The Rise of Ren Crown

by Anne Zoelle

  The tattoo shot from his finger and hit Kaine. Kaine bellowed and shadows shot from him.

  The shockwave sent everyone in a five block radius sprawling. Except Raphael, who remained on his feet.

  Raphael looked at me from far down the road, and smiled, then dropped a wide, round, black circle to the ground. It stuck like a suction cup thrown with great force.

  I knew what that was.

  “See you soon, Butterfly.” He stepped onto the portal pad, and immediately, sunk down as the edges of the pad pulled in toward center. There was a streak of darkness, then the dredges of Kaine were launching at Raphael just as his head was about to be covered. The edges sealed over the top of them, sealing them fighting inside as they disappeared into the earth.

  I gaped at the scorch mark—the only evidence that they'd been there at all.

  A bolt hit me in the shoulder, jerking me left, and I blindly threw a combination that Axer had taught me.

  Tarei morphed in front of me with a horrible, sadistic look on his face.

  Panting, I raised a hand. “We couldn't resist, right? I've been told criminal types can't.”

  The rage on Tarei's face lasted only for the moment it took for my magic to knock him back again.

  The praetorians were suddenly surrounding the two of us. Not slowly and creeping, but absent one instant, and there the next. I forgot how to breathe.

  I didn't forget how to yank the chaos field over me. Shaking, I looked around; only the thin field a protection. Surrounded. Beaten. Outnumbered. Friendless. Exactly as they'd wanted me on Tuesday.

  Wanting, hoping, that I would show myself as an Origin Mage. I could see the device they'd had on Top Circle—the one that captured the magic of an Origin Dome. And in Tarei's other hand was a gold cuff.

  Tarei smiled at me, cracking his neck to the side. “We're going to strip you apart. I love to watch the master at work. We'll remake you so that you only work for the master. In the basement, where all hope is lost.”

  Tarei's purple eyes glinted suddenly. “Shhh...” he said, his voice changing tone and sound. “Save the best of the surprises for when she visits us.”

  Stavros.

  Terrified calm descended over me. I touched my armband, then clenched my fingers around it. I slowly rose to my feet.

  “Your basement? I don't choose to accept your invitation.”

  “It's less an invitation...and more a demand.” Stavros smiled, image flickering between Tarei's insanity and Stavros' cold regard. “You will accompany us, Miss Crown.”

  “It is illegal to just take students.”

  “How tiresome.” He sighed. “Are we really going to go through this again? Here? And, you without your support?”

  I smiled tightly. “Are you going to throw me in with Marsgrove? You have Phillip Marsgrove, the Dean of Special Projects at Excelsine, illegally in your custody,” I bit out. “How do you plan to justify that to the public?”

  Tarei's face flipped back into view, as if he'd wrestled for control. He smiled sadistically. “We aren't. And I'm going to cut into him while you watch me, then I'm going to turn the scalpel on y—”

  His face flipped and Stavros was there again instead. “Now, now. Let's not get ahead of our agenda, Tarei.” Tarei's whole body flinched, as if Stavros had done something to him from whatever remote hole in the earth Stavros inhabited.

  “Now, if you would, Miss Crown.” He motioned toward the surrounding praetorians. “We have a schedule to keep.”

  Still holding the field, I sidestepped the first attempt to grab for me. The field sparked about me and they carefully eyed me, obviously trying to decide if it was some Origin Magic trickery.

  “Release Marsgrove. I'm betting that the public doesn't even know you have him. Were you going to blame that on the terrorists too?”

  “I find that there is little that the public cares to know as long as their safety is secured. And I do that quite well.” Stavros smiled coldly.

  “The public won't stand for it.”

  “After they discover you in the Third Layer performing Origin Magic, no one will care about other matters.”

  They were going to try and force my hand. My heart picked up speed, but I kept hold of it.

  “How do you plan to get me off campus? And to frame me—trying to pretend I'm an Origin Mage so you can scare the public more? You tried on Top Circle already with that bogus test.”

