Chapter Nineteen: Assault on Crelussa

 

The technician jerked as holograms bloomed all over the console area. Alarms blasted and the mages taking notes scrambled to collapse their devices and run toward the console.

“Sanitarium breach from the tunnels,” one of them shouted, fingers flying with magic. “The wards have been tripped. Three sets, now four. All targeting and repressive spells have been deactivated. We can’t obtain magical signatures.”

The Bandits were swearing in mass, scrambling to get eyes on the rest of the sanitarium. “Son of a... Where's Dare? What's he doing? The sneak is over. Exit point A has been closed. Exit B is closing. We are in deep sh—”

The alert technician threw a spell net toward us, which Constantine absorbed in one of the papers I had given him. Constantine smiled darkly as the man’s eyes widened.

“Emergency functions at the Sanitarium have been activated, 01,” Dagfinn said tightly, using codenames. “That means immediate removal of—”

I didn’t wait, moving swiftly toward the cell and pulling out the rest of the spells from the container that we had pre-prepared. Lightning and chaos sparked inside, and I hurriedly threw everything we needed for the plan to work. The sneak was dead, but we could still achieve our aim.

The console technicians were shouting over each other, drowning out the single technician who was trying to alert the others to our presence. Constantine prowled slowly toward him through the madness, container magic in his palm.

“They—” Another technician’s arm collided with the first man’s as he tried to push a button.

“Hands on magic, Gormly! They are right outside. Defensive magic engaged. All signatures inside locked for defenses.”

“No! They are right h—”

“Hostiles gaining entry.”

The magic on the door to the chamber burst, shaking the room.

Still working the spells, I spared a glance for the intruders and looked directly into the eyes of Vincent Godfrey's son. A savage look entered his twenty-five-year-old gaze as magic filtered through his pupils and he pointed at me. “Grab her!”

I dove at Constantine, who opened his arms and spun both of us behind the console.

In the mayhem, two of the console technicians spared me a confused gaze, but the terrorists were already streaming toward our position, and since we were dressed as technicians, they rapidly turned their attention away from us and toward the intruders.

Wards and defensive magics began illuminating the room as more bodies streamed in over the top of their quickly falling comrades.

One blast targeted our putty, identifying it as dangerous and blasting it through an airlock.

“The terrorists are trying to free the feral! Remove the cell now! Now! It doesn’t matter if all the permissions aren’t in place, go!”

I would have smiled at that excellent assessment, if Vincent Godfrey Jr. hadn’t tucked his dive, sliding around the console and into view.

One of the technicians went down at our side, then another.

I heard Delia swear, distantly, in my head.

Godfrey’s gaze affixed on Constantine, raw and bloodthirsty, and without any doubt that he could see though the enchantments we had hidden ourselves beneath, since the enchantments only worked on people already spelled into the system here.

“You,” he said to Constantine, raising his hands. “Will die slowly.”

I was already scrambling to push us both around the console’s corner. Now was probably not the time to point out that Raphael had been the one to murder Vincent’s father permanently—Constantine had only temporarily killed him.

Killing magic released from Godfrey’s hands, and I threw myself in front of Constantine, pulling a shield up from my shoe to eat the incoming blast. Constantine’s defensive blast curved around me. Still hampered by the cuffs we hadn't removed, Constantine’s strike was easily batted aside, and though the shield worked, it was destroyed by the hit and Godfrey had already sent another.

A ceiling beam dropped into the path of Godfrey’s killing strike, and Axer dropped from the ceiling, magic swirling around him, blanketing the room as he spun, and taking out everyone standing.

“Level Ten demon!” one of the technician’s yelled.

“I will pay TOP MUNITS for that signature fabricator,” Loudon said, with a bit of demand as the room responded to Axer’s fabricated magic signature as if he was truly a demon from hell.

“Not sure you can pull off the panache,” Patrick said to Loudon, mental voices as ragged as if they were audibly out of breath. “Exit C back in business. Working on Exit D. Real life Freespar. Look at him kick the shivit out of them.”

“Secure the Origin Mage,” Godfrey yelled out harshly, now tucked underneath the console we’d abandoned. “Blast open the feral girl’s cell. Kill Dare and all the Second Layer scum in this compound! But Leandred’s mine!”

“Someone has a crush!” Patrick crowed—mania in his voice.

“Seriously, now is the time to shut the chatter!” Mike yelled.

