by Liz Marsham
Arkayna made a swirling motion with her hand, and the other girls nodded. Together, the griffins banked into a low arc, dropping the Mysticons off silently on the opposite side of the hill. Led by Arkayna, the four of them crept stealthily up the hill and took cover behind the wide monument at its crest.
From here, they had a clear view of Dreadbane holding his hands out over a grave marker. As they watched, he muttered under his breath, tensed his fingers into claws, and raised his hands to the sky. With a low rumble, the gravestone split in two, and a skeleton clawed its way out between the broken halves. At Dreadbane’s urging, the skeleton rose to its feet, clutching a longsword in one bony hand. Tattered, batlike wings unfurled from its back, and it screeched at the sky.
“Of course!” Arkayna whispered. “Sword’s Rest is where the soldiers were buried after the Battle of Victory Heights!”
“With their weapons and armor,” Em put in. “Which doesn’t make this easier.”
“Ugh,” sighed Zarya. “Gotta say, when we beat Necrafa, I was thinking we’d never see this guy again. He seemed so…”
“Defeated,” finished Arkayna, nodding. “Necrafa broke his heart.”
“Looks like he got over it,” Zarya said. “Guess he wants to be the big bad now.”
“Shushums!” hissed Piper. “I can’t hear what he’s saying!”
“He’s just ordering…” Zarya began, but then she trailed off, perking up her ears. That didn’t sound like orders.
“Are two spectres for each enough?” Dreadbane was asking.
Zarya frowned. Who was he talking to?
A familiar voice came from a point farther down the hill, past where they could see. “How clever are they? Some pieces will be heavier than others, but maybe it’s best to always send three, to make the search faster.”
Dreadbane let out a dry chuckle. “My spectres are loyal and fierce, but they are … not clever. Three it is.” He turned to the next gravestone.
The other girls were all staring at Zarya, who muffled a groan of dismay. The second voice was definitely Ami’s!
“What is she—” began Arkayna.
Zarya cut her off with a chopping hand motion. “I don’t know. But let’s go stop them.”
Arkayna nodded and began to stand, then turned back to Zarya. “Just…”
“Don’t worry,” Zarya said confidently. “I’m good.” She held up her training bow, still a little dusty from its time in the back of her closet, and patted the quiver of arrows at her hip. “These aren’t magic, but they still work for smashing at a distance.”
Arkayna gave her an anxious smile. Even though Zarya knew things between them were still unresolved, she felt a wave of warmth toward her sister. It was killing Arkayna not to say “be careful” right now, but somehow she was holding it in for Zarya’s sake. So Zarya returned the smile, and she was glad to see a little of the tension go out of Arkayna’s shoulders.
“Let’s go, girls!” announced the Dragon Mage, and the Mysticons sprang into action.
Em tossed a handful of small orbs onto the ground around Dreadbane. Purple, sticky goo boiled up where they landed, covering the grass and gravestones, gluing one skeleton in place halfway out of the dirt, and sticking Dreadbane’s feet to the ground. Dreadbane snarled.
“Surprise!” Piper cried out, flinging her three hoops at him. The first one hit right in the center of his forehead, dazing him. The other two caught each of the curved black horns rising from his skull, pulling him backward. With his feet immobilized, Dreadbane pinwheeled his arms for balance but couldn’t help collapsing onto his rump. “One thousand points for the Striker!” Piper cheered.
As Dreadbane hacked at the glue with his sword, Arkayna shot green blasts from her staff in quick succession. One by one, the spectres began to fall to the energy blasts.
Seeing this, Dreadbane snarled again. He held his free hand out to a section of graves not covered in goo, raising new spectres as fast as Arkayna could destroy them.
Zarya ran straight down the hill, nocking and firing arrows as she went. The first found its mark in the nearest spectre’s skull, and she was turning to find her next target when she realized that the spectre she shot was still moving. Girl, these normal arrows don’t explode, she reminded herself, loosing two more arrows into the spectre. This time it fell and stayed down. “Ami!” she called. “Ami, what are you doing?”
