Witch Doctors Inc: SEASON TWO (Ongoing)

Part 2.11

I teleport to my childhood home in a panic. Onyx's words ring in my ears. You, and you alone, will face what you did.

The kitchen is empty. I close my eyes and focus on the energy around me. The singing energy of the kettle. The burning tang of onions. A cheesecake of rainbow lights.

And it.

The coldness.

The brokenness.

Incomplete.

Unforgiving.

Tugging, tugging at me, like icy fingers. Any warmth in me flees. I'm left shivering, a ghost of a witch standing in the memory of a kitchen. Butterflies press their wings against my insides. Whatever waits for me, I can't let them loose. Whatever I've done, I can't do more.

The door is unlocked. I step into the darkness, following the feel of steps beneath my feet. The coldness that moves me is jagged, with sharp ends that long to cut into my skin.

I know it. I definitely know it, and it knows me. It yearns for me, an old friend to embrace with sharp edges. The darkness inside me sizzles, waiting to take flight.

I open my eyes.

My breath freezes.

Beyond the tattered junk that piles on top of old sofas and tables, is the source of the coldness.

It's a jagged piece of ... glass? No, I realise. Ice. It's black ice hissing and spitting with smoky sparks. It's encased in a glass cube.

It wasn't like this the last time I saw it. It was part of a swirling sphere, and I'd thrown it into the heavens, hoping to never see it again.

It's broken now, the fire it once held gone.

It's empty, cold.

It's a shard of the Orb of Ariadne.

*

How could this be?

Only a Phaedrean can break the seal on the Orb of Ariadne. Only I, the last Phaedrean, could set free the contents within - an ancient fire demon, and my old enemy Scion. How could there be a shard of the orb in front of me now?

This is what was causing the fires. The seal on the orb is an ice seal. It draws heat to it, which is how I trapped Scion inside it in the first place. The heat of the orb's insides had repelled me then. But now, it holds no heat. It is broken ice, the remnant of a seal of Phaedrean magic. My soul is ice, just like Scion's soul was fire. It needed me to complete itself.

Weakness overwhelms my knees. I crumple to the ground, breathing heavily. It isn't my mother's ghost. It isn't her body, cold with anger. She died in a cart accident.

Relief surges up my throat and comes out as a sob. When Onyx looked at me like that, I had thought. I'd really thought.

But he was angry because he told me to destroy the Orb of Ariadne using the dark power. I'd refused, because I was the only Phaedrean left, and no one else could break the orb's seal. I'd trapped Scion, the Ariadni who had used the dark power on the First Witch's mentor, along with the fire demon the orb originally contained. Onyx warned me that I'd regret it.

I close my eyes against the truth before me. The seal was broken. Scion was free. The fire demon was free. The demon's energy would be like a beacon cutting through outer space. The Ariadni would come.

Why couldn't I sense the demon's energy, if it was so powerful? I wasn't trying, but surely something with that level of power would have given me a ping. Unless, of course, someone was masking it.

I send a whisper of ice in the shard's direction. It twists around it, settling its smoky fingers into the cracks in the ice. Focusing all my energy, I squeeze. With a tremendous crack, the shard shatters. What remains is nothing but a twinkling ice powder. It hovers for a moment, then disappears into the air.

No more fires. No more ghosts. No more accusations.

And yet, the butterflies inside me still writhe. The demon was free. It would wreak havoc on humankind. It would bring the Ariadni, who would enslave the people who I thought of as my own.

Onyx was right.

It was my burden to bear.