemed to hit Luna, driving her back deeper and deeper under the layers of darkness. She felt a weird sensation of separation which she could neither understand nor define.

Then, abruptly, unexpectedly, she found herself seated inside her own head, gazing out through her own eyes. It was strange to experience any degree of physicality, and at first she couldn’t decide if she was relieved or not to feel the structure of a skull, to peer through eye-shaped windows. But she was here now, so she forced her lashes to part and gazed out.

And there he was.

Her husband. Her Nigel.

Standing directly before her, his face vicious, his lip curled in a snarl, his teeth on edge.

She felt something else as well, something . . . inexplicable.

Luna dropped her gaze, blinked a few times. Tilted her head to one side as she contemplated the sight of a rusty old trowel protruding from her chest, the handle gripped in her husband’s hand. For a moment, she was too confused to understand.

Then she thought,Oh. Of course.

She remembered watching Nigel place the spell on this instrument. An old work of sorcery that, by rights, ought to have been worked on some mighty sword or fell dagger. But those weren’t the sorts of tools found lying around a garden. Still, the magic was the same, the power woven with Dire-force and gleaming with anti-light and unnamable colors. She remembered watching him take that ensorcelled trowel and drive it into the Heart Tree—but the spell had caused the trowel to affect only the dark magic which was trying to ensorcell the Heart Tree, not the tree itself. With great skill and cunning, he had transformed it into a spirit dagger.

The enchantment was still alive. Still powerful. Wrought by the Grimshade Lord with permission from his Sovereign. And now she saw it protruding from her body without seeming to touch her body at all. Only the alter-image, the glamourized vision of loveliness that was Jastira. It was her invasive soul which he pierced.

With a vicious twist, he drove it deeper.

Jastira screamed.

Luna gasped, staggered. Not from any physical pain, but from the hideous sensation of all that black sorcery pouring out from her, the undoing of the resurrection spell which had placed this foreign entity inside her. Jastira did not let go easily, however. Luna felt her reaching out, dragging magic through the various energy-lines still connecting her to the last few standing sorcerers. Luna, once more in possession of at least a few of her senses, heard strangled cries uttered, saw cowled forms collapsing, drained of their magical essence. Their darkness fed their mistress’s, and she swelled and grew and fought.

But Nigel’s spell was stronger. The Grimshade Lord, the Sorcerer of the Age—not even the Shadowbane Lady was a match for him.

Luna turned her gaze back to her husband. He was difficult to see through all the whorling of Jastira’s spirit pouring out from her, through the weird haze of anti-light and anti-glitter and the sparking colors of the Dire. But he was there. She could just discern his face, wreathed in an expression of raw fury which made him look singularly monstrous. Where was her lover?Where was her Nigel? Where was the man who had changed her life for the better in every possible way? He stood before her, almost unrecognizable as he leaned into a different side of his nature. A side which, she knew, had been there all along. A dark, deadly, completely Dire version of Nigel Grimm. The man who could save her.

He was speaking a spell. Words spilled from his tongue in a language of damnation, a spell far darker than any she’d ever imagined. It seemed to suction the darkness of Jastira right out of her body, every last clinging strand of soul which sought to hold on.

Then, breaking through the whirling chaos of shattering spell-sigils, Luna saw a portal opening. A new portal—not a doorway to the Dire Dimensions. No, this was something far worse. Far darker. Far more final.

With a sudden wrench of spirit, Luna realized what it was her husband intended to do.

She whipped her head swiftly to look at him. Toreallylook at him, not just with her physical eyes, but with the new green-light magic which burned through her. She saw his soul separating from his body, whirling up into the storm with Jastira’s as the two of them blended together. A terrible, inexplicable magic which Luna could not understand, but she was a quick study. She could read the situation well enough.