Bracing herself as best she could, she pressed her fingers against the crystal. Instantly, she felt the power growing stronger, as though it were already coursing through her body. She pulled away hastily, too late to stop some of it from taking root in her mind.
Even after she broke contact, she still felt the school all around her. The Doctor’s TARDIS was nowhere near as complicated as the interior structure of Whitehall. She sensed Shadye as he made his unhurried way down to the nexus, and the Grandmaster, as he held the remaining students and tutors safe in a sealed section of the school. All around the latter, there were hundreds of interlocking dimensions, all piled up on top of one another.
Unsure of what she was looking at, she pulled away as she sensed Shadye’s sudden alarm. He knew what she’d done - and was coming to stop her.
Not that he has much choice, the tactical part of her mind insisted. Given time, I could turn the school against him. He has to stop me now. Or flee.
She pulled her mind back to herself and started to concentrate. The power she’d drawn from the ley lines wouldn’t match Shadye’s power–she doubted she could, unless she was willing to court madness– but it would be enough to keep him busy until she could get him into the right place. At least it would be easier here, in the nexus, than outside in the school itself. There was a risk that Shadye would try to draw the power of the nexus for himself, but–if she was right–the mere contact with it would be too much for him to stand. He’d be convinced he could tame it, right up to the moment when it melted his brain.
The doorway exploded inward with a thunderous crash. Shadye strode into the room, holding up one hand in a defensive posture. He was alone, even though Emily could sense the presence of Orcs and Goblins outside, in the antechamber. Shadye clearly didn’t want an audience, or distractions.
Or ... did he fear that his servants might make their own bid for the power? They’d been human before the Faerie started playing with their genes. And she would have been surprised if they didn’t trust Shadye any further than they could throw him.
Of course, being Orcs, they could throw him quite some distance.
The necromancer stopped at the edge of the room, almost as if he was reluctant to walk into it any further. His humanity seemed to have completely faded away, his cloak and robe the only thing that kept him even vaguely humanoid.
Emily’s enhanced senses saw power coiling around him that wasn’t quite visible to the naked eye. Somehow, it reminded her of CT–and how he’d grown additional manipulators at will.
“You have unlocked the power,” Shadye said. Emily couldn’t tell if he meant it, or if he was trying to play with her mind. “Stand aside and allow me to fulfill my destiny.”
“I don’t think that would be a very good idea,” Emily said mildly. In hindsight, she should have studied acting, as well as engineering, chemistry and a dozen other subjects that would have prepared her for her brave new world. It took everything she had to appear confident in front of the maddened necromancer. “Your destiny doesn’t lie here.”
“My destiny lies where I say it lies,” Shadye snapped at her. He still hadn’t moved forward and she took heart from that. “Stand aside.”
Emily smiled. “How can you claim that you make your own destiny and, at the same time, call me a Child of Destiny?”
“You are a Child of Destiny,” Shadye insisted. “You are here to change the world. And it will change, at my hands.”
He’d abandoned the idea of converting her to necromancy, it seemed. Or maybe he’d just put it to one side.
Emily studied him and allowed her face to develop the smile that had driven her stepfather into angry fits when she was a kid, waiting to see what he’d do. Shadye might decide to lash out at her, with all of his power, but there was no way to know what would happen if they fought a duel within the nexus. Maybe they would overload it and blow the ley lines accidentally. Or ... once again, there were just too many possibilities.
“Your destiny is to die here,” Emily said. She shaped a spell in her mind and readied it for immediate use. “So die.”
She tossed the spell at him, transfiguring the air around him to deadly black smoke. For a heartbeat, Shadye was blinded.
It wouldn’t take him long to dispel the smoke, but it gave her a moment to cast her second spell. A dozen copies of herself stood around the room, all looking ready to fight. There was so much power flowing through the Nexus that it would be difficult for him to find the real Emily among the shadows.
