Chapter Ten: Cracked Pieces of Ice

 

I cringed. “Mostly.”

Rosaria’s face filled with horror as she watched Axer wipe through the remaining soldiers as if he had been warming up before, and now was finishing a workout. There was a reason he was feared. A reason people always said with hesitancy, “But he’s on the good side.”

It reminded me a little of watching him decimate a hundred opponents in Freespar on Will’s tablet that first peek into the magic world.

But I had also seen him rehabilitate and heal the most fearsome animals and opponents he fought, and restore the landscape, always making certain it contained magic.

I pulled magic into my palm and thought of Christian. I tugged at the light connection already formed between Rosaria and me and touched her feelings for her brother—the mixture of love, frustration, and the devotion that they shared—and pulled it into the magic I was creating through the layer and grid.

A butterfly clutching a rose unfurled in my hand and I placed it in her free one.

Guard Rock climbed to my shoulder and flipped into my hood, watching her from his favorite spot.

“It’s what you make of it,” I whispered.

She stared in wonder as a lush garden bloomed around us with alyssum, asters, and liatris, and dandelion seeds lifted into the air like fluffy stars. Her gaze met mine and she gave a stuttered nod.

“I am so angry with you right now, darling, that there isn't a synonym violent enough to describe my fury,” Constantine said mildly as Axer finished off the remaining hunters.

I cringed. But the wonder on Rosaria’s face and the feeling of my power was too much for regret.

“I needed to save them,” I said. I touched the ground as the layer cracked another small bit at the overwhelmed points. Far too much magic was exerting itself on a layer bound to non-magic.

The shaking world steadied and stilled, but the extra magic used around the layer that was pulling into my body was filling me almost uncomfortably. It was a heady, curious sensation.

“You are the one you need to be saving.”

I had no time to unpack the pieces of that, though, as praetorians suddenly surrounded us. And with them was Kaine.

Power surged through me. I opened the layers with my mind, clasped both of Rosaria’s hands in mine with a whisper of “It will be okay,” and shoved her to the same place that held Samuel with his connections and the girl reaching toward the stars.

Freed, I held one hand out toward Constantine to return him to the Third, and the other to Axer to send him to the spot where I had sent the ferals. But both were already in motion—Axer sidestepping and Constantine slipping around me before I could connect to either of them.

The praetorians swarmed, and like the shifting tile magic in the Midlands, I used the magic I had already channeled to flip the entire section of First Layer city pavement we were standing on into the Second Layer.

The fifty-foot patch of Taiwanese street shone starkly in the massive Saharan desert.

The praetorians rose, shrieking, and their shadows grew long and uneven along the dunes.

The first shadow hit the salt circle Axer threw and was sucked into the sand.

Kaine smiled and dove toward him.

“No,” I gritted out, and threw a paper from my cloak. I layered a shimmer of nasty enchantments over it as it whirled—the same wards that kept the portal pad safe from Kaine.

Another praetorian flew into its path.

The sacrificial praetorian screamed as the paper touched him, and his shadow cloak sizzled, leaving behind a normal mage, broken and twitching on the hot sand.

Axer thrust a sword through Kaine, then twisted his body just as a shadow pierced the air where his back had been, skimming the edges of his cloak in slowed motion. But Kaine’s shadowed fist pierced Axer’s other shoulder as he turned.

I took out the praetorian trying to clasp a metal gauntlet around my wrist, but the action left me unable to help Constantine as a praetorian ripped away his protective shield. Constantine hissed in pain and tried to block the shadow as it pierced the diminished magic of the cloak and reached for his face.

I whipped toward him, but it seemed that I was moving in slow motion as well. No, no.

Magic blew through me like a thing of smoke and fury, and a stream of glowing, ultramarine paint ejected from Constantine’s forehead onto the shadow. The shadow hissed and sizzled, flailed and staggered, then seeped into the dirt like the Wicked Witch after being doused in water.

My brain scrambled for a moment, but there wasn't time to think. Four praetorians swooped toward Axer as Kaine thrust another shadow spike toward his chest. I used the magic gushing through me to pull the paint from the fibers of the anti-Kaine paper and cast them out in a splatter of Pollock-like flare.

Kaine evaded it, but the other shadows dropped, twitching to the sand, their human forms convulsing as their shadows coiled and attempted to seep inside their hosts again. Another four took their comrades place, and four more swept behind.

