Images flash. A second fireball comes with a shotgun kaleidoscope of light beams, and they tear through our shield man before he can raise a defense. The fireball burns and all goes black. And this is our Fated end...
"No!" That's not how this ends. A crazy idea hits me. I pull out an explosive device and arm it for two seconds. Then, I force my eyes closed and make myself listen. Not to the sounds, but to the moments... There. I throw the device. Two seconds later, a swirling mass of purple plasma pulses outwards from it, attacking every tunnel surface nearby. When the pulse draws into itself, it brings the walls and ceiling down with it, though it sucks in one of our people, too—just as a fireball streaks our way.
It never has the chance to hit us, but I hear it explode on the back side of the tunnel collapse. A glimpse of a vision replaces what's before my eyes, and I see the enemy team engulfed by their own fire. There's no time to ponder the death I just gave them, though. I'm sort of stunned—I just made Fate bend to my will.
"Nicely done," Birka says. "We'll have to side-track down this tunnel, though, to continue on. I know the way." She strides down the side tunnel, the rest of the team scrambling to get up and catch up. We pass another intersection, but at the next one, she turns left again.
Soon, we're back on the right track. At each intersection, now, we encounter light defenses. These are easily overcome, but they're growing stiffer with each one.
Talon nudges me. "Won't be long before we're in the real fighting," he gasps.
I look over to see his complexion pale, then return, though not as ruddy as before. The Revenants fighting are taking their toll on him. "Stay near me."
He nods without answering, but keeps up at my side.
The next two skirmishes go well enough, though we lose another one of our fighters. Birka is a fine war leader, and the losses could have been much worse.
Abruptly, Glenn holds his arm out to stop Birka up ahead, tearing me from my thoughts. "Bunker at the next intersection. We’ll lose a lot of people in the first shots if we continue."
I'd almost forgotten he had that Gift. It's not as powerful as mine, but in many ways, it's more versatile. Like now.
Birka nods grimly. "Thanks." She starts to rearrange our troops, moving some back and moving others forward. How she keeps all their Gifts in mind, I don't know, but she's the queen for a reason. "Troops, advance," comes the command.
Every hair on my arms and neck stand up and I expect all hell to break loose with each step we take. I don't have long to wait.
The first volley comes our way from down the tunnel, a hail of bullets that are easily stopped. They slow to a standstill in midair, then fall to the floor, clinking as they bounce away. A repulsor field? No time to think on it, though. We're charging right into the maw of the bunker. We have to get through to succeed, casualties be damned.
The fight is a blur. A wave of enemies is put down. We advance. A magical counter-attack, stopped with one casualty. On and on, we advance—
There's a sound like a train approaching, and then as it crescendos, five people holding hands appear in our ranks, teleporting in. Lightning streaks from one, and two of our people are blackened in an instant.
I'm already leaping toward them with daggers drawn, they're so close.
One turns and, with a swipe of her hand, I feel a force wrap around me like a giant's fist, crushing, and she flings me aside with a simple gesture.
The wall rushes up to me, and for a second, I black out. When I open my eyes, everything hurts. I'm tangled with something. Talon. He leapt with me? I struggle to my feet and help him up as I look around to get my bearings. We're ten feet down a side corridor. I turn to rush back into the fray, my target picked—
A neon-green dragon streaks at us from the back; Talon and I are easy targets, outside of the main fight. The dragon devours us...
I grab Talon and yank him back, away from the main corridor. Then I see it—a phantasmal dragon, someone's offensive Gift with a touch of flair, misses us by only two feet. It slams into our corridor's opposite wall and explodes, knocking me and Talon back like ragdolls. I land on my back and skid what feels like twenty feet.
Then, there's only the tinkling sound of rubble settling, the acrid stench of sulfuric smoke, and Talon's wheezing. When I raise my head to look back, all I see is rubble. The corridor has collapsed behind us.
"Well." Talon struggles to his knees. "Looks like we're on our own."
So it does. I have no idea who's alive on the other side, but the mission remains. "Let's go, then."