The smoke vanished. Shadye paused, again holding up one hand, then released a blizzard of spells towards her and the duplicates.
Emily jumped in order to avoid some of his tricks, praying that he wouldn’t be able to wipe out all of her duplicates before she managed to prepare her next trick.
Shadye seemed to be losing control completely, lashing out angrily towards one of the duplicates. A flash of light powerful enough to blast through stone walls struck one of the crystal columns, only to be effortlessly absorbed into the nexus.
Emily blanched. That could have blown up half the country!
Shadye howled in rage and blasted the column again, but to no greater effect.
Taking advantage of his distraction, Emily created a second set of duplicates and followed her spell up by throwing a hail of practical joke charms at his back. The itching charm, she’d discovered when practicing with Alassa, was actually surprisingly hard to block, even for a skilled magician.
Shadye spun around and unleashed such a blast of fire at her duplicate that the illusion popped like a soap bubble.
Emily jumped back behind one of the pillars, only to find herself staring at black tentacles that seemed to have come out of nowhere. One of them grasped her leg and picked her up, dragging her towards Shadye. His red eyes glared at her as he pulled her closer, one hand holding the stone knife.
He must be running low on power, she thought, desperately. If he wants to drain me, he must be running critically low on power ...
She looked at the shadow and generated a beam of light, causing the shadow to break apart and merge back into the darkness. But it was too late; a clawed hand caught her and yanked her forward until she was staring into Shadye’s glowing red eyes.
Shadye lifted the knife threateningly, ready to plunge it into her chest.
Emily panicked. Raw power lashed out of her with no clear direction, which forced Shadye into a defensive posture. Emily quickly shaped a cutting spell she’d learned from books and aimed it at his arm. The arm disintegrated into nothingness before she dropped to the ground.
Shadye slashed out at her as she fell, barely in time for the blade to miss her skin. She knew exactly what would happen if he managed to get his hands on more of her blood.
Shadye bellowed a curse in a language the translation spell refused to adapt for her and summoned more shadowy monsters to his side.
Emily turned and ran. The creatures came after her as she desperately tried to generate another ball of light. But Shadye snuffed her first ball of light out; the shadows fell on her before she could produce a second. A monstrous shape that seemed oddly familiar grabbed her tightly enough to make her cry out in pain. Desperately, she focused her mind, thought of a monofilament blade and lashed out with it. The shadows recoiled, giving her just enough time to pull free.
“There is no escape from the Living Shadows,” Shadye informed her. He seemed calmer, oddly; perhaps he thought that victory was within his grasp. “You cannot fight a shadow.”
He was right, Emily realized. Laser-like beams melted them, but they reformed with terrifying speed; bright flashes of light dispelled them, yet they returned as soon as the light faded away. She tried to produce permanent globes of light, only to watch helplessly as Shadye picked them off, one by one.
And then the shadow-creatures caught her again and sent her stumbling to the floor.
The chamber shook as Shadye worked his will, summoning a stone table into existence. Emily knew
what it was a moment too late. The shadows lifted her up to deposit her on the stone, moving to secure her hands and feet, pinning her. Her magic suddenly seemed to be useless. The stone absorbed anything she did, but it couldn’t–didn’t - block her link to her prepared spells. She clung to that thought as Shadye advanced on the table, red eyes glowing with bright light. Just a few seconds more ...
“If you will not serve me of your own free will, you will be reshaped,” Shadye informed her. He lifted the knife again, moving it to the point where Emily had stabbed Sergeant Harkin and revealed that he had no mana to call his own. But Emily knew that Shadye would have no trouble draining her. And then, he’d either feed on her life force or rewrite her brain to suit himself. “I will make Destiny my servant.”
Emily wanted to giggle as she released a handful of spells, including the charm keeping her final surprise under wraps.
