Ashes of Chaos (Legacy of the Nine Realms #2) - Amelia Hutchins Page 0,12
lips curved into a smile. The scent of decay and death caused my eyes to burn as the stink from her heated breath fanned my face.
“What is your name?”
“It is whatever you wish it to be, Mistress,” I announced, standing statuesque straight.
“I didn’t ask you what I wanted to name you. I asked you what name your mother graced you with, Witch.”
“Soraya, Mistress,” I stated without looking into her eyes. I looked through her, knowing she hated it when her acolytes looked into her decaying form.
“Tell me, Soraya, what do you see out there?”
She smiled at me as more power entered the room, jerking our bodies from the sheer force of magic to find that Ilsa had removed the dead witches from the room, adding them to the power grid outside. Ilsa grabbed my hand, forcing me to the window as my heart jackhammered against my ribs, worried about her intentions.
Oily shadows appeared around the victims comprising the grid. We called them The Dark Ones. They were creatures completely consumed by dark magic that had taken control of them in life, flowing through them in death. Venomous clouds of magic oozed around them, poisoning the air as they moved the corpses around, connecting hands or other body parts to the next in line.
It wasn’t just a toxic cloud surrounding them, though. Damned souls and the souls of those added to the grid lived inside the clouds of mist. Revenants created the macabre fog with the dead’s graying faces, reaching toward the witches tending the human power grid. To those of us close enough to the darkness, we knew what crawled within the blackened cloud.
The Dark Ones had nearly captured me once. Their twisted gray corpses with poisonous teeth and long, grasping claws were created to capture the living. The dead’s withered husk had seized my leg, leaving poison that seeped into my pores, fighting to subdue me so the dead, mindless beasts could feast upon my living cells.
The condemned souls of The Dark Ones exist trapped within perverse, dark magic, forming swirls and wisps that drift in the thickening fog, reaching out toward their victims like smoky fingers. Still, I could hear the unholy eeriness of their voices as they screamed and cried out for us to join them in their void of nothingness.
Witches that had displeased Ilsa wore coverings over their faces to hide bits of bones revealed from the boiling of their flesh. Their punishment was to stand close to the revenants, allowing the wispy fingers to caress their skin. Bile pushed against my throat, burning. I fought to conceal my weakness so I wouldn’t become her next victim, adding my magic to her power grid.
The odor released from the cloud surrounding The Dark Ones consisted of death and rotten flesh that clung to their souls in the afterlife, of which they could never escape or know peace, so long as Ilsa lived. That was the fate given to the acolytes who had displeased her, no matter how minor the offense.
These witches thought they served Ilsa well, but revenants would consume them in that unholy mist if they displeased her again. Their corpses spat out and added to her power grid, making the ultimate sacrifice, forced to serve her for eternity.
Many others had displeased her or failed to answer her summons to give in to the dark magic. Ilsa slaughtered them for their unwillingness to take what she so freely offered. You helped the mistress either by becoming a dark witch or by adding your power to her grid.
Focusing on the scene below, I saw that the grid spread out miles beyond the horizon, further than my eyes could see. Bodies covered the ground in circular patterns, even where the sun rose over the mountain, and in the sweeping valley that settled into a wide-mouthed gorge. All the grids were directing power to the Palace of Magic, no longer called the Palace of Light, once Ilsa had assumed control. No light reached these walls, shrouding the palace in darkness and offering only a cold, restless death.
Ilsa cleared her throat, and I realized I had yet to answer her question. I continued to gaze out the window.
“I see absolute power, which is yours for the taking, and rightly so, Mistress,” I turned toward her and away from the grid she forbade us from admiring too long, in the event we thought to reach for the power it exuded.
Ilsa’s smile was cold, curving her lips, sending dread and trepidation rushing