“Watch out!” Emery slammed into me as I looked up, trying to place that strange thrumming sound.

Large beasts, like elephants with wings, thundered down from the sky. They opened smallish mouths with large teeth.

“But it’s only an illusion. She won’t actually kill anyone with those,” I said, staggering back toward the corner of the invisible warehouse wall.

A female mage with a purple robe, a higher-tiered Guild member, staggered as she looked up, probably in awe. Or confusion, because those flying animals were whack. Reagan had a very strange imagination. Weirder, even, than mine.

I barreled into the mage, jabbing her in the eye before elbowing her in the face, and took her to the ground. I kicked out at someone else, my boot connecting with his jaw and knocking him backward. I called up a fast weave of moderate power to take a third mage before he could reach for his smaller pack of spells.

A huge roar quaked my heart and shook my bones.

I ducked instinctively and looked up. Amazingly, like with the lion incident, Emery didn’t. So I grabbed him and yanked him lower.

The winged elephant thing swooped down. From its little mouth belched a thick stream of fire. Blistering heat washed over me and I shrank back, throwing up my arms. Emery threw a shield of black survival magic over both of us, keeping some of the heat back before it dissolved.

“Maybe we weren’t supposed to run out here after all.” He struggled back toward the warehouse, dragging me with him.

“This is why we should have discussed the plan more!” I tripped over that blasted invisible warehouse wall or roof, falling to my hands and knees. Emery helped me up again and we scrambled forward.

A mage stood before us with an orange sash. I couldn’t remember what level that made him, but the last casing in my pocket assured me it didn’t matter. My spell spread across him and bent him backward.

The crack made me gag.

A roar preceded a blast of heat and pressure, knocking us forward. Wings beat at us overhead, the flapping elephant things sailing by before swooping low on the other side of the warehouse and belching fire.

My foot hit a lip of something and I tripped forward. Emery did the same a second later, splaying out right next to me on the smooth warehouse floor.

Sear.

“Move!” I rolled to my back, pulled down magic, and threw it into a hasty weave right as the incoming spell reached me. I raked the spell, countering it before scrambling backward so it didn’t reach me before it dissipated.

Emery flung a spell ahead of him from his belly, opening slashes across three mages approaching the lip of the warehouse.

“I think we were supposed to keep mages from reaching the warehouse,” I said, flipping over and pushing to my feet.

“My bad,” he said with a grunt. Standing now, he flung spells in rapid-fire toward mages standing in a cluster, looking upward.

Above the hubbub, floating in the air like a goddess, with hair whipping in the wind, hovered Reagan. Power ripped from her like lightning as the flapping elephant things swooped and rolled, spewing fire on those not fast enough to get out of their paths.

“We were definitely supposed to cover her back.” Emery took off running, and I paused only long enough for an I told you so about our failure at interpersonal communication.

I mean, how much more proof did a person need?

A weave in progress but not quite ready, I ran with my hands in front of me and rammed my shoulder into the back of a mage who’d been seconds away from firing a spell at Reagan. He fell forward and I finished the weave, turning and firing it out. It opened up across the warehouse floor turned weird, swampy pond, rolling and tumbling toward a line of mages who’d made it past the Dumbos-from-another-mother.

My spell caught them at the knees and legs, crushing through bone and tissue.

“Oh, gross. Emery, switch.” I spun away, my stomach rolling, seeing a few mages tripping over the far corner of the warehouse. I took a few steps forward, feeling Reagan’s pulsing magic, diminishing in power. She was expending more than she needed to with this weird false reality, and it wasn’t long from running out.

“We need to speed this up,” I yelled.

I rodent-zapped those mages, punching holes in parts of their bodies. The ball of heat I’d sent out continued to roll, capturing two more would-be escapees before running out of power. Emery fired off one spell while building another, fired off a third, and kept building the second.

“He’s always a step ahead.” I dug in my pockets for more casings, but came up empty. Just me and my imagination.

A mage staggered up, half burned. Another was basically crawling. Emery took out one and I sent a simple spell of magical spikes to deal with the other. Elephant things flickered above us. Then the whole false reality flickered, bright sunlight blasting down, blinding me. Darkness resumed, and now I couldn’t see a thing. Blinding sunlight again.

“This is the worst,” I yelled at Reagan, who was lowering from the sky.

The day resumed, bright and full of color. The green of the grasses and trees rushed back in.

