by Ryan Muree
Nothing would get past him. Nothing would harm Emeryss or the Zephyrs so long as he could help it.
The Ingini man stopped and stood across from him. The man had short dark hair and goggles. He wore a light green jumper and leather bands with holsters and sheaths at his legs and waist. He aimed two short weapons with glowing blue cartridges on their sides. Two rounds of ether-light released from his guns.
Grier moved his bracer an inch. His crystalline black shield vibrated from the hit but blocked the shots’ paths easily. This Ingini wasn’t a good shot.
He smiled and dissolved his ether-shield. Let’s see if he’s good in close combat.
Lunging forward, Grier knocked both guns out of the Ingini’s hands in two swings with the staff end of his weapon. Sweeping at the Ingini’s legs, he forced the man to leap over his staff and roll out of the tent.
The Ingini then produced two daggers with blue ether gleaming at the edges. Sparks dripped off and singed the grass. He leaped for Grier, aiming to cut off the bracer protecting his sigils.
Grier blocked two, three, four swings of the man’s daggers, and then kicked him in the chest.
The man fell back onto the grass, but Grier sunk his swordstaff into him before he fully hit the ground.
“Nice!” Vaughn called to him. His shock-white hair was mottled with dirt and debris. He stood next to a boulder three times his size, and a man’s boots stuck out from under it.
“Did you—?”
“Crush this man to death with a pebble? Yes. Ready for more?”
He looked back over his shoulder at Emeryss, who was bent over a patient and handing Kayson whatever he needed. Grier nodded. Yes, he was ready.
Emeryss could barely keep her eyes off Grier.
He was a machine, every move deliberate and fluid. That Ingini had no idea what he’d been up against and had paid for it.
“Gauze,” Kayson demanded, as he sewed up a man’s wound with a needle and thread.
She refocused and handed him the rest of what she had in her hands. “Is there anything else I can do?”
“Libby!” he called out, ignoring her completely.
A short, young woman with a cropped bob and freckles stepped around the tent pole and knelt beside him. She wore a blue RCA uniform with a pink and white emblem on her shoulder. “Resorting to gauze and needles, Kayson?”
“I’m out of ether,” he bit back, focused on the wound he was closing.
Emeryss cringed. He was out of ether because she hadn’t scribed enough for them. Things would be smoother had she been able to continue doing it.
Kayson handed Libby an empty champagne bottle. She placed her hand over the neck and filled it with fresh water from her palm. He took the bottle back, drizzled some over the wound, and passed it to Emeryss for her to hold.
She looked over her shoulder; Grier had left the view of the tent, and her heart squeezed. He was probably fine. He was strong. He was capable. He’d be fine.
“I need more,” Kayson rubbed the scruff on his jaw with the back of his bloodied hand.
“More what?” she asked.
“Supplies, but we need someone who can—”
“I can do it. I want to help. Where are they?”
“Right outside the tent with the other party stuff. The barrels. You know where?”
She nodded.
“It’ll be a green bag with the Zephyr emblem on it.” Kayson grabbed her wrist. “Stay low, look before you move, and haul ass.”
She crawled her way across the tent. Shouts rang out, and fires rippled off the field, lighting up the night. A few drops of rain pelted her face. Black smoke billowed into the orange sky. A quick look beyond the tent, she found most of the RCA pushing the Ingini back, leaving the pallets of supplies safe behind the wedding tent.
She crouched and hurried to the pallets. Barrels of wine and crates of food made up most of it, but it was easy enough to search through. As quickly as she could, she peered between and behind for Kayson’s pack. A lump of sacks lay crumpled together behind a barrel, and she reached for them.
Stabbing pain ripped through her arms. She flinched and gasped.
Keepers. Two young, male Keepers she’d never met had grabbed her by both arms and were pulling her off the supplies.
“Let’s hurry,” Avrist commanded behind her, motioning for them to drag her presumably to his ship.
“No!” She squirmed and twisted. “No! Grier! Adalai!”
