Allegiance (Causal Enchantment #3)(40)
Author: K.A. Tucker

With a stone-faced gesture, she pointed to the man to her left. “Meet Incendia.”

I felt my brow furrow as I translated the word. It was familiar. Latin. Incendia … that means … A flaming rope lashed toward me from the male Fate’s fingertips, quickly coiling around my arms, snaking over my torso, until my entire body was engulfed in flame. Before I had a chance to scream, the flames disappeared. “Fire …” I finished my thought as a gasp, swallowing my panic.

“This is Ventus,” she continued, pointing to the other female Fate next to Incendia. I looked to Ventus to see only a tiny smile before her body twisted and morphed into a miniature tornadic funnel. She slammed into me, lifting me off my feet, that deafening freight train sound filling my ears again. As with Incendia before, the funnel suddenly disappeared, dropping me safely onto my circular platform. “Wind,” I translated for myself.

“Unda is behind you.” I barely turned before a giant wall of water crashed into me, sending me flying backwards, flipping head over heels as if caught in the base of a waterfall. I sensed my body plummet to the depths of the universe with no hope of resurface. In another instant, I was standing on my feet on the platform again, not an inch of me damp.

I only just had time to gather my bearings before a mountain of soil rained down on me from above, entombing me, cutting off all access to the oxygen my mortal shape required. I waited for the soil to vanish. I prayed for it to vanish. Just when I thought I’d met my breaking point, just when I was sure I would pass out from lack of oxygen, the dirt fell away to reveal the female Fate once again.

“And I am Terra,” she stated, with the tiny globe in her hand again. Earth …

With a bead of sweat running down my back, I appraised all four of them again. Fire, wind, water, earth. The four elements. They were what magic embodied. All powerful. All deadly. And based on their greetings, all violent. I paused to calm my nerves.

“So there are four of you?” I asked again.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not.”

Perhaps four Fates. Two female, two male …

“Do not dare label us,” Terra warned, crispness in her voice as she plucked thoughts out of my head. “We can be whatever we want, whomever we want. We aren’t bound by your laws.” Instantly, the four of them morphed and eight scaly, enormous dragons appeared in their place, kaleidoscopic snake eyes watching me with evil intent, as puffs of flame escaped their nostrils.

“You’re …,” I began to speak and they quickly morphed into four different creatures: Incendia, a bear; Ventus, a mermaid; Unda, a gigantic tarantula; and Terra, an alienlike creature. All different, but all maintaining those same variegated eyes through their transformations.

They are whatever they want to be, I surmised. How would I get information from such evasive creatures? I decided on a fairly simple and unobtrusive question. “When did you give me my powers?”

Terra twisted her lips as if deciding how to answer, or if she would answer. “On your fourteenth birthday,” she finally confirmed.

Fourteen. I remembered that birthday well. By breakfast, I was exploding cups and saucers without thought. By dinner I accidently set fire to the neighbor’s barn. Within days, my powers rivaled the most advanced of my classmates. In weeks, my tutors.

“And what were you hoping to accomplish by giving them to me?”

“Accomplish?” Terra chuckled. “There is nothing to accomplish. There just … is. We just … are.”

I scowled, earning a giggle from Unda, her face alight with excitement over my frustration.

“Why did you come here? To play games or to ask us for help?” Incendia demanded to know, crossing long lean arms over his chest.

Play games? They were the ones playing games! I breathed in through my nose, held it for a moment in my lungs, and then pushed it back out. “You know exactly why I came. Why did you bring me here?”

“We do not answer questions. We give answers,” he barked in response and my head jerked to one side with the force of his tone, as if he somehow slapped me.

Any rational person should be on their knees, begging for mercy. I had lost my ability to be rational long ago. “No answers? Not even for your special person?” I retorted, my mouth twisting sourly.

Incendia scoffed. “You are Terra’s, not mine.” So they each had their own ‘chosen ones.’

“Come now,” Terra said soothingly, a smile on her face as she spoke to her counterparts. “We may as well give her something. She’s given us so much.”

What the Hell have I ever given them?

Terra turned to me, smiling in response. Her arms fanned out over the bowl of worlds. “What have you given us? A break from this monotony! These worlds,” she reached down, scooping up a handful, “so many, and all the same! The same requests, the same wishes, the same pleading …” She said, shaking her head as she tossed the worlds back in. Popping sounds filled the air as they crashed into others, breaking apart. Destroying life. Destroying existence …

I forced that sick feeling in my gut down, focusing on my own needs. Information. Respite. “And how have I done that?”

“By being you! Reckless, stubborn, persistent Sofie!”

I frowned. “I don’t understand.”

Terra began walking around the semicircle, passing each of the other elements as she spoke, her hand waving across the vessel. “We govern over existence. Each of us has a universe.”

The dividers in the wheel—they now made sense! Four quarters, four Fates, four universes.

“That’s right,” Terra explained. “Each one of these universes is identical. Each one has a planet just like yours.” Four universes, four planets. That meant there wasn’t just one parallel planet to Earth. There were four!

“She catches on quickly,” Ventus chimed in, but by the irritation in his voice, I don’t think he saw that as a good thing.

“Four versions of the same world times how many worlds …” Terra continued, ignoring him. “Don’t think you are unique or clever, or somehow you wish for things that others do not. The same spells come to us, over and over again. Immortality, wealth, beauty, youth, revenge …”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Unda droned. “Wrath, greed, sloth, pride, lust, envy, and gluttony. The seven sins—over and over again. You’re such dull creatures. It becomes …”

“Tedious after a while.” Terra completed her circle around the bowl, ending where she began to finish Unda’s sentence.

