Taste the rainbow

Then he let the spell loose, the darkness pressing in on his eyes from all sides. He did not cast it upon himself.

He cast the spell into the mirror.

And the mirror, invested with its additional power by a planeswalker, rebounded the effect upon him fourfold.

Jodah was almost thrown physically backward by the force of the spell. It was a simple curative, the most basic of spells, multiplied by four. His body trembled, and he could feel the slightest trickle of air dribble into his lungs, cold as a stream off a glacier.

Again, he thought, and pulled the white energy, the memories of the farms and fields, into his mind. Without thinking, he stuffed it into the same framework.

The shock was the same, the next breath a bit stronger. His heart made a staccato beat from the interruption, then thundered strongly in his chest.

Again, he thought, and pumped more white mana at the mirror, to have it flung back into him. He jerked in a spasm and coughed up fresh pinkish blood. The darkness receded from around him.

Now he didn’t need the mirror and pulled the mana at will: White and green for healing, black to knit together the torn cartilage of the throat, blue to determine and stem the mental loss, red to surge through the bloodstream, replicating the lost fluids and adding strength.

He fed on the rainbow.

Finally, he stopped, breathing hard. The jagged tear that Jaya had cut was reduced to a puckered scar that ran around Jodah’s throat. He leaned over and coughed up a long strand of congealed, black-red blood, the last tatters of his severed trachea.

***

The Shattered Alliance, Chapter 15