She dug her feet into the burnt grass until they were scratched raw. Smaller explosions and screams echoed from behind her, but she screamed out anyway. Straining to look over her shoulder, to wiggle her arms free, to let her weight work against them, she fought the Keepers’ grasp. She kicked, she spat. They were just as relentless as she, but three times as strong.
“Help! Kayson!” The tent got farther behind her. “Sonora!”
No one heard her. Grier was somewhere fighting. Sonora didn’t respond. The battle was too much.
“You bastard!” she shouted, trying to see Avrist over her shoulder. “You’re a damn sea slug, you spineless—”
A whistling whine fractured the chaos, setting her teeth on edge and a panic in her chest. A thunderous crack and boom shook the world behind them, and they were all thrown to the ground.
The wind knocked from her chest, she coughed for air. Her arms were covered in dirt and grass quickly becoming mud under the rain. Her heart pounded so fiercely it might have stopped altogether. She scurried to get up and away.
Avrist stepped in front of her, gripping her by her hair. “You are not getting away again.”
She clawed at him, kicking and fighting to break free. The Keepers’ chain darts pierced her arms and hooked into her flesh. The pain arced all the way through her ribcage. She sucked in a wheezing gasp of air and collapsed back.
Then everything went white—blinding, spinning white—accompanied by muffled sounds passing by.
The world stopped spinning, and she blinked rapidly. She was upright again being carried away from the pallets by the Keepers with Avrist behind her. Her arms weren’t wounded, though the memory of the pain lingered.
“Let’s hurry,” Avrist commanded—again.
She’d seen this before. It’d just happened. The ether-grenade would be next—
Instead, there were two slight whines from the Keepers dragging her, before they toppled to the ground. The young men in the mud had elderly faces stricken in terror. Avrist took a couple steps back from her as Adalai and Tully materialized on either side of Emeryss.
“Sorry we’re late,” Adalai said.
Emeryss had barely caught her breath. Tully had reversed time? To before the Ingini had hit them with an ether-grenade and the Keepers had pierced her with their chain darts?
“Ready for some fun, old man?” Tully wiggled her fingers toward Avrist.
With his eyebrows as high as he could lift them and his mouth open, he backed away one step at a time in his raclar and sandals. His hands slowly lifted in surrender.
“Wait for it,” Adalai mumbled.
The whistling broke through the air again, followed by the crack and boom. Instead of being thrown to the ground, Adalai had crouched with Emeryss.
Her ears still rang, but Adalai was pulling her back up to her feet, nodding and talking.
Emeryss shook her head. She couldn’t understand her. She could barely make out anything.
Adalai leaned in closer. “I’m sorry about the escort. I would have lost everything. Tully will take care of Avrist, and I’ll keep an eye out for Grier.”
Adalai Blinked away back toward the fighting, leaving her in the hands of Tully and Avrist—the two people who hated her most.
Tully rolled her head on her shoulders, stretching her neck and smiling at Avrist. “Would you like to be frozen for all eternity or see your life flash before your eyes?” She stalked Avrist from a few feet away. He circled, she circled, but she’d caught her prey. He didn’t have a chance.
> Emeryss touched Tully’s shoulder. “Don’t. It’s not worth it.”
Tully pulled away from her hand and snarled. “Shut it. This jelt tried to take down our ship and kill us too many times. I’m not doing this for you. I’m doing this for me.”
Avrist inched back, but Tully moved forward with him.
The floating debris and rainfall was making it harder to see around them.
“Tully, you can’t kill him,” Emeryss shouted.
“Watch me.”
“He’s the only locator Caster.” She wiped the rain out of her eyes. “If you kill him before another one is born and trained, new Scribes can’t be found!”
Tully huffed.
“Listen to her,” Avrist hissed.
“Fewer Scribes, fewer grimoires,” Emeryss said. “The RCA can’t afford that to happen. We’ll lose the war.”
Tully lunged at Avrist, toppling him to the ground and wrestling for control. She reached for a dagger strapped to her back.