“There are more, Origin Mage. There will always be more. You can’t defeat the shadows even in the sun.”

“We’ll see.”

“Excellent,” a horrible voice said from the man on my right, features dripping to form another set. “Cast out the weak, Origin Mage. Thin our forces to only those that deserve to be my guards.”

“Sacrificing people is your gambit.” I shot viridian paint at Stavros’s host. The body dropped but Stavros’s face appeared on another.

“Our gambit soon, I think.”

Kaine and Axer moved at uncommon speed. Their fight was almost too fast to process. Three shadows were swooping around them, waiting for their chance to attack. Constantine was trying to help, while not moving from my side. But even I wasn’t certain how to help without taking both out.

“I have to thank you, Miss Crown, for your lovely hand delivery of three ferals. The first, trussed and waiting for us with stars in her eyes.”

Chilled water rushed from the top of my head down my spine to settle ice cold in my stomach. “No.”

“And the boy with such a special skill set—one that we might not have secured without your help according to the eyes I had on scene. He will make a formidable ally, if I twist those skills and decide to let him live. And the girl who killed her brother. Power there. And so much emotion. Delicious, it will be to digest.”

Constantine’s hand wrapped around my elbow, alarm striking through him like a lightning bolt, as he channeled our entire community. I pushed away the group magic like I was swatting a fly, focused only on Stavros’s parasite.

A media report resounded through the air.

“The Department has rescued six of the twelve Awakening mages. The Department secured three of them at the site where the Origin Mage illegally and irresponsibly pushed them, likely planning to consume their magic later. The damage toll—”

I pinched the report dead with a shake of the layer. “No.”

I had assured Rosaria it would be okay.

Stavros smiled. “You have a particular affinity for returning to the same places over and over. Do you seek solace? Comfort? Home? Weakness. Makes tracking you disgustingly simple. But you think yourself powerful enough not to worry. And what do a few ferals matter?” He shrugged. “Not at all. A winning mindset. I must say I'm pleased.”

Unwittingly, I had shoved them right into the Department's net. The hunters had probably stood there waiting for the next to appear before trussing, tagging, and taking—or disposing—of them. Like they had with Christian.

The image of the siblings clutching each other blighted my view.

“We’ll get the girl’s brother, too. She might survive a few days’ more in her present circumstances, and watching us work over her brother—well, mental torture is the best kind.”

Blackness swirled inside me.

“No.” Darkness, rage, certainty.

Stavros smiled. “Oh yes.”

I thrust Constantine through the air and into Axer’s chest with enough magical force to send them both skidding fifty feet away from Kaine.

“Ren, don't—”

Then sent the ground beneath them whirling through flipped space—taking Axer and Constantine far away. The book dove between the layers as the layer broke and shifted around me. Beneath my feet, the sand shifted and trembled. Fifteen shadows dove at me simultaneously, and I pulled.

The Second Layer Sahara was nothing like the Fourth Layer Sahara—overflowing with nightmarish creatures living under the sand and creeping through its individual particulates to invade new hosts—but it held a few nightmares that the non-magical desert did not.

And no longer was I limited to dealing with a single layer. Not anymore.

I smiled grimly and flipped a section of the Fourth Layer into the Second—like a Midlands tile that was being reordered.

A giant lizard with wings erupted from the tiled dune, roaring and diving toward a praetorian, then another hit the empty sand near Kaine, who swirled into the shadows of a cactus as the lizard gave chase.

“Is that it, Origin Mage?” Stavros appeared on the face of another praetorian. “Is that all you have?”

“You will die,” I said. “I will not let you live.”

I pulled at the layer again, making it wave along its axis, pulling the bright spots the wyrm dragons called home in the Fourth Layer toward our position. I couldn't call the animals to me directly, but I could influence their environment—the magic upon which they relied, and the paths upon which they traveled.

Wyrms gravitated toward the hottest sunspots in their wretched desert sands to coil and nest. A few showed up occasionally in the Midlands and Axer had long ago taught me about them. Run from the hottest points in the sand, as those are always nest markers.

I pulled the heat signature. Home is here.

The wyrms immediately followed the magic.

And as soon as they were within range, I obliterated the bright spots, turning their feeling of home into feelings of rage. Someone had taken their nests, and I had pointed them straight at us.

They burst through the sand in a flurry of terrifying teeth and horrible shrieking sounds. Razor-blade scales ripped through the concrete as one grabbed a praetorian, then another was caught in the teeth of another.

