by Anne Zoelle
A burning slice split my right side.
Everything was going hazy, and my cheeks were wet.
“Ren's going into shock,” Will's voice yelled from the fabric at my throat. Alive.
The feel of Neph's magic immediately washed through me. “Olivia, I can't get to you. Ren's magic—her command—made it so I have to stay close to Will, Mike, and Delia and revive everyone that falls, and everyone keeps dying. But I can give you forty seconds.” Her voice was thin and strained and I wanted to help her.
A blast of Neph's magic burst from my chest and made everyone around us stop in slack-jawed awe—staring at something only they could see.
Olivia's hand was suddenly clenched around my chin. She jerked it downward to make sure I saw her pointing at the blonde girl. “Resurrect her.”
“I don't know her.” I was only responsible for her death, not her life. I was responsible for Olivia's life. Will's. Neph's. D—
“Ren.” Olivia growled.
I dropped to my knees and laid my intact hand on the girl's torn stomach. Magic spilled into her. There was a cloud of magic still extending outward from where the dome had exploded and I grabbed it. Sunlight shot everywhere, haloing out my sight. Christian?
I pushed the enormous amount of magic into fixing everything in the body beneath my hand.
Magic—in a dazzling and sickening array of colors—was flying everywhere around the river I was channeling downward. Traps were springing in a perimeter around us one after another in technicolor brilliance. Olivia was holding concave shields made of magic and shooting colored balls at the soldiers. Nameless and faceless students ran, leaped, shot, fell, then rose again.
My gaze met Bellacia Bailey's in the mass. Her green eyes were slitted and her perfectly styled hair had violently loosened around her face. Her expression was apocalyptic. I wasn't going to be able to do anything against an attack from her. She drew her hands back, took a deep breath, threw her hands forward and screamed.
Sound waves burst from her. In the thick magic of the field, they visibly rippled the air.
The sound waves shuddered the air above me and I could hear bodies falling behind me in the first wave of it—dropping enemies that had been drawing closer to me in my unaware state.
The waves turned into ripples and Bellacia stumbled, drained. Then Inessa was there, shielding her and pushing Bellacia toward a magical barricade some of the students had formed.
“You will finish this, then you will answer. You will!” Bellacia yelled at me as her friend manhandled her back.
Arms wrapped around my neck and words spilled into my ear in a foreign voice, as the blonde girl I had just resurrected clung to me.
“I think I'm responsible for you now,” I said absently. I let go of the conduit of magic and flared the rest outward toward anyone my magic considered a friend. The girl continued to utter words in my ear like a vow. “You need to hide,” I said.
She said something else incomprehensible, then sprinted off into the fallen grove like a pixie wearing shoes taken directly from the feet of Hermes—dodging between fighting mages, magic making her feet move faster.
I rose, and the gash in my side magically knit itself together, as did the repaired fingers on my damaged hand. The magical tingles were laced with Neph's remote magic.
“I didn't mean use that much magic,” Olivia hissed, flicking her fingers to finish stitching the job on my side. “You need to save some for yoursel—”
Will gasped, “Olivia, watch out!”
My mouth worked silently as the pull on my magic engaged and a violent blast of magenta impacted an inch from Olivia's chest. The barest hint of wings shimmered, and a butterfly rose in front of her, then burst into a hundred shards of smaller butterflies, each absorbing the magic, pulling a piece of my shield from me, then shattering. Saving Olivia. Saving her exactly as the caterpillar life cycle creation had been designed to do.
I clutched my head and tried to rebuild my shield set. Triumph mixed with other intense emotions. My magic had saved Olivia. The remote leech had worked. Exactly as designed.
I saw her look down at her hands in disbelief.
But I had no time to process her reaction as Godfrey's face came into view and his expression indicated that he had been granted every wish he'd ever made. His gaze followed the thread of magic in the air right to me. “It's her, it's her, not a device.”