Chapter 23
The corridor stretches on ahead of us without branching, forcing us to either stay and hope for rescue or continue on. It's not much of a choice, and we put one foot in front of the other, duffle bag banging against my thigh with each step.
As the minutes pass, the corridor remains as it was—stretching onward, featureless, a boring beige that quickly begins to feel like it's trying to claw out my eyeballs. After only ten minutes or so, I'd kill for a splash of color.
Unfortunately, as those minutes pass, Talon's mostly healthy complexion begins to fade, becoming ashen. His steps shorten, and his breaths lengthen and are soon labored.
"Are you okay? What's going on? You look like hell."
Through gritted teeth, he gives me a lopsided flash of a smile. "I'm the nexus. I think that, as the Revenants are injured, their healing draws energy from me. I feel as crappy as I must look."
I nod, but don't reply. What's there to say? We only have one choice—keep going.
Until, that is, I see a crack in the wall. It's only a small crack, a couple inches wide, sitting halfway between floor and ceiling on the left. I've seen that crack before... "What the hell?"
"What?"
I point at the crack. "We've passed this same crack before. We’re going in circles. How on earth are we going in circles in a straight corridor?"
Talon laughs, but it immediately turns to coughing that bends him over. I hadn't realized he was so weak, but he waves away my attempt to lift him up. "Let me catch my breath." After a moment, his labored breathing returns to normal, though shallower as his appearance continues to degenerate. "Not a circle. An illusion. Give me one of your knives."
I pull out Lucky Number Seven from its hidden sheath at my ankle and hand it to him without a word.
He takes a small water bottle out of one cargo pocket, unscrews the cap with shaking hands, and pours just a few drops onto his right index finger tip. Holding my knife in his left hand, his wet fingertip glides over my blade quickly, making an intricate pattern I cannot follow. It takes only a second, but when he pulls his finger away, very faint light glows from my blade and I immediately see what he's done. A glyph. He may be without magic, but he is the son of the queen and not without knowledge, it seems. "What will it do?"
He holds the knife out to me. "Raise the knife in front of you. The glyph will cut through illusion the way the knife cuts through flesh. Symbolic magic is full of, well, symbolism."
Taking the blade, I raise it up before me, holding it with the blade extending horizontally. The corridor ahead shimmers, then it seems to burst, exploding in a kaleidoscope of multicolored shards that twinkle and glow before fading away, almost like ash scattered before the wind. In their place, I see what we've really been doing—the corridor curves sharply both ahead and behind. We really have been going in circles. It’s also not a featureless tunnel, for other tunnels intersect this one.
Talon grunts. "We are at the heart of the labyrinth. All those corridors come in on the left hand side, given the way we are facing. But what's on the right?"
I narrow my eyes and stare at the wall. There's nothing there, and yet... If the corridor bends at a consistent rate, it forms a circle. Others must intersect all around. But that leaves a void in the middle, and therein must lie the true heart of the labyrinth. "Interesting. How do we get in? I doubt we can just blow a hole in that wall, and even if we had the gear to do it, you're in no co
ndition to run for cover."
"True." Talon points at the dagger in my hand. "It's a circle, so let's circle it. Just keep your eyes open and your dagger up. Maybe we'll get lucky."
We've only been walking a minute, at most, when I hear a man's voice ahead of us. "Here they come again. When are you gonna let me just kill them?"
Another man's voice replies, "When I get bored of laughing at them. Now be quiet, private."
"Yes, sergeant."
It's a force of will not to alter my steps. I can't allow them to think anything is amiss, so I keep walking without saying a word. Talon turns his head to look at me, briefly, but says nothing and keeps up with the slow, steady pace I set. Only a few steps later, the curve of the tunnel reveals an alcove ahead where I had seen only a flat, featureless wall before. And in that alcove, two men with swords in scabbards stand, watching us. One leans against the wall lazily while the other stands akimbo, facing us. Keeping my eyes forward like I'm walking down a straight hallway is an effort of will, each step taking us closer. I tuck the blade behind my cupped hand, which, although it severs the true-sight, keeps me from telegraphing my next move.
