Truth Seer Book Four, page 22
“Harper, you’ve got this. You freaking have this,” Beth tried. Indecision crept into her tone. Weakness, too. She was getting stronger – and she certainly knew how to use more powers as a soul shard. She wasn’t an infinite source of energy.
Neither was I.
I took a step. My knee buckled. I grabbed my head. Pressure built and built. The kind of pressure that doesn’t fizzle – it bangs.
“Harper, Harper,” Beth tried. “Dammit. You have to snap your connection to your reflection. Do it now. Do it before you die—”
Too late. Everything became black. I felt like a robot someone had thrown in a trash compactor. Why turn me off when they could destroy me?
My blood… as everything became black and the ringing got worse, for a second I tuned in to my heartbeat. Bang. Bang. Bang.
The gap between each beat was getting wider. They felt like chasms. I couldn’t jump across. I couldn’t fly. I was on the wrong side of life, slipping back into death—
Before I could take that final plunge, something slapped me.
The ringing bang echoed through my skull. It cleared away the fog until it reminded me of one thing. My oath to my truth magic. A promise that I’d never let go of. One that defined everything I’d done and wanted to do.
I would use the truth to set my magic free. And when I was done, I’d set the rest of the city free too.
I don’t know where the strength came from, but I locked a hand down on the pavement and rose, body bucking. Sweat rained off my brow, my hair stuck to my face, and the wind whipped through my clothes. This was a pocket realm, but unfortunately it possessed the same wintry weather as the city. Snow tumbled down from the laden clouds above, and as I struggled to stand, my feet kicked through a good inch of it.
In my weak state, it only reduced my energy further. But one thing kept me going.
“Harper, run. She’s almost found us,” Beth roared.
When I didn’t move, she rammed me in the shoulder. I just lifted a hand.
I had an oath. Did my reflection? Yes, she could call on my magic. Hell, she could refine more than I ever had. Quite likely because she didn’t have to deal with my body’s weaknesses. But did she know what truth magic could actually do?
No. And I was only just learning myself.
“Beth, keep me away from her. Do what you can. It might cost you everything. I promise I’ll save you before you die.”
“I don’t care about me. You need to save yourself, Harper. Now—”
“Working on it,” I spluttered.
I squeezed my eyes closed. I forced my hand into a fist. I plunged into the heart of what it is to be true.
What must you align with for something to be true? What about abstract facts? Things like love and justice? Concepts that humans use to organize the world but have no physical correlate?
The truth must be bigger than all of that.
It felt like another realm you could align with. When you saw it, and it saw you, everything would finally make sense.
I’d never realized how big the truth was. Whenever I fought for scraps of it, it felt small and fleeting, like some disappearing honey eater on the horizon.
But the real truth was massive. It was far bigger than the world of lies. Far more importantly for me, it was much, much larger than this pocket mirror spell.
Beth kept promising me I couldn’t break complex mirror spells. I simply lacked the power. She was right. But she was also wrong.
It depended on how I attacked them.
“Harper,” Beth coughed, “I’m weakening.”
“You’ve got a little left in you,” I said. A fact. Not a guess.
“You’re right. But you are heavy as hell.”
“I don’t know if Hell weighs anything.”
“Stop being pedantic. Keep trying to defeat her. She—” Beth couldn’t finish the sentence. My reflection cracked through a window at ground level and shouldered Beth out of the way.
Beth tried to remain by my side. My reflection was stronger. She struck Beth with her elbow, and the soul shard tumbled down the street. It left me vulnerable, hardly capable of standing, almost blind, and as weak as a turtle without its shell.
My eyesight sharpened long enough to see the reflection smiling. Dangerous glee ripped across her lips as she reached for my throat. She grabbed it and lifted me up.
Her four droplets of magic still hovered above her palm. They pressed into my skin. They were me but they weren’t me. Not in this reflection spell. They wanted to return to me, but if they touched me, they’d burn me. That was a heck of a conundrum. One the reflection knew exactly how to use.
She lifted her hand back. The four drops spun brighter.
She’d punch me with them. It’d immediately deplete me and kill me.
I looked into her eyes. “It won’t work,” I said, strangely calm for someone on the edge of death.
“It won’t work,” she repeated in my exact tone. “But it already has.”
She punched me. Or at least her fist sailed close.
The truth was bigger than me. And it was much, much bigger than her.
I’d stupidly questioned whether hell weighed anything. I can tell you this – the truth certainly did. Now I’d started to accept its enormity, I appreciated there was no stronger force in all reality. Nothing heavier, nothing bigger – nothing more forceful.
Last time I’d fought my reflection by simply removing my source of magic from her. She’d re-connected to it.
Now I’d defeat her in a new way.
“Not everyone can hold the truth. Almost no one has the strength,” I found the time to mutter.
Crunch. Her fist impacted my cheek. But it wasn’t accompanied by the full force of my blood.
Often in life we spend so much time running from the truth. When we finally find it, we turn from it. It’s too heavy, inconvenient, and hard. It shines light into the corners of our lives we’d rather not see.
But it’s the only force strong enough to build our existences on.
I was telling you this now why? Shouldn’t I be dying?