Ami came into view at the bottom of the hill, a dozen spectres clustered around her. She glanced at Zarya and seemed about to answer her, but then she shook her head and turned back to the spectres. She addressed the three on her left, then turned and gave whispered instructions to the next three.
“You have bigger problems, Ranger!” taunted Dreadbane from behind her. Zarya spun around just in time to dodge a blow from a newly raised spectre carrying a mace. She dropped to the ground and rolled up into a defensive position, but the spectre lost interest in her. Instead, it flapped its wings and glided down to join the growing army around Ami. Zarya looked around and noticed spectre after spectre ignoring the Mysticons and heading for Ami instead.
“I think—” Zarya began, but she was cut off by a warning yelp from Piper. Looking down, she saw another spectre emerging from a grave right at her feet. She danced backward and fired an arrow, pinning the skeleton to the ground. Running back up the hill, she finished her thought: “I think he’s trying to stall us!”
Dreadbane laughed. “‘Trying’?” He looked down at Ami, who nodded. Tipping his head back, he called to the nearly thirty spectres around her. “You have your orders!” he boomed. “Now fly!”
As one, the spectre army rose into the air. Then, before the Mysticons could launch an attack, the spectres split into ten different groups and flew in ten different directions.
“Form up!” yelled Arkayna. Immediately, Em whistled for the griffins as Arkayna, Zarya, and Piper tried to pick off the retreating spectres. But there were too many, and they were too scattered. Then Zarya heard a rattling, whooshing noise and looked down the hill to see Ami approaching, mounted on the undead vulture.
Arkayna pointed her staff at the vulture.
“You’ll hurt Ami!” cried Zarya, reaching out to block Arkayna’s shot.
“So sweet, Mysticon,” snickered Dreadbane, leaping onto the bird’s skeletal neck. “Enjoy your visit to the Sword’s Rest.” He gestured, and huge bone spikes burst from the ground around the Mysticons and closed over their heads.
It took only a few minutes for the Mysticons to hack themselves free of the cage. But that was enough.
Dreadbane and Ami had escaped.
19
In Which Spectres Become Collectors
“Malvaron!” Arkayna shouted into her bangle phone as they mounted the griffins. “There are ten squads of three spectres each descending on the city. We don’t know what they’re planning, but it can’t be good!”
Malvaron’s hologram face appeared above Arkayna’s phone, looking confused. “Yeah, I know. News reports are already starting to come in.”
“Oh my goblin,” Arkayna gasped. “Girls, we have to hurry!” She turned back to the phone as the griffins launched into the air. “Where are they attacking?”
“Well, that’s the thing,” Malvaron said. “They’re not, really.”
“What?”
“Here, I’ll show you.” Arkayna’s phone blooped as Malvaron sent her a video.
Ten feet away, clinging to Archer’s back, Zarya watched as Arkayna’s brow furrowed. “Hey, Malvaron, don’t leave the rest of us out!” Zarya yelled over.
She heard a muffled “Oh, sorry!” A second later, her own phone blooped, and she gestured to start the video.
In the short clip, shot by a bystander at street level, three spectres swooped down to the side of a tall office building, stopping to hover about six stories up. Ignoring screams from below, they peered in one glass window after another, until one of the spectres pointed and screeched. Together, the three battered the window wi
th their weapons until it broke. Then they reached inside, grabbed something with their bony arms, and flapped away.
“What the hex?” Zarya looked at the other Mysticons, who were watching with similar confused expressions. She saw Em freeze the video on her phone and zoom in on the spectres.
“Cords, maybe?” said Em, puzzled. “It looks like they grabbed a bunch of cords.”
Bloop. Another video arrived on their phones. In this one, three other spectres landed in a junkyard and grabbed armloads of scrap metal.
Bloop. Another video. Two spectres pointed long spears at three terrified doctors as a third spectre ransacked an emergency room. Then the three spectres flew away with a bunch of bottles and packets wrapped in a sheet, leaving the doctors unharmed.