Emeryss leaped at Tully to pull her off, to stop her hand from grabbing the weapon. “Stop, Tully. Stop!”
Tully managed to wrestle free from Emeryss and grab hold of Avrist’s hand instead. It began to shrivel and wrinkle with age spots sprouting rapidly along his skin.
He squealed like a child.
Emeryss pulled harder, but Tully’s arms and dress were slippery. “Stop!”
The ether was winding its way between Tully and Avrist, draining him of time.
A sigil presented itself in her mind, one she hadn’t seen in a long time but instantly recognized—Blunt.
It was matter related, ether someone like Vaughn could use for brute force to knock someone away. Her fingers grew so hot, she’d swear they were glowing pieces of amber. She retracted her hand, afraid of what would happen to Tully if she’d continued, and it was all Tully needed.
Tully’s dagger flew out from its sheath and buried into Avrist’s chest to the handle.
His eyes sank in. His hair grew white and thin. His skin turned to an ashy color. Tully pressed him harder into the ground as if the dagger could go deeper, as if there was any more time to steal from him.
Another explosion hit too close, shattering the rush of rain and shouting of the battle.
Emeryss’s body was lifted and thrown to the side. She landed in the soggy mud with a crunch, and her ribs, lungs, hips, and shoulders ached from the impact.
She wanted to run away. She wanted to find Grier and the Zephyrs and get out. Ears ringing again, she sucked in from the pain coursing through her, wiped the dirt from her face, and scanned the area for the others.
Tully was face down in a grassy puddle, clawing out of a large divot in the grass.
Emeryss managed to scramble to her feet to reach her, but Tully’s arms were shredded, and her legs…
“Sonora!” Emeryss shouted. “Kayson, Tully needs your help!”
No answer.
“Just get me up,” Tully demanded. “My legs hurt like a bitch.”
Tully’s legs were turned in the wrong direction, torn in places down to the bone with blood seeping into the soil. She was trying to drag them behind her.
Emeryss went to scoop her up from her underarms to at least get her upright, but Tully screamed in pain.
Maybe she could carry her to Kayson in the tent?
Clangs of metal and the thumps of ether-guns caught her attention.
Grier.
He was finally clear through the drizzle. Vaughn was beside him, and together they were staving off Ingini forces pressing in. Urla was there, too, alongside some of the other Casters in RCA uniforms.
“Come on, idiot! Get me up!” Tully was laying back on the ground panting.
“I-I can try to carry you. Can’t you reverse time again? Or speed up the healing?”
Tully’s eyes widened as her lip curled in fury. “Oh, I’d love to, but someone decided not to write the damn books they promised, and I used the last bit on your stupid ass earlier!” She held up her blood-smeared wrist. Her skin was blank.
Emeryss knelt behind her and tried to drag her away, but she was unbelievably heavier than her small frame appeared to be. “I can’t—I can’t lift you.”
Tully reached into the side of her muddied dress and pulled out a small book. “Here.”
A long beeping noise tore through the air.
“What is that?”
Tully pointed to the wall.
It sounded like an alarm or a countdown perfectly synced in seconds, but there was no way to tell what it was counting to or down from. Two gargantuan metal pieces on the wall slid back and revealed an enormous weapon that extended out into a cone. It was pointing at Marana.
“What is that?” she asked.
Tully scrambled back on her elbows. “Take the damn book and scribe me a Reverse Time sigil!”
Emeryss refused it. “I can’t, Tully.”
“Do it!”
A long beep hung in the air, and Grier, Vaughn, the other RCA fighting, even the Ingini, stopped and turned toward it.
For less than a second, it seemed all of Revel held its breath. Ether froze, the rain stopped falling, time didn’t exist, and it felt exactly like when she was in a trance on her way to scribing on the ethereal plane. Nothing was solid. Nothing was sure.