Stavros face flipped from one screaming guard to another, and with each one, I remade the layer—leading the wyrms on a rage-filled quest to devour the intruders.

The rage ran through me as I took out each one.

A decrepit, delighted sound emerged from his throat. “Do you think I inserted my soul? Only the naïve think that giving their soul will return something lost to them,” he said with a pointed, cruel smile.

No, not death. I'd unmake him.

Tiles from landscapes in each layer of the world lifted and flipped in a blizzard of destruction—trees ripping from one, water and sea creatures splashing from another, desert vistas churned, skyscrapers broke, memorial buildings collapsed inward, four-headed beasts, creatures, beings, and plant life swirled, all with living mountain zephyrs fueling the surge.

Strands of hair swirled around me in lashes of brown and red as power cascaded everywhere in electrified bolts.

The regular praetorians fell before Kaine, whose magic fed all of them, and one by one they were sucked into the tornado of tiled change as I pulled sections from each layer to destroy Stavros and his puppets of death.

Kaine, in shadow form, flew between the bits and pieces of debris—flying against the world-ending current—strangely riding the currents. And when each remaining praetorian flew by, he opened his shadow-encased maw and swallowed the shadows coursing with my magic.

Energy rippled through him, making him grow, not in size, but in presence with each consumption.

It was horrific enough to pierce my veil of rage.

A stone statue struck him, cracking an arm, and Kaine fought to right himself, smile growing, as he landed unsteadily. “Soon, I will have enough of your magic to make me an Elite. We will have real fun then.”

Stavros flickered across his features. “Rafi was always such an astute pupil.”

“You don't get to call him that,” I said tightly, opening my palm. A remnant feather of the hummingbird tattoo Greyskull had given me fluttered fiercely across my skin.

Stavros smiled. “I can call him whatever I want. He's mine. As you will be. Friendless, overpowered, and alone.”

“Like you?” I flipped our positions, disgorging myself into the layer space behind Kaine, and plunged the tattoo like a knife into his back.

He shrieked, and shadows spewed from his mouth. Rage and pleasure filled me.

The separating shadows dove toward me.

I grabbed the tile before me, spinning it downward to trade with the first point that came to mind—because what difference did familiarity make now?

It made a lot of difference, I discovered a half second later when Axer and Constantine reappeared on the flip side of the tile. I stared at them in horror and channeled magic a second too late to flip them back. The two were already diving for me.

“No, no, no!” I said, trying to twist and bend, to whoosh them away—stirring the blizzard into a tornado.

Bursting with malevolence and power, Kaine converged on them from behind. And I could see the moment where Axer was forced to choose—from hiding his magic signature to giving up the ghost. He rotated in the air and shot Kaine into the tornado as Constantine tackled me to the ground.

“Ah, Alexander Dare. With a logged signature. Lovely, lovely to see you here, my boy,” Stavros said, grotesque features alight with pleasure, his decomposing face whirling through the tornadic destruction attached to Kaine's breaking shadows. “Aiding the Origin Mage in destroying the world. Probably with the goal to take her to your island for a bit of experimenting. What a Bridge Mage could do with an Origin Mage...” His voice was filled with pleasure. “I’ll know soon. Just as I know the powers of all Awakened mages.”

Rage. White and blistering. “You killed my brother.”

“An unfortunate occurrence in one way, and yet at the same time—look at you. Do you think you would have achieved this type of power if you hadn't stolen it from your dead twin?”

Nausea rose swiftly, and paint bubbled up from my throat and over my lips.

“Oh, poor thing,” he said with perfectly executed, false empathy. “Archelon got the whole sad story from dear Rafi when they merged. Do you prefer to think that your brother gave you his magic? His magic remade you.”

“He’s lying,” Constantine yelled harshly in my ear.

Stavros smiled. “Am I? I Awakened your brother. And I killed him.” He leaned forward. “You’re welcome.”

The world turned black.

Symbols flashed across my vision. I grabbed for one and broke it. Paint—every drop of it that had been gathering inside of me—burst forth, coating the world. Stavros would die.

Two sets of familiar hands banded around my wrists. Magic flowed through Constantine and Axer to me—magic from our entire community—but there was something broken in it—as if the circuit was almost complete, but not quite, and that meant their magic and manipulations couldn't stand up to mine.