Multiple voices were freaking out and combining in my head—pointing at all the different aspects of horror that were happening.

I narrowed in on Olivia's voice and Neph’s forced calmness and pushed all the others to the rear of my mind. Axer stalked toward the console, simultaneously blasting magic around the corners of the room.

“Three seconds, 01,” Olivia said grimly to me, changing to codenames. “Two. One.”

A grinding noise tore through the air. My head jerked toward the cell. Rosaria was staring straight at me—eyes ablaze with white—her hands on the glass, reaching toward me. The locks popped one after another, then the cell dropped through the floor.

“The feral’s cell has been dropped to the transportation level of the sanitarium,” Olivia said. “Spell still in place. Locking mechanisms secured. 3, 2, 1. She’s gone. Comms?”

A tense moment passed, then Dagfinn said, “Arrival at Keating Glen. Transfer to Level 1. Transfer to Level 2. Transfer to Level 3—Darpin Sloughs. Conspiracists guessed that one years ago. Transfer to Level 4—I knew it, Level 4 is in Fels Hollow. Level 5. Dear Magic, are we going to get—no.” He swore, but it was without heat, voice giddy that we’d traced even that far using conventional means. “All outside spells erased. R—I mean, 01?”

It was the moment of truth, and the feed went silent with it.

I closed my eyes, feeling the magic and connecting to the kernel I had so carefully placed. “Got her,” I whispered.

Two other life forms snapped together. “Got three.” I sagged. “I’ve got three. Same location. Found them.” Maybe all of them.

I almost couldn’t process the idea—something that I’d been working on for weeks that was now within my grasp.

“Transmitting details.” I sent the amorphous block of mental data through the link we had established to decode travel parameters for Awakenings.

Dagfinn crowed. “Verrange. A sea town—it isn’t even listed in the conspiracy threads. Starting the parameter match now to identify the exact site, but we got them. Verrange. The Level 5 labs. Hell yes.”

“Now, get out,” Olivia said tensely.

Patrick swore. “Exits C, D, M, and T are gone, and one of the terrorists is activating a Level 8 ward killer and bomb on the transportation level.”

Swearing echoed across the comms.

“The transportation level holds all the stored Awakening magic. Vats of it,” Saf said, too calmly. “Held together by layer wards. Igniting them will kill everyone in that facility and take down the security of the Second Layer in one stroke.”

“We have to stop them.” I was already moving. Constantine made a sound that was somewhere between a growl and a sigh as he dove after me.

Axer simply wiped his hand in an arc, clearing our way at the expense of two spells striking his back. He was already peeling them out of his cloak and throwing them back as we skidded around the corner and out of sight.

“Ren,” Olivia said.

“Queenie, she’s right,” Patrick said, voice oddly tense. “She has to.”

I lunged for the other corridor and shot off two spells—just enough to give cover as Constantine followed. I narrowly avoided a direct blast and twisted into another corridor. The walls to our right crumbled under another blast.

The Bandits had given up all attempts at being quiet, but instead of the loud commentary, they had become eerily focused.

“Stealth mode was fully disengaged,” Dagfinn said with dead calm. “Now it’s my turn. Go left, 01 and 02. I have you covered.”

We veered left. Bolts of magic shot from the surveillance spells running along the ceiling, taking out the mages behind us. Dagfinn, freed of concealment restrictions, began activating one system after another.

“03, rendezvous at point five-one-one, repeat, five-one-one,” he said to Axer. “I can route System 2 to cover you.”

“Comms, switch views and jog incoming streams.” Asafa's voice was calm as he gave orders—the master coordinator of their gaming group. “Leader, find the terrorist's point of entry. Troublemaker, jolt ward eight-two-five. Courser, keep the magic flowing.”

“I've got visual contact, Balance,” Kita said—codenames fully in use now that we ran the risk of being compromised from the outside.

“Troublemaker, rally that hall, then take out the next two, and the one behind. Comms, leave a trail.”

I skidded around the corner as magic flew from the spells lining the hall, targeting everyone but us.

“They are closing in on our burrowing points,” Patrick said grimly. “You have less than three minutes before they seal us out.”

“03 is kicking the utter crap out of Godfrey Jr. on his way to the rendezvous point. But Godfrey just yelled, 'Destroy the painting.' What painting?”

My breath caught and the only thing that kept me from returning was Constantine's fingers gripping my collar and tugging me back into motion.