Once I estimate we're approximately parallel with the two goons, I raise my blade and draw another in one fluid movement, and turn toward the guards.
Only, I'm four feet off. The guards, alert and watching us, reach for steel—
A metallic clicking sound repeats itself beside me as I realize Talon is attempting to shoot them with a revolver he picked up somewhere. Only, it's not firing.
I shove off with my right foot, streaking left, directly at the sergeant. One blade finds the small space at the base of his neck, near his collar bone, and sinks to the hilt. He'll be dead in three seconds, so I let his sagging body tear the uncharmed dagger from my hand. I already have another drawn by the time I close in with the private. He has an actual sword, but it's slow and he's not prepared. The glyphed blade knocks it aside while my fresh knife catches him in his sternum.
As he slumps wide-eyed to the floor, mouth moving soundlessly, I realize I have tears streaming down my cheeks. I want to throw up. These men had to die, and I know it, but it doesn’t make it easy, especially up-close and personal like this.
I feel a hand rest lightly on my shoulder as Talon's deep voice comes softly to me. "You're okay, Mirella. You did well. It's never easy, and it isn't supposed to be. But mourn that later, warrior-girl. We have a mission to finish."
He's right. I wipe tears with the heels of my hands, the smell of blood thick in my nose, and turn with Talon to face the alcove which is now revealed. At the back stands a single door.
"Too bad your gun's a dud." Then it might not have been me who killed these two men. But he's right, we have a mission to complete.
"Did you notice they carry blades, not guns? And they're mortals. Unaffected by any magical side-effects. I think technology like firearms simply won't work here, and that means we're very near the shard Birka mentioned. The heart of Mortals Landing may well lie behind that door.
The door has no knob. I step up to it, looking for a button or a handle or any kind of feature. Only, when I get within arm's reach, six glyphs appear, each a different color. I can see through them as they seemingly float out from the door itself to hover just within my reach. "What the heck?"
"Stop." Talon's voice, though weary, is firm.
I freeze, stifling my urge to touch the glyphs. "What are they?"
"I recognize these symbols. They stand in for numerals in symbolic magic. Actually..."
I wait for him to finish his thought.
A moment later, he wheezes, "I recognize the numbers they represent, too. It's my birthday, but all jumbled up."
"What, like a passcode?"
"That's what I'm thinking. Birka must have set it. How anyone else got in, I don't know. Teleported, maybe? Whatever the case, I am pretty sure I can unjumble it."
Pretty sure. I don't like those odds, but I grit my teeth and step aside. I don't have a better suggestion. "What happens if you're wrong?"
"Knowing my mother, it will trigger a trap of some kind. Probably magical, probably devious, definitely deadly. At least for you—I'm not sure I can die right now any more than the Revenants can, though I feel like death warmed over."
I nod. The battle must still be raging elsewhere, Dawson's revenants sucking Talon's energy to keep them alive despite their injuries. "Well, do it. I haven't seen a vision of this killing me or you."
"That's good enough for me." He steps up to the door, staring at the glyphs for a moment. I count the seconds going by, and when I get to five, he reaches up with one hand, index finger extended. He touches one and moves his hand downward. The glyph follows, like dragging an icon on a computer desktop.
He smiles, and with surer hands, begins to slide the glyphs around like one of those jumbled-picture toys. As he moves the last of them to the very end of a line he's made, they flare brightly for a second before fading, leaving spots in my eyes.
In their place, a lever-type doorknob appears.
"After you," he says, smiling wanly. "If anyone's inside, you're in better shape than I am to deal with it.
I grit my teeth and push the lever down. The door pops inward an inch with a faint metallic click, but I waste no time before shoving it open and leaping through the doorway into the room beyond, landing with knees bent and both knives up and ready.
