Obscure, Mosaic Chronicles Book Seven

by Pearson, Andrea

  Nicole sensed the Wind Arete approaching. She was positive he wouldn’t be traveling alone—she’d always seen an Agarch with the Aretes. Would he sense her and report her?

  Unable to see what she was doing and praying her magic would make things right, Nicole commanded the dirt to seal off, to mirror what it had looked like before.

  Just as soon as the dirt stopped glowing, she felt—and heard—the Agarch and Arete enter the room.

  Nicole held still, trying not to breathe. She pulled her powers back, tucking them as closely around herself as possible.

  No sound came from the room. Had they discovered her? Had her powers betrayed her? Did the Agarchs suspect someone had entered their living space?

  Nicole waited a full five minutes before a new thought occurred to her.

  She didn’t have enough air to stay alive. And without knowing how long her enemies would stick around, she couldn’t go back the way she’d come.

  This only meant one thing. She would have to dig through the dirt, away from the room and its occupants.

  Nicole got to work. She wriggled around until she was facing the opposite direction. Using her powers, she began gathering small amounts of the moist soil. She pushed it down, packed it under her feet, and slowly dug up while moving away from the room. She ignored the feeling of grime sticking to her sweat, coating her skin. Her thigh throbbed from the exertion of the day, and she felt her energy draining away. But she didn’t stop.

  It was long, hard work. The temperature of the surrounding dirt was much lower than the air outside and that was a relief, but Nicole desperately needed more oxygen than she was getting.

  Panic started to set in when she sensed herself reaching the limits of her magic. She’d moved maybe five feet of dirt—it was much more difficult than she’d imagined it would be. What had she been thinking? She was about to suffocate!

  Nicole started feeling lightheaded when her oxygen ran out and she began breathing old air. She forced herself to calm down, to breathe slower, shallower.

  Even desperate as she was, she realized that death at the hands of the Agarchs would probably be worse than suffocating in the middle of the hard-packed dirt.

  She moved more soil, pulling it down, packing it under her feet, squirming herself upward.

  The dirt became looser. She started using her hands to move it around, and that was easier for a bit.

  But that was still work and it was exhausting.

  Nicole felt tears gathering in her eyes. She’d just barely gotten Austin back. Was she about to lose him forever?

  She pushed those thoughts and feelings aside—she couldn’t allow them to distract her, to weaken her resolve.

  Dig, dig, dig. Shift, shift, shift. She’d make it, she would—she had to.

  Dig, dig, dig.

  Nicole began taking breaks. She was using up far more oxygen than she had available. While resting, she sent her magic out to find those valuable pockets of air.

  There was one about two feet away.

  Nicole collapsed against the wall of dirt behind her. Two feet, under ordinary circumstances, would hardly be anything, but here, where moving even just an inch was agonizing, both magically and physically, it might as well have been a hundred feet away.

  Sensing her willpower weakening, Nicole gave herself a pep talk. She couldn’t give in, couldn’t get frustrated. Had to make it, had to survive.

  Not bothering with moving through the dirt anymore, Nicole focused on pulling that pocket of air toward herself.

  She realized belatedly that shifting dirt would have been easier if she’d used her physical power as much as her magic from the start. If she’d crawled along through tunnels that gradually sloped upward as she made them, rather than focusing on keeping herself upright. But there wasn’t anything she could do about it now.

  Nicole’s lungs were burning. Her heart fluttered, her muscles cramped. The pocket of air was only inches away. She was going to suffocate!

  Stars fled across her vision. She couldn’t tell which way was up anymore.

  Just as she began passing out, she felt the dirt above her shift, lessening the load. A hand grabbed her hair, pulling it. Nicole moaned. Someone reached through the soil into her little bubble and grabbed her chin, yanking it up to the air above her.

  She opened her lips, gasping as air washed over her. She didn’t know if she was feeling it physically or magically, but she didn’t care. It entered her starving lungs, expanding them. She felt things popping around her, but she couldn’t tell where the popping sounds came from, whether inside her body or out.