“The Kinsky.”

“There's a Kinsky painting?” someone asked, confused. “I never saw one.”

“It's in the secure ward,” Loudon confirmed. “They hung it after his death. His last vetted piece. Big kerfuffle over it back in the day. Thought it might be unstable.”

“Chatter,” Constantine hissed.

The feed went silent for a second. Constantine wasn't usually the one that chastised anyone for talking.

“If they are targeting it purposely… Maybe one of you should prevent that. Get to it first? See why—”

“On it.” Axer sounded out of breath.

We were almost there.

“03 heading back to the main room, and it’s refilling with hostiles. We can take out half, but we need another exit for him,” Asafa said grimly. “01, we took out all the terrorists in the loading dock, but I can’t do anything about the box. Turn left, Re—01. On your right.”

We burst through the loading dock door. The mountain vista spread out like an inverted Excelsine, taunting me. Loading transports lined the bays. A hundred vats of shimmering magic were encased in reinforced wards. Bodies littered the floor.

A spellbox bright with white light—a moment from bursting—vibrated beneath a ward box containing the connections to dozens of similar boxes. The shimmering vats blinked atop them.

I grabbed at my nullifying cuff.

Constantine’s fingers wrapped around my wrist, trapping the cuff. His other hand was already raised, his wrist bare.

“No,” I said. “You’ll be—”

But his magic was already spreading out like a pair of giant wings, throwing the storage paper I had given him fall term toward the spellbox. It wrapped around it at the last second, and a muffled boom burst the paper into confetti.

“You’re going to have to make me a new martini set,” he said, almost idly.

“Your magic.” He had just sunk his magical signature directly into the mountain.

“But not yours. And let’s see my father try to cover up this one with the government,” was the vicious response.

“Move out, move out,” Olivia shouted. “Incoming.”

I could see a shadow shrieking along a mountain in the distance. One bad event on top of another.

“It’s Kaine,” I said. Constantine swore.

“That’s not all. Department reinforcements just arrived on the summit. Shoot, shoot, shoot, you’ve got to get out of there.”

The building shook.

“I have no idea how you are still alive, but a terrorist got through 03,” Dagfinn said tightly. “Direct hit on the Kinsky.”

“Forget the Kinsky!” someone yelled. “The Department and praetorians will take care of the sanitarium—get out of there.”

The layer began slowly grinding.

Kaine's shadow suddenly shot faster than I'd ever seen it, shooting straight up to the room we'd just left.

“The Kinsky took another hit! It’s related to the sudden layer instability!”

“We just lost 03.” I could hear the fear in Dagfinn's voice. “And all surveillance on that level.”

Constantine swore again.

We didn't bother with id spells, doors, or assistance—Constantine simply lifted his hand upward and pulled down with his unbound magic. A hole ripped through the floor above, then the floor above that, tearing a large, jagged pathway. I grabbed a carpet from the transport dock and we tossed ourselves on top and shot upward.

The reason for Axer’s silence became apparent as soon as we flew into the destroyed room. Our own comms sputtered and broke under the cloud of spreading shadow.

A few of the Awakening cells had been split open in the fire and their mages were either splayed on the floor or walking around in a daze, magic sparking off them in devastating waves.

The rest of the Awakening mages were alert in their cells, and they stared in terror. The walls separating the Awakening areas had been demolished, so that every Awakening mage in a cell was now in crumbling view. The magic that ran along the sides was sputtering.

The cell grids weren’t going to hold. And the combined shockwave of four thousand Awakening mages and their magic springing free, without direction, would be devastating.

“Come to join the fun?” Kaine smirked at us.

He and Axer were dueling in the center of the unnaturally enlarged room. Terrorists were taking potshots at them from the side. Kaine’s shadows lifted one after another from the ground, breaking their necks midair before dropping them to the floor. “Mustn’t let the terrorists win.” A shadow sliced toward Axer and he dove and returned fire.

“I will finish my father's plans and the greater ones that I've been given!” Godfrey said viciously, trying to destroy them both.

Five more spells were shot from the sides, and both Kaine and Axer took precious time to deal with each while trading their own blows. Axer’s cloak was smoking with the number of hits it was absorbing. There were only so many killing blows it was going to be able to absorb.

