Perhaps there were more trials still to come? Alex hoped not.
With a violent tug, Alex felt the energy within him pull away, a darker silver mist gathering in a cloud above his head. Howling faces emerged from the mist, black mouths opening in a piercing scream that shook the very foundations below. As the scream faded, the cloud surged toward Julius, the paler mist following suit.
Alex felt a connection still linking him with the mist. He closed his eyes, focusing on it, leading it in the direction of the one who had made Leander Wyvern release the spell in the first place, bringing the Great Evil into being. Another scream pierced the air as his mind connected with the cloud of mist, showing it what his heart wanted more than anything. In his head, he rewound the flashing image he’d seen, flicking it back to the burning eyes of Leander Wyvern, and the hatred his ancestor had felt for the king who stood nearby. He understood now that this was the final step.
The silver mist hurtled through the barrier Virgil had made, which had no protective effect whatsoever against the ferocity of the Great Evil’s last stand. It whirled around Julius’s head, constricting him like a shimmering boa, swallowing him up. He howled in pain, but the mist had him now. His body collapsed onto the stone floor. A few seconds later, a ghostly form rose from where the mist had torn Julius’s spirit away. With its clawing hands, the mist dragged the spectral form down into the pit, and though the wispy fingers of the phantom king struggled to grasp at solid ground, there was no escaping the Great Evil.
As soon as the torn spirit was pulled below, the rest of the mist rushing backward with it, another thunderous blast shook the pit room. The earth cracked as boulders tumbled from the roof—the cavern was falling in around them.
“GO!” Virgil yelled, shoving Alex toward the door.
Though he had little energy left, Alex ran as fast as he could, diving headfirst into the hallway and not stopping until he reached the staircase at the far end. Virgil arrived a second later, followed by the straggling soldiers.
They turned, just in time to see the corridor collapse, sealing the pit forever.
Chapter 29
The roar of the collapsing pit echoed in their ears, fissures tearing up the sides of the pagoda. Alex and Virgil, trailed by the guards, stumbled upstairs. Hadrian was nowhere to be seen, having left his guard post, but Alex didn’t mind—he was too exhausted to think about anything but what had happened in the cavern below.
Alex sat down against one of the still-shaking walls, too weary to move. The guards who had made it out sprinted past, heading for safer ground.
“We need to leave the pagoda,” Virgil commanded.
“Need a minute to… catch my breath,” Alex said, shaking his head. His whole body felt weak, every limb numb, as if he’d been leaning on them and they’d gone to sleep.
Virgil hauled Alex back to his feet. “Not yet. You may rest soon, but we must get out of this building.”
Reluctantly, Alex allowed Virgil to drag him along, though he leaned heavily against the skeletal man’s frame, unable to hold his own body up.
“Did you know that was going to happen?” Alex asked as they hurried toward the pagoda’s exit, the whole building still trembling around them.
“Know what was going to happen?”
Alex clawed a breath into his lungs. “The mist taking Julius?”
Virgil smiled. “I thought something might happen, although I didn’t quite know what. Given the failed attempts, I knew a key ingredient was missing, and when we read that passage, and you told me of your friend’s warning, I came to a conclusion. Julius had to be present too,” he explained. “I knew I had to get him to stay, no matter what. With you there, I thought it’d be easier. He wanted to keep an eye on you, make sure you did it properly, which gave me a window of opportunity. I didn’t know it would kill him… Let’s just call that a perk.”
“Why wouldn’t you tell me that was what you had planned?” Alex asked, feeling as if his body were about to crumble around him, just like the pit.
Virgil sighed heavily. “If I told you, and Julius were to practice some of his favorite torture treatments on you, I knew you might break and tell him what I had planned,” he began. “You might think you’re strong, but you don’t know Julius’s definition of pain the way I do. I have had years of it, and have developed something of a tolerance, but you haven’t. Moreover, I had nothing to lose, whereas you have your friends and allies. In all honesty—and I envy you for it—you had too many weaknesses he could prey upon. I couldn’t risk it. Keeping it secret was the only way I could ensure his presence during the spell.”
Alex could understand that—not that it made him any less irritated that he’d been kept in the dark. What if they hadn’t been able to keep Julius at the pit? What would have happened then? He thought about asking the skeletal man, but he was too tired to get into it. Already, his eyelids were drooping and his shoulders felt heavy. It was all he could do not to curl up into a ball and sleep for a thousand years.
“I became the mist, in those last moments,” Alex said sleepily, hoping Virgil would understand what he meant.
“I felt it too.” Virgil paused for a moment, leaning against the wall, still clutching Alex. “The spell is designed purely for regicide against a cruel ruler, so it makes sense now that it had to be the king’s blood that broke the spell. An elaborate eye for an eye kind of deal.”
“Did it take half of me?” Alex gasped, his lungs burning.
Virgil smiled sadly. “Yes, I think it did. It took half of me too. We split the load—I think Elias stepped in to ensure it only took half of each.”
