by K. Gorman
He turned from the empty rooms, extinguished his flame, and left back down the stairs.
But as he re-entered the alley, he paused.
The quickest way to Leloni’s place led past the scene of the fight. It was not a place that he particularly wanted to revisit, especially now that he’d seen exactly what an Earth Mage could do. Elemental battles had been rare in Terremain, and the most he had had to defend himself against had been regular people.
People were easy. Make a fist of fire and even the toughest, most cocky-assed assailants reconsider their approach. You could beat down a lot of things, but fire hurt just by touch. It made Ketan nearly invulnerable to street fights, once he pulled it out.
Unless, of course, they had a gun.
Guns made things tricky. But the average street kid couldn’t afford one, and he had never messed with any of the gangs—what gangs were left in Terremain, anyway.
He wondered how they would cope, now that the city was occupied. He had a feeling Swarzgard soldiers were a lot less lenient to the shadier side of the city than Ryarne’s had been. Perhaps he could expect more gangsters to appear in the Underground during the next month or so, what with the way things were going.
He rubbed his hands, feeling the heat left over from the fire. He could bypass the fight scene if he went through the main arteries of the Core, but they would take him well out of his way and add an extra ten minutes to his travel time. Plus, he might be recognized.
He had been part of an armed robbery less than two hours ago. Even if Roger was willing to overlook that, Ketan doubted the memo had gone out yet.
He’d rather avoid the public eye.
A small, nervous feeling fluttered at the back of his mind as he turned away from the alley’s mouth and back to where the passageway narrowed into a maze of dark, twisting brick corridors. The rafters seemed to close in on his head, the walls narrowing, the shadows thickening. He ignored them, put his foot forward, and started walking.
It wasn’t long before he smelled the smoke.
The Earth Mage had done a number on the buildings. The electrical wires had snapped, and the place was so dark, it was like walking into a wall of physical shadow. Blackness engulfed him.
With a thought, fire burst across the palm of his hand. Broken bricks lay strewn across the path, mingled with charred and splintered wood and fragments of metal and glass.
And an unhealthy atmosphere of dust.
He closed his mouth and breathed through his nose.
He paused at the edge of the umbra, squinting into the shadows. His fire only lit a semi-circle around him. The rest was dense, close, and black.
But he had never been afraid of the dark. He pushed onward, crackling the flames of his Elemental torch higher. Silence pressed in around him, as physical as the darkness. The back of his neck prickled. There was something about the place that made him uneasy.
Then, he heard a noise.
It was a single sound, as if someone had flicked a rock against the wall, or skipped it across the floor.
It set his instincts on fire.
The torch ignited, leaping high into the air. The scene turned into a golden display of dancing light and shadow.
Rubble piled high in front of him, looking much different from the alleyway he had left before. That one had been largely passable after the fight. When he, Meese, and Gobardon had left, the buildings had been largely intact.
Now, only one building remained. Barely. The other had disintegrated, its walls looking like someone had taken a great, savage bite from its middle and left it to bleed. The structure sagged, and he could see the second floor tilt toward him, bits of debris hanging from the end. Inside, supporting walls were strained and broken. Rafters stuck out of the pile like wayward fence posts.
It looked like there’d been another fight.
Someone moved out of the dark.
Michael was barely recognizable. At first, Ketan thought it was blood that caked his face and streaked down his neck and shoulder, turning the fabric of his T-shirt into a dark, sinister mass. But as the Earth Mage stumbled forward, the darkness on his skin glinted in the light.
Solid, not liquid.
Stone, not blood.
Black crystal engulfed the Mage’s shoulder, stretching up his neck and down his right side. His face was a mask of pain. His breath wheezed, ragged and slow. Sharp crystal stones were embedded in his cheek and grew over his mouth. His dark eyes flicked forward, focusing on Ketan, the fire reflecting like twin candles.
The crystal shone in its glow like solid petroleum.