Everyone in the room was throwing killing magic. Our carpet taxi took an immediate hit and Con and I tumbled off. I raised our best shield to cover us. Constantine shoved me behind a terminal and began ripping apart a massive cat’s cradle he pulled from his pocket, string coiling in his grasp. He twisted three strings together then threw them outward. A net opened and secured around four mages—two terrorists and two Department security officers.

He nodded grimly and grabbed the cat from his coat and an enormous handful of string. “Everyone out there but the hero is an enemy,” Constantine said viciously, then shot all the string in a magically enhanced arc straight at Axer. “Go!”

The cat bounded into the air, three spade tails flapping in slowed motion as it hit the first net with a clawed paw, then the second with the middle tail, and a third with a back foot, rotating in the air like some weird bluish-purple cat ninja as it punted each net toward a different section of foes.

“Wha…” I couldn’t even finish the word as the cat flew along the thrown arc, past a ducking Axer, tumbling as it hit its final targets.

“I have serious problems,” I mumbled, raising another shield behind Axer as a mage took aim, and another in front of us as we were targeted too, all while watching my creation secure the forces around the main show group by group. “And so do you.”

“I accept your gift. Thank you, darling,” Constantine murmured. The cat streaked across the floor, spit acid at one of the mages targeting us, then dove into Constantine’s open cloak. The string maneuver would only work once. The rest of the forces—the best of them—were already tweaking personal shields to account for it.

Axer got in a shot on Kaine, sending his shadows shrieking, and our communications returned for a moment.

“Watch to your left, 01. Forty unaffiliated soldiers incoming from the west. One hundred from the east. Fifty from—”

“Ren, it’s Helen! Transport room! They aren’t there to save—”

Kaine yanked Godfrey Jr. into the path of Axer’s overpowered killing blow, then swirled into smoke.

I frantically looked at the spread of the smoke to see Kaine in front of the Kinsky. He gave me a taunting wave. Behind him, the woman closed her eyes as if in great pain, and a parcel ejected from her hands as Kaine swirled into the painting.

The painting pulled inside of itself with an unnatural crack. Axer’s spell hit the wall a split second too late.

Patterns bloomed, spreading like a plague along the wall. Rumbling started from deep within the layer. The walls and floor began to shake. I stared at the ejected parcel at the base of the wall and held out my hand.

“RUN!” multiple voices screamed.

“Full destabilization has occurred. Readings marked and logged for posterity. Enacting Order 5376.15.94 under power of the Prestige,” Helen Price ordered from far below, her command running through the systems and blaring into the air due to some predefined security measure.

My gaze was on the patterns expanding along the floor as the Kinsky parcel zipped toward me. I heard Olivia’s soft, unnatural, “No, that’s not, no.”

“Olivia?” I asked. “What—”

“No.”

My gaze shifted downward almost unwillingly, through the break in the floor, not allowing the jagged rips and beams to hinder my gaze.

Helen Price stood below. She looked up and met my gaze, and another face flickered in dark amusement over hers, before she ducked into a transport and was gone.

The parcel from the Kinsky hit my hand and a series of clicks and magic clanged in succession.

And as if she was next to me, Olivia’s breath went uneven. I could feel her channeling magic hundreds of miles away, screaming, “No!’

Below, ten of the large storage vats of Awakening magic disappeared in a flush of magic. Then another twenty, then all the rest. In a blink of an eye, they were all gone.

The other Department mages disappeared—hopping on transports, heading in different directions.

“The layer will be destabilized,” Mike said, shock threading his voice. “The Department didn’t even try—”

“All Second Layer troops are withdrawing,” Will said in equal shock.

Voices were overlaying each other on the comms.

“Leaving only the terrorists in such nice, spread apart target zones,” Dagfinn said viciously. “Courser, look at this buffet. We never get such clear shots in game. 03, conserve your containers. Target colors set. Courser, you’re on that one, that one, those three, Troublemaker has five, Balance has four, Destroyer got a block of six, Traveler gets three—”

“They took the magic,” Delia said tonelessly through the sounds of the Bandits using the surveillance spells to fell the terrorists still standing.

“The code. Emergency procedures,” Mike said, shock turning to grim certainty as the last terrorist in the room dropped. “The only way the magic from the Awakenings can be relocated is through an Act of War or if the structure destabilizes beyond repair.”

“This wasn’t a trap set just for us,” Constantine said grimly, helping me up to meet Axer, who was walking toward us. Constantine looked around the devastated room filled with bodies, then up at the Awakening mages whose cages were flickering out. The layer cracked and shifted again. “This is a sacrifice.”