They had reached the main foyer of the pagoda, the room dripping with dark corners, just the sort Elias liked to hide in. Alex looked around for the shadow-man, but he wasn’t there. “Did Elias get out?”
“I think that man can get out of anything.” Virgil chuckled wryly, though the laugh turned into a cough, a few splatters of blood landing on the Head’s pale palm.
“You okay?” Alex asked, helping Virgil over to the banister of the staircase.
Virgil shrugged, coming to the end of his cough. “I feel strange, as if there’s something missing inside, but I guess we won’t know the true damage until later,” he replied. “How are you feeling?”
“Like hell,” Alex said grimly. “Everything hurts. But at the same time, everything feels numb.”
“Hopefully, it’ll ease with time,” Virgil whispered, clutching his chest.
Alex thought about the survivors of Starcross, and how some of them had wandered through the camp like zombies, their eyes vacant, never recovering from the loss of their stolen half. He wondered if he’d end up like them.
“Elias!” Alex called, searching inside himself for the piece of soul he’d accidentally taken. The pulse of it was weaker, the connection seeming to fade by the second. When he could no longer feel it, he began to panic. “Elias, are you there? Elias?”
Movement in the rafters above drew Alex’s attention. A waterfall of shadow poured down, and Elias appeared before them. Only, he was not quite the shadow-man he usually was. The black vapor of his being had thinned, the stars dimming across his galactic skin, bright flashes exploding inside his being, like suns turning into supernova before burning out completely. His starry eyes were dull and listless, his flowing form barely hovering above the ground.
“Elias, is that you?” Alex whispered.
The shadow-man flashed a faint grin. “Still here, mon cher… just about. Who knew death could hurt this much? I’ve avoided it for so long, I thought it would be easy when the moment actually came,” he wheezed.
“Elias, you’re not going to die,” Alex said. “You used a lot of energy to save us both, but you’ll recover—you always do.”
Elias shook his head slowly. “Not this time, amigo. I think I hear a bell tolling, and it’s tolling just for me,” he murmured, still smiling.
“You can’t go,” Alex insisted, feeling a flutter of panic
in his chest.
“Ha, I knew you’d come to like me, Alex Webber,” Elias teased. “It took me stopping that mist from tearing you to pieces, but we got there in the end. You love me, you really love me!” he cried dramatically, putting on his best spoiled-actress voice.
Alex chuckled, though he was too sad to give it much energy. “Maybe I’ll even miss you a little bit, one day, when I’m by myself, expecting you to drop down from the ceiling unannounced,” he teased halfheartedly.
“You never know, I might just be watching,” Elias said with a wink. But Alex knew he wouldn’t be. Where Elias was going, there was no coming back.
Siren Mave appeared a moment later, pushing through the front door. With a sigh, she shuffled over to the spot where Elias floated, her eyes watery, her mouth set in a sad line. Sniffling, she pushed her horn-rimmed glasses back up the bridge of her nose.
“Come on, you wastrel, it’s time for us to go.” Siren Mave spoke softly, conjuring an orb of black magic between her palms. It held the stars inside, the constellations swirling in a bright white stream that melded into a circle as the orb span faster. “In fact, it’s time for all of us to go,” she said, ushering them all outside, where nothing was about to tumble down on top of them.
“Thank you for finding me,” Alex said, choking on the emotion that clogged his throat. “You might have been vague and annoying, but we did it, didn’t we?”
Elias grinned, his teeth flashing. “We sure did, kiddo.”
“You did an excellent job, Alex,” Siren Mave chimed in. “We couldn’t have asked for a better charge. Nobody thought you’d ever walk through that gate, and none of us could have known you’d be precisely the one to finish this, for good,” she added, flipping the orb onto one hand, while reaching out her free hand to shake Alex’s. He took it wearily, a shiver running through him as he felt her deathly cold palm.
Meanwhile, Elias was fading away, turning almost entirely see-through, until Alex could see the water gardens through his body. Their time together was at an end, and though it had been a turbulent journey, to say the least, Alex was sorry to see the shadow-man go. Siren Mave too. The world would seem just that little bit too quiet without them.
“Alrighty then, let’s get this show on the road while there’s still something left of me to sashay away with,” Elias said, his voice barely a whisper.
“Quite right. Wouldn’t want to rob you of your dramatic exeunt, would we?” Siren Mave teased.
“Never,” Elias replied.
“Siren Mave?” Alex piped up, finding his voice.
The squat woman glanced at him. “A final request?” she asked.
He smiled. “Something like that… I was just wondering, what do I do with the book? It didn’t return to the vault on its own.” He gestured to the tome tucked under Virgil’s arm.
“Ah, yes, the book. You may keep it, or put it back—it’s up to you,” she said. “It is yours, in essence, to do with as you please. Is that everything?”
Alex hesitated, having so much more to say but little time to put his thoughts into words, as Elias was fading more and more by the second. “That’s everything,” he said finally.
Elias had faded into almost nothingness, and his voice was like an echo. “Find peace, Alex Webber.”