  His eyes narrowed.

  “Just like you got me here to the Midlands. Invited me here, telling me that you had finally found Olivia Price after your men mistakenly sealed her inside a building that was inaccessible to scrying attempts. She barely survived. Constantine and I brought a hologram of Axer along so that he could help us search, because he knows the Midlands best. Are you going to go after him now, too?”

  Stavros stilled, image flickering once, twice, then becoming harder. He knew what I was doing. And his gaze promised death.

  Tarei's puzzlement—his master might have figured it out, but Tarei had not—started to flutter through the unnatural facade.

  I pushed two fingers into my armband, then pulled out Bellacia's recording device that had been running since I squeezed my fingers over it. “Smile.” I clicked a button and the device whirled. The last thirty seconds replayed in the air, Tarei's voice speaking his threatening words again, followed by Stavros's.

  If I knew Bellacia, she was downloading and cutting the news into headlines already—Dean Illegally Taken! Department Basement Real! or maybe a clickbait, Praetorian Says All Hope Is Lost. And the club would already be spreading rumors that the Department had taken me from campus—salting and burning the path behind me. If we got the information out there first, the Department would have a more difficult time convincing the public that I'd left campus on my own recognizance.

  Tarei immediately shot a spell at Bellacia's device, and I was only able to half-deflect it, as my shields absorbed the rest of the force of the blow. I stumbled back.

  Blinding light exploded—Axer, Constantine, and Olivia finally taking their opportunity—and the praetorians around us fell, but Tarei, in the center with me, continued forward.

  Spell after spell flew from him. Half of them would have obliterated me without my shield set.

  “Get it,” said Stavros's voice over his. “There is still time. I am blocking the transmission.”

  “Give that to me!” Tarei yelled, firing another blast. “Where did you get that?”

  Blocking it? I grimly dodged a spell, tucking the device firmly into my armband now that I had clicked it and its use was complete. I could only hope Bellacia retrieved the footage at some point.

  Tarei didn't allow me time to recover, and I was thrown against the wall of a building.

  Tarei raised his palm to end the fight, and Axer stepped calmly behind him and snapped his neck. Tarei dropped, strings cut. His purple eyes moved in his lifeless face, showing someone still alive behind the scenes. With an absent wave of Axer's hands, and Tarei's lids slid closed.

  I shuddered. “Will someone revive him?”

  There was something dark in Axer's eyes as he looked down at him. He looked up at me and smiled. “Who can say, on the field of battle?” One hand hooked behind my back and he urged me forward. “We have to go.”

  The praetorians were already fighting again, but the terrorists had also revived many of their own numbers and were attacking them from behind. The Legion had done the same, and they also joined the fight.

  It was a bloodbath.

  The unidentified hooded mages that I had seen briefly, flitting from one dark cranny to another, seemed to be on our side. Or on Axer's side, more specifically.

  One of the hooded figures opened his cloak and the carnivorous vine dove inside. The figure turned and disappeared around the corner. Gone. I silently thanked the vine, then turned my attention back to surviving.

  Axer, Constantine, Olivia, and I fought together. Well, Olivia was trying to obliterate anyone Depar
tment related, while the two boys and I were trying to get all of us to a better position so we could activate the vortexes and leave.

  It was easy fighting with them. I was very used to working separately with all three of them, even with Olivia's out-of-character beserking. And it was easy to pass magic between us using me as a focal point. Axer and Constantine fought with an easy awareness of each other. As with the other combat mages in Axer's unit—they had a keen knowledge of the moves the other would make. They had fought together, some time, long ago.

  We were vastly outnumbered still. And even with the transmission to Bellacia, Stavros still had plenty of heads to hop and plenty of damage to deal, and he was getting closer to us.

  However, active magic was waning. Quickly.

  Corpus Sun had a recycling unit, so the magic inside the dome wasn't shifting and attacking us yet, but it wasn't regenerating either. The recycler wasn't instantaneous. Loudon had given us the rundown on it. It took hours to pump clean magic back out. The active magic in Corpus Sun had been drained almost as soon as the fighting had broken out—in the initial bloodbath. Everyone had used as much as they could, not waiting to let the other side do so.