“I can feel their terror,” Neph said. Silent until now, her voice was numb.

“And they have it all immortalized on recorders they set up,” Olivia said, voice scarily even. “The reports and several selective bits are all over the newsfeeds already—they claim they had to take the magic to save as much of the layer as they can. They are already reporting that a cataclysmic event is about to occur, and the sanitarium will be lost as well as the stability of the Second Layer. Because of Ren. The only thing they don’t have is your magical signature, Ren. They have Leandred’s, but if they get yours… Their footage even looks like you are working in tandem with the terrorists.”

“Which begs the question—how did Godfrey Jr. get here?” Constantine walked over and kicked his dead body hard.

“Revive him for questioning,” Trick said immediately.

“There’s no time,” Dagfinn said, voice going tight. “Structural integrity of the building is declining rapidly. Seventy percent—sixty-five percent—Sixty—”

Axer whipped out a storage paper I had given him long ago. It was the paper that had once housed a dozen different terrorists. Magic shot around the room and pulled Godfrey’s body inside, along with a slew of others.

“Godfrey will remain temporarily dead in suspended animation until we need him,” Axer said grimly. The ten-minute timeframe was paused in the paper—a bit of temporal physics that I had done by accident and been hoping to recreate on a medical scale someday.

The layer cracked again, and it snapped the overwhelming patterns back into a normal view. I shoved the Kinsky parcel into my cloak.

“Can you do that to everyone in the building, Dare?” Olivia asked sharply and hopefully.

Axer looked at the over four thousand mages staring back at us. He looked at me and I shook my head, lips pressed against the horrible emotions rising in my throat. “No,” he said grimly.

The building sparked and started teetering. I could feel it shift—shift to slide down the rock, down the cliff, crumbling into the ravine. I had climbed this mountain. I knew how far the canyon lay below.

I looked at the grid of mages in their various states of Awakening—the coherent ones staring back—four thousand plus mages about to die as part of Stavros’s bigger play.

One of the mages near the bottom put her hand against the glass, gaze fiercely connected to mine.

The foundation cracked. I let my cuff fall.

“Ren, you will be blamed,” Olivia said sharply, seeing the motion through Dagfinn’s hacked surveillance.

“I know.” The building tilted.

Axer’s cuff fell next to mine. Constantine looked sharply at him. Axer raised a brow then looked deliberately at Constantine’s already bared wrist.

I closed my eyes and reached out with my magic and froze Crelussa and the Second Layer in a mile radius around Crelussa, using the knowledge I had gained from creating the bubbles in the Third Layer.

“Signature logged,” Olivia said tightly. “The stories are already being spun.”

“How long can you hold the radius?” Axer asked me, gaze switching lightning fast between weak points in the structure.

“Five minutes, maybe. Without consequences.”

Axer turned and shot off a spell so suddenly that I jerked. Two techs rose, struggling, from the floor in his remote grip.

“Please, we can help,” one of them said, flailing at the band around their throat. “We can give you more time. Fifteen minutes, at least.”

He set them down, and held his hand palm out to the side. A spell flew from Constantine to Axer’s hand and Axer twisted it before lassoing it around the techs. “You betray us, even in thought, and you—and your next closest kin—die without the ease of death that falling from this mountain would give you.”

The first tech shook her head in terror, then ran to the controls. “We don’t want the Awakening mages to die. The Department pulled the magic offsite. Why would they do that? We are dead without it.”

“They are sacrificing you,” Axer said, turning away. No longer constrained by a cuff or container, his fingers spit another spell at the floor which spread rapidly in all directions. “Revive any of the others you need. But each person you revive will be under the same death spell until we are physically gone from this site,” he finished without watching as the other tech paused in his scramble to revive two of their coworkers.

The tech revived one, but set a coma spell over the other. A good choice, as the other was one of the techs who had acted suspiciously.

“Can you flip the mountain?” Axer asked me.

“Yes, but I can’t guarantee the results.” I swallowed. Possible cataclysmic repercussions. Crelussa was full of magic. Even with the vats gone, the magic of four thousand Awakening mages and the slew of linchipin wards that survived and held the Second Layer safe equaled the combined force of multiple nuclear bombs. I couldn’t anticipate the repercussions.

