by Jada Fisher
“Oh yeah. You know, I always wondered why I couldn’t have a gift like yours. It’s so flashy. I miss seeing it. You should show me now.”
“I should?” Sure, that sounded like a good idea. I had an ancient spell circle in front of me and all that. I could give him a bit of a show before the end of the world stopped all that.
“Yeah, you should. It would make me really happy.”
“Alright then.”
I reached down into myself, into the well of simmering energy that I thought had been empty. But Krisjian seemed really sure that it wasn’t, so there had to be something there.
I rooted around, trying to grasp it, but every time I thought I found something, I was just greeted by echoing nothingness.
“I can’t find it,” I murmured, closing my eyes and reaching deeper.
“It’s there. Can’t you feel it? I can. All wild and bubbling. So much that you could burst. It’s right there.”
His voice washed over me in waves and suddenly, like a crack of lightning, all that magic appeared inside of me, wild and rushing just like he said.
“I got it!” I cried, and then I grabbed that energy with all I had and slammed it right down into the runes I had hurriedly scrawled out. I pushed and pushed and pushed, trying to put everything I could into the circle.
For several minutes, it seemed like nothing happened. I poured out what I had into the spell, sweat dripping down the back of my neck and Krisjian’s hand growing cold and clammy in my overheated grip.
But then I felt it. Rumbling through the matter of things, cutting through places I couldn’t see. Wind started to pick up around us, whipping grit up and into my face. But I didn’t stop. I called as loud as I could with my magic, reaching out across dimensions, across all barriers.
And then, with a burst of light, none other than my personal grim reaper popped into existence in front of me.
“Davie?!” she asked, sounding absolutely shocked. Hey, her and me both. “You’re alive!?”
“You seemed rather shocked,” Krisjian said, finally pulling his hand from mine. It was only then that I remembered the whole influencing thing that he was doing, and I stared at him with wide eyes.
“Whoa. That really worked. You convinced me that I had my magic again.” There was a responding surge within me, a white-hot crack of energy. “Wait, I do have my magic again! Like, a lot of magic. How did you even do that?”
“I don’t know,” Krisjian said. “I didn’t even know that was something I could do until I was on those steps with that awful dwarf who’d killed so many of us. I’d just wanted her to stop lying, and then she did.”
“Fascinating,” the spirit cut in. “But really, the convergence happened, so I was sure all of you were dead.”
“Um, isn’t that something you would be able to tell?” I asked, getting to my feet and wiping off my messy hand. “You know, uh, being a soul collector or whatever.”
“Shepherd to the Souls of the Seers, if you must know the word-for-word title for my curse. And maybe if I was fully powered, but I’m still recovering too and, I’m sorry to tell you, there are a lot of people dying right now. Although I gotta admit, Sokhanya gave me a real jolt. That was impressive.”
I thought back to the version of Sokhanya we’d met, how the whole air around her had practically radiated with energy. “Yeah. I can see that. Look, I called you here because—”
“Where’s your dragon boy?”
“What? Uh—”
Right on cue, Bronn came running from where he’d been lingering and pounced right up to the edge of the circle. The spirit looked down at him for what had to be three long seconds before her gaze returned to me.
“…is this a joke?”
Bronn let out a long stream of chitters that I was pretty sure it was a good thing we couldn’t understand.
“No. It’s something about this realm.” I hurriedly continued so I couldn’t be interrupted again. “But we called you here because we need you to find someone.”
“Really? It’s the end of the world and you want some sort of missed connection?”
Bronn let out another loud growl at that.
“Calm down, she’s just trying to get a rise out of you,” I said. “And we ran into another Sok, one who was never held by dragons or abused, and she said there was a way to stop the rotted dragon.”
“That’s impossible. He’s done the spell. All the worlds are uniting, and everything is falling apart. I’m sorry, but this apocalypse is a done deal.”
I growled in frustration. Of all the obstacles in my way, I hadn’t expected an argumentative spirit to be one of them. “Look, she was real convincing. I at least want to hear her out. We kinda got, uh, interrupted.”
“The floor broke in two under us and we got dumped through the fabric of reality into a different dimension,” Krisjian supplied helpfully.
“Ah, of course. Because that’s how conversations normally end.”
“Anyways,” I cut in. “Can you help us get to her? And once we get to her, can you get us back to our friends?” I swallowed, almost dreading the next words out of my mouth. “…if they’re all alive?”
“They’re alive, just…scattered, as far as I can tell.” The spirit didn’t say anything else for a long moment and I stood there, wondering if I would need to convince, needle or beg further. “I… Fine. We’ll go talk to this oracle who apparently knows how to stop the end of the world.” She took a deep breath, which I was pretty sure wasn’t necessary for her to exist but whatever. “I’m guessing that the elder didn’t like any of your compromises?”
“No, he actually agreed. But then Faeldrus ate him whole in front of all of his other followers.”
