Estella could tell they were running low on time.
That didn't actually make it any easier to do the thing that was definitely going to kill her friend. Especially not with her own magic. She'd been afraid of just this situation before—that something she might do might have such visceral, personal consequences, and the idea that she was effectively going to destroy Saraya was a difficult one to swallow. Even if she'd volunteered.
Still—at least it wasn't something Vesryn had to do.
"It's probably best if you lie down," she advised, though the benefit would be just as much on her end of things as his. She had no idea what kind of reaction this was going to cause, or how much pain would be involved, but it was a safe bet that it was going to hurt. No other interference with the connection had ever been totally benign, not since Zethlasan started it years ago. Estella could feel a tremor in her hands, but she stilled it, squeezing her fingers into fists and easing them again. Her eyes sought and found Khari's.
"While everyone else works the magic, I need you to be here. This is... delicate, and it might not work so well if he moves." She didn't want to say 'please stay here so you can hold down the person I love most if I hurt him badly enough he thrashes,' but it was the thought, one she hoped Khari would understand without any further explanation.
Once everyone was in position, Estella settled next to Ves's shoulder, reaching out to lay her fingers softly there. Contact made it just a little easier, and considering how complicated this was all going to be, she needed every little advantage she could muster. Truthfully, she wasn't even exactly sure how she was going to go about this, or what it required, but maybe getting a better sense for how things were would point her in the right direction.
It was alien, the feeling of two completely different entities in overlapping space. Saraya had always been enough a part of Vesryn that she'd shared his vital signs, his felt existence. But now it was like... they weren't completely separate, but it was as though two pages in a book that had been stuck together were coming apart, starting at the edges, which curled now in two directions. That was the only way she could describe the feeling it gave her.
Her eyes eased shut, and she focused on that. It took a great deal of careful searching, but eventually she found a starting point: the pain of the connection itself. They were beginning to experience it differently, where before their mutual anchor to Ves's body meant they felt it as basically the same. Shared dreams, shared feelings. Estella pulled in a bracing breath, and began to untangle the weave.
She didn't have untangle for long before the ritual chamber itself seemed to take notice. Likely the mages that had done this originally used the same kind of magic, probably much more confidently... and with much greater cruelty. But the runestones appeared to be part of it, as their symbols flared to life, the magic the other mages were letting flow into them spurring them on. They latched onto the target of Estella's magic, and pulled.
A bolt of panic shot through her—she tried to gentle the pull, but like iron filaments to magnetized stone, the forces at work simply would not be denied, even by her.
Instantly Ves gasped in pain, his back involuntarily arching as his limbs seized up, and fought against Khari's hold. It was a good thing she was there to keep him pinned, or he would've moved far too much already. There were tears already springing to his eyes, and he almost seemed to be choking on his own breath, but he managed to utter a single word.
"S-steady."
Estella made a soft sound, not by conscious choice, expressing her distress perhaps more eloquently than she'd have otherwise had time for, but she did her best to follow the direction, too keep unwinding the places where they were still bound, prizing them apart with the magical equivalent of delicate, dexterous fingers.
A few moments longer and the color of his skin started to seem unnatural. He was turning blue, almost glowing with it, the light coming from within him rather than any source in the room. It grew brighter and brighter, and she could feel that the pain was increasing alongside it. He should've passed out by now, but the spell itself seemed to be keeping him from it.
Estella's vision blurred; she blinked away the forming tears, setting her jaw and clenching her teeth. She couldn't stop, and she definitely couldn't let this be for nothing.
And then the light erupted from within him, not from his throat or his eyes or any specific orifice, but from every pore in his skin. He screamed in pain, drowning out the sound of the magic pulling him apart from Saraya. The light seemed to solidify, floating embers in blue that lifted into the air past her and Khari, collecting and gathering on the ceiling. That had to be Saraya, forced to leave the host that had housed her for so long.
Eventually Ves's screams faded to nothing, and the last of the light left him, until all of it remained hovering above them, illuminating the entire ritual chamber in blue. Beneath Stel's hand, Ves lay perfectly still, his head lolled to the side, his eyes shut as though he were sleeping.