There were so many pieces in play. The book had hit the reverse button for me, but this destruction wasn’t mine. It wasn’t one person’s alone—no thread that could be followed.

I shook my head. “But we can save this spot. Build it anew.”

“Remake Crelussa?” Olivia asked sharply.

“Brick by stone by ward by line.”

“Can you do that? You have to get them exactly right,” Loudon said, all seriousness for once. “Crelussa is tied to so many things. Do you understand that, Crown? Exactly. Or it—and anything connected to it—goes boom.”

I licked my lips. “Yes.”

“You might not save them. And you will be blamed,” Constantine said. “You will still be hunted.”

“We have to try,” I said quietly.

“I know, darling,” he said, and opened his palm, motioning to me, already knowing what I was going to do. There was a sadness, resignation, and surrender to his emotions that I didn’t understand.

I pulled out the box I had been safeguarding since leaving campus.

“Is that the campus magic?” Patrick asked sharply. Without waiting for a reply, he and Olivia started barking new commands at others apart from our feed.

It was the campus magic as well as the Department’s destructive magic that we had all flipped with the field Con, Stevens, Mbozi and I created.

“What are you going to do?” Mike asked softly while Will contributed to whatever Patrick and Olivia were doing.

I felt Neph open herself up to me, her emotions muted in sorrow. I couldn’t even imagine what she was feeling from all of us.

“We are going to recycle this site using the mages and magic already here,” I said, looking at the cells. Determination and confidence was strumming through me.

I opened the box on top of Constantine’s palm and withdrew the end of a long satin ribbon. I connected to the magic of the box and pulled.

This time the canopy of gold and silver satin opened outward like a parachute—throwing the magic into a shimmering net around us, then pushing like an expanding balloon to cover the entire building and site.

“Standing by,” Olivia said. “We are with you.”

“I know.” I could already feel them. Feel Excelsine waking up. The connections were too entangled to identify—an interconnected web of support connecting into an impenetrable field.

I adhered the edges of the canopy to the layer and pulled the community magic that we had engaged.

Constantine’s breath stuttered next to me, then his fingers gripped the box and his mouth firmed.

I connected to the wards and the magic, nudging it to reveal its previous state, then hooked those together. Then the next set, then the set after. Ten, twenty, fifty.

Like starting a roller coaster ride, we initially sailed forward. But all too quickly we hit the uphill climb. Everything was still building toward an end, but the car was slowing and clicking louder. It was becoming harder and harder to get the magic to do what I wanted. The edges of the wards kept slipping away.

“The magic is backsliding. Like it’s trying to go up a slide, and keeps slipping to the bottom,” Saf grimly agreed. “What is happening?”

“It's not enough. The magic isn't enough,” Olivia said.

A surge of magic powered through the canopy, and I started knitting again, faster this time. But intertwined with the surge of power came a sickly, terrible feeling.

The feeling became worse, and the copper and turquoise and violet threads that had hummed with life since Constantine had stopped hiding them started dulling, thinning in my hands. I tried to inject them with life, but as it was with the Origin Book, once the magic began pouring in one direction, it was something I didn’t know how to reverse.

I looked at Constantine. At his graying skin and resigned expression.

And I knew with a sudden, horrifying certainty that he was dying.

“No, no, no,” I said, lower body scrambling, upper half elbows deep in a magic I couldn't stop.

“Neph just passed out!” Mike said from far away. “Will, Olivia!”

“How could she pass out? What pathway was she...oh, no,” Liv said.

“Shoot, shoot, shoot, Leandred was expelled,” Kita said. “Why did no one think about that? How has he been channeling the magic? Just through Nephthys? What have the two of them been doing?”

“Sacrificing themselves, obviously,” Mike said grimly. “Bau is not a surprise, but what the hell, Leandred?”

The color was seeping from Constantine so rapidly now that I couldn’t even identify a shade that wasn’t gray. I tried to physically tear my hand away, but his grip became steel around mine. I stared at him in incomprehension.

“It’s okay. Your muse will be okay.” With his other fingers, he softly touched my hand that was gripped hard in his. “And forty-five hundred for one is a tolerable trade.”

I couldn’t stop the magic and I couldn’t get out any words.

“No,” said Axer’s voice, without inflection, from behind me at the same moment he grabbed the back of Constantine’s neck with one hand and mine with the other.