  “Nicole,” Coolidge whispered loudly. “Come on, Nicole, pull yourself out. I can’t exert any more magic—I’ve reached my threshold. Austin and Jacob are doing their own thing. It’s just me here.”

  Nicole drew in several more breaths, then nodded, shaking the dirt from the rest of her face. She struggled until her arms were free. She grabbed Coolidge’s hands and kicked her way out as he pulled.

  “Not a bad idea,” he said, “but stupid, considering it was just you.”

  Nicole didn’t respond. She blinked at the light as he led her into a crater above ground.

  “You exploded things,” she said. Why hadn’t she thought of that? A sudden burst of energy instead of the trickle would have been so much more effective. One swoop, and she would have been free.

  But what sort of attention would it have gotten her? What sort of attention did it get him?

  “Do you have the talisman?” he whispered.

  Nicole shook her head. “No,” she said. “I didn’t find it until Early came to warn me.”

  Coolidge didn’t respond, but Nicole didn’t need him to. She knew he wasn’t disappointed. She’d done what she was supposed to—find the talisman’s location—and they’d come back for it later.

  “Help me make things right again,” Coolidge said once they reached the edge of the crater.

  Nicole reached to her magic, glad to find a portion of it ready. She sent it to the scattered dirt, surprised none of the Agarchs had noticed already, sensing as he did the same.

  Together, they replaced the dirt.

  Just as they finished, Coolidge stopped. “Can you feel that?”

  Nicole shook her head. She was too exhausted to feel anything.

  “The Arete—he’s coming.” Not waiting for Nicole to respond, Coolidge dashed around a building.

  Nicole rushed to follow. She now felt the Wind Arete—he hadn’t been far away.

  She turned, looking toward his magical pulse.

  He came around the corner of a building only ten feet away and froze when he saw her. Their eyes met. Nicole gasped. He wasn’t a Wind—he was a Silver. How was that possible? He hadn’t Restarted yet. She turned and ran, catching up with Coolidge.

  Was the Arete to be trusted? Would he turn them in? Had the Agarchs sent him to find her? They had to know something was going on—there was no way they couldn’t. But what did they suspect?

  Nicole and Coolidge dashed around buildings, then raced up the side of the hill and back to where Nicole had left the group.

  She dropped to the ground, crawling into the hiding place. She gasped, her lungs angry and sore from what she’d put them through that day. “We ran in plain sight—aren’t we worried the Agarchs will see us?”

  Coolidge shook his head. “They don’t see things the same way we do.” He looked at her. “You remember the one feeling your face with its antennae?

  Like she could forget. “They sense things that way—you’re right,” she said. “But they still knew we were there.”

  “Yes, they have other senses we don’t have. But something tells me they use humans as much for physical eyesight as for labor.”

  Nicole immediately thought of Will, the human slave down in Arches. She hadn’t thought of him in a very long time. A brief feeling of sadness came over her, but she pushed it away. He’d made his choice. “But that Arete did see us.”

  “W
e’ll leave as soon as Jacob and Austin come back from creating diversions.”

  Jacob and Austin returned moments later, and Nicole was surprised to see Akeno trailing them. Apparently, Jacob had keyed to Taga Village while Austin was creating distractions. Good thing, too—the Makalo brought a shrunken door with him, which he enlarged, then hid in the middle of the thicket.

  “What should we do if the Agarchs figure out what happened and move the talisman?” Nicole did not want to walk to Shonlin again to find the new location, then go through the horrible ordeal of following the golden trail to what might well be their deaths.

  “They won’t,” Austin said.

  “Are you sure?” Nicole asked.

  “As much as I can be.”

  Jacob looked at Nicole. “Dust storms and rifts happen frequently here, so Austin created a bunch of those, hoping they would draw the Agarchs away, without alerting them to our presence.”

  Nicole glanced at Austin. “You created a dust storm?”

  He grinned. “Yup. I’m pretty good at them now.”

  Nicole returned the smile and reached over to take his hand. Her boyfriend was awesome.