I needn't have worried, though. There's no one inside. The room is far from empty, however. Stretching at least fifty feet across in a broad circle, the walls are covered with intricate rune lines and glyphs, which glow a rainbow of colors that bathe the broad chamber and us alike in an avalanche of almost neon-like lights.
But my eyes are locked on what's at the room's center. "What on Earth is that?"
I sense Talon step up just behind me. "I... I don't know. It shouldn't be possible."
At the center, a tube of glass extends from the floor to the ceiling some twenty feet above. Protruding from it at irregular intervals in a spiraling pattern are a slew of electronic devices. They shouldn't work in this magical place, but then I see glowing, faintly sparkling lines covering them, like circuits—magical circuits.
"I've never heard of this."
"Nor have I." Talon steps up to the tube—which is also inlayed with a spider web of glowing lines in every color of the rainbow—and examines a device closely. I notice he is careful to avoid touching it, however, and make a note to follow his example. Who knows what happens if one of these short-circuits.
As I stare at Talon and the hulking arcane device he's examining, I catch a movement at the corner of my eye. I think I do, at least. I step closer, narrowing my eyes, looking intently. Yes, there it is again—a thin tendril of translucent light extending from the tube to Talon. I'm pretty sure I see no such tendril reaching out to me.
The longer I stare, the more clear that tendril becomes. Thick, it undulates with rainbow colors, though predominantly a sickly, neon green. But there's more—additional thin lines, waving in some invisible breeze, reach out from Talon himself in all directions. I follow one with my eyes, ignoring Talon's droning speech for a moment until I'm sure what I'm seeing. Eight tendrils spread evenly in all directions, the lights occasionally pulsing brighter in no pattern I can detect.
These must be his tethers to the other hubs. And this is the heart of the whole endeavor. "Talon..."
"I see it." He turns to face me. "But look into the vat, or whatever this tube is. Get close, and stare at it."
I follow his instructions. At first, I see nothing. Just an empty vat, faintly lit by the myriad colors emanating from the walls and from the devices spiraling around the vat itself.
I'm about to say so when I think I glimpse something. I narrow my eyes. Slowly, a shape emerges. It glows faintly, too, with a swirling mass of colors that reminds me of a lava lamp. But the glow, as it materializes before my eyes, reveals the shape inside. It's Talon. Or more like his ghost, a translucent
shadow of himself. "What is that?"
His response is as softly half-whispered as my question. "It looks like me, doesn't it?"
It does indeed. Like an ectoplasmic after-image of him. "How is that possible?"
He pauses a couple heartbeats before replying, "I think that's my magic, in there. I think my Gift has been somehow stuffed inside this crystal shard, and it's what is powering all the hubs. It's altogether creepy to see part of my soul floating in there."
I look at Talon askance, but I suppose it makes sense. Our kind would likely view the Gift to be part of their very souls. "But that presents us with a dilemma."
"Oh?" Talon turns to look at me. "Our course seems pretty clear to me. Blow it up, save the world."
I'm shaking my head in horror before I realize what I'm doing. "No!" The word slips out, unbidden.
"No? Why not. It's here, we're here..."
I take a deep breath, but really, I'm trying to articulate my thoughts. "That's the part of you that's still magical trapped inside that glass cage."
"Crystal."
"Moot point." I take a deep breath. "It’s powering the hubs and fueling the Revenants. But if we destroy it, or even just turn it off, you'll never get your magic back. Never. It'll be gone."
"Why is this even a question? Save the world, or save my magic—which I can't even use, since Dawson's got it in that prison."
"But we could find a way to get it back into you, where it belongs. Dawson couldn't use it then, either."
Talon's gaze bores into me like scalpels. "You're letting your own fears and guilt guide you. We don't know that we can get my mojo back in my meat suit, or how long that would take. Me having my Gift again isn't the priority anyway. What good will it do if Dawson takes over everything? This is our fighting chance. This moment, where the last of our loyalist forces are spending their blood to give us this opportunity. Now, blow this damn thing."
I swing my duffle bag to hang in front of me and reach for the zipper.
Cursed Seer Page 18