Shadye held the knife above her chest, his red eyes studying her as if he expected her to surrender and become a necromancer, just before the air started to blow past them. A moment later the knife was yanked out of his hand and spun through the air, finally vanishing into nothingness. Shadye stared at where it had been as the pull grew stronger, tugging at him even as he grabbed hold of the stone table. He started to say something–Emily guessed he was demanding to know what was happening–but it was lost in the noise of the wind. Shadye spun around and threw a fireball at her, but it only made it a couple of inches before the gravity pull sucked it in, too.
The shadows holding her down were coming apart. When they did, the gravity threatened to drag her into the pocket dimension along with Shadye. She grabbed hold of the stone table, praying that Shadye had secured it to the floor, and held on for dear life as the necromancer struggled to find some way to counter what she’d done. Emily hadn’t been able to think of anything he could do, but Shadye had a great deal of raw power at his disposal - and he was desperate.
For all she knew, maybe he could cancel the spells that she’d shaped into creating a miniature black hole leading to a new dimension.
She looked away as his robes were pulled towards the black hole, revealing something so horrifying that she didn’t want to look any closer. Whatever he’d become was very far from human, an eldritch horror out of nightmares. Worse yet, his form was threatening to come apart completely.
His eyes glowed bright red as he cast spell after spell in the air, before finally managing to shield them both. Somehow, without quite knowing what he was fighting, Shadye had managed to save his life.
Emily would have been impressed if he hadn’t looked as if he was about to forget how useful she could be to him and kill her outright. Dark magic crackled around his one remaining claw and his eyes were bright with hatred and malice.
But he hadn’t managed to completely stop the black hole, merely provide some protection for them both. Which gave her hope.
“You will die,” Shadye screamed in a cracked and broken voice. Indeed, she was no longer sure if he even had a mouth. There were things crawling inside his hood. She could sense that it was taking almost all of his magic to keep the protections stable and neglect the black hole. “Child of Destiny or not, you will die!”
Emily started to laugh, finally realizing how it felt to know–to truly know–that death was unavoidable. “You were wrong,” she said, still keeping a tight hold on the stone table. “You were wrong from the start. My mother’s name is Destiny.”
Shadye stared at her. It took him several moments to work out what she’d said, and how badly he’d erred right at the start. And when it hit him, he lost control.
The gravity pull reasserted itself. Emily held onto the table, feeling it shuddering under her, as Shadye flew backwards and hit the black hole. For a moment, it seemed that he was just too big to fit into the tiny singularity ... and then his body twisted and vanished into nothingness.
Working frantically, Emily reached out and cancelled the spells that had created the black hole. It–and the pocket dimension it led to–simply blinked out of existence, taking Shadye with it.
She rolled off the table and collapsed onto the floor, feeling utterly drained. It felt as if she were alone in the school ... as if she were the last survivor. The sense she’d had of the Grandmaster’s presence was gone; she felt too dazed to try to determine if the Grandmaster was dead or if the enhanced awareness she’d been granted of the school was gone, along with the power she had used to make the black hole. Her head spun madly and she felt almost delirious.
When she looked up, she thought she saw a tall man in monkish robes. He carried a huge book and looked directly at her. But when she blinked, he was gone.
Carefully, she pulled herself to her feet and tottered towards the door. It opened at her approach, revealing a dozen Orcs lying on the ground, all dead. There was something wrong with their bodies, something she should have seen at once, but it eluded her. Dazed, she stumbled and would have hit the floor if someone hadn’t caught her arm. A tall boy with dark hair looked down at her, his expression unreadable.
After a long moment, he lowered her gently to the floor and walked away. She turned her head in time to see the shadows swallow him up.
The entire building appeared to be shaking madly as the Grandmaster tried to reassume control of the interior dimensions. Emily smiled as she felt his will work through the building, isolating the remaining monsters that Shadye had used to invade the school. She lay back on the ground, too tired to go any further. Her head spun and she blacked out ...
... She must have blacked out, for the next thing she saw were anxious faces staring down at her.
