I couldn't beat Alyssara.
The thought was a cold, absolute fact, a shard of ice in my mind that her power had solidified. I was trapped, pinned by her warping Reality Control, my Peak Radiant power a child's shout against her hurricane. The cottage of her fantasy had been replaced by a cruder, plainer prison of pure force. Her hand, radiating that chilling, possessive energy, was moving toward my face, her voice promising to break the 'flawed copy' and find the 'original' beneath.
Despair sat on my chest like wet sand. The gap was too much. The wall to Divine-rank, the barrier I had been climbing toward for two years, hung just above me, close enough to see and nowhere near close enough to touch. And I was not strong enough at Peak Radiant to break her Complete Control. I had failed.
Suddenly, the suffocating pressure of her sanctum vanished. The cold, alien architecture, the scent of roses and ozone, the overwhelming presence of Alyssara – all of it dissolved.
I was in a garden.