With a sickening feeling, Ketan realized it was growing.
He jerked back, scrambling amongst the debris on the alley. The Earth Mage fell against the ruined wall, his fingers like claws as he searched for support. The crystal grew with an audible crack, assimilating the Mage’s chest and abdomen as he struggled.
Soon, Michael gave up. His legs folded under him like a lawn chair. He slid down the wall.
Ketan stayed where he was, listening to the ragged ebb and flow of the Mage’s breaths. They seemed to be getting slower, more drawn out. Louder.
He studied the Mage’s face, wide-eyed, watching the crystal bloom like fungus on Michael’s lips.
With a shock, he realized it was almost over Michael’s nose.
He sprang up. His switchblade unfolded in his hand. Before he knew what he was doing, he’d closed the distance, pulled the Mage’s head back, and aimed his knife.
Michael snarled in pain, the sound muffled by the crystal. His eyes snapped open and focused on Ketan in a frenzied stare.
The blade’s edge made a soft chink when it hit the crystal. Michael hissed. Blood welled under the blackness.
Ketan took a closer look, and his heart sank. The tip had caught the crystal, but the crystal wasn’t just on top of the skin—it grew underneath, too.
At a thought, his fire floated toward him, bottom cradled in the air like a Will O’ Wisp. Heat whispered as it hovered by his shoulder.
Michael’s eyes widened. He struggled from Ketan’s grasp like he was trying to get away.
In a second, he realized why.
Crack!
Crystal fissured from the Mage’s shoulder, the closest point to the flame. It crept into the air with horrifying speed, changing, growing, little spikes splintering off like a tree branch…
It reached toward the fire.
And, as it grew, something pulled on his magic. The fire in the air shuddered, guttered.
Dimmed.
Michael shoved him away, sending him sprawling backwards. The knife flew from his hand, clattering against the bricks somewhere to his right. He looked up just in time to see the tip of the obsidian spike touch the edge of his flame.
The stone swallowed the magic.
The alley went horrifyingly dark.
Ketan scrambled away, rough stone cutting into his palms. The ground rumbled and shook beneath him. As he tried to stand, he felt it kick from under his feet. His boots skidded on the ground, seeking purchase—anything to get him back on his feet. He reached to rekindle his Element.
A wave of magic shoved him back.
Fire sparked in his palm, re-lighting the scene. The ground beneath him shivered, rattled, carried him away, turned into a moving carpet by the Earth Mage. A jagged line swerved across the alley from where it had broken away, and the whole scene juddered around him, still shifting. His mind reeled, thrown off balance by the odd movement.
He glanced behind him, in the direction he was going—and braced himself for impact.
His shoulder and ribs hit the wall hard. Wind and fire knocked out of him. Darkness returned.
The second flame struck closer to him, shattering to life above his palm. It gave barely half the light the earlier one had, but it was enough to see the scene.
The Earth Mage slumped against the wall, his eyes focused on Ketan. Green sigils, glowing like algae under oil, shifted under the black crystal. It encas
ed half his body now. His good arm, the one he had used to push Ketan away, was raised in a universal gesture: palm vertical and flat, fingers splayed.
Stay.
As he got another look at the crystal, Ketan was inclined to obey.
It had mutated where it had touched his flame, forming a near-perfect silhouette of fire in the air. It glittered like obsidian in the light.
The dust settled. Silence crept back into the alley, interrupted only by the cricks and creaks of growing crystal.
Ketan met Michael’s stare.
“There isn’t anything I can do, is there?” he asked.
The Earth Mage held his stare, eyes dark and piercing.
Then, he gave the slightest shake of his head.
No.
Ketan’s stomach dropped. The Earth Mage was dying, and he knew it.
“Do you want me to stay?”
Crystal encased the Mage’s neck now, preventing even the basest form of movement. Ketan saw it creep across the back of his skull, tendrils of it shifting forward like spider legs.
