A Taste of Mercy (A Recipe for Disaster Novel 2)

are the only mercy left.

All my emotions fled from me at once as an odd kind of calm took over. It wasn’t that I didn’t care, but instead that I accepted it all, giving myself over to the moment. Brenin gripped his first tool and started to sketch something into the skin of my back, the shallow cuts bleeding freely as my friends screamed bloody murder at him and I stayed silent. The pain built pressure inside as my Wild Magic coiled, waiting for something I couldn’t think about. I screamed as skin was burned, sealing the cuts he’d just inflicted, my entire mind teetering on the edge of sanity as I tried to just hang on.

The Archive in my head was silent as the book on the altar started to radiate a terribly twisted darkness. A blackness that was hard to look at was vomited out of the pages, thankfully crawling away from the babies but somehow stretching into gate midair. The frame work for the Breach was being built, whatever it was that Brenin had carved and branded into my back drawing the Archive out of me and using its power to fuel the framework.

“Call the Chaos out Callahan.” Brenin commanded me and I actually laughed, feeling my sanity start to crumble as the Breach began solidifying into this reality. “I warned you that I would use you completely and own your soul before this was all over my pet. Now do as I command!” he struck out and hit me across the face.

Obscenely enough that strike helped to clear my head and settle something inside. “I am not yours to command Brenin, I never was. No one here has that kind of power over me, not even myself.” Because I finally realized that that was who the strange voice in my head was, me. Some version of myself from a future where I embraced Death, embraced the Reaper and was given a chance to come back to the moments I needed to alter, to give myself the advice and guidance I needed. But not once did I have the ability to command even myself to act. It has always been about choices. “Release me, release my family and I’ll finish summoning the Breach.” It needed to be done.

“I am King here!” Brenin spat at me and I let some of the rage in my gut curl through my skin. It presented in actual form, thorns that covered my flesh without wounding me, grasping vines that wrapped around the chains on my wrist and wrenching them open so that I freed myself.

“You are nothing. You are not even the ash and dust of ruination.” I stood to my feet and Brenin backed away from me. For the first time the power dynamic shifted in my favour; whatever he saw on my face must have been truly horrible indeed. “You are not the even the pus and rot of decay.” I stalked forwards and he scrambled backwards, unaware of where his footsteps led him; unable to look away from my advance. “You are nothing, and you will not even be remembered.” I warned with a terrible whisper as he stepped back once and hit the gate of the Breach.

Brenin screamed as the terrible blackness of the Breach sank into his body, wrapping around his limbs as he tried to pull away. As I watched, the darkness oozed into his screaming mouth and flowed down his throat, silencing the sounds but not yet killing him. It spread under his skin, the darkness radiating until it filled him completely and finally consumed his heart, with a last wrench Brenin’s body exploded into gore, all of it absorbed into the gate with no trace left behind of the one Demon King.

The Wild Magic inside me coiled and quivered, feeling the draw of the Breach like a magnetic pull. I had Chaos in front of my and a version of it inside me, and they were both very eager to be reunited, but I resisted. If I didn’t close that Breach, more of those monsters would come through, and they had been steadily fed on Power for too long for any of us to handle. Some version of me from the future had already failed at this, for her to know that this was the moment I could make a difference and yet I didn’t know what to do. The Wild Magic in me didn’t want to lash out and destroy it, it wanted to rip it open and spill it forth. I did my best to ignore the pull, going to my friends and freeing them of their bonds even as the gate swelled larger.