The tense muscles in her body went slack, slumping her shoulders without her consent. She hadn't felt this drained in a long time, perhaps because of the particular combination of emotional and physical tolls. Swallowing, she shifted her eyes to the ceiling, but only for a moment. Her hands were shaking now, and no amount of discipline was going to stop them. Just—she just had to be sure. Estella's fingers sought the pulse point on his neck.
Nothing.
At first she thought she'd just somehow missed the right spot, or that her shaking was making it impossible to feel what was there. But a second, more deliberate attempt sucked the air right from her lungs.
Nothing.
A hard lurch nearly brought up the contents of her stomach. "No." Had she not been careful enough? Had she done something wrong? Had the attempt been doomed from the start? More of them lurked, but Estella shoved them all away, rising to her knees and leaning over Ves. "No, no, no."
“Stel?" Khari's eyes had been drawn by the coalescing light, but the brokenness of Estella's tone must have returned her attention to her immediate left. She shifted, reaching as if to put a hand on her shoulder, but something brought her up short. Ves's state, perhaps. “Stel, is he—"
"Start his heart." That was Harellan, having caught onto the situation perhaps more quickly than most would have. His tone was sharp, urgent. "Quickly, there isn't much time."
Start his...?
Estella shook herself. Start his heart. If Harellan was telling her to do it, it had to be possible. Her magic had to be capable of it. Placing one hand back on his shoulder, she gently moved Khari away with the other to clear herself space to work. Her breaths were short and shallow, panic she didn't even properly notice overtaking her. It was hard to focus on anything but the vast nothing where they were connected, the feeling of the absence of a life where moments ago there had been not one, but two under her fingertips. Start his heart. Start his heart.
Instinct took over; Estella pushed the magic, less concerned with the subtleties and more with the sheer overwhelming need to feel something again. To know that life was in his limbs and behind his eyelids. It washed over him like a wave over the shore, purplish light dissipating like mist. Nothing. Again. Still nothing.
"How?" she demanded, voice cracking beneath the strain. Her vision was darkening, but she couldn't tell why. Her fingers curled tightly into Ves's shirt, and she swayed where she sat, unstable and not sure what was causing it. Everything seemed further away than a moment ago, even her own thoughts. "How do I do it? Help me—please."
A steady arm wrapped around her middle, bracing her against a larger body—Cyrus. He knelt beside her, pressed knee-to-knee and hip-to-hip. “Breathe, Stellulam. Deep breaths, with me." She could indeed feel his chest rise and fall, steady, even. “Focus here for a moment. My magic—you feel it?"
She could only muster the wherewithal to nod. She'd felt it the moment he was beside her: power, vigor, life. A sharp and painful contrast with Vesryn under her hands. Still, it was Cyrus, and if there was anyone in the world she trusted to know what to do, it was her brother. He could help—Cyrus could help. The iron solidity of the thought was enough to slow her breathing, even if she couldn't quite match his.
“Good. Now channel it. From me to you, and you to him. Go on; you won't hurt me." And indeed she could almost feel it being pushed at her, formless unlike the kind released as spells. He was offering it up for her to shape as she desired, to bolster her flagging reserves.
Almost unthinking in her desperation, she seized what was offered. It was an odd feeling, taking in magic from outside, but it wasn't so different from that minimal brush with the fade that all mages shared. Except there was nothing minimal about Cyrus's magic and there never had been. Even just what was passed between them felt like so much more than she'd ever handled at once; so much more than she alone was capable of. She could feel it all over, under her skin, tingling like the aftershocks of a chain lightning spell. No wonder they were so natural to his hands.
Controlling it was a gargantuan task; she could almost feel it fighting her, like it was a conscious thing with desires and needs, one that needed out. Estella shuddered once, but wrested it into the shape she wanted, pulling in a hard, fast breath and releasing the magic on the exhale, willing the life back into her beloved.
Her fingertips actually sparked when they lit this time, the color of the magic changed until it was as much blue as purple, and left her in an abrupt jolt, one that would have pitched her backwards if not for Cy's steady hold on her. The palm she'd laid flat against Ves's chest felt hot; wisps of smoke rose from the fabric of his tunic underneath her skin.
But the superficial burn she'd no doubt left in the same shape on his skin was nothing to her—because she felt it. A flutter first, and then an erratic jump. And then—and then.
A heartbeat.
She collapsed back into Cy's hold, unable to keep herself upright any longer on her own.