The Mage said nothing, but his eyes flicked to the fire and back.
Right. Dying in the dark, alone, to some black crystal was probably not the most fun way to go. Not that death was fun to begin with, but it was probably better to have light than not, in this situation.
Ketan swallowed the thought and shifted back a step. His hand felt for the wall. The roughness of the brick provided a strange comfort.
Silence trickled by. The crystal grew. Michael closed his eyes and tilted forward. His breath softened.
Then, after what seemed like an eternity of quiet suffering, the crystal on the man’s face grew over his nose.
Despite having lived in what some might have called a war zone, Ketan’s experience with death was somewhat limited. Terremain’s streets had been devoid of it. The only signs of war had been the craters that appeared in the road overnight, or the desolate look of the city’s suburbs after the evacuation.
Death, he soon learned, was a deeply ugly affair.
The Earth Mage thrashed. Ketan heard the crystal creak and crack as Michael strained against it. It grew faster, coating his cheek, a branch growing up and across the bridge of his nose. Green light flickered underneath the crystal on his arm, flaring on the skin of the Earth Mage’s still-bare wrist as he clawed as the crystal.
Quicker than light, the crystal covered that, too.
After a minute, Michael sagged. His eyes, wide and white with fear, relaxed. Turned glassy.
What skin Ketan could still see quickly turned from a ruddy shade of purple to a more deathly, pale complexion.
And, as the Earth Mage died, the crystal spread across the floor.
Chapter 36
The crystal moved fast, filling the gaps between brick and concrete. It streaked toward Ketan like spilled oil on an almost purposeful hunt.
He scrambled back, shoes skittering on bits of loose concrete. His back hit the wall of the ruined building.
One of the streaks cut off his exit, glistening like tar. It gleamed and glinted in the amber of his light. It was dark, malevolent, and, considering how fast it had consumed Michael, very dangerous.
Ketan slid along the wall, heart pounding in his chest. His fingers bumped along the bricks, and then into empty space.
Another spike of black crystal stabbed toward him, drawn like a moth to flame.
Wait.
He paused, staring as the black spike curved upward into the air.
It wasn’t going for him at all—at least, not yet.
It was going for his fire.
A crack sounded from Michael. The Mage was completely covered, slumped inside a crystal casket. Green flashed like a storm under the obsidian, little darts of Earth magic.
With each flash, the crystal grew.
It ate magic.
Ketan lifted his fire higher, away from him, toward the pile of rubble.
If he could direct it away…
The spike of black paused, four feet tall. Its tip glinted. It stopped, as if considering.
Then, it snapped toward him.
Ketan jerked out of the way just as it stabbed into the space he had been in. He darted farther into the alley, the way Michael had come.
But instinct told him to stop. Instinct, and the solid darkness of the shadow beyond his firelight.
If Michael, now covered in crystal, had come from that way, what were the chances he’d find an obsidian-coated death waiting for him in the darkness?
No way. He’d played too many of those kinds of video games. You didn’t run into the spooky, solid-looking darkness. Not unless you had more than one life to play with.
Luckily, there was another way out.
He scrambled onto the broken wall behind him, hoisting himself up and into the ruined building. The floor swayed as he pulled his body over, and he snapped his legs up beneath him as quickly as he could. Dust filled his nose, stung at his eyes. It was almost as dark in here as it was in the alley.
Almost.
He wasted no time. Ignoring the ominous give in the floor, he ducked low, spread his arms, and sprinted across the space.
It had been a warehouse once. Remnants of machinery rose on one side, dusty metal illuminated briefly by the flicker of his fire. His breath came hard in his ears. The sounds of the crystal cracked and crackled behind him. In his mind, he imagined the floor behind him jet black already, the deadly stone snapping at his feet.
He pushed himself faster, flying through a doorway and sprinting for the front. When he met the stairs, he took them two and three at a time.
