The Haunting of Guaritori Diolco, Part 40
Clashing Shadows
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“Medea, Mateo, your magic is not immediately involved in the ritual,” said Hecate. “Do what you can to reinforce the door.”
Nothing about Mateo’s curanderismo was related specifically to that task, but he started praying, hoping his faith could slow the attackers. Medea sketched lines of lunar energy across the door, but judging by the loudness of the pounding and the way the door was already bulging inward, I didn’t think whatever restraints she could impose would last long.
“I built protection into the outer circle,” Hecate reminded us. “Even if they enter the room, we will not immediately be overwhelmed.”
Her voice sounded confident, but I could tell from the way my head felt that she was nowhere near done. Just speaking required her to stop the magic substitution, if only for a moment. What would happen if an external threat demanded more of her attention?
“If we are attacked, and the others must defend us, I will hold the two kinds of magic together in your mind,” said Hermes. “They will not drift apart as Hecate fears.”
Given how much Hermes knew about magic, his reassurance made me feel a little better. But when all of the magic in my mind was his, the situation was easier for him to control. Now that the magic was partially Hecate’s and partially Hermes’s, I wasn’t sure how much influence he’d have.
I knew that magic was still present, but I could no longer wield it as I had before. It felt inert as a lump of lead and unconnected to me, as if it were a foreign body sitting inside of my mind but no longer part of it.
In addition to Medea’s silver reinforcements, I now saw a pure white light shining on the door. No doubt, that was a result of Mateo’s prayers, but just as I began to think we had a chance, the door, ripped from its hinges, flew across the room. Cronus rushed in, waving his sickle menacingly. Atlas followed, and then an enormous wave of darkness blotted out everything outside the circle as Tartarus entered.
“Surrender, and I will spare your lives!” yelled Cronus, his voice sounding as thunderous as Zeus’s once had.
It was at that moment I realized a flaw in Hecate’s protective circle—Persephone and Zeus’s body were outside of it. Persephone was nearly exhausted, but even at peak condition, she could never have beaten those three in a fight.
Cronus’s attention was focused on those of us within the circle at the moment, but Demeter, realizing her daughter’s vulnerability, readied herself to run to her defense. The moment she left her assigned spot, the ritual would become unbalanced—and dangerous.
The silver light around us brightened, pushing back a little at Tartarus’s seething darkness. Perhaps Hecate was trying to keep the three intruders focused on us. If so, she succeeded, at least for now. Cronus studied the silver barrier for a moment.
“You cannot hold that line against us,” said the dethroned king. “Surrender now, while you still can.”
“If you destroy us now, the magic accumulated by our ritual will likely escape as wild magic and destroy you as well,” said Hecate. I could hear the strain in her voice, but perhaps that emphasized the amount of power she was trying to control.
Cronus paused, but only for a moment. “Or the energy will disperse harmlessly. Shielded by an elder power, I am inclined to take my chances.”
“Withdraw or I will curse you again!” yelled Hera, defiant as always.
“I doubt you can, enmeshed in this ritual as you are,” said Cronus. “But even if you could, what do you think became of your last curse? Tartarus broke it—and he will again, if need be.”
Zeus lashed out with a thunderbolt. It was a restrained display, far less than he could have done, just enough to force Cronus to parry with the sickle and make him nervous. But even that distraction from the ritual caused the power flowing all around me and in me to fluctuate wildly. Spirit, the point of the pentagram that drew on Zeus, was the glue holding everything else together.
“Enough,” said Hecate, her voice sounding even more strained. “Cronus, we are trying to rebalance the energies of this plane before it is too late. You stand to benefit as much as we do by allowing us to finish what we have begun.”
Cronus’s reply was to slash with the sickle at the protections surrounding us. The blow caused a shower of silver sparks, and the defenses flickered all around us, but they held. I doubted they could endure too many more blows, however.
Mateo continued to pray, this time no doubt to strengthen the defenses. Medea also added her magic, and the silver light brightened. Cronus just laughed and started striking the barrier over and over again, filling the air with sparks and making the flickering much worse. Or was that my vision failing? The more distracted the Olympians involved in the ritual became, the more the incompletely merged magic within me twisted.
As if Cronus’s attacks were not enough, Tartarus pressed forward, bending the silver aura that surrounded us. If that shadowy pressure continued, our defenses would soon crack like an eggshell. Between Tartarus’s attacks and Cronus’s, I couldn’t see how the defenses would hold together for more than three minutes at most.
“We must chance ending the ritual,” said Hermes, his thoughts reaching the others through the various magic connections created by the ritual. “It is the only way to keep Cronus from killing us all. I will do everything I can to protect Garth.”
I knew he was sincere, but my heart skipped a beat, anyway. I could already feel the magic within me beginning to pull apart. Hermes gripped it as hard as he could. I called on the Philosopher’s Stone, but it did not react at first. It could heal my body or my mind, but I had no idea if it could keep two diverse pools of magic merged into one.
