Time's Tragedies- The Books Of Beginning [2]

80. The Confrontation

Lili's fingers drummed lightly against the stone, her chipped fingernails making little clinking noises with each tap. The rhythm was fast and frantic, filled with madness and mania and the ash of burning worlds, so unlike the music she normally played. The song was the Dire Magnus's, but the instrument - the movement of her fingers as if she was pressing down on keys rather than touching rock - was piano, her own medium. Wasn't that what all of art was, though? Taking the past and then making it her own.

The great ruins of once great sandstone structures surrounded her like a castle, like a throne. The sky overhead hung bright with the dawn sun on the horizon, casting reds and golds and rosy pinks (like Eternity's hair) over everything, including the town downhill from where Lili waited. 

She didn't think these were the same ruins she and Abby and Jake and Eternity - before Eternity was so tied in knots with her that she couldn't tell where Lili began and her pink haired beloved ended - had hidden in that very first night, before Loris and the disappointment that was the magical council, but she could have been wrong. Either way, the location felt right. It was, after all, located not only where Rhakotis once stood strong, but atop a crossing of ley lines, where power could be more easily imparted from magician into the world they wanted to manipulate. It was where Lili would stage her final confrontation with Robert Lloyd.

After the battle of the stronghold, Lili hadn't slept, she had only eaten a gyro sandwich that she'd purchased from a late night vendor in New York, and she was mostly running on adrenaline. But she didn't care. She felt as though this was her moment - it had to be. After all, the last time the Dire Magnus had come to Rhakotis, the city burned. This time, it was Robert's turn. 

There was no turning back now. She had sent Robert a message to meet her already, a message written in the blood of one of his imps that he had left as a spy to monitor New York and the Wibberlys allies there. She'd told another imp to deliver it, stepping over the corpse of its kin to give the sheet of bloodied notebook paper to the monster. It had looked terrified, as terrified as she hoped Robert would feel, reading her words.

Lili was done with playing nice and she wanted her enemy to know it.

The message had been very simple, really, and yet she knew it would ensure he came.

Come to Rhakotis immediately. If you aren't there by the next sundown, I'll send out magic to track you down, magic that burns and destroys the world you want to rule over so badly. If you don't come, I'll make sure that there's nothing left for you to take power from, nothing left to control. I'll strip apart everything you worked for, every plan you made, piece by piece, and only then will I kill you. This is your only chance to stop acting like a cowardly worm and face me one on one before I start hunting you down like the animal you are.

You know what I can do. You know that you can't hide forever, as fun as it is for me getting to be the hunter rather than the prey. This is the closest thing to mercy I will be granting you. Take it or leave it - the consequences are on your head.

Bring your worst. I'll see you soon.

- LH Wibberly

Robert's arrogance and his carefully maintained plans, they couldn't handle having her rip apart everything he had ever stolen or swindled or built. Robert was not like Kate or Rafe or any of the Wibberlys - he could survive, yes, but he could not endure. He could not start his life over after it was uprooted, not like Kate and Michael and Emma had done time and time again with various orphanages and all they entailed. If Robert lost his armies, his plans, his resources, he was just a man. And there was nothing that Robert could stand less than being an ordinary man, no better than anyone else.