I’d never seen a grim reaper do a double-take, but she absolutely did then. “He ate one of his two remaining elders in front of his followers and none of them bolted?” Krisjian and I both shook our heads. “Huh, amazing how some folks are so indoctrinated that even their self-preservation goes right out the window. Unfortunate.” She straightened her stance and the smoke around her thickened, starting to move in more noticeable pattern. “Alright, give me your hand. Let’s go see if we can stop the apocalypse after it’s already happened.”
4
A Snowball’s Chance
I expected there to be more words, more pomp, circumstance and ceremony, but one moment, the three of us were standing there, and the next, we were in the kaleidoscopic swirl of whatever was between realms. Except we weren’t so much falling through it as rocketing through it, moving so fast that I couldn’t even quite comprehend it. But almost as soon as I started to get a handle on it, we popped right back into reality.
And by reality, I meant a raging inferno on top of what looked like a collapsed city.
“Whoops, wrong plane of existence,” Maedryell said quickly, almost too quickly for me to comprehend, then we were speeding through the in-between again.
It was borderline indescribable, the rush of it. A blink of an eye, and we were in a whole different dimension entirely. And then another one. Suddenly, it made sense how just one person could be the guide for all of the oracles who passed on and got a little…lost.
But it also made me wonder, had she been lonely when we’d been wiped off the map? Or had that only been in our world?
I readied to ask her as much when suddenly we popped right on top of what seemed to be the ruins of an apartment building. The sudden stop made my neck crack and my head spin, but I managed not to land flat on my butt.
“Uh, this doesn’t look like the place we met her,” Krisjian observed.
“The place we met her cracked in two, remember?” Bronn said behind him. Me and Krisjian startled at that, jumping and staring at the prince.
“When did you change back?” I asked, alarmed. I quickly looked over him, checking for any damage. He was red-cheeked, and it look like someone had taken a whisk to his hair, but otherwise seemed alright.
“About two dimensions ago.” He shoo
k his head and then his arms, followed by his legs. “I don’t ever want to be that small again.”
“Right. I’m sure that tiny-dragon-you will be of little consequence in the grand scheme of things. Anyways, whoever you wanted me to bring you to is here.” A strange expression crossed the woman’s ephemeral face and the skull hovering just behind her features came forward into prominence. “Oh.”
“Oh?” I repeated. “This isn’t a situation that we really wanna hear ‘oh’ in.”
“You need to hurry. Your friend is dying. When I said she was here, I believe that she’s…right here. As in, under our feet.”
“What!?”
I collapsed to my knees, digging through the dirt and shrapnel. Suddenly, I was aware of sirens all around us, and people calling for help. Had that always been there or did it just start?
That didn’t matter. What mattered was that our only possible lead on saving each and every world had been buried under rubble while the rest of us all popped to safety.
It seemed even in other worlds, Sokhanya had the worst luck.
“Stand back,” Bronn said, pulling at my shoulder. I listened to him and he reached down, heaving up bigger pieces than I could ever hope to and slinging them out of the way.
I had to help. I didn’t know how, but I had to. I stretched out my magic, trying to see what I could do, but all it did was leak along the crevasses, cracks and debris, filling every nook and cranny like it wanted to shield the whole mess.
Useless.
“Help us,” I said to Maedryell, knowing I sounded desperate but absolutely so far from caring. “Do something!”
“I… Look, I know I’ve broken a lot of rules for you, but I literally can’t. I can’t lift these stones. I can’t suddenly teleport all of them out of here. There’s a limit to what I can do even with all the power that the curse gives me. That’s part of what makes it a curse.” I wanted to argue with her, I really did, but I knew she was telling the truth. “Can you imagine a worse punishment than standing by and watching innocent children die who could have been saved if you could affect their world? To seeing preventable, awful deaths but being unable to help in any way? That is not an accident.”
There had to be something, though. What was the point in having a grim reaper on our side if we couldn’t use her to stave off death?
“Could… You can feel them, right? Can you tell us where they are? Give us a place to dig?”
She seemed to mull it over a second, watching as Bronn tossed an especially large piece of debris to the side, before nodding. “I’ll try my best. After a couple of millennia of being a permanent bystander to everything, I’m not used to all this…directness.”
“So what, cutting off my arm so that Faeldrus couldn’t eat me was a spur of the moment sort of decision?”
“Uh. Yes. I panicked.”
I looked down at my only remaining hand, the short stump of my other arm feeling as if it extended too. “Right. Well, try not to panic now and just see what you can sense.”
To my surprise, instead of answering outright, she sank into the ground, smoke billowing across the rubble. Fire engines had arrived and rescue crews and there were some people pushing themselves up from the rubble while others were scrambling to dig, calling for whoever was trapped. Strange how none of them seemed to notice the smoke, or even that Bronn was throwing things that no human should be able to do on their own. I supposed a crisis had a way of distracting people.
A few moments later, the spirit was emerging from the rubble right in front of Bronn. “This way,” she said matter-of-factly, and then the dragon was rushing to follow her.
Even though Krisjian and I certainly weren’t strong compared to Bronn, we still helped, digging where we could, trying to get the grit out of his way. And eventually, a gray hand reached up into the light, desperately grabbing at us.