Ves suddenly gasped and moved, gulping in the air like it was water and he was dying of thirst. His head lifted and then fell back down to rest on the stone and metal floor beneath them. He blinked rapidly, clearly disoriented and still in a fair amount of pain, but he was alive. Very much alive.
Behind Estella, Astraia released a breath she'd probably been holding the whole time, coming forward and setting down her staff. "Hold still, Ves." She lit a healing spell in her hands, starting to tend to the burn on his chest. The magic was soothing enough that he stopped fighting to move, and the signs of pain etched on his face began to relax.
Soon it was quiet again, the only sounds being the soft trickle of Astraia's magic at work, and the barely audible hum coming from above, where whatever was left of Saraya remained. Ves's eyes were fixed on the light. "What happened? Was... was I..."
“Dead? For a little while." Cyrus's reply was void of all humor; he carefully eased Estella back into a more comfortable sitting position, but he didn't move away, perhaps anticipating that she still required support. The arm he'd been bracing her with shifted to rub gently at her back. “Stellulam restarted your heart."
Estella scrubbed her hands up and down her face a few times. She didn't want to interfere with Astraia's work, and she probably couldn't move much just now even if she wanted to, but she smiled a little. "Cy helped." The words came out slurred and indistinct, fatigue weighing down her tongue and the sheer panic and uncertainty of the minuted prior rendering her unable to find the wherewithal to say anything more illuminating just yet.
"That's..." Whatever word Ves was looking for, he couldn't find it. Unbelievable. Remarkable. Alarming, perhaps. After that he said nothing, and for a moment all of them could simply focus on getting their breath back, and simply being in this moment. Ves was alive, but...
"She's gone." The words were a heavy admittance, like a new weight of some kind had just settled upon his chest. And as if on cue, the light hanging over their heads began to dim. One blue ember at a time faded and vanished into darkness, until every last one flickered out, and only Astraia's magelight remained. "She's gone," he repeated.
With a soft groan as she tried to shift, Estella managed to get close enough to take his hand, watching the last pieces of Saraya fade away. Her breath shuddered; she squeezed Ves's fingers.
"I know," she murmured. "I'm sorry."
That didn't actually make it any easier to do the thing that was definitely going to kill her friend. Especially not with her own magic. She'd been afraid of just this situation before—that something she might do might have such visceral, personal consequences, and the idea that she was effectively going to destroy Saraya was a difficult one to swallow. Even if she'd volunteered.
Still—at least it wasn't something Vesryn had to do.
"It's probably best if you lie down," she advised, though the benefit would be just as much on her end of things as his. She had no idea what kind of reaction this was going to cause, or how much pain would be involved, but it was a safe bet that it was going to hurt. No other interference with the connection had ever been totally benign, not since Zethlasan started it years ago. Estella could feel a tremor in her hands, but she stilled it, squeezing her fingers into fists and easing them again. Her eyes sought and found Khari's.
"While everyone else works the magic, I need you to be here. This is... delicate, and it might not work so well if he moves." She didn't want to say 'please stay here so you can hold down the person I love most if I hurt him badly enough he thrashes,' but it was the thought, one she hoped Khari would understand without any further explanation.
Once everyone was in position, Estella settled next to Ves's shoulder, reaching out to lay her fingers softly there. Contact made it just a little easier, and considering how complicated this was all going to be, she needed every little advantage she could muster. Truthfully, she wasn't even exactly sure how she was going to go about this, or what it required, but maybe getting a better sense for how things were would point her in the right direction.
It was alien, the feeling of two completely different entities in overlapping space. Saraya had always been enough a part of Vesryn that she'd shared his vital signs, his felt existence. But now it was like... they weren't completely separate, but it was as though two pages in a book that had been stuck together were coming apart, starting at the edges, which curled now in two directions. That was the only way she could describe the feeling it gave her.
Her eyes eased shut, and she focused on that. It took a great deal of careful searching, but eventually she found a starting point: the pain of the connection itself. They were beginning to experience it differently, where before their mutual anchor to Ves's body meant they felt it as basically the same. Shared dreams, shared feelings. Estella pulled in a bracing breath, and began to untangle the weave.