Bodies lay strewn in the fields, blackened and burned. A wildfire was smoldering near our protective walls. A smattering of mages had survived the onslaught by hanging toward the back. They’d obviously done so to protect themselves from the elephant things and our flying capsules.

“It’s the last stand,” I heard Reagan say. She was on her knees to my right.

Emery looked from her to me, and I knew we were thinking the same thing.

She was done. We had to end this.

Without a word, we were running in opposite directions, charging toward the remaining mages and mercenaries.

Pulling at everything I had left, I yanked energy up from my toes, still feeling the balanced bubble connecting my magic to Emery’s despite the fact that we were getting farther and farther apart. I mixed two vicious spells together and stopped short, remembering the balloon searching spell that attached to us last night.

I started to back up, which caught the attention of the three mages left in my vicinity.

They paused their weaving for a second, staring at me. It was that pause which sealed their fate.

I closed my eyes for a moment, pulling the wildness and rage of Emery’s magic and the complex mixture of fire and ice of Reagan’s powers into my spell. I sent that up into the air. Instead of ballooning, it merely opened up like a parachute before drifting down.

The three mages went back to work, but I had already turned away and was running toward an injured mage attempting to escape. A quick spell to his middle ended that right quick, and I lost some of my breakfast.

Screams reached my ears now that the false reality had completely faded. I turned back in time to see the three mages’ throats exploding, and realized I’d confused the weaves. I hadn’t intended it to be so violent.

I lost the rest of my breakfast.

Someone on the periphery ran for it.

And maybe that was the reason for the false reality. Since Reagan had helped us create the spells for the protective walls—she had actually trapped them in instead of just keeping outside eyes and ears from seeing what went on inside. She’d forced them to remain. Forced them to keep her secret.

With her magic gone, that was no longer the case.

I took off in hot pursuit, pulling together my pumping arms to get a weave going. Then I realized I could do a one-handed weave with the pumping arm. So I lessened the complexity of the spell and gained on the cowardly man in the stupid hat. In a hundred more feet, I let the spell loose. My spell dragged him to the ground and started to shred through him.

I spun, breathing heavily, and my stomach rolled again. I needed less heinous spells. Killing someone didn’t have to be so colorful. There was no point to it besides being gruesome for gruesome’s sake.

Jogging back, I saw a line of fire in the distance, beyond the warehouse, spreading in front of someone attempting an escape. It grew, now chasing that person back toward Emery. He shot off a spell, knocking the enemy to the ground.

My boots made crunching noises on the burned ground. The breeze whipped at my hair. My breath sounded loud in my ears.

But that was because all the other sounds had died down. Quiet rang as loudly as the battle had minutes before.

I swept my gaze around the area, searching for anyone left standing. Debris and bodies were littered all through the field, unmoving. Three people were still on their feet.

A sob choked me and tears of unbelievable relief rolled down my hot face. I couldn’t believe it.

Reagan and Emery were two of the three. I was the last.

We’d done it.

The three of us had gone up against a host of nearly two hundred or so mages and mercenaries, and somehow, we’d survived.

As I continued toward the ruined warehouse, I caught sight of Reagan swaying on her feet. She pulled down the lingering fire, completely in control of it despite her empty power tanks.

We would’ve never been able to do this without her. Not with all the vampires, shifters, and mages who were friendly to us in New Orleans. She was our ace in the hole. More powerful than anyone in the Brink, I had no doubt.

And the only way we’d have a prayer of taking down the Mages’ Guild permanently.

Emery and I owed her our lives and our freedoms, and if we made it out of the next leg of our battle with the Guild alive, we would be forever indebted to her.

My mother’s haunting words came back to me:

Her path has been set. Her journey is in motion. He will complete the pyramid of power. The curse breaker will join the oath takers and forge a bond in blood. It is in this union that the way forward shall be writ. That they shall all learn their highest level of power, and balance the kingdom.

Reagan’s was the path that had been set, because it was my journey in motion. Emery completed our pyramid of power.

I stopped and scanned the field littered with enemy bodies.

Emery and I were still learning to work together. We hadn’t even boosted our power by officially joining as a dual-mage team. Reagan, too, was still learning, if what she’d said earlier was true. And together we’d downed an army.

Shivers coated my body. Pyramid of power, indeed.

Reagan fell to her hands and knees.