‘I don’t care if Night is your sister. I’m going to kill her on sight. If we don’t stop her now, you’ll be the next.’ Acala said.
‘Glad we are on the same page.’ Dawn’s eyes burned with mana and fury.
She kept the destruction spell for Night’s crystal and her Tower Blade Tier Spell, Rising Sun, ready to be unleashed the moment Night was in sight.
What the Crazy Horseman had done was more than betrayal, it was fratricide. Something that among Baba Yaga’s direct children, like Firstborns and Horsemen, was considered an unforgivable crime.
The Red Mother had given them life and only she could take it away.
In case of a dispute, only non-lethal fighting was allowed. If either side wanted the battle to be to the death, they had to summon Baba Yaga via their eternal bond and ask her judgment.
Night had spat on a millennia-old tradition and everything the Horsemen stood for in one fell swoop. Kelia had provided Baba Yaga with precise dimensional coordinates and so many details about the location of the attack that Dawn could find it with her eyes closed.
Sunshine brought Dawn to her destination in the blink of an eye, yet aside from death and the ruins of the mining town, there was nothing to find. Acala and Dawn used Tower Tier detection spells, hoping to find a dimensional trace to give chase to Night or at least a few of Dusk’s fragments.
‘Even one more shard would make Mother’s work much easier. Saving my brother takes priority. Revenge can wait.’ Alas, she found nothing.
The space had been relaxed and every bit of crystal collected.
“Come out and fight me, you coward!” Dawn yelled at the top of her lungs, her voice booming for kilometers but only silence answered her call.
She Warped in random directions, using her detection spells in the hope of stumbling into Night’s trail. Luck turned her back to the Horseman and Dawn was forced to return to the hut empty-handed.
‘There’s nothing I can do here. I’d better make sure that Night hasn’t backtracked to steal Dusk’s steed while Mother is busy.’
When she arrived, there was no trace of the traitorous Horseman but none of her brother either. There was no magic in the air, only the sound of Kelia’s sobbing. She was curled up in a fetal position, holding the shard piercing her chest while rocking back and forth.
“Is Dusk…” Dawn failed to find the strength to complete the question.
“Gone? Yes. Dead, no.” The Red Mother said, shifting from her Crone form to that of the Mother before wrapping Kelia in a gentle embrace.
“Really?” She sniffled amid tears and bubbles of snot.
“Yes, child. How do you think that I came to your side like that? If Dusk was dead so would be my bond with him. My bond with you.” Baba Yaga replied.
“Can you bring him back?” Kelia asked.
“That’s beyond even me. We are missing his body, his mana organs, and his core.” The Mother shook her head.
“Then he’s dead!” Kelia started sobbing again.
“No, because he’s left you a critical piece of himself. His mind.” Baba Yaga touched the crystal shard and it shone with new power.
Dusk’s voice was gone but everything he knew was still there. Any question Kelia asked would be answered, but the information came to her cold and impersonal. It was more like reading a book than remembering.
“Now, you have two choices, child. You can let me pull the shard out of your chest and return you to the safety of the Empire. You are still an Awakened and the Empress cares for you.
“Dusk will be gone forever but you’ll be safe and Night will have no reason to bother you again.”
“What’s the other option?” The mention of her hated enemy made Kelia steel with fury and her voice ooze with venom.
“You keep the shard where it is. It will keep Dusk alive but it won’t give you any power. On top of that, Night might feel the connection with the remaining fragment and hunt you down until she gets it.” Baba Yaga replied.
“Can you use it to find her?” Kelia asked.
“Maybe, maybe not. This was not supposed to happen. I have no idea if the link between the crystal and shards goes both ways or if only Dusk’s main body can locate its fragments. All I can tell you is that you’d be in danger and I’d use you as bait.”
“What wasn’t supposed to happen?” Kelia’s hatred shifted to Baba Yaga as well, considering her responsible for Night’s madness.
“I’ll explain that later. First, I need to know your decision. Your future depends on it.”
“The shard is mine!” Kelia had it hide under her skin, even though it caused her great pain. Without the Horseman guiding the process, it was more like digging through her flesh than merging with it.
“If it means that you can bring Dusk back or lure Meln into a trap, my life is a little price to pay. I want him dead. I want to be the one dealing the death blow!”
“Get in line, sister.” Dawn said.
“Let’s go. We have people to warn and plans to make.” A touch of Baba Yaga’s finger and a healing spell made Kelia faint.
Her battered body and her fractured psyche were in dire need of rest.
“Where to, Mother?” Dawn asked.
“Lutia.”
***
In a makeshift cave hundreds of kilometers from the attack, at the same time.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” Since Night was entrusted with the hardest part of the work Orpal had to take the most of the pain to preserve her focus.
The wounds they had inflicted upon Dusk were now shared between Orpal, Night, and Moonlight. Yet The Horseman couldn’t risk exceeding the self-repairing enchantments of her steed so she inflicted minor damage upon her mage tower and added more only after it had been fixed.
The three Horsemen had been carved from a single Spirit Crystal after splitting it into its components. Light for Dawn, darkness for Night, and everything else for Dusk.
It was why he was the only one who possessed the first Guardians’ bloodline abilities.
After her defeat at Balkor’s hands, Night had been forced to admit that the god of death was right. Light and darkness were two sides of the same coin and Baba Yaga had made a mistake by making three Horseman instead of one.
She planned to correct that mistake. To fuse the three crystals back into one to give birth to a perfect being.
‘Mother had to be scared of us if she split us. I bet that in our original state, we were as strong as her. Maybe even more.’ She grunted in pain as she tried to fit Dusk’s shards into her crystal while also providing them with the energy to preserve their enchantments.
‘I would have preferred to assimilate Dawn first but her host is more powerful than mine and she never gets away from mother. Dusk was my only chance at getting rid of the weakness she imposed upon me.’
‘Are we finally free from the self-destruction spell?’ Orpal asked as he writhed in agony like a worm someone had stepped on.
