The Hidden Crystal

Chapter 50

It was singing. The magic was singing to her.

Iris felt it rushing through her veins, flooding her senses, hot as fire and cold as ice, exhilarating and terrifying. She felt and tasted the beauty and the music. Everything was a blinding white, and everything was clear. The roars whispered, the shadows glowed, the discordant rang true. She could see now—see everything. Hear everything. Understand everything.

She saw the truth.

She saw the multicolored bits of magic that did not belong to Micah, sparking off of him and popping before they could escape. She saw the emptiness where his heart should have been. She saw the surprise and doubt in his icy blue eyes reflected within his core.

She heard a chorus of voices revealing his secrets.

"Micah." Her voice rang out in the silence, confident and challenging. "You want the power in this amulet? You don't know what you seek. But he does."

She pointed to Micah's right with her left hand, her skin bathed in the same soft white light that shone between the fingers of her right hand. The red cord and the blue flames were gone, but crimson blood still trickled down her arm.

A man materialized beside Micah, gray and translucent, little more than a shadow. Micah jumped back, startled. The features of the man's face were dull and blurry, but his eyes were clear. Clear, hollow, and sad.

"He was like you, a man who sought more power. He found the crystal, and he cut the amulet from it. His greed sealed his fate."

She pointed beside the shade, and another man appeared, shorter and stouter but just as despondent, his eyes just as empty.

"Because his spell didn't just trap his magic inside the amulet at his death. It wrenched his very soul from his dying body and locked it away, a tool for the next bearer to use until he, too, died and found himself imprisoned in the amulet, unable to rest."

A horde of the gray figures filled the throne room to her left and Micah's right. Men, women, humans, dragons, elves, dwarves—all had borne the amulet in life, and all were bound to it in death.

"They all know the power of this amulet, and they're all tired. They want it to end. For a thousand years, they have searched for the person who won't succumb to greed, the person who will break the cycle. They're all in my head, every moment of every day. Do you know what that sounds like? Do you know what that feels like?"

Micah's eyes widened. Several of the court ministers clapped their hands over their ears. A roar of whispers echoed in every mind within the room. The common tongue, old draconian, elvish—dozens of languages, hundreds of voices, all saying the same thing: End this.

"I'll let you in on a little secret, Micah. Your extraction process doesn't work on me. The past bearers give you a drop of magic so that you think you're getting what you want, but you're actually unlocking their power within me. Every time, you just make me stronger."

She took a step toward him. He took a step back. Blue magic shot from his hands toward her, slamming into her and engulfing her. He smirked, but then the blue vanished, absorbed into the white radiating from her body.

Her eyes were white, all traces of brown gone.

Micah's smirk vanished. He took another step back.

"You said compassion is my weakness, but you were wrong. I know who you are, Micah. I wanted to hate you after what you did to me, but I can't. I pity you."

She raised her left hand and laid it flat over the center of his chest. He tried to sidestep around the throne, but a wall of white prevented his escape. She closed her eyes, and the white whitened under her left hand, spreading across his torso.