And then Axer’s magic reached through mine. I felt it pull hard, taking control and pinching the connection from Neph and campus to Constantine.

The building started to slide again. The techs and mages cried out, useless in these last moments of terror.

“Dare’s stopping the play,” Olivia said grimly. “He’ll get them offsite. We need to see if we can save any of the Awakening mages in or after the fall. Crelussa is going down. Get ready.”

“Understood,” Dagfinn said. “We are going to prime the—”

Then Axer grabbed the entirety of my connections and pulled. The Bandits all hissed.

“That’s not stopping! That’s not moving offsite! That’s—”

He pulled from Constantine, too, but a different pull—he had taken control and was funneling Constantine’s abilities. I knew the feeling of this pull. I knew what Axer was doing. I felt Neph yanked back into full alertness and health. I felt Constantine revive fully on a gasped breath and abruptly flushed cheeks.

Constantine was staring at Axer in shock and disbelief, both of us half-turned to look at him.

“I would still choose to save you. I accept the blame for that,” Axer said quietly. “I always have.”

A combination of incomprehensible emotions overcame Constantine’s expression. Then he closed his eyes, and their connection burst open.

The pulls zinged a hundredfold—bursting outward with added deliberation.

“Do you all feel that?” Will said in wonder while the others shouted.

I felt Neph stroke our connections, then offer up the entirety of her muse community ties.

“How is he doing it from so far away?”

“You know how.”

“Dear Magic. He’s a Bridge. And he’s using Leandred’s magic and the connections he is still holding. He just copied one of my thoughts—I felt it.”

“Not just those connections either.”

I couldn’t look away.

Watching someone who had hidden a talent for so long—shaky at first, then growing stronger and stronger until flares of gold and blue were the only things I could see.

Axer used the combination of Mind and Bridge Magic and pulled from the mages in front of us, then the ones behind us, taking over their connections, searching and grabbing the ones that directly led back to Excelsine, then the ones that led to those, then to others, connecting them into a web that not only pulled on school, but that also pulled on the four thousand mages overflowing with power before us.

And he funneled it all directly into a container he was touching—me.

The thoughts of thousands of different mages were incomprehensible, but their feelings ground me. I knew exactly what to do with a streaming red room, and I had been schooled every day at Excelsine in how to handle chaos for a finite period.

Neph’s magic swept through the pathway created just for her—and soothing magic fell upon the entire chaotic web.

Axer was looking down at me, and suddenly, it all seemed easy.

“Give me everything anyone knows about Crelussa,” I said, and opened myself completely.

And he used my magic to stretch effortlessly across the layers, pinpointing each mage through the connections already set, like our very own Priority Five. As soon as the point touched, he created bridgeways into their magic, and Constantine pulled the thoughts from their minds and Neph soothed the roughest edges left behind.

We took from all the techs, the workers, and mages who had graced these halls here and at Excelsine.

And I absorbed it, like the book had, like the red streaming room at Excelsine demanded, and knitted the experiences and knowledge together.

One of the revived techs looked at us in wonder and terror—and in absolute certainty that she was only temporarily discarding the latter as she extended her hand toward us. Connections bloomed across her palm and we grabbed them. The brightest one whispered that it connected to one of the engineers in charge of Crelussa’s ward maintenance. And Axer pulled that connection into the bridged web, then pulled another dozen attached to that engineer, then a dozen more—while Constantine copied the knowledge from their minds.

I could feel the shock and fear as each person’s knowledge was given to me. But a weird thing happened in the seconds that I started to rebuild Crelussa. Like the tech, there was a moment of stunned silence, then everything became a whirlwind as people actively began pushing anything they knew.

Excelsine was first. Always. They had hardly taken a moment to feel shock before they were joining in with everything they had.

The mages in Crelussa—both the Awakening ones and workers left behind—had joined in the terrified way that anyone seeking life sustaining aid would—completely and unreservedly. There had been little conscious choice at first. But when they seemed to realize what was happening, when they saw the tech extend her hand, the actions became deliberate. People began shoving their parents, their families, their neighbors, anyone they had ever touched into the mix.

It was those people that took the longest to grant full, unrestrained access. Not all of them did grant access—some had to be forcefully taken—but the majority contributed all that they could.

We had ten seconds counting down as we pulled the last stone on the mountain into place, but it felt like an eternity had passed.

I could feel the paint stirring in my blood, the blood seeping from my nose, and the secrets of the world sparking the air around me.