“Rest,” a voice said quietly. It sounded like the Grandmaster, but she couldn’t tell for sure. “It’s all over now.”
“The wards need to be replaced,” another voice said. Emily felt her head spinning; the wards had fallen because of her unique nature. It had all been her fault. How many had died because of her?
She tried to speak despite the pain in her head. “Grandmaster?”
“Yes,” the Grandmaster said. “Rest now.”
Something touched the side of Emily’s head, and she plunged back into darkness.
Chapter Forty-Eight
EMILY OPENED HER EYES, VERY SLOWLY.
Her body felt ... weird, almost as if she were lighter than air. It crossed her mind that she might have been dreaming, that she might have had an accident and imagined everything from Shadye’s kidnapping to his death ...
... And then she looked up. A ball of light floated high overhead. The Grandmaster sat next to her bed, looking down at her anxiously.
It had been no dream.
“Welcome back,” the Grandmaster said. He studied her thoughtfully, his expression oddly familiar. It took her a moment to realize where she’d seen something like it before; on the face of a man studying a new form of life. “You saved the school.”
Emily tried to sit upright and failed. “Thank you,” she managed to say. Her entire body felt drained, unable to move. “Is ... is he really gone?”
The Grandmaster smiled, but it didn’t quite touch his eyes. “I wished to ask you the same question. And I need to know what happened between you and the necromancer before you killed him.”
Emily hesitated. Shadye might have been an eldritch abomination, but there had been enough matter left in his body for the black hole to rip him apart before crushing him down to a single point in the pocket dimension, which should then have been deleted from reality. She couldn’t imagine how anything could have survived that. Even teleportation spells shouldn’t have been able to get him out. They were unreliable in pocket dimensions, particularly ones created by other magicians. Even if Shadye had been reduced to a disembodied entity, he should have been deleted along with the pocket dimension. He was–he must be — dead.
But part of her didn’t believe it.
“I think he’s dead,” she said, finally.
The Grandmaster peered down at her, one hand stroking his b
eard. “And what did you do to kill him?”
The black hole hadn’t been a real black hole, Emily knew, or she might have had worse problems on her hands than a furious necromancer. But she’d thought of it as a black hole and deliberately set out to create something with a powerful gravity field that could both suck in matter and crush it into a very small space. It might prove to be an ultimate weapon against the other necromancers. Yet, if she introduced the concept of variable gravity fields to this world, who knew how far a curious magician would take the concept? He might produce a real black hole, risking the entire planet. Or he might turn it into a new and fearsome weapon. It might be better if she kept her mouth shut.
“I don’t think I should tell you,” she said, after a long pause. The Grandmaster gave her a sharp look; Children of Destiny were supposed to be enigmatic, but there were limits. “The knowledge would be too dangerous for this world.”
“Necromancers could use it,” the Grandmaster said. It wasn’t a question. “Or are you a necromancer yourself?”
Emily stared at him. “No!”
“There are a handful of witnesses who say you murdered Sergeant Harkin to claim his mana,” the Grandmaster informed her. “Shadye apparently spared them; we do not know why. What happened?”
“The Sergeant knew the ritual would fail,” Emily said bitterly. She was no necromancer, but she could see how someone could jump to that conclusion. And if she told the truth about what had happened in the nexus, it wouldn’t be long before everyone started meddling with simulated black holes, risking the entire planet. “The Sergeant told me what to do.”
“So he did,” the Grandmaster said. His eyes never left her face as she puzzled it out. Of course; he would have looked into the witnesses’ minds and seen everything. “And in volunteering for death, he helped save the school.”
He looked down at the floor, almost as if he were ashamed. “I accept the judgment of a Child of Destiny,” he said. His face twisted into a smile. “Or at least that is what I will tell the Council of War, when they finally demand that I tell them what happened to defeat Shadye. But I’m afraid that suspicion will still fall on you. Willingly or otherwise, you took part in a necromantic ritual and may be tainted.”
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