“Is blood loss what would kill me?”
“That, and the shock of the magic, if it has to go too deep into your memory.”
“Great.”
“We’ll start with you sitting in a chair,” Aerdeca said.
Oh fates. I was going to let the blood sorceresses poke at my mind. I was used to the supernatural, but this was a bit creepy even for me.
Mordaca went to the chair near the fire and pulled it over to the table. She set it up as if someone were about to sit in it and have dinner. Mordaca pointed to it. “Sit here. Put the map on the table.”
“Thanks.”
Mordaca and Aerdeca hustled around the room as I sat in the chair and put the map on the table. I positioned it so that I could read it.
Cass and Nix came to stand next to me.
“You’ll be fine,” Cass said.
“Yeah, a little dying never killed you.”
I grinned. “True.”
Mordaca appeared at my side and nudged Cass out of the way. Nix followed, setting up vigil on the other side of the table with Cass. Mordaca set two large bowls on the table, one near each wrist.
My heart raced. “Could this turn my mind to mush, you poking around and all?”
“It’s a possibility,” Mordaca said. “But we’ll be careful. Honestly, death is more likely with this, if you have a hard time locating your memory of the language.”
Great.
Aerdeca appeared at my other side, two glinting silver blades in her hand. She passed one over to Mordaca.
“Raise your wrists,” Aerdeca said.
“Both?”
“This spell requires more blood. Enough to make you woozy and weaken your mind’s defenses.”
Barbaric. I grimaced and raised both hands, swallowing hard.
Mordaca and Aerdeca each took one of my wrists. Pain flared when the knives sliced through my skin.
“It will help if you try to focus on what you want to remember,” Aerdeca said.
“Okay.” I did my best, imagining being able to speak whatever language was written on the parchment in front of my face.
The scent of my blood drifted toward me, making my stomach turn. I did my best not to look, but the drip, drip, drip of the dark red stuff was hard to ignore.
“Isn’t that enough?” Cass asked.
“Do you feel woozy, Del? Tired?” Aerdeca asked.
I shook my head, trying to see. “No.”
“More it is, then,” Mordaca said.
The blood continued to drip, filling the bowl until a sheen from the light overhead developed on the surface. Tiredness dragged at me.
“I think I feel it,” I said.
“Good.” Aerdeca put my hand on the table. Mordaca followed. From the corners of my eyes, I could see them sprinkling herbs into the blood. They stirred the concoction with their daggers, then laid the blades on the table and picked up boxes of matches. I was having a hard time keeping up with what they were doing.
“Eyes on the paper.” Aerdeca pointed to it. “The real fun is about to start.”
I glued my vision to the map, noting that the words were starting to wiggle in front of my face. I blinked, trying to make them stay still.
The sound of matches striking filled the air. Unable to help myself, I peeked up just in time to see Aerdeca drop her match into the blood. It burst into flames, sending up a thick black smoke that smelled sweet and rich and horrible.
I coughed, gagging slightly, as Mordaca and Aerdeca pushed the bowls closer to me so that I breathed in more smoke.
No wonder people had a shitty opinion of blood magic. This was gross.
“We’re going to touch your head,” Aerdeca said.
“Uh huh.” My voice slurred, and I realized that I was still bleeding from my wrists. That wasn’t good, right?
Two hands lightly touched my hair and I swayed.
“She doesn’t look good,” Nix whispered.
“She’s still bleeding,” Cass said.
“Shut up,” Mordaca snapped.
“Hey!” Cass stepped forward.
“Guys, is cool,” I slurred, squinting at the lines in front of my face. What the hell had I gotten myself into?
Magic suddenly pulsed on the air, strong and rich. Mordaca’s tasted like whiskey, making my throat burn. Aerdeca’s chirping birds got louder, as did the feeling of a breeze over my skin.
But even weirder was the feeling in my head, as if thin tendrils of smoke were unfurling in my mind, poking around all the crevices in my brain. It felt like it originated in my mouth.
Oh, ew. Was that why they’d lit my blood on fire? I shoved away the thought, not wanting to focus on what exactly was going on here.
“Focus on the words in front of you,” Mordaca said. “We’re going to try to find the memory.”
The blood smoke choked me and hazed my vision and I squinted at the squiggles. Minutes or hours passed as my mind drifted. It was like being drunk on magic and blood loss. My vision began to darken at the edges.
“Anything yet?” Mordaca asked.
My head bobbed, dipping down toward the table. The words still looked like gibberish.
“Nooo,” I slurred.
“Try harder,” Mordaca said.
I blinked and squinted, my head bobbing again, almost hitting the table. The words danced in front of my eyes. For a second, it looked like one said west, but then it just looked like a squiggle.
“You… almost had it,” I said.
The room began to spin around me as my vision narrowed in on the words in front of me. My breath heaved in and out of my lungs, loud as a jet plane in my foggy head.
Aerdeca’s whisper drifted through the fog in my mind. “She’s fading. We should stop.”
“No!” I thought I screamed, but it came out only as a whisper.
“Too dangerous,” Mordaca said. “You’re losing too much blood. This could kill you.”
“No, one more… try.” I blinked, trying to gather every ounce of will that I had. But my head bobbed toward the table again and the words blurred in front of my eyes.
“You’re dying, Del.”
Dying. The word spurred an idea and I said, “I don’t… die.”
I called upon my Phantom magic. It took a few tries, but I caught the shivery thread of my gift. Ice slithered through my veins, but it carried clarity to my mind. I glanced at my arm, grateful to notice that I hadn’t fully transformed. I was only slightly blue, hopefully little enough that it could be explained by blood loss.
I blinked, using the last of my Phantom-given strength to focus on the words in front of me. Just as they began to swirl and form something recognizable, I lost the thread of my magic.
Then passed out cold, the pain of my head thunking on the table the last thing I knew.
The dream pulled me back in time, away from the blood sorceresses’ lair and into that same tower in the mountains. It was dark this time, with only a sliver of moon visible through one of the arched windows.
Draka, in her human form, stood on the other side of the room. She was as beautiful as ever, pale and blue and transparent, her face as ageless as the moon appeared to be.
“It’s not very far.” She pointed to the ground in front of her. “You can do it. Just teleport to here.”