Axer let out his breath, his eyelids sliding shut and his hands loosening. It was the pose of someone who had done something so utterly satisfying that they didn’t know how to express it. Like every stoppered urge held for a millennium had been finally relieved.

Constantine was staring at him like he'd been asked a question for which he didn't know the answer.

“Congratulations,” Olivia said grimly. “There's now a tie for the most terrifying mage in the world.”

“The bounty on you both just tripled.” Loudon whistled. “Niiiice.”

“Are you okay, Neph?” I asked desperately.

“Yes,” Neph answered softly. I felt her stroke the pulsing connections. I closed my eyes and clasped them gently.

“She is lit like a sun flare. The entire campus is pulsing. Now repeat what you just did and delete everyone’s memories,” Olivia said grimly. “Including ours.”

Constantine was already reaching back out.

“No,” Axer said.

“Dare—” Olivia tried.

“We aren’t hiding anymore.”

Constantine’s hand was hanging in the air and he was staring at Axer, that same incomprehensible look on his face.

“There is no way anyone will let the three of you live freely after that,” Olivia said grimly.

“We’ll see,” Axer said, never breaking eye contact with his roommate.

“Leandred?” Olivia asked sharply.

“I’d like to see someone try at this point,” Constantine said, but his voice lacked its usual languidity, as his hand slowly lowered.

I looked down at the complicated magic web in my hand, then walked to the tech who had opened her hand and connections first. There was no feel of Stavros on her—I’d gotten used to identifying the mages he had implanted. And none of the successfully revived techs had it. The initial techs had picked well after the evidence of Axer’s death spell had become apparent.

She backed away as I approached, her hands open downward in a “don’t shoot me” mage gesture. I grabbed one of her hands and looped the ward structure around her palm.

She looked at it in shock and terror. I was surprised she still had the capacity to increase both emotions.

“This one controls the entrance wards,” I said, indicating the bright yellow in the web. “Don’t let anyone enter the facility until you have assurances of safety from the countries with Awakening mages here—from the engineers and security forces—not the Department. Tell all of them that the facility will fall unless a contingent containing a representative from each country that has an Awakening mage here is present to step across the threshold.”

She swallowed and nodded shakily.

“Will it?” Delia murmured.

“No,” I said solely through the connection, so that the tech couldn’t hear it. She needed the ability to voice that statement as truth.

“Sending that detail to Bailey, as well as the surveillance recording of you saying it,” Olivia said. “Going live wide in 3, 2, 1, done.”

“Department security forces securing the perimeter were just stopped by outside military forces,” Asafa reported.

“We are at a twenty million spread for the news. Thirty million. Sixty,” Dagfinn said.

“Twelve delegations already indicated arrival in ten minutes, 01. One hundred delegations. Two hundred.”

I looked at the tech. “Each Awakening mage gets a representative.”

“I understand.” And she looked like she really did.

“Opening Exit AH,” Dagfinn said. “I can’t believe you crassetars got all the way through the alphabet, then down to H again.”

“I can’t believe Dare made us create fifty-two exits, and that we’ve exhausted thirty-four.” Kita sighed. “The only thing that sucked more than planning all of those was watching all of them disappear.”

“We can use that exit to get us to Verrange,” Axer said.

I inhaled and nodded.

“Now?” Mike said sharply. “We aren’t going to regroup?”

“All eyes will be here, on Crelussa. There is no better time. And one of the natural routes Peoples shared can get us most of the way there.”

It had been hard for Delia to give those routes to Axer. I could feel the lingering uncertainty in her. She wasn’t the only one who didn’t trust him.

“You’ve got the site and coordinates, Comms?” Patrick said.

I reached for the lights in my head that throbbed with their presence.

“Yes,” Dagfinn said. “Five hundred feet underneath a nondescript office building for a children’s toy company. The building schematics aren’t going to be of much use, but I’ve got a program running over them. Hacking into all dark site alternative schematic plans for the town that might hint at what is hidden beneath.”

Axer unfurled his fingers and I saw the magical compass in his palm, pointing assuredly west with whatever coordinate Dagfinn had remotely input into it the second the identification spell worked. I saw the phoenix dragon tattoo under his cuff, surrounded by a crown, a sword, and the elements of the universe. I touched my wrist, certain that I would find the same tattoo upon mine.

He looked at me. “We will find all of them now,” he promised.