  “We’re going to have company if we don’t leave now,” Coolidge said.

  Jacob nodded and created a link to the castle in Eklaron, then ushered everyone through ahead of him. He shut the door before they saw anyone entering their hiding place.

  Nicole was surprised to see Lizzie sitting at the table in the throne room, playing cards with Queen Arien.

  “Lizzie!” Nicole said, dashing across the room and throwing her arms around her best friend. “Oh, my gosh, I missed you so much!”

  Lizzie stood, still in Nicole’s embrace, and wrapped Nicole in a hug of her own. “I’ve missed you so much too!”

  Nicole sniffed, pulling back. “If I’d known you were only going to be asleep for a few hours, I definitely would have insisted we wait. It would have been so good to see you before going to that horrible planet!”

  Lizzie chuckled. “You probably would have been less dirty and sweaty too.”

  Nicole looked down. “Oh, yeah. Sorry about that. It’s awful there—super hot, and I actually buried myself in dirt.”

  “Umm . . . you didn’t need to tell me that’s what you’d done.” Lizzie said with a smile. She sobered. “And also, you’ve actually been gone four or five days now. I’ve been awake for two of them.”

  That got everyone’s attention. Austin frowned. “Are you serious?”

  The queen glanced up, setting her cards on the table. “She’s right. Time must move differently on that planet than it does here.”

  “This is bad,” Nicole said. “To us, it’s only been two, maybe three hours.” She ran her hand through her hair, pulling dirt clods out of it, and looked at Jacob. “You’re probably going to want to find out what’s been going on with Keitus during that time.”

  He nodded. “On it.”

  While he was Time-Seeing, everyone took a seat at the table.

  “Nicole dear, would you like to clean up?” the queen asked.

  “Yes,” Nicole said. “But right now, we need to discuss this. I can handle the dirt for a little longer.” She motioned to the others in their group. “Besides, I have a feeling everyone will want a shower after what we went through.”

  The queen nodded. “So, what did you find?”

  “We know where the talisman is,” Nicole said, “but it’s going to take a lot more help to get it back.”

  “What sort of help?” Dmitri asked from the head of the table.

  Coolidge glanced at the king. “Arete help—we’ll need Silvers or natural Earth Aretes.” He looked at Nicole. “I think you had the right idea, sneaking away through the dirt like that. We’ll be able to do the same thing.”

  “My parents should be willing to help,” Austin said.

  Coolidge nodded. “Good. We’ll use them.”

  Jacob returned. “Keitus wasn’t in his usual place. I found him hulking around outside some library thing in his dimension. But he didn’t have any magical objects with him, and he looked seriously ticked about something.”

  Dmitri leaned back. “Good. Keep your eye on him. And take these poor people home so they can get cleaned up and prepare for their next trip to the other planet.”

  Jacob got to his feet and the others followed suit. After promising to keep each other updated, Jacob took them to their respective homes.

  The first thing Nicole did was take a long shower. She couldn’t believe how good it felt to have cold water cascading down her back. She shivered a bit, enjoying it completely. It had been two months since she’d had a shower!

  She was careful to clean the wound in her leg thoroughly. It wasn’t as bad as she’d feared—the Kaede sap had really helped.

  She joined Lizzie in the living room, for once glad Austin wasn’t there. She loved her boyfriend, but she’d had plenty of time to catch up with him. She craved her friend’s time now more than anything else.

  Lizzie was staring at her phone, her eyes distant. “Well, Chet didn’t wait around for me.”

  Nicole held her breath, watching her friend closely, then released it. “I’m sorry. You were gone a long time.”

  “I know. I seriously can’t believe I was unconscious for almost two months! That’s crazy.”

  Nicole agreed. “I was pretty out of it the first month, but that last month was just awful. I couldn’t reach you, couldn’t escape . . . but getting stuck there ended up being a good thing.”

  Lizzie raised her eyebrow. “How?”

  Nicole told Lizzie everything about the time she spent with the natives. She didn’t hold back any detail—wasn’t about to be quiet now, not after she’d spent so much time with people who didn’t speak her language.