She didn't have untangle for long before the ritual chamber itself seemed to take notice. Likely the mages that had done this originally used the same kind of magic, probably much more confidently... and with much greater cruelty. But the runestones appeared to be part of it, as their symbols flared to life, the magic the other mages were letting flow into them spurring them on. They latched onto the target of Estella's magic, and pulled.
A bolt of panic shot through her—she tried to gentle the pull, but like iron filaments to magnetized stone, the forces at work simply would not be denied, even by her.
Instantly Ves gasped in pain, his back involuntarily arching as his limbs seized up, and fought against Khari's hold. It was a good thing she was there to keep him pinned, or he would've moved far too much already. There were tears already springing to his eyes, and he almost seemed to be choking on his own breath, but he managed to utter a single word.
"S-steady."
Estella made a soft sound, not by conscious choice, expressing her distress perhaps more eloquently than she'd have otherwise had time for, but she did her best to follow the direction, too keep unwinding the places where they were still bound, prizing them apart with the magical equivalent of delicate, dexterous fingers.
A few moments longer and the color of his skin started to seem unnatural. He was turning blue, almost glowing with it, the light coming from within him rather than any source in the room. It grew brighter and brighter, and she could feel that the pain was increasing alongside it. He should've passed out by now, but the spell itself seemed to be keeping him from it.
Estella's vision blurred; she blinked away the forming tears, setting her jaw and clenching her teeth. She couldn't stop, and she definitely couldn't let this be for nothing.
And then the light erupted from within him, not from his throat or his eyes or any specific orifice, but from every pore in his skin. He screamed in pain, drowning out the sound of the magic pulling him apart from Saraya. The light seemed to solidify, floating embers in blue that lifted into the air past her and Khari, collecting and gathering on the ceiling. That had to be Saraya, forced to leave the host that had housed her for so long.
Eventually Ves's screams faded to nothing, and the last of the light left him, until all of it remained hovering above them, illuminating the entire ritual chamber in blue. Beneath Stel's hand, Ves lay perfectly still, his head lolled to the side, his eyes shut as though he were sleeping.
The tense muscles in her body went slack, slumping her shoulders without her consent. She hadn't felt this drained in a long time, perhaps because of the particular combination of emotional and physical tolls. Swallowing, she shifted her eyes to the ceiling, but only for a moment. Her hands were shaking now, and no amount of discipline was going to stop them. Just—she just had to be sure. Estella's fingers sought the pulse point on his neck.
Nothing.
At first she thought she'd just somehow missed the right spot, or that her shaking was making it impossible to feel what was there. But a second, more deliberate attempt sucked the air right from her lungs.
Nothing.
A hard lurch nearly brought up the contents of her stomach. "No." Had she not been careful enough? Had she done something wrong? Had the attempt been doomed from the start? More of them lurked, but Estella shoved them all away, rising to her knees and leaning over Ves. "No, no, no."
“Stel?" Khari's eyes had been drawn by the coalescing light, but the brokenness of Estella's tone must have returned her attention to her immediate left. She shifted, reaching as if to put a hand on her shoulder, but something brought her up short. Ves's state, perhaps. “Stel, is he—"
"Start his heart." That was Harellan, having caught onto the situation perhaps more quickly than most would have. His tone was sharp, urgent. "Quickly, there isn't much time."
Start his...?
Estella shook herself. Start his heart. If Harellan was telling her to do it, it had to be possible. Her magic had to be capable of it. Placing one hand back on his shoulder, she gently moved Khari away with the other to clear herself space to work. Her breaths were short and shallow, panic she didn't even properly notice overtaking her. It was hard to focus on anything but the vast nothing where they were connected, the feeling of the absence of a life where moments ago there had been not one, but two under her fingertips. Start his heart. Start his heart.
Instinct took over; Estella pushed the magic, less concerned with the subtleties and more with the sheer overwhelming need to feel something again. To know that life was in his limbs and behind his eyelids. It washed over him like a wave over the shore, purplish light dissipating like mist. Nothing. Again. Still nothing.
"How?" she demanded, voice cracking beneath the strain. Her vision was darkening, but she couldn't tell why. Her fingers curled tightly into Ves's shirt, and she swayed where she sat, unstable and not sure what was causing it. Everything seemed further away than a moment ago, even her own thoughts. "How do I do it? Help me—please."
