Nyx's mind, or what remained of Eleonora's tormented consciousness beneath the layers of Chaos and primordial power, floated in a sea of pain and exhaustion. Her refuge in the Hollow Earth was a scar in the darkness, an echo of her shattered power. The memory of Aria, of that almost forgotten maternal warmth, had opened a floodgate, and now other ghosts from her past danced before her inner vision.
The warmth of Umbria... so different from the fire she had known before, the fire I myself had sought so eagerly...
Her mind drifted back to the days when she had abandoned the rigid structure of Umbria, seeking a rawer, more... liberating knowledge. She came to the Red Wizards, the Scarlet Circle. At first, they were a revelation. A brotherhood of renegades who dared to delve into forbidden mysteries, who saw magic not as a set of rules, but as a savage force to be ridden.
With them, Eleonora thought, Nyx's voice a mocking echo in her own mind, I learned to dance with pure Chaos, to see the inherent beauty in controlled entropy, to break the chains of the predictable and tedious magic of the academies. It was a heady knowledge, a promise of power unbound by the shackles of a stifling morality...
She remembered the nights of rituals under bloody moons, the crackling energy of spells that bordered on madness, the rough camaraderie of those who had chosen to walk the path of shadows. And among them, ever-present, ever-intense, was Sorcha.
Sorcha of the Crimson Hand. Eleonora had initially seen her as a tool, a force of nature she could command. She remembered Sorcha's often brutal schemes to destabilize the other schools of magic, to sow discord and break Umbria's monopoly on arcane knowledge. Her ideas were cruel, yes, Eleonora's conscience admitted, her methods often tinged with a thirst for revenge against a system that had marginalized her. I saw her as a useful warrior, an enthusiastic executor of my most... ambitious plans for the Circle.
But now, in the stillness of her near-death, other images, other nuances, imposed themselves with painful clarity. Sorcha, with her threadbare robes and ever-present gauntlet, arguing heatedly with the Circle's Elders, defending Eleonora's most heretical theories, her dark eyes shining with fierce loyalty. Sorcha, offering her an old, battered grimoire on shadow manipulation, a text Eleonora had sought for years, with a crooked smile that was almost shy. "I found it in the ruins of a forgotten library," she had said. "I thought... you would like it."
And that time, after a particularly grueling ritual that nearly consumed them both, when Eleonora had collapsed, it was Sorcha who had cared for her, who had protected her from the other Circle members who coveted her position, offering her a dark, spiced wine that tasted of earth and ancient power. There were no words of affection then, only a harsh camaraderie, that of two predators who had hunted together and survived.
She was never my enemy, Eleonora's voice whispered into the void of Nyx's mind, the realization a cold, sharp pang. Even with her savage plans for the Circle, with her agenda of chaos and destabilization... all she wanted, deep down, was my success. For the Circle, under my guidance, to rise. She wanted my approval. She tried... to be my partner. My friend.
Shame, an emotion Nyx thought she had purged long ago, coursed through her. She saw herself, the Eleonora of those days, consumed by her own growing ambition, by her thirst for power and knowledge that transcended the limitations of the Scarlet Circle. She saw how she treated Sorcha with calculated distance, accepting her loyalty as due, her ideas as mere suggestions to be considered or discarded. She remembered Sorcha's look sometimes, when Eleonora laid out her most grandiose visions, plans that no longer included the Circle as an equal, but as a stepping stone. A mixture of dazzled admiration and a barely veiled hurt at her inability to see her as anything more than a capable follower, a useful tool.
I was so caught up in my own ascension, she thought with a bitterness that tasted of ash, so convinced of my own superiority, of my destiny to transcend... that I ignored her clumsy gestures of loyalty, her attempts to forge a deeper bond. I made her feel less. I used her devotion and offered her condescension in return.
Chaos gives you power, yes. But it isolates you. It blinds you to the small lights of connection, to the bonds of loyalty not based on fear or ambition, until you find yourself alone in a darkness far vaster and colder than you ever imagined.
The image of Sorcha, now allied with Dracula, fighting for her survival in Cancún, south
It rumbled in her mind. Perhaps, just perhaps, Sorcha hadn't found in Dracula a new master, but what she had always sought and Eleonora had denied her: a pragmatic ally who, at least, recognized her courage and strength without trying to diminish her.
The memory, instead of bringing comfort, deepened the wound in Nyx's being. Another betrayal, but this time, a betrayal perpetrated by herself, long ago, against someone who had only ever wanted to be her equal in the darkness.