Conviction's King | Damian Book 1

Chapter 25

I pull the hood over my head and form a picture in my mind. Green light shudders around me and my surroundings change, leaving Cressa-la, Tamir, and Amawa-na behind. When the green disappears, before me sits a small house, a shack.

I collapse to my knees. They'd never find me here. Maybe Cressa-la had a moment of bravery and was able to break the rules to retrieve my friends, to find me, but none of them are brave enough to go through Wurn territory to find me. If Revli is the tribe of love and Initi is the tribe of peace, Wurn is the tribe of war. They are fierce and easily provoked—it's not surprising that Morgiana came from that tribe three-hundred or so years ago. It's why I was able to make her crack for a split second back in the Underground. She says I'm run by emotions... but she seems to be blind by her own.

Staring at the shack, I'm reminded of the horrible things she made me do. Horrible things that I eventually did without her asking.

I was an obedient little evil teenager.

I sit in silence for forever, it seems. I think I hear Cressa-la calling for me at one point, but I don't respond.

On my back, I turn over, staring at the shack as memories spiral out before me, each one filled with blood and lives of people lost. How did I ever live with myself?

I stand, wobbly, and line my hand up with the shack, making sure I cover my entire view of it. This is Morgiana's home on the island, and the spot she has trained me since I was around thirteen. There's a vast cave-like structure beneath the small house, a place she calls the Fishbowl because it's awfully round and shaped like something you'd trap a fish inside.

It's where I had my first kill. Drea-de.

He was a part of the Initi Tribe. Cast out because he was found out to be a One-Hundred. Morgiana took him in, hoping he'd be useful, and then she ordered me to kill him.

And so I did.

My hand radiates green, cyan mixing with the bright color. Little pieces of black shift across the surface and I grit my teeth. Antimagic is beginning to form inside of me.

Antimagic is a gifted body's reaction to using its powers for evil while the host is aware they're doing something wrong. Amawa-na had it for the longest time, and she had enough to where it would manifest everywhere she cast a spell or glow. Cressa-la even had a lethal dosage enter into her bloodstream by accident. Her brother, Friedrick, also known as Kamier-na (the hunting partner she'd been hiding from earlier), promised a handful of tribes knowledge in exchange for some trinkets to help him infiltrate the Emperor's Library, where every piece of knowledge was kept including things from before the Flood many, many, many years ago. It was their central knowledge center, and Cressa-la ended up absorbing every piece of it. Her body then began to create antimagic, slowly, and, when she was cuffed in the manta ray merpeople's city, the cuffs were made off antimagic, making her feel absolutely sick. The antimagic in the handcuffs then melded with the power and antimagic already in her system, making her go through an extreme amount of pain.

She went through a lot. She really did.

And I'm the one that started it all.

Cyan lightning cracks around my fingers as I release the mostly green orb pulsating between my fingertips. It collides with the walls of the shack with a loud boom, the entire thing exploding with energy. Fire crackles as it devours Morgiana's stuff, all the finer things in life. She lives a life of luxury thanks to Cressa-la's mom, who had struck a deal with her before Cressa-la was born.

For a moment, I worry about if Morgiana was home or not, but I decide to push the worry away. If she was home, she would have come out guns blazing by now, or she would have sensed my presence and come to check and see why I was here. She must be tending to something else, something that kept her away from the sound of the blast, or even out of sight of the smoke as it rises. The fire takes to the trees and I watch as it devours what little bit of pieces Morgiana has above land.

As the flames slowly dance higher, I walk toward the burning, dilapidating house, eyes locked on the stairs leading down to the Fishbowl. Pressing the fire back is a shield I place around my skin to protect me, and I descend into the Fishbowl, silent. Inside are two seats facing one another, and a ridiculously large area for battling, blood staining the ground. One of those was because of me. Maybe more.

I take a seat in the chair facing the stairs and wait, the smoke drifting into the Fishbowl and rising upward, but it's growing thicker. The fire is loud up at the entrance and I begin to think that waiting here for Morgiana to arrive is useless, that I should go somewhere else to hide away from my friends. From the girl who makes me crazy.

I was never one to run from problems. I would face them head-on and hope for the best as I looked for a way to win. Patience, calculations, that's what I ran on as the anger, the looming need to taste victory, to press the pain upon those who did people like me wrong fueling the fire and keeping my momentum strong. There was no force on this earth that could stop me, until Cressa-la was chosen by the moon. Until the eclipse bonded us in an unexplainable way, waiting to marry us at the touch of our lips, but in the old timeline, it could never be. Not while she loved Tamir. Not while he was her everything and I was the villain. Always was.

Always will be.

The cracklings of the fire stop very suddenly, smoke lingering. Clacking from heels echoes down into the Fishbowl and I find myself growing excited with anticipation as I slip into my element. This is what I'm good at, what I've always been good at.

Being bad.