I gripped it immediately, comforting words pouring from my mouth. I knew it wasn’t the woman we were looking for—the skin was too dark and the palm too broad—but that didn’t matter. What mattered was that someone was scared and alone and buried under their own home because I had messed up.
It seemed to take an eternity before we were able to dig full out, but when we did pull what turned out to be a middle-aged woman from the rubble, she was crying and coughing and holding onto my front with surprising strength for someone who had probably been running low on oxygen.
“It’s alright, I gotcha,” I soothed, patting her back. “We’re right here. You’re okay.”
She was wheezing, dirt from her getting all over me, but I didn’t really want to let her go either. It wasn’t until the rescuers came and swept her up to take vitals that I realized Krisjian, Bronn, and Maedryell had moved on.
We pulled two others from the debris—kids who had hidden in a closet together. Then we pulled an older man out. None were Sok. And as if we needed anything else to happen, an ear-shattering explosion of thunder sounded above us, and the weather turned bad.
Horror movie bad.
I stared in shock as the winds picked up and lightning shot sideways through the sky. It was like the world was ripping itself apart and couldn’t decide which natural disaster it wanted to go with.
“We’re running out of time,” Maedryell said, appearing up out of the wreckage again. “She’s deeper. If you want to ask her anything, you have minutes maybe.”
“That’s not enough time!” I objected, my heart thundering in my chest. “There has to be a faster way to get to her.”
Bronn let a bit of a sigh before his handsome face turned to mine. “I mean, it’s already the end of the world, so what’s throwing in a dragon?”
Before I could say anything, steam covered him from view. I expected his large, shining form, resplendent and mighty, but instead, the same tiny version of him skittered forward, darting into a tiny space between two large chunks of debris.
“What is he doing?” Krisjian murmured.
“I think I have an idea. Who would have known that new form would come in handy so quickly?”
She had an idea? I didn’t. I stood there, my whole body practically vibrating. I wanted to do something. This world’s version of Sok was trapped and probably suffocating and I just wanted all of the horrors of the day to stop.
But then a rumble sounded from below our feet and I had to pinwheel my arm to keep my balance while the ground shifted. I heard myself let out a yelp of surprise, and then both Krisjian and I were tumbling backward.
Shouts of alarm sounded all around us but that quickly faded to the back of my mind as the familiar, massive form of Bronn rose from the rubble, dirt and debris falling from his scaled sides.
“Oh,” I said, feeling a bit awestruck by the scene. “That was a good plan.”
His head dipped down, gently setting not-Sokhanya in front of us. I gripped her, bringing my ear close to her mouth, and I was relieved to hear the breath rasping in and out of it. Sluggish, but definitely there.
“Dragon?”
“What is that!”
“Demon!”
“We should leave now,” Maedryell said, tilting her face up. “I feel Faeldrus drawing close again. It looks like there’s one benefit to his stubbornness.”
“Benefit?” I asked, carefully brushing the worst of the grit from Sok’s face.
“He’s so obsessed with ending you to start his regime that he’s delaying the completion of things.”
“Wait, something still needs to be completed? I thought the ritual was done?” Krisjian asked, also scrambling to his feet.
“The ritual is done, yes. The worlds are combining. But he needs to connect himself to the well source of energy in order to benefit from it.”
“Oh…”
She held out her hands as Bronn shifted into human form. There were more gasps and screams of alarm around us, but by the time the steam disappeared, we were long gone.
5
Had Us in the First Half
“Davie!”
/> I nearly stumbled back as the solid mass of my sister crashed into me, her arms about my neck and her lips peppering my entire face with kisses.
“You’re alive, you’re alive, you’re alive, thank God, you’re alive!” she breathed between every kiss, and it really did sound like a prayer. “I knew you had to be alive, but I couldn’t feel you. Was that how it was for you when I accidentally sent myself away? Goodness, I thought I was going to go crazy!” She peppered my face with even more kisses. “The world certainly is.”
“Worlds, actually,” Krisjian corrected with a wry smile. Mal waltzed up to him and slung her arm around his skinny shoulders.
“Good to see you back, kid. I was sure you were dead.”
Krisjian looked from Mickey to me then to Mal. “Why can I not have a greeting like that?” he asked as my sister continued to smother me in affection. I took the moment to gather where we were, and it looked like it was the ruins of some building, the way the light filtered in showing we certainly weren’t underground. Ugh, when was the last time I had been outside during the day in my own world?
What a depressing thought.
“Cause you’re not my sister, kiddo. Glad you’re back.”
“What’s happened here?” I asked finally, disentangling myself from Mickey long enough to draw a breath. “Is it the same as everywhere else?”
“Well, I don’t know about what’s happening everywhere else, but we’ve had earthquakes, tornados, and fires breaking out all over the city while things are popping in and out of existence,” Mickey answered calmly, her hands going to my shoulders and staying there. “Almost got beaned in the head with a toilet.”
I looked around, trying to make sure everyone was there. “Sokhanya?” I asked.
“Speaking of toilets, she’s just in the restroo— Uh, who is that Bronn’s holding?”
“This is not-Sokhanya,” Krisjian said helpfully. “She is also deaf, but she speaks, and I think she knows sign as well.”