Rexei managed to get the scroll the right way up, skimmed quickly over the instructions at the top, and started chanting. “I summon the spirit of my God . . . dess,” she called out, quickly adjusting the lines to better match this moment. She also tightened her gut in the way the Actors Guild recommended for making sure audience members in the farthest rows would always be able to hear. “I summon the will of my people’s Patron!”
“I summon the spirit of my Goddess!” she heard someone shout, echoing her words. A quick glance up showed it was the brunette with the green viewing crystals perched on his nose. He quickly circled his hand, looking at the others, the ones who had come to rescue her. “Come on—help her! Give the Gearman your strength! I summon the spirit of my Goddess!”
The others quickly if raggedly repeated his words, then continued with her second line. “. . . I summon the will of my people’s Patron!”
Quickly looking back down at the scroll in her hands, Rexei read off the rest of the lines, pausing between each one for the others to recite them in her wake. With each verse asserted, she could feel something welling up within her, and she clung to it, along with her image, her belief, in her Goddess.
“I bless this land in the name of my Goddess . . .
I bring the Goodness of the Heavens and their power to smite!
I sanctify this ground as holy in the name of Guildra,
And I purify the air, the rain, the day, and the night!
I am a believer with faith in my Goddess;
I believe with all my strength that She will protect us.
I bless this place in the name of Holy Guildra
And in the name of the Guilds and the values by which She exists.
I cast back into the Nethers all demonic intrusions,
And by my faith and by Her Great Blessings,
I seal now the Veil, cutting off all darkness and blight!”
Nurem screamed and clawed hard at the trembling, visibly weakening wards. Rexei felt only the tiniest tremor of fear, though. With the invocation’s assertions had come an answering, controlled anger. All the pain of having lost her mother and having to flee her family, all the stubborn determination to survive despite being so terribly young and alone, all the maturity she had learned and the lessons she had absorbed in how to listen and heed, obey and learn, how to create and believe first and foremost in herself, and now . . . and now, to believe in her Goddess . . . who stood with her, behind her, supporting her . . .
This demon was not going to win.
“I call upon Guildra, my Patron, my Goddess
To cast you back into the Netherhell from whence you came,
And to seal forever this ground as Holy, not profane!
Be gone in the Name of Guildra!
Be gone in the Name of the Heavens!
Be gone in the Name of the people of Guildara!
Be! You! Gone!”
She flung up her arm, shoving her palm heel-first through the air. Something coalesced inside of her as she did so, and thrust outward with the force of her arm. A golden spark, shimmering with hope and faith and trust, seared straight for the weakest point in that claw-stretched, cracking ward—and slammed Nurem the Monster back down through his bubble, down through the half-seen hole in the world, all the way down into the Netherhells. Golden sparks—smaller and less powerful, but appearing in the dozens, the scores—flung themselves inward from her fellow Guildarans, each a tiny spark of faith that caged the darkness, squeezed it down, down, down . . .
“Be Thou Gone from this Blessed Place!” Rexei asserted, putting every last inch of her life and her will, her magic, her music, and her faith, into her command.
A final, fat spark shot forward, expanded, devoured . . . and erased the dark stain of a sparklike rift from their side of existence. The contracting bubble of Light burst outward in a bright spray of harmless pale gold sparks. Where they fell, they erased all traces of paint, scrubbing away most of the runes on the ground.
“Well done, Gearman,” the woman at her side praised. She rested her gauntlet-covered hand on Rexei’s shoulder. “Well done, and well managed for prophecy’s sake.”
“Prophecy, hell!” Captain Torhammer snapped. “I recognized five of those places in those mirrors. We need to get after them!”
“No.” Rexei hadn’t realized she was going to speak, but the mention of prophecy . . . she could not remember the time or the place, but she knew that this was important. “No. Let them go. They will be dealt with. We have our own messes to manage.”
“That’s not your call to make—” Torhammer started to argue.
A chime rang softly right next to her ear, startling a yelp from Rexei and a visible twitch from the captain. Orana gave both of them a sheepish look. She tucked her sword inside her robe and pulled it shut, making the blade somehow vanish, then stuck her hands into her sleeves. When she pulled them out, the left one had no gauntlet on it, nor a vambrace, though it did have a bracelet with a strange hinged top. Flipping it up, she moved away a few steps as she spoke. “Yes, Pelai . . . ?”
Pelai . . . why is that name familiar? Rexei wondered. The others were picking their way down toward the two of them, foremost the sharp-nosed, green-lensed fellow with the curly hair. At first it had been brown, but now . . . it was reddish gold? When did that happen? It must’ve been an illusion spell. A smart choice around priest-mages . . .
“Rexei, are you okay?” he asked her, stepping through the gaps in the speckled remnants of paint, the ones which the swordswoman had made. “Do you . . . do you remember who I am?”
She nodded her head, then shook it, wrinkling her nose. “Um . . . sorry, no. I’m okay now, but . . .” Pausing, she looked at him. He was only a few inches taller than she, and she knew she had never seen him before, but . . . Awkward silence stretched between them as something in his gaze turned sad and regretful. It hurt her to see it, hurt her deep down inside in the same place where she could feel Guildra residing. “I . . . don’t know if this is going to sound really strange or creepy or . . . or like I’ve slipped a cog and broken some gear teeth, here, but . . .”
“. . . But?” he asked, brows raising in encouragement for her to continue.
“But . . . I feel like I know you,” Rexei forced herself to admit. “I know I don’t, but . . . I feel like I know you, and . . . like . . . I feel like I care for you . . . which is really silly and stupid, because we obviously haven’t ever—”
His fingers covered her lips, even as his own mouth curved in a smile. “You do know me. Or you did. We knew and liked each other a lot. Unfortunately, you had to take a magically binding spell to forget all about me, and everything around me, so you wouldn’t betray me to the ex-priests who just fled here.”