  The girls talked for several hours. It wasn’t until just after midnight that Lizzie told Nicole what she’d done after waking up.

  “You’re going to find this really interesting,” Lizzie said, hopping off the couch. She ran down the hall to her room, returning with a notepad. “The queen gave this to me,” she said, plopping back on the couch. “I sat in on lots of meetings with Azuriah, Dmitri, and Arien and took a ton of notes. Azuriah is translating the pictures of pages you took that talk about the talismans, and we’ve finally figured out what they each do.”

  Nicole straightened, blinking the tiredness from her eyes. “Awesome. Tell me everything.”

  Lizzie bent over the coffee table, opening her notepad to show Nicole diagrams of the talismans. “Which is the one on the other planet?” she asked.

  Nicole pointed it out. It was an abstract design, asymmetrical, fluid, pretty.

  “Awesome. That’s the Water talisman. The one I have is the Fire talisman, as we already know. Okay, so the Fire talisman reveals things. Think about what happens when something is burned. It pretty much disappears—changes into ash. If you burn a box, it reveals what’s inside.”

  “As long as whatever’s inside isn’t flammable,” Nicole said.

  Lizzie mock glared at her. “It’s metaphorical—not literal.”

  “Okay, so explain what it does, then.”

  “I just did. It reveals things.”

  “But how?”

  Lizzie bit her lip. “I’m not sure. It still doesn’t work for me.” The sad expression that crossed her face made Nicole’s heart ache for her best friend.

  “I’m sorry, Lizzie. I hope we’ll have time to figure out your powers soon.”

  Lizzie nodded, then swallowed. “We will.” She turned back to her book of notes. “Okay, so the Fire one reveals. The Water one—the one you found—hides. Water covers things. Fire and Water are kind of opposite, right? One destroys the other. Fire evaporates Water and Water drowns Fire.”

  “Are we talking about the types of magic, or the elements themselves?”

  “Both. Neither—it doesn’t matter.” Lizzie glanced at her friend with a smile. “Just keep listening.”

  Nicole
pulled a blanket to her lap. “Sorry. What does the Earth talisman do?”

  “It strengthens. So, when you want to build a strong house, you use Earth properties—steel, cement, bricks, things like that.”

  “And that would mean the Wind talisman weakens, right? I mean, if they’re opposites, which it seems they are, that would make sense.”

  Lizzie nodded. “Yes, exactly.”

  “But how does Wind weaken?”

  “A hurricane rips through a town, destroying things. Weakening structures. Unless you have something Earth-like to strengthen them.”

  Nicole nodded. “Got it. I can see why having all of the talismans at once would cause a lot of problems.”

  “Yes. It creates the perfect magical object—something capable of both strengthening and weakening, revealing and hiding. It gives the bearer of the talisman a great deal of power—most of which is unknown, since the four have rarely been in the same person’s control at once.”

  “And this is why Keitus wants them so much,” Nicole said. “The possibilities could be endless—even the known powers are amazing.”

  “Exactly.” Lizzie glanced at Nicole. “Did you see him there, on the other planet?”

  Nicole shook her head. “From what Jacob Saw earlier, I’m guessing the old guy’s a bit behind us—he still doesn’t know how to get to the other world. It’s not like he has Jacob’s key or anything.”

  “Yeah, no kidding.” Lizzie closed her notebook and leaned back against the couch, resting her head on Nicole’s shoulder. “I know I wasn’t aware of the passage of time while I was in Shonlin, but I still feel like it’s been ages and ages since I last saw you.”

  Nicole felt tears building up in her eyes. “I know.” She didn’t need to say anything else. Instead, she reached out and clasped Lizzie’s hand. What would she do if she lost her best friend? Her heart ached at the thought.

  A sudden thought occurred to her. “If four days passed while we were gone . . . do you think Keitus might have gone to get the last talisman? I mean, if he knew where it was, and it ended up being closest to him . . .”

  Lizzie blanched. “And if he did . . . would Jacob know?”