He jumped the last five, blasted the door, and broke through in a shower of burning wood, sparks, and cinder.
His boots pounded hard on the open street as he sprinted away.
It took him three blocks before he looked over his shoulder, and another five before he slowed. The sounds of the crystal had vanished—although he could still hear the crick, crick, crick of it growing in his mind.
Everywhere, the shadows were suspect.
He edged toward the middle of the street, scanning every crack in the ground for the crystal’s telltale darkness. Each patch of asphalt, every glint of broken glass, shard of plastic—his mind whirred, adrenaline pushing him to keep looking, searching, running—
“Ketan?”
He jumped and twisted around. Fire burned in his hand before he knew it.
Leloni stood under the eaves of a wall, a lumpy messenger bag hung between the spikes of her jacket. Her eyes were wide as she looked at him. Shadows closed over her face.
He panicked. “Get away from the wall!”
Startled, she jerked away from the brick, skipping around to look at it.
Finding nothing, she rounded back on him.
“What the fuck? Did something happen?”
The street stood silent around them. It was one of the nicer ones, closer to the Core’s center. He could tell by the quality of the lights that dangled from the rafters—real, bona fide streetlamps fixed solidly to the beams, rather than a jerry-rigged string of incandescent trouble lights and compact fluorescents. The pavement under their feet was newly patched, smoother than the broken bits of the less-cared-for parts. The slick blackness of the new tar and asphalt made his spine shiver.
Up the street, embers glowed from the building he’d busted out of, burning on what remained of the door.
“We have to get out of here,” he told her.
Leloni didn’t move. “Why?”
Her eyes slipped coolly from him to the fire in his hand and back again, her face a blank, unreadable mask.
This was her poker face, he realized.
Ketan doused the fire.
The words streamed out. “Something’s happening. Something bad. It killed someone. Almost killed me. The Mage, he—”
He was babbling, he realized. He shut his mouth, took a deep breath, and refocused his thoughts. The black crystal had scared him—scared him much more th
an anything had scared him in a long, long time. He could feel the adrenaline leaving his blood now that the fight was over. His hands shook. It took a minute to piece himself together.
And Leloni watched him the entire time, unmoving. Untrusting.
“It’s some sort of bad magic,” he said at last. “I think it’s spreading. We have to get away from here.”
She fingered the strap of her bag, adjusting where it dug into her shoulder. “To your new place?”
He shook his head. “No. It’s not safe. Do you have anything there?”
“No.”
“What about your bag of clothes?”
“I left it with a friend.” Her eyes met his, one eyebrow rising ever so slightly.
Well, okay then. He wouldn’t push. “Good.”
Silence stepped between them. Her eyes shifted, moving to different parts of his face. It felt like she was measuring him.
And, in the distance, he heard the sound of a building groan. Something cracked like a gunshot.
He stared up the street. Maybe it was just him, but it looked like there was more dust in front of the building he’d run through. He could see it making halos around the streetlights.
When he turned back, it seemed that Leloni had completed her examination. The mask was gone, replaced by an attentive, cautious expression.
“You weren’t kidding, were you? About the… bad magic stuff?” Even as she said it, she hesitated over the last part.
Yeah… maybe he could have worded that better.
“No. I wasn’t.”
She looked back up the street. The embers had died from the fire he’d set, but the blasted door was pretty obvious. Only half of it hung on the frame, the hinge of the other half having broken off entirely. Smoke still rose from where he’d burned through the lock.
Leloni took a step forward, and the closest streetlight fell over her, illuminating the bleach-blond hair.
“Where should we go?”
He took it as a good sign that she was including herself in his plans. Although, he didn’t think she’d like his decision.
He took another look up the street, watching the dust float around the lights. He didn’t hear the sounds of the crystal, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t growing. An Earth Mage had a lot of magic to eat, and the crystal was a ravenous thing. Like a predatory plant with its roots in a vat of blood.