Bloop. Three spectres herded terrified comet-watchers into a corner at the Mercer Observatory, then three more descended from the sky, pried open the upturned end of the largest telescope, and carefully pulled out its huge curved lens.
Zarya massaged her temple as the videos kept coming in. There must be a pattern. Metal, cords, lenses … Suddenly, she remembered the neat crates of materials in Ami’s wagon, and she gasped. “I know what they’re doing!”
“For realsies?” Piper said, a hint of awe in her voice. “You are so smart!”
“Well, I don’t know exactly what they’re doing,” Zarya admitted, “but I bet they’re getting stuff for Ami.” She grimaced. “The spectres aren’t the threat this time. Whatever she’s building is.”
Arkayna nodded and addressed her phone again. “Malvaron, where are the spectres taking everything?”
“I’m not sure yet,” he said, and then he blinked, looking at something in front of him. “But I have a pretty good guess.”
Part of Zarya didn’t even want to know. She braced herself, and still she was surprised.
“The royal guards are reporting that a huge skeleton bird just landed on the castle balcony,” Malvaron continued. “You’d better get back here.”
20
In Which a Plan Becomes a Threat
Amileth put both hands to the small of her back and stretched, then bent over her project again. There wasn’t much time, and there would be only one chance at this.
She was briefly distracted by the noises around her. From where she worked, crouching several feet back from the edge of the wide balcony, she could hear the crowd below. Guards were keeping everyone behind a barrier set back from the castle, not sure what kind of threat was inside, but they weren’t evacuating the plaza completely. Ami was pleased; the more people stayed out in the open, the better her device would work.
She heard a clunk behind her and glanced over her shoulder, where an open arch led directly into the castle. Dreadbane and the spectres, their errands finished, had taken a handful of guards hostage and set up a defensive line around the … Ami couldn’t actually tell what kind of room it was supposed to be. Some kind of lounge, maybe? Did lounges usually have giant, dangling chandeliers and tasseled furniture? In any case, the spectres had pushed the furniture up against the walls, giving Ami more room to work, and the hostages huddled in one corner with Dreadbane looming over them. In the opposite corner, the skeletal vulture lurked, pecking at the shiny tassels on the couches. The sound Ami had heard was one of its huge wings knocking over a table.
Ami shuddered. The bird gave her the creeps. She didn’t feel great about Dreadbane threatening the hostages, either. Sternly, she reminded herself that they’d be fine in a couple of hours. She looked up at the approaching comet and smiled grimly. Everything would be fine in a couple of hours.
Picking up a screwdriver, she refocused on the device in front of her. On the outside, it looked like a crudely cobbled together version of one of her anti-magic footlights, but about three times as large. And the inside held a few surprises.
Once she plugged in this light, the beam, focused through the giant telescope lens, would be strong enough to reach the comet. Like any other light that hit Wells’s Comet, it would split and refract and reflect back down, hitting thousands of points all over the city. But unlike other lights, anything touched by these reflected beams would have the magic sucked out of it. And unlike her stage act, where magic was stored safely in her normal footlights, this targeted magic would be siphoned off into the sky and lost forever.
She finished screwing the giant lens into its metal frame, slotted it into place at the front of the device, and began cleaning it carefully with the alcohol and sterile cloths from the emergency room. Only a couple more steps to go.
And then, she thought, no more will a few random people be given huge amounts of power, while the rest of us are left to dream of an easier life. Once Ami had taken their magic, everyone would be on equal footing, to find their own way using their own talents. It would be good for them. After all, how can you know what you’re capable of, she thought as she lifted the light onto its stand, until you’re forced to try? If she could do it, so could they.