  With the active magic gone, everyone was now fighting with containers.

  And, of course, with every additional use of magic, the recycler became more overloaded, and the extended magic use had started creating cracks in the magic of the dome. Soon, it would splinter out, like Ganymede Circus, and collapse, leaving those who survived completely exposed to the Third Layer at its most base level—where magic was precious, but its origins and environment were hostile.

  Another crack appeared in the dome.

  Each strike had to be well-aimed. Every piece of magic had a cost.

  Instead of bolts flying everywhere and resurrections occurring continuously, each magic use had to be weighed and given now.

  I looked up at the dome and palmed the ouroboros. Somewhere, Loudon was rubbing his hands together in anticipation.

  “Are we ready?” I asked.

  Axer looked at me, then gave a hand signal. The hooded figures started to disperse, still fighting, but clearly in retreat.

  “Constantine?” he barked.

  “I need thirty seconds.” He pointed to the building behind us. “I can do both at the same time.”

  “Price, go with him.”

  Olivia strangely obeyed.

  Then it was just the two of us defending the street. Axer looked at me. Our gazes held for a moment.

  “Do it,” he said.

  I looked around the town of Corpus Sun. The thinly magicked town and the decrepit wasteland surrounding it. I snapped the ouroboros from my neck and held it in my palm. I disengaged the empty container marble and held it up to the sun. It was empty, waiting to be refilled.

  When the dome collapsed... Well, might as well give it a try while I was destroying things.

  I shrugged at Axer's questioning look, then activated Loudon's spell.

  Chapter Forty-seven: Excelsine United

  Constantine, Olivia, and I fell into the Midlands.

  The vortex fizzled out, gave a crack of chaos magic, and a troll appeared.

  I let a single hysterical laugh escape, then pulled myself together and knocked it out.

  “Oh my god, I'd never thought I would say this, but even sleeping at Bellacia's sounds awesome right now. Let's go home.”

  Axer and a portion of his hooded friends—who had sprinted into the room as Corpus Sun broke around us—had taken the other vortex back to the competition. However he had gotten away from the competition, he had to have devised a way to return and not to be missed.

  Not all of the hooded figures had accompanied him—some of them had melted away into the Third Layer landscape.

  The three of us had taken the other vortex. The one to home.

  I brushed myself off and started moving energetically forward through a section of Roman ruins, arm hooked with Olivia's. Constantine rolled his eyes next to us. But there was a focused sense of satisfaction thrumming in him that was new.

  “Ren, I can't go back on campus,” Olivia said.

  “We already have all our excuses lined up and ready. And I got Stavros on tape.”

  Hopefully “tape” translated to whatever the correct word was here.

  “No, you don't understand,” Olivia said. “If I see my mother, I'll kill her.”

  I nodded. “Yeah, I feel that way too.”

  “No. I'll actually kill her.”

  I nodded again and shrugged. “I'll help you hide the body.”

  Constantine snorted next to me.

  “Ren.” She yanked my arm and stopped. “Look at me.”

  I did. There was something black zipping along one of her veins. Horror abruptly filled me. “What is that?” My gaze jerked to hers, as three things that Raphael had said in the dreams and in the past coalesced.

  “He turned you into the assassin instead of me.”

  “Yes.”

  The idea that Helen Price might not see another sunrise...? Not really top of my concern list. That Olivia would be forced to make it happen? That etched itself into the top five.

  Because all joking aside, murder outside of regulated combat was still illegal in the Second Layer. And Justice Magic was in play in almost every community here.

  There had to be some devious exceptions that occurred in homes—now that I knew Raphael had been used by Helen, Olivia had probably been abused with protection magic growing up, in order to subvert the Justice Magic in some way.

  But Olivia committing outright murder? Probably on some public street?