And that's when the dome around the Magiaduct blew. The explosion rocked the entire mountain and everyone automatically ducked. Magic burst from me in response to the Origin Dome's collapse and I stumbled and fell. At my loss of control, I could feel the Junior Department's boxes explode, opening the Midlands once more, magic sucking through the boundaries and coiling inside.
Justice Toad gave a weird, ear-splitting shriek, ending his silence. It was very, very possible that even without the Administrative Magic, the tablet realized I was now truly expelled.
Contrarily, relief surged through the combined magic of the scarves as Delta, Gamma, and Epsilon yelled that the muses were taking up their flagpole posts and were calling all students. Everyone in the Magiaduct was streaming from the building, heading up to help the muses and to free the Administration Building.
Trick cackled in delight.
The teachers would be freed. And Marsgrove would hie down the mountain at top speed to arrest me. We were almost saved. The scarves were crowing with it.
The students around us started swarming, en masse, up the mountain, toward Top Circle as well—heeding the call of the muses to free the Administration Building, to end this.
But I couldn't move, hands curled into the dirt, shaking. The Layer was shaking. And no one seemed to be aware of it or else they would be freaking out too.
“Grab her, now,” Godfrey repeated, clutching his chest. As the originator of the magic, connected to whatever device or enchantment he had stolen, he was obviously also affected by a second dome shattering—and the magic was pulling on anything connected to it (Godfrey) or kindred in spirit (me).
His footsteps lurched toward me. “All personnel, to me. Now.”
“You will not touch her.”
The words preceded a flash and then Olivia was in front of me, battling like a demon freed from hell, throwing devices and magic toward the foe.
But Godfrey was also a demon possessed. “Forget the students. Forget the processor. Forget the mountain,” he yelled. “Here. All personnel to me, now!”
I crawled and tried to cover Olivia's back as she moved forward, offensively blasting enemy after enemy. All of the students were streaming away from us and up the mountain, and the soldiers were streaming after them, trying to cut them down from behind—either not hearing Godfrey or not able to hear him in his stumbling state. The Layer was shaking and it was all I could do to keep it steady and protect Olivia at the same time.
“Wait, wait! Don't abandon the battle fields! Neph! Get everyone back down here! Everyone! Everyone!” Will shouted mentally through my scarf. I could hear him throwing devices left and right in the background and I could hear Mike and Delia fighting as well. “Ren and Olivia need help! Neph!”
My elbows gave out and I face planted in the dirt. So much for Epsilon's theory that they could just blow the dome around the Magiaduct... Magic was sucking out of me as the detonated magic in the Origin Dome continued to spread outward. Black lightning crackled in the distance and a rip sounded. A tsunami in the First Layer, or a flood in the Fourth, or a plague in the Third...some natural disaster had just occurred somewhere in response.
I seemed to realize it subconsciously before consciousness grabbed hold. All of those things that had been occurring... Origin Magic backlash. Build a house of bricks, then remove a few bricks at the base willy-nilly, and disaster occurred.
Just like in the Third Layer.
Scarf chatter was suddenly shouting about backing off from touching the Administration Building's dome. They too now understood the danger.
“—Layer cracking!”
“—can't possibly—”
“How did you get the battle field dome down, Crown?”
“By Magic, everyone, stay away from the Midlands, I repeat, stay away.”
“Crown? Answer!”
I couldn't answer. I was doing everything I could to stabilize the magic spreading outward and to guard Olivia's back.
“Constantine,” I croaked out. “Help. Leech.”
But Constantine didn't answer.
Fifteen balls of fuchsia burst around us, blowing back the students who were turning around to help.
Olivia was holding her own, but there were just too many enemies and we were too far away to layer our shields together. My shield was doing triple duty and incurring heavy damage just trying to keep me alive.
And the magical cloud was expanding, shuddering across the surface of the Layer.
“Just grab both of them, for shivit's sake!” Godfrey yelled.