A blinding blue light erupted from the wall in a beam toward Marana. The energy, the ether, the heat that undulated off the beam quaked the ground as the line of ether-light plowed through stone and cement. It disintegrated a hole twice the beam’s width through the center of Marana and out the other side.
Incinerated. Hollow. Silent.
Ingini had wiped a massive chunk of Marana and its inhabitants from the face of Revel in one shot.
The air was stuck in Emeryss’s lungs, unable to ease the increased tightening of her chest and the light-headed burn in her head.
“Take it!” Tully shoved the book into her palm as her younger features began slipping away to someone much, much older. “Give me a damn Reverse Time sigil, and I can fix this. I can fix all of it!”
Her fingers shook as she opened the first page. “I can’t scribe anymore, Tully.”
“You have to!”
The tears threatening to fall grew larger as she closed her eyes and tried to sense the ethereal plane in the havoc. But nothing was happening. There was nothing to fall back into, no plane to squeeze herself into. There was nothing there.
“It’s not there—”
“We don’t have time for you to fail at everything!”
She gripped the pages in her hands. “I’m trying!”
They were out in the open, and worse, she was out in the open with her eyes closed, trying to put her spirit in another part of the universe. She couldn’t do it in the room with the lights low, so there was no way she could do it here. Her rapid heart thundering beneath her chest would not behave. Her breath would not calm. Her hands would not stop trembling.
The beeping on the wall started again.
On her knees in the mud and rain with fires lapping around them and Grier and their friends fighting for their lives, she couldn’t disconnect from the world. She couldn’t leave.
She wrestled with her hands for control over them.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
There was the faintest tug. It was the best she had to go on. She took the lead in her mind, following that tiny pull until it had wedged her between time and space.
She exhaled in relief. She was finding her way, getting back into the ethereal plane. The whispers came through when she’d needed them to for that boy. They could now, too. Somehow.
Finally, the darkness washed away to inky ether floating around her. But it was different. Beyond the ink was the scene outside of her real body: Tully on the ground in front of her, Grier fighting with a large serrated blade, Vaughn crushing and shrinking Ingini, Urla electrocuting the ones running away from them with ease.
Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she recognized the whispers again
as the voices of the plane—they were just louder.
She went to hold up the mini-grimoire, but there was no book. Her hand was empty, and her fingers were like orange-red fire, glowing with vibrant ether.
What in the world...?
A milky ether she’d never seen before caught her attention. It was like a pinpoint ahead of her in the distance, growing larger by the second.
She walked toward it in her mind. She reached for it, fingers outstretched, and eyes focused on meeting it. It wasn’t bigger; it was coming closer. She could just touch it…
Jerked back, she slammed into something hard and unforgiving behind her. Ether bloomed, and she choked for air. There shouldn’t have been anything solid in the ethereal plane.
She blinked, and she was back in the confusion of flame and rain in Revel. Her ribs ached, possibly fractured this time, her hands and legs stung. She groaned to sit up, to see what had happened.
She jerked her head in every direction. “Tully? Tully!” she yelled.
But it hurt to shout. Her skin burned from the heat—even her eyes hurt. It was painful to try to stand as her muscles and joints protested any movement.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
The ether-light on the wall would go off again. She needed to get Tully to Kayson or Sonora or—
A wail broke through a short distance away from her. Sonora was bent over a crumpled body, glasses in her shaking hands. The tent was gone. Kayson was bloodied in her arms…
Pain speared through her as she strained to sit up. She’d been thrown back from where she’d been. Singed pieces of the mini-grimoire had been strewn across the charred grass. She was farther back than where she and Tully had been. Where she’d stood was now a small crater of fresh dirt, fire, and the remnants of an RCA uniform. She’d been knocked back by an ether-grenade? And Tully had…
“Oh no.” Her voice wavered as the long beep from the wall cut through the air again. “No, no, no.”
The beam erupted a second time at Marana, and she squeezed her eyes shut, letting the tears seep through.
All these people.
Smaller pops rumbled through the field before the wall. She had to keep moving. She had to find Grier, and Adalai, and Vaughn…