  I didn't know what the legal system was like outside of Excelsine, but the outcome of that action couldn't be good.

  “Okay,” I said, taking two deep breaths, then pulling us back into motion. “Avoid your mom, got it.”

  “Anyone in the Department.”

  I stumbled and turned to her. “Anyone?”

  She nodded grimly.

  “That...makes all your actions in the past hour make a lot more sense,” I said slowly.

  I rubbed my lip, thinking. Constantine stayed silent at my side.

  “We could go to ground,” I said finally.

  The Third Layer, with its large swaths of Outlaw Territory, would work for a number of purposes.

  “We can't go to ground,” she said. “I know what's been going on. We have to go back to the dorms. You have to go back.”

  “I'm not going without you. And the Legion is all over campus. Give it five or ten minutes, and their numbers will probably include some of the same men we just fought. I won't—”

  “Don't abandon me, then.” She cut me off, knowing exactly what I was going to say. “But we need to get back to the dorms, and we need alternatives fast.”

  “I will never abandon you.”

  Her hand wrapped around the back of my neck and she pulled my forehead against hers. “Ren, I know.”

  ~*~

  We exited the Midlands to great fanfare.

  Bellacia's broadcast had played everywhere.

  And even if some gazes were narrowed dangerously on us, many looked happy to see any students returned. One of us.

  I wasn't sure what it meant, but many of the students in the front of the crowd had paper roses in their hands.

  The only negative aspect was when the first member of the Legion pushed past the students in order to take us for questioning.

  Olivia whipped back her hand to cast, but Constantine was faster with the spells, and I was faster with physically wrapping myself around her. I tucked her head into my shoulder so that she couldn't see.

  “She is delirious. She needs to be taken to Medical,” I heard Constantine say in his normal, dismissive tones to the crowd around us.

  Olivia panted into my shoulder, trying to get hold of herself, but one member of the Legion, then another stepped closer, and she grew tenser and tenser.

  Then she went abruptly limp, and I ca
ught her as she slipped to the ground. Tendrils of clear magic simmered on Constantine's fingers.

  We exchanged grim looks over her fallen form.

  Much to Constantine’s dismay and ever-simmering rage, Stuart Leandred cleared a path and the professors rushed in—Mbozi, Wellington, Greyskull, and others. Even Stevens clicked her way to stand in the path of the head of the Legion.

  “I do not believe we need your assistance. In fact, I believe there is a Senate review at this very moment that you are required to attend, Legatus Shike.”

  The adults argued and Greyskull bent over Olivia.

  “Phillip was released,” Greyskull murmured as he scanned the worst of our wounds and touched fingers to Olivia’s temples. “They are calling it a clerical error. I don't know how long they would have kept him. Thank you.”

  I closed my eyes. “It was my fault he was taken.”

  “No,” Greyskull murmured. “Our actions are each our own.” In a louder voice, he declared, “These three students need immediate attention in Medical after fighting a fleet of trolls and two dozen zombies.”

  He lifted Olivia and I stopped him before he moved away. “Don't let anyone question her. Not yet. Healing coma, please?”

  Greyskull examined my expression, then nodded. He carried her toward the closest arch that connected near the Magiaduct.

  As Constantine and I followed in his wake, through the gauntlet of students, I was greeted with more of the same. The weaving, waving bodies of the crowd—those who wanted to reach out, and those who shied away.

  Peters handed us our Justice punishments—Level Fours—for going into the Midlands against regulations. It was the nicest Peters had ever been when giving me a Level Four. On a disdain scale of one to five, it was a weak two point three.

  We neared the arch, and I withdrew the container that had held the group's combined magic, and that now contained a tiny amount of the Third Layer.

  The magic within the marble reached out broken tendrils to me. It vainly tugged its fused tendrils, from where they had once more become stuck on the glass. A broken plasma ball.

  Constantine looked down at me.

  “What? No.” He swore under his breath, while trying to keep a bored look on his face as we navigated the last of the crowd. “I know that look,” he said in a low voice. “What are you thinking?”