I rose and used every tactic Dare had taught me, every tactic that I had observed and that our ragtag group had been practicing to dodge, trap, and evade. Wind enchantments threw the papers at charging enemies, swallowing them inside, but others just kept coming. And the shakiness in my limbs and the horror in my head kept increasing.
“This is a decided case of finders keepers,” a new voice said. “You always were behind the ball, Vincent.”
Emrys. He hadn't left.
“And such a keeper. With some sparkling new additions,” he finished. His voice was somewhere off to my left.
I released a stream of magic forward and tried to sweep a paper toward a man trying to kill Olivia, while at the same time my peripheral vision saw a dart headed my way. A dart would bounce off my shield like a paper airplane, so I ignored it and concentrated on holding and dispersing the cloud of Origin Magic.
Only the swirl of gold magic in the dart made me look at it twice. My shield pulsed companionably in response.
To the gold. No. No.
There was nothing I could do to stop its impact anymore. In a millisecond, mathematical equations of angles and speed rushed through my mind. Whatever was heading my way had been created by Raphael. And with my magic releasing elsewhere, I couldn't form enough preventive magic soon enough to intercept it in time. It was going to pierce my shield and do...something terrible. The satisfaction in every line of Emrys's body made that apparent.
I thought of Christian.
My gaze met Olivia's. Horror, fury, and despair. Her expression compressed, then become determined. The empty cocoon was already in her fist and magic was flaring outward, pinching space. No. No.
Magic yanked inside of me, pulled, leeched, and hands pushed me, shoving me from the path of the blast. I landed hard on the grass. Cracks formed in the sky as the cloud of Origin Magic abruptly released from my grasp.
Splayed out, hair falling in my face, I saw Olivia standing in the position of space that I had just occupied. In a horrible, horrifying repeat of what I had done for Dare last term, Olivia had used my magic to impossibly port herself across campus and into my position of space. She had been practicing porting with a leech inside the Midlands—where Administrative rules didn't apply. She had been practicing for fun, a smile on her face.
And when her cocoon had hatched into a butterfly a few short minutes ago, she had figured out that I had put a leash to me inside. She had used it to port to me. She had taken my place.
Gazes connected, I could see satisfaction mixing with her underlying terror. She had known, and she'd chosen to port to me anyway.
Olivia's skin burst into gold.
“No, nononononono!” I scrambled upright, but she was already disappearing, her body breaking up one tiny burst of gold at a time, starbursts of golden light vanishing pieces of her body bit by bit, like Lightning Festival magic. “Nononono!”
“Stop! Don't touch me!” Olivia threw a hand forward as I stumbled to try and reach her.
And that was the problem with leeches—even the ones we created. They rendered the leeched mage magicless during the leech's use and for precious seconds thereafter.
“Olivia.” I stumbled, lurching forward uselessly like some horrid nightmare. I wasn't going to make it in time.
She gripped her brooch and tore off her scarf, throwing it away from her disappearing body. The working of her bare throat showed her anxiety as the shimmering burst faster. Gold dust puffed out as the scarf fell on the grass. Her hazel eyes were a maelstrom of emotion.
Then they too burst with gold and vanished. The scarf was the only thing left to show that she had stood before me. The world swam as I fell on it. I saw the blurred image of a man readying another dart as the group of soldiers closed in around me.
The aftermath of the leech ended. Magic rushed back into my control.
Coldness. Numbness. Rage.
Rage.
The waiting cloud of Origin Magic dove into me like a meteoric swarm, then pulsed outward as I threw my arms to the sides, blowing away everything in my vision. Black shapes toppled like dominoes in a broad circle around me.
The earth cracked and creaked.
My hands hit the ground roughly and a trench opened in front of me. I could wrench the earth in two. Force this world to eat itself. Here, on the edge of existence.
A pull, a crack—tiny in the melee of destruction that I could wield—yanked at me and footsteps sprinted toward me. A strong forearm diagonally banded my chest, then I was being pulled upright and hauled away from the trench. The arm felt familiar. Someone was pulling me away from the edge, and it didn't matter if it was friend or foe. The enemy had killed Olivia. Olivia had sacrificed herself for me.
