Phantasia

The Patriarch was laughing out loud. His knights were laughing out loud. Wotan was laughing out loud. Only Apeliotes, her fellow faerie, kept a straight face, his water element showing through.

“I’m serious,” she continued, “Why can’t you?”

“Humans will never understand one another,” said Wotan, “We don’t even understand our own selves.”

“I will not stand beside one who threatens my power,” said the Patriarch, “There can be only one future for this world, and it will be Godhand’s.”

Phantasia sighed and dematerialised herself, her feet slipping through the floor. “I guess there’s no saving you then,” she said, “I hoped there was a chance people could help one another, but…”

“Slip away with your dreams,” said the Patriarch, “Return to your world and leave the future to those of us with the vision and power to shape it.”

Phantasia, now down to her waist, looked up at him with sad eyes, mimicking as best she could the look of child about to burst into tears. “Then you won’t let me friends go free?” she asked.

“Their suffering will serve to make me even stronger.”

She made sure that, as her face sunk through the floor, the last thing the Patriarch saw was her fake tears. She could see him relishing her sorrow as she fell away into the floor below, and felt his aura shift as his attention returned to focus on Wotan and Apeliotes.

Perfect.

After all, he was only human, and for all the magic he imbued himself with, he didn’t have the same senses as a faerie – as Phantasia. When she burst out of the floor behind him, all his focus was ahead on his rival. She caught him mid-sentence as he was drawing his energy inwards for another magical assault.

“…associating with them was your worst mistake!”

Phantasia placed her hand on his back.

She’d done it before with her friends, first instinctively and later, after beginning to understand her abilities, with intent – embracing her aura with theirs, funnelling positive power into their angst-ridden hearts and easing the darkness that consumed them. It didn’t always work and she’d only tried it when they were aware – and never when they rejected it – but again there was only one way to test these things!

The knights lunged for her with their swords but were halted mid-attack by Apeliotes, who bound them once again with his sealing abilities. As they struggled to break free of their ethereal chains, Phantasia flipped over the Patriarch and spun to face him, pulling herself free from his aura in the process. His face was frozen, his breathing shallow, and the magical lines dulled. Drained of power, Phantasia staggered backwards.

The Patriarch struggled to speak. “Y-you. I can’t…”

He was immobilized. Phantasia had managed to purify his aura of contamination as she’d intended, revealing just how much he had embraced the darkness. All that was left of his spirit was a hard shell, and now he was drained of his chi there was little he could do. For all the advantages a physical body had, it was still useless while it lacked energy.

Until the aura began to grow back.

Phantasia crawled backwards as the Patriarch’s aura began to reform. For all her power, there was still one thing she’d forgotten about the complex rules that governed these things, and right now she was cursing herself as she imagined Faye chiding her for such an amateur mistake. The physical body was so coveted by immaterial demons because it gave them an anchor to the physical world, and it was the same with humans. Unlike the immaterial leansídhe, the Patriarch had his anchor, his shield against Phantasia’s purification. Physical bodies regenerated mana.

Phantasia, on the other hand, couldn’t regenerate without a source of uncorrupted mana, so she was forced to cower as the Patriarch returned to full power in a matter of moments. Another magic shield sprung up around him as Apeliotes attempted to intervene, but the Patriarch smashed the chains without effort, the magic lines throbbing to their full intensity across his face.

“An interesting creature you are,” he said, shaking free the last remnants of purity from his aura, “But still nothing more than a naïve child. I could hear you appealing to my heart. Am I capable of ‘love’, you ask?”

Phantasia grit her teeth, knowing the answer.

“My love – my faith – is what gives me power.”

Chapter 22
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