“And you must answer them all?”

“No … not in the least.”

“So … why don’t you just ignore the requests, if they’re so tedious?” I pressed.

“Yes, we do much of the time. But we can’t ignore all. What else would we do, then?” With hands widespread over the bowl and orbs focused, Terra stated, “This is our purpose.”

My head was spinning by now. I’m sure there was a simpler way to explain all this. “We maintain equilibrium. Where there is life, there must be death. Happiness for sadness. Love for hate,” Terra explained.

“For whom?”

Terra’s brow quirked, the first sign of confusion I’d seen from any of them. “For whom?”

“Yes. Who decided you needed to maintain the equilibrium?” Again, that bewildered look. “Is there a higher power than the Fates?”

“We answer to no one!” Incendia features suddenly tightened into a savage glare.

Well, I guess that’s a touchy subject. Whether there was someone or something higher was still unclear, though I had a feeling perhaps a higher power was in control, beyond these Fates. Incendia’s eyes narrowed as he read my mind.

“So, you just answer us when you feel like it?” I asked.

Terra smiled. “More or less. When one of you casts your spell, we decide how that spell will be delivered, how the course of fate will be changed. If it will be changed.”

Change the course of fate … the blood in my veins suddenly sparked. “Yes, about that.” Now I remembered why I was here. What had driven me to demand to see these wretched things. I crossed my arms, leveling Terra with a stare. “I don’t recall asking you to bind a baby to a deadly curse, or resurrect my lover. Or kill him in the first place!”

Four arrogant smiles answered me. I wanted to punch them all, but I knew they’d eviscerate me if I so much as moved.

“The rules are simple,” Terra began. “Listen closely, for we’ll only explain once. If we answer your request, we must do what you wish. How we choose to do so is up to us. That’s part of the fun.”

“Fun?” My voice turned shaky. Four universes, four games. Mage was right. This was all a game! I was their entertainment! “And of course you couldn’t ever simply give us what we want,” I added bitterly.

Bewilderment flashed across Terra’s face. “I suppose we could but … how monotonous this burden would become for us!”

“You killed Nathan because you were bored?” I shouted.

Her composure was enough to drive someone off a cliff. “No … you killed Nathan. Remember?”

Rage tore through me. I wanted to leap forward and attack her. I pictured doing it. The picture was immediately obliterated by a wave of crippling pain. My knees buckled and I crumbled to the pedestal, panting as it took its time to subside.

“Finished?” Incendia purred with a wicked smile. “I am the one who decided to eliminate Nathan. That was my twist to the spell. That’s how the game works. Each of us has our chosen ones and we can grant the spell but not without council and input from the others. That way, no one is favored.”

“So,” I said, still winded from my warning, “for every Causal Enchantment I come to you with, you will grant it but not without perverting it into something so skewed from what I asked for, it is more a punishment. To what end?”

“We’ve already explained that,” Incendia answered coolly.

I struggled to my feet. “Oh, yes. That’s right. For your entertainment.” I spat out each bitter word. “When will it end?”

“When only one chosen is left standing.”

“So one of you is supporting me while three of you are always trying to break me.”

“Basically,” Ventus answered flatly, shrugging. “Nothing personal.”

Yeah, right … “And so how many of these ‘chosen ones’ are left?”

“Two,” Unda answered. “You and Incendia’s.”

I’m in a competition and I don’t even know who my competitors are. A tiny part of me—the aggressive Sofie—swelled with pride over being in the final two. Whoever this person was, they were important. “So either I break or yours breaks,” I surmised. “And then what?”

Incendia shrugged noncommittally. “We start again. We choose another planet. We find our players, and we begin.”

How many of these “games” had they played? How many worlds destroyed? “And Earth? My world?”

“We never grant the same request in the exact same way twice. That’s a rule,” Terra began to explain in an authoritative voice. “But, no matter how we choose to play the game, all paths will lead to one fate. Your world will end, my dear Sofie. That I can assure you.”

A desperate numb feeling washed over me as I regarded Terra more closely. She was both my protector and my punisher. Without her gift of choice and her magic, I would not be a vampire. I would have died long ago, buried by Nathan. With her gift, I have suffered countless injuries, caused pain to others time and time again. And now they were telling me all of it was hopeless.

“Can’t I buy some more time?” I asked, my voice hollow.

“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” Ventus answered, that caginess back, indicating my time for asking questions had come to an end.

“Now that we have given you some information, what is it you want from us?” Terra asked.

What? Seriously? “You know exactly what I want!”

“Yes, we do. But you must ask it and then we will decide how we will grant it. We cannot simply interfere with fate at our choosing. We have no autonomous power over the worlds. Our only mode of influence is through spellcasters and their requests.”

I hesitated, this piece of information highly interesting. How on earth should I request them to reverse all that they had done? Any request I made would be poisoned seven ways from Sunday. The mess could grow more serious than it was today. A thought struck me.

“And if I don’t? If I just stop casting spells? This game might never end, right?”

Four expressions turned stony and I realized I had found a loophole. I smiled. If I didn’t cast spells, they didn’t have a game. If they didn’t have a game … Had I found a bargaining chip?

A blur, a shift. Suddenly our surroundings changed. I now stood within Nathan’s gardens, crisp summer night air drifting across my bare shoulders. Out from behind the oak tree stepped a tall, lean, man. My insides melted. Nathan. Nathan as I remembered him. Nathan with chocolate brown irises. Nathan who recognized me, loved me …