“No, Ren. Revert it,” Axer commanded, his normal ready state overtaken by urgency. His cloak started to sizzle as paint ate through it.

“I will end him,” I spit, yanking at the hands and magic holding me.

Stavros smiled. “Commencing the first part of the operation.”

Axer threw back his head, throwing off his hood, and his ultramarine gaze, uncloaked completely by the loss of the magic protecting his identity, bored into mine. “And with it the world. The world is breaking, Ren.”

He pressed a paint streaked palm against my forehead and I could feel the agony beneath his skin. He had a dozen shadow-filled stab wounds and necrotizing magic was eating away beneath.

“Look.”

I looked around me, and it was as if I were seeing the devastation through new eyes. The sign of a First Layer home flipped by me—257 Maple Avenue. We had a Maple Avenue around the corner from my high school.

A tiny mote of horror seeped around the edges of my rage.

But my horror was not enough to assuage the deep blinding hatred that had been building in me for months and those emotions separated—breaking out and away. My fury was a living, livid thing in the tornado of hell exploding around us. My magic wanted Stavros to die. Even if it meant that everything else followed.

I didn't know how to calm such fury. I had accepted the death of my brother. Accepted that he would no longer be with me in this life. But his murderers...

The ones that were murdering ferals? They had to pay.

“You will kill us all,” Axer said calmly, eyes the same hue as they’d been the night my brother died. He pushed the images of all my friends across a connection that he was pulling from Constantine—a connection that had never been stronger. Alexander was weaving the connections into a thick rope instead of a multitude of separate threads. “Rage has a price.”

I sobbed.

“You have to decide.”

“Weakness,” Stavros spit. “Your friends will be the first thing I rid you of.”

Constantine looked at me calmly, resignedly, like he had long anticipated this and was ready for this death. The edges of the tornado sucked in closer, licking at his skin, pulling at it, ready to deconstruct.

The sob caught in my throat.

I didn't know how to stop what I had started. But there was something that did—something that was removed from my emotions.

As soon as I pulled, Ori came streaming through the whirlwind—papered wingtips catching the edges of all the tiles. It looked down at me, then looped backward and dove sharply through the funnel, pulling the entire storm down with it, open pages flaring skyward as its spine angled toward me, sucking magic from me in a violent pull.

Reverse.

It drew each tile, animal, and piece of the world that I had mismanaged against one of its page tips, mixing it with a splatter of paint, before casting it like a whirling frisbee through slits in the layers that opened like scattershot holes blown through a target.

Crelobsters plunged into blood red oceans glimpsed through a resealed tear.

Wyrms dove into the boiling sunsands to rejoin their offspring.

Banyontees replanted themselves in starlit glens.

The Great Pyramid reconstructed itself.

The Conservatory of Ten sealed shut.

A possum backflipped neatly onto a branch.

The book pulled harder in the sucking whirlwind of a storm, pulling on my magic—my very being. Flipping each tile back into place, resetting each section, each animal, each magic, reading me and reversing the way that I had pulled it.

“No!” Stavros shouted as the book returned everything to its rightful place.

Except for me. For I had no place to go.

And I was… God, I was dangerous. Too dangerous.

I readied myself to release the boys. To do whatever I needed at the end. Guard Rock dove down the back of my cloak, embedding himself in the spells woven too closely around me, and I brokenly regretted that he was too close to send to safety.

“Flip the tile, Ren,” Axer commanded. Their papers and protections pulled into their cloaks.

I couldn’t. I had to end this. To be here until the last pull of the book signified the end. “Let go,” I whispered.

“No.” Constantine threw a cat’s cradle at Kaine’s reaching hand and his shadows shrieked as the strings ignited around his shadowed fingers, tying them together.

I couldn't flip the boys without taking myself, too. There were too many ties between the three of us for me to separate us this close.

I could feel the pull grow tighter—the book was almost done. I could see Kaine again, wearing Stavros' enraged face as he watched the book undo all my terrible work. He looked at me and held up Kaine's shadowed hand.

“Let go!” I tried to shake them loose, but my magic was under the book’s control, fixing the world.

Brilliant ultramarine, turquoise and copper connections bored into my heart. “Flip. Us,” Axer demanded.

Black magic jetted toward us as Ori sucked in the entirety of the tornado's whirlwind. Parchment burst around us as I pulled both boys and the imperial leather spine into my arms, and forced us through the earth.