Not quite.
My victorious but presumptuous reflection dropped me.
I wasn’t dead.
My brow was cut, my cheek was broken, and blood leaked out of the corner of my mouth. It didn’t stop me from smiling.
Fear crumpled my reflection’s brow. She shook her hand out. She clenched her fist, squeezing my four droplets of blood. She lanced down to a knee and punched me again. This time I lifted my own hand. I caught her fist. It stopped her from cracking my nose open. It threw me back. It didn’t kill me.
“Impossible,” she spat. “I have your blood—”
“But I still have the truth. Something you’ll never have. You’re just a reflection,” I said blankly. “Nothing more than a mere copy.”
Something was sliding into place.
My reflection couldn’t see that. She only saw an opening that wasn’t there. She roared, thrust toward me, and tried to shoulder me out of the way.
I took her blow.
She lifted her hand up and went to slap me with my four drops. I didn’t bother blocking her. Her hand struck me – and I felt almost nothing.
She cursed again. “This can’t be happening—”
“I’m afraid it is. You are nothing but a reflection. You’re not real. None of this is. You know what happens when you realize something isn’t real? It loses all power over you. It loses any semblance of a connection to the truth,” I said in a far harder tone, “and then… well, it just loses.”
I shot forward. My blood wasn’t out. Or rather I didn’t have my own drops out. I couldn’t call on any. Do that, and I’d kill myself. But for the first time I didn’t need my blood to fight back.
I just needed to shine truth like a light, eliminate the darkness, and plunge through into reality.
I struck my reflection.
I didn’t doubt myself, nor did I question my senses. On the face of it, she looked exactly like me. But for the first time I could see clearly.
She was not real.
She didn’t have a soul.
Not all real things have souls. Rocks and dirt and inanimate metal aren’t alive. That doesn’t change the fact that reality feels different. It has more truth. That’s what it’s ultimately built on.
My reflection had none.
I rammed her side, and she fell like paper to the pavement.
I leaned down on one knee as she gasped.
Bethany finally picked herself up. She couldn’t limp, but she rolled weakly over the road toward me. “You did it. I have no idea how you did it, but you freaking did it, Harper.”
“Not quite yet. I still have one lesson to hammer home.” I reached down, forced my reflection’s hand open, and pulled the blood from her.
It wasn’t a fight. It belonged to me – I knew that. I just realigned reality until it remembered that.
As the blood snapped into my hand, an interesting thing happened. Each droplet spun around one another. They looked like atoms and felt just as powerful as a paused nuclear explosion.
My reflection looked up at me with shimmering fear in her eyes. She wasn’t real. It was an act.
It still felt like staring at a mirror.
A cracked one. What does a mirror show you? Reality? A very specific sliver of reality. Because that’s the other side of the truth. There are tiny truths – there are massive ones. Technically they all link up together, but if you focus on one infinitesimally small fraction of reality, you miss the rest.
She was my reflection – a fact. She was not more powerful than me – a more important fact.
I squeezed my blood. It spun harder.
My reflection winced. “You don’t have this kind of power.”
“Who are you to say that? You are a mere copy—” I froze.
I’d been calling her my reflection all this time. She wasn’t my freaking reflection. She was a life copy, wasn’t she?
My eyes darted back and forth as I scanned her.
“What, Harper?” Beth demanded.
I reached forward, pinned my copy, and stared into her eyes. It was so obvious now. She wasn’t real. I didn’t need to question how I knew that. I simply got out of the way of my senses, and they confirmed that fact with a ringing bang. “She’s a copy, Beth. The woman who held the mirror up in front of me – she must be the life copier. And this is her work. This is just a sub mirror realm. It’s not some special place. And she,” I pointed at my reflection, “isn’t freaking real.”
My reflection snarled at me. But then she went back to looking terrified. She felt like Lady Edwina when she’d discovered me in her broken bathroom. A robot without a program to deal with her current circumstances.
I sneered, lips ticking high. “Thanks,” I said to my reflection plainly. “You finally taught me how to sense souls.” I patted her lightly on the cheek.
She still didn’t know what to do. Time to put her out of her misery.
I rocked to my feet. I held my four droplets of blood. I squeezed them. Then I let one dart out from the main group. I say let. It did what it wanted to do. I got out of its way.
It shot right through my reflection’s chest. She didn’t scream, and God knows blood didn’t splatter out. She simply disappeared. She looked like a drawing on paper someone threw too close to a fire.
This mirror spell couldn’t survive without her. It crumpled. The sound of glass cracking met my ears, and the next thing I knew, I landed down on a knee in the dusty Coliseum.
I doubted anyone even knew I’d disappeared. It was still chaos. Darkness kept sweeping through the room, too. Whenever it did, a group of aides by the door would chant and eventually force it back.
It meant no one would’ve noticed my disappearance. And they didn’t notice me as I forced my way to my feet. I grabbed Beth. I closed my hand around my blood drops. With a whisper, I commanded them to recede back into my body.
“That was close, Harper,” Beth snapped.
“That was useful,” I said over her.
She paused then chuckled. “You know, you were always this woman.”