A steady arm wrapped around her middle, bracing her against a larger body—Cyrus. He knelt beside her, pressed knee-to-knee and hip-to-hip. “Breathe, Stellulam. Deep breaths, with me." She could indeed feel his chest rise and fall, steady, even. “Focus here for a moment. My magic—you feel it?"
She could only muster the wherewithal to nod. She'd felt it the moment he was beside her: power, vigor, life. A sharp and painful contrast with Vesryn under her hands. Still, it was Cyrus, and if there was anyone in the world she trusted to know what to do, it was her brother. He could help—Cyrus could help. The iron solidity of the thought was enough to slow her breathing, even if she couldn't quite match his.
“Good. Now channel it. From me to you, and you to him. Go on; you won't hurt me." And indeed she could almost feel it being pushed at her, formless unlike the kind released as spells. He was offering it up for her to shape as she desired, to bolster her flagging reserves.
Almost unthinking in her desperation, she seized what was offered. It was an odd feeling, taking in magic from outside, but it wasn't so different from that minimal brush with the fade that all mages shared. Except there was nothing minimal about Cyrus's magic and there never had been. Even just what was passed between them felt like so much more than she'd ever handled at once; so much more than she alone was capable of. She could feel it all over, under her skin, tingling like the aftershocks of a chain lightning spell. No wonder they were so natural to his hands.
Controlling it was a gargantuan task; she could almost feel it fighting her, like it was a conscious thing with desires and needs, one that needed out. Estella shuddered once, but wrested it into the shape she wanted, pulling in a hard, fast breath and releasing the magic on the exhale, willing the life back into her beloved.
Her fingertips actually sparked when they lit this time, the color of the magic changed until it was as much blue as purple, and left her in an abrupt jolt, one that would have pitched her backwards if not for Cy's steady hold on her. The palm she'd laid flat against Ves's chest felt hot; wisps of smoke rose from the fabric of his tunic underneath her skin.
But the superficial burn she'd no doubt left in the same shape on his skin was nothing to her—because she felt it. A flutter first, and then an erratic jump. And then—and then.
A heartbeat.
She collapsed back into Cy's hold, unable to keep herself upright any longer on her own.
Ves suddenly gasped and moved, gulping in the air like it was water and he was dying of thirst. His head lifted and then fell back down to rest on the stone and metal floor beneath them. He blinked rapidly, clearly disoriented and still in a fair amount of pain, but he was alive. Very much alive.
Behind Estella, Astraia released a breath she'd probably been holding the whole time, coming forward and setting down her staff. "Hold still, Ves." She lit a healing spell in her hands, starting to tend to the burn on his chest. The magic was soothing enough that he stopped fighting to move, and the signs of pain etched on his face began to relax.
Soon it was quiet again, the only sounds being the soft trickle of Astraia's magic at work, and the barely audible hum coming from above, where whatever was left of Saraya remained. Ves's eyes were fixed on the light. "What happened? Was... was I..."
“Dead? For a little while." Cyrus's reply was void of all humor; he carefully eased Estella back into a more comfortable sitting position, but he didn't move away, perhaps anticipating that she still required support. The arm he'd been bracing her with shifted to rub gently at her back. “Stellulam restarted your heart."
Estella scrubbed her hands up and down her face a few times. She didn't want to interfere with Astraia's work, and she probably couldn't move much just now even if she wanted to, but she smiled a little. "Cy helped." The words came out slurred and indistinct, fatigue weighing down her tongue and the sheer panic and uncertainty of the minuted prior rendering her unable to find the wherewithal to say anything more illuminating just yet.
"That's..." Whatever word Ves was looking for, he couldn't find it. Unbelievable. Remarkable. Alarming, perhaps. After that he said nothing, and for a moment all of them could simply focus on getting their breath back, and simply being in this moment. Ves was alive, but...
"She's gone." The words were a heavy admittance, like a new weight of some kind had just settled upon his chest. And as if on cue, the light hanging over their heads began to dim. One blue ember at a time faded and vanished into darkness, until every last one flickered out, and only Astraia's magelight remained. "She's gone," he repeated.
With a soft groan as she tried to shift, Estella managed to get close enough to take his hand, watching the last pieces of Saraya fade away. Her breath shuddered; she squeezed Ves's fingers.
"I know," she murmured. "I'm sorry."