With the lens clean and the device in place, there was only one piece missing. On the ground in front of her, resting on a clean cloth, was a palm-size, flat, polished piece of glass. With it, she could test the aim and reach of the device. She looked around to make sure no one was paying attention, then patted the inside pocket of her jacket, where she had hidden one of her crystal prisms, the same size as the glass. The prism was the product of hundreds of hours of trial and error. It was the key to her anti-magic beams, allowing light to resonate on a frequency that magic responded to. This small, fragile trinket, and the others like it that were still installed in her stage footlights, were the most closely guarded secret of her life. So she would install the prism at the last moment, only when she was sure everything else was ready. After reassuring herself that the prism was intact, she picked up the test glass and opened the back of the device, revealing an empty slot. Then she froze.
The noises from the crowd below had changed. Before, they had been anxious murmurs. But now, growing slowly in both volume and intensity, she heard … cheering?
“Stop right there, Amileth!” the Dragon Mage demanded. In tight formation, four griffins flew down to ring the balcony, and the Mysticons leapt off and landed dramatically on the railing.
Amileth rolled her eyes, allowing magic to begin building in the fingers of her free hand. Time to teach these girls another lesson, she thought.
21
In Which Alliances Shift and Create a New Rift
Em had landed closest to the device, and now she peered at it from her perch on the railing. “That thing’s pointed right at the comet,” she realized.
“The comet is made of magic?” Piper gasped. “Then the light’ll kill it! Don’t take Wells’s Comet away, Amileth,” she pleaded. “What’d it ever do to you?”
Ami shook her head, grinning slyly. “Try again, little one. But hurry, I have very little time for you right now.”
“You have more time than you think,” Arkayna said. She pointed to the device. “Mysticon Knight, take it apart.”
“Touch my work and you’ll regret it,” Ami snarled. She gestured, and a ball of blue energy began to grow and crackle in her hand.
Em froze, looking from Arkayna to Ami.
Zarya jumped into the silence, slinging her bow across her back and climbing down from the rail. She held her hands out in front of her. “Ami, whatever you’re thinking of doing, just listen. Dreadbane is dangerous.”
“He’s the least dangerous person I’ve met tonight,” Ami said. “But that will change soon.”
“Not if—” Arkayna began challengingly.
“Dragon Mage!” interrupted Zarya. She stared at Arkayna, willing all her fear and desperation to show in her eyes. “Let me.”
Arkayna exhaled and nodded.
Zarya turned back to Ami. “What do you mean, ‘that will change soon’?”
“Soon, all of the magic that you sling around so irresponsibly will be gone,” Amileth said. “All of the magic in the city wi
ll be gone.” She nodded. “And then everything will be much simpler. Much better.”
“WHAT?” cried Zarya. “Ami, you’re going to hurt a lot of people!”
“I’m—Don’t exaggerate. Some people will feel helpless until they learn to live without their magic, yes. But—”
“No, Ami, think it through, please,” Zarya said. “You won’t just be taking the magic out of people.”
“Some of the medical equipment in the hospital runs on magic,” Em pointed out.
“The Dragon Train runs on magic!” cried Piper. “It’ll crash for sure—boom!”
“Plus everyone’s phones will stop working…” Arkayna started.
“Scry-fi will fail…” continued Em.
“Exactly,” finished Zarya. “And that’s just the start. There’s gonna be sickness and chaos and panic. How will that make anything better?”
Ami took a step backward. “I … You’re just trying to stall me. Again!”
Zarya shook her head. “Look, I get it. We treated you badly. You wanted us to know that, and we do. We’re so sorry. But what you’re planning is … well, it’s not you.”
Ami let out a bark of angry laughter. “Oh, and you know me so well,” she scoffed.
“I know what you told me,” Zarya said, taking a step closer to Ami. She gestured to the crowd below. “You want to show people that there’s more to their lives, right? You want to do what you do best: Make them wonder. Amaze them. Right?”
Slowly, Ami nodded.
“This isn’t going to do any of that. It’s just going to scare them.”
Ami looked down at the glass in her hand, and her eyes filled with tears. “You’re right. By the stars, you’re right. I just felt so betrayed. Since I was a child, I believed that if I could ever do real magic, my troubles would be over. And when the opposite turned out to be true, I—well, I acted rashly.” She looked up at Zarya. “I told you I wasn’t the best at thinking on my feet.”