“What does that mean?” I tucked my hair behind my ears as I navigated around several rushing aides. I exited the room. Lux and Vince weren’t in sight. They probably thought I’d already rushed away to a clinic somewhere.
Guess they didn’t know me well.
I had no intention of sitting the next part of this fight out. Not when I had my newfound skill.
I deliberately strode past the aides as close as I could get. I didn’t need to touch their shoulders. I just had to stare at them.
None of them were copies.
Bethany knew precisely what I was doing. When I was out of earshot of the vamps, she asked, “Any of them copies?”
I shook my head.
“Time to check on Vince and Lux. I wonder if they’ll be harder to detect though, Harper.”
“Why would you say that?” I waved a hand in front of my face as if I were gathering something amorphous. “It’s automatic now.”
“A copier’s magic is as strong as the thing they are copying.”
I frowned deeper. “I thought copies were imperfect?”
“Let me rephrase that. When you copy a very strong thing, the subsequent copy is stronger than the copy of a weak thing.”
I tried not to glaze over. “Thanks for rephrasing that. I feel like you’ve hammered holes in my head.”
She sighed. “If you copy an ant, it’s not as strong as the copy of a demon. Got it?”
“Yeah.” I frowned. “But I think… look, if I get close enough to Vince or Lux, I think I’ll be able to figure out if they are copies.”
“Less thinking and more action.”
Indeed.
An aide rushed up to me. I knew them by sight. They worked for Vince. “What are you still doing here? We thought you went home. You have been instructed by the head to go home immediately.”
I looked at the guy. I nodded. “I’ll take my car—”
“You’ll take a portal.”
The guy found a more powerful aide. Together, they created a portal. I looked at both of them. Neither were copies. They could work for Lord Omega though.
I grabbed Beth close. I didn’t need to say it. I knew what she was thinking. We could create our own portals now. It was hard and costly, but if they sent us to Lord Omega, hopefully we could just escape again.
They didn’t. We arrived on the porch of the house.
Snow had settled thicker up here. We weren’t that much higher than the city. It still made a difference. It was heaped against the porch beams, and a little had touched the door. Its frozen embrace glittered under dusk’s ebbing color.
I immediately pivoted on my foot. My truck was back.
I walked straight over to it.
“We should at least mention this to Virginia,” Beth said.
“Go inside and tell her. And get me something from the fridge.”
“Something? Harper, I thought you knew your mind now.”
“Knowing your mind doesn’t mean you know what you want every moment. It means knowing your priorities and always keeping yourself aligned with the greater truths,” I snapped with the knowledge of someone who’d learned that through blood, sweat, and tears. “Plus, you have good taste. I trust you.”
She chuckled and disappeared.
I sat in my truck and smartly turned on the seat heater. I sank into its warm embrace. Beth didn’t take long to return. She had a brown paper bag in her magical grip.
She flew into the car after I opened the door for her. She dumped the paper bag in my lap.
I opened it. It was a sandwich. I bit my lip. “Something tastier would’ve been appreciated.”
“It’s a salami sandwich with extra mayonnaise. It’s on theme.”
“What?” I grabbed it and crammed it into my mouth, not realizing how hungry I was until the first few morsels struck my taste buds.
Zip and bang. My brain said chew, and I freaking tore through the sandwich like a sabre-tooth tiger to a tiny little herbivore. “What do you mean it’s on theme?” I thumbed some crumbs from my lips.
“We’ll start with Lux first. Vince will be too hard. The Council is in disarray. Lux must’ve returned home.”
“Right.” I didn’t question her. I turned the car on. I did a U-turn and sped off down the dirt road. As clouds of gravel rose up behind us, the snow settled from above. It didn’t chill me to the bones. The thought the life copier was out there did.
Had I seen her sufficiently to recognize her? She’d clearly become desperate. She wouldn’t have attacked me personally if she thought I’d ever escape from that reflection spell.
But I had.
I hadn’t seen much of her. But had I seen her hand?
“Concentrate, Harper. The road is icy. I’ll drive.” Beth, without waiting for me to agree, shot into my lap. She stretched herself.
I was glad this car was magical. If a passing motorist saw her, God knows what they’d think.
Come to think of it, there was so much magic in this town, I must’ve passed it when I was normal. Had I just ignored it? Had my brain registered it then thought, nah, and continued with its complicated, busy day?
But there comes a point in everyone’s life when you can’t ignore what’s really in front of your face.
We reached Lux’s establishment. I parked in the laneway. I drummed my fist on the steering wheel, almost banged the horn, then slipped out of the car.
Snow had piled up beside Lux’s back door.
I opened it.
I saw his kitchen staff. They stared back at me. I imagine news had spread. Nobody attacked me or said anything confrontational. Everyone watched me.
Hell, they all watched one another, too. There was a serious suspicious undercurrent.
I said nothing. I strode through them. No one stopped me. Fortunately, I didn’t detect any life copiers. Maybe the life copier had been less active than I thought. Lady Edwina was the only copy I’d encountered – apart from my reflections.
My stomach progressively tightened as I strode to Lux’s office. He’d better be inside.
I reached it, and rather than knock, I opened the door and walked in.
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