Hecate didn’t wait to find out. Instead, she diverted her power to reinforce our defenses, and I felt the magic within me writhe in Hermes’s grip. Zeus lashed out with much stronger lightning, and the elemental forces involved in the ritual began to drift apart as the spirit holding them together dissolved. Poseidon jumped out of position and lashed out at Atlas with his trident. I felt dry as a desert as the water magic faded. Hestia added hearth fire to our defenses, and I felt a chill as the ritual fire cooled. Hera started brewing another curse, and my lungs cried out for oxygen as the air magic died.
Medea tried to twist the darkness nearest to us, push it back. That effort, combined with the enhanced protection, might have worked, but the Olympians weren’t fully rested. Cronus was still able to deflect Zeus’s somewhat diluted lightning. Atlas retreated from Poseidon, luring the former god into following him. As soon as the trident was mostly outside our protective field, Atlas ducked under the prongs, grabbed the shaft, and pulled it downward. He couldn’t quite manage to pull it from Poseidon’s hands, but he did keep the sea’s ruler from pulling it away from Atlas and striking another blow with it.
Meanwhile, Tartarus’s pressure continued unabated. He brushed off Medea’s effort to restrain him and squeezed harder and harder against our silver protection, which started to buckle despite efforts by Hecate, Hestia, and Mateo to reinforce it.
My perceptions of what was happening around me gradually faded while the magic within me, partly Hecate’s and partly Hermes’s, continued to convulse as it struggled to break from one force into two. All of Hecate’s delicate handiwork was coming undone. Hermes managed to slow the process but hadn’t yet figured out a way to stop it. The Philosopher’s Stone remained silent. I tried reaching out for the magic myself, but it remained unresponsive to me.
Even though I had lost most of my contact with the outside world, I still felt our defenses collapse with a blinding explosion as Tartarus finally crushed them. Palpable darkness descended around all of us. I had recovered from the breathlessness caused by the withdrawal of air magic from the ritual, but now, I again felt as if I could hardly breathe. The darkness pressed even harder, and I felt sure I would suffocate.
The physical threat was real enough that the Philosopher’s Stone finally came to my rescue, though I had no idea whether it had enough strength to permanently resist a force as mighty as Tartarus. I could breathe at least a little, but for how long?
My ability to survive Tartarus might not matter if the Olympians suffered defeat. Cronus struck down the Telchine body housing Zeus’s soul but didn’t kill it, perhaps wishing to return control to Damnameneus. Atlas tore the trident from Poseidon’s hands and struck the ruler of the sea with it, shaking him like an earthquake and wounding him badly. Tatartus continued to squeeze the rest of us. Anyone like Hecate with magic left in her would have a hard time wielding it, though the witch goddess continued to fight, as did the other goddesses and Medea, at least from what little I could tell.
It wouldn’t matter. We were all done for now.
The splitting magic within me was giving me the weird feeling of being in two places at once. As my mind started to disintegrate, I wondered if Cronus would have to go to the trouble of killing me twice. I could hear his laugh, triumphant but slightly maniacal, coming from somewhere nearby.
I saw a light somewhat like moonlight, though it wasn’t a remnant of our shattered defenses. It seemed to be coming from just outside the door. Perhaps I was hallucinating as my mind was pulled apart by two competing magics.
“Stop this at once!” said a familiar voice.
“You are no match for me,” Tartarus replied as Iskios stepped into the room, glowing his way through Tartarus’s darkness. “You only won before because the other elder powers helped you. I will surely defeat you now.”
“There was a time when that would have been true,” said my son, sounding amazingly confident. I’d seen Tartarus’s earlier victory, and I wished with all my heart that Iskios had stayed away. I wanted him to live, not to die with the rest of us. I thought I started crying, though I was no longer sure. My physical senses were almost as disrupted as my magical ones.
“But you made one mistake,” Iskios continued calmly, as if darkness wasn’t surging around him, waiting to crush him. “Apparently, elder powers are tied to their original role in the process of creation. You built the foundation in shadow and stone and were supposed to maintain it. When you refused to play that role any longer, you severed the connection you had with that foundation. When I did the job you refused, it put me in a position to take control, not only of your former realm, but of your power.”
“That’s ridiculous—” began Tartarus, but even I, distracted as I was, caught the sudden shift in the room. One second, Iskios was David facing a Goliath on steroids. The next second, David rapidly changed places with Goliath. The shadows around us shifted from hostile to friendly, and they no longer weighed us down. Tartarus struggled at first, but he seemed helpless to prevent Iskios from draining his power away. The former elder power started, but his roar quickly faded to a whisper.
Iskios still looked much as he had before, but the light and shadows playing around him were much more intense, and his overall power level was far greater. He caught my eye for a moment and smiled. Then he imprisoned what was left of Tartarus in a cage of light and turned his dark wrath on Cronus and Atlas.
However, before he could seal his victory, Cronus managed to reach the unconscious Telchine body Zeus was still occupying and held his sickle against its throat.
“Make one move against us, and Zeus dies!” Cronus yelled, nicking the scaly throat and drawing enough blood to underscore his point.
Time seemed to stand still for a moment as Iskios considered what to do. Before he decided, I felt an explosion as the magic inside me ripped itself apart, finally and irrevocably, despite Hermes’s best efforts.
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What an end! my goodness, each chapter is better than the last one! 👏🏼