Coldness. Numb rage. Right in my chest. Right where Olivia's thread pulsed green. Still...pulsed... green?
Numb rage turned to fire, and my magic exploded.
The arm holding me dropped. The earth thrust back together. Mountains in the far distance shook and crumbled. I thought of Dare in the Midlands.
Dare.
A wave of the dome's magic ripped from me and the spells blocking the ports blew open with the explosive sound of a million shards of detonated glass.
Mouths opened in screams, and terrified student faces—with gazes focused on me—were rejected from my view. I didn't have time for fear. Only for rectification and retaliation.
I tore the magic away from the ports in a fast flowing mist of piercing screams. Connected to campus, I could feel Dare and the rest of the combat mages streaming through the port on Top Circle. Coming through so quickly, as if they had been balanced on the balls of their feet on the other side, notified and waiting for this exact moment.
I could feel Dare. I could feel his magic enveloping the dome around the Administration Building. Then the connection to him snapped. Dead. Dead. I lurched and fell forward. Then the connection snapped back into place—almost too quickly for me to truly process his death. A moment later the mountain rocked as the Administration Building burst free.
Cheek pressed against the Earth, I could feel Marsgrove too—his magic striping the air. There were dozens of unfamiliar touches as well—other combat mages or Department types—but the figures were moving too fast for me to keep track. Justice Toad was back online and croaking gutturally and burning my lower back through my bag. And I...I just didn't care. I threw my bag to the side and rolled to my back.
I was shaking. I realized it the moment that sound returned. I was shaking uncontrollably, and I felt empty. Exhausted. Drained. No one was still standing in a fifty-yard radius surrounding me, and that included a portion of the level below. From above, it had to look like the blast radius of a detonated bomb.
The connection to campus was draining quickly—a tenuous thread, barely supported by the empty well of my magic.
I was fried. I gripped my chest. Olivia was alive. But I had no idea where. She had been taken via that golden burst, and a mathematical proof or artistic rendition wasn't going to help me. I needed magic, and someo
ne up top had already funneled all of the magic from the Administration Building's dome. It had to have been done immediately—so quickly that the dome's magic must have been the only thing that concerned whoever had done it. In the midst of a thousand deaths, some official had done that first? That wasn't reassuring.
Through clouded eyes, I stared at the scarf puddled on the ground next to where Olivia had stood. She had shed it. She had shed the scarf so that the enemy didn't get it. The scarf that controlled the others.
Adrenaline sputtered from some hidden well, and I rolled and grabbed the scarf, and yanked it on over mine. Frantic questions and shouted directions immediately assailed me, and I realized that I had ended the communication magic threaded through my scarf at some point—and probably through everyone's scarves—but now that Administration Magic was back in play, our communications were online naturally again, at least for everyone else.
I yelled directions through Olivia's scarf to assist and update the combat mages. The enemy forces were still actively fighting all over the mountain. Dare would have told his own forces at this point about aiding anyone wearing a scarf. And as far as I was concerned, he was back in charge.
I unwrapped the scarf again, and crouched on the spot where Olivia had stood. I put my palm to the earth and pulled a portion of the combined magic from the scarf network into my other hand—we had set up the scarves to allow the lead scarf to use a small portion of embedded magic from all of them, if needed. I needed.
I pressed her scarf against the ground and focused the magical circuit. I pressed down on my more unhelpful emotions—loss, despair, failure—and concentrated on the question I needed the remnants of Olivia's presence and magic to answer. Where did you go? An indecipherable six-sensory response shot through the loop and I shakily captured it in the scarf's threads.
I let go of the combined magic in the scarf, and wrapped it back around my neck.
Voices were shouting even more loudly. Over-buzzed on emptied adrenaline and mortal peril I could hear Neph and Will, thank God, and a stream of other voices I was happy to hear yelling at me. Friends and associates who were alive and accounted for.