With that, Siren Mave’s orb grow bigger and bigger, until it blocked them from view. It spun faster, sucking their bodies into the center, before closing in on itself with a loud snap, sending out a blast of air that swept Alex’s hair back.
Looking at the empty space where Elias and Siren Mave had been, Alex refused to cry, though a bubble of emotion welled inside him. He would let it all hit him later, when the dust settled and he could accept that it was actually over. Instead, he thought about what Siren Mave had said about the book, and the potential it held, with all its mighty spells. It might be handy to keep around, he reasoned, but knew there was too much temptation between its covers. As powerful and useful as it might be, Alex wasn’t sure he wanted to keep it.
“So what are you going to do with it?” Virgil asked, handing it to Alex.
“Put it where it belongs.”
He was going to return it to the vault and lay its curses to rest.
Chapter 30
A small cluster of soldiers had gathered at the far edge of the water gardens outside, chattering anxiously among themselves. It seemed the guards who had come up from the pit had spread the word about Julius’s demise, and no longer knew what to do with themselves without his leadership to guide them.
“Is the king dead?” one asked as Virgil and Alex walked toward them. It was surprising to see that it was still daylight, the sun hurting Alex’s eyes. He’d thought they’d been down in the pit for hours and hours, but only a few had actually passed.
Virgil nodded, propping Alex up. “King Julius has died,” he said, a strange look passing over his face. “As the son of the rightful queen, Queen Venus, I will be aiding her in her duties as ruler of our nation. She will be firm but fair, as you have come to expect, and she will make an announcement when the time is right. In the meantime, you should all return to your families, wherever they are, and await further instruction,” he continued, his voice gathering strength.
Alex glanced at the sunken-faced man, surprised by his quick thinking. It was best to get the idea of Venus ascending to the throne into their heads as soon as possible, to prevent any ideas of a coup d’état on the soldiers’ parts, or on the parts of any other royals who might deem themselves worthy.
The soldiers looked at one another in confusion, but Virgil was still a royal. Given his heritage, they did not dare defy him, even if they thought him the runt of the litter.
“Spread the message as far as you can,” Virgil added, before hauling Alex forward. “And dispense with as many of the traps in the forest as you can, before you leave.”
“We need to go to the vault,” Alex insisted. The hybrid nodded and changed direction. The walk was a longer one than Alex remembered, the sun dappling the ground as it glanced through the canopy. Birds tweeted, seemingly oblivious to the quake that had shaken the earth. The pagoda remained standing, to Alex’s surprise—and was relatively unscathed, with only a few split planks and broken windows to show for the chaos that had ensued in the cavern beneath. For that, Alex was glad. Of all the havens, he’d always liked Falleaf best.
At last, they arrived at the side door of the vault. It was sealed shut, just as it had been the last time. But as Alex neared, clutching the book to his chest, the door sprang open with a rusty creak. Unaided, Alex walked into the warm, cozy light of the library. It was little changed since the last time he had visited, except for one notable difference: a skeleton lay on the ground, curled up by the fireplace, the bony knees tucked up beneath a bony chin.
Alex shuddered, knowing whose skeleton it was. After the promises they had made to return in time, it appeared Alex’s fears, and the immediate loss they had felt, had been right—they would never have reached Lintz before the specters did. Even if they had, the ghoulish creatures would still have devoured him. It was like the professor had said—once a person had looked one in the eye, there was no escape. They would travel to the ends of the earth to take what was owed.
The true loss of Professor Lintz hit Alex hard, adding to the losses that already weighed heavily on his chest. They had all come here together; they had all walked this path together, and he was losing them one by one. Gaze, Lintz, Storm, Elias, Siren Mave, and countless others, falling along the way.
“I’m sorry, Professor,” he whispered, struggling to keep himself together.
Solemnly, he left the skeleton and walked up to the diorama of the solar system that still ticked its steady rhythm. A few of the smaller planets had moved since he was last here, but Jupiter had barely moved at all. Climbing the ladder to reach the largest planet, he wrapped his hand around the orb that represented it, waiting for it to glow. A moment later, it pulsed beneath his palm, the empty drawer popp
ing open beneath.
His limbs felt sluggish, like he was wading through molasses, but he managed to clamber back down the ladder and wander toward the drawer. After taking one last look at the book, smoothing his hand across the leather cover and flicking through to see the glyphs that covered the pages within, he placed it in the compartment and pushed it shut with a quiet click. There was a satisfaction in knowing nobody else could get their hands on it, not without Hadrian’s say-so, anyway, and it was unlikely the nervous royal would ever let anyone run the gauntlet again. Hopefully, with the Great Evil quelled, and no imminent threat upon the magical world, there would be no need for such a book ever again.
“Dear boy, I was wondering if you’d be back.” A voice spoke softly from behind.
Alex whirled around to see the ghost of Lintz hovering before him, though the professor was no less sizeable in his phantom state. He wore a smile upon his face, his moustache twitching at either end, but the glitter in his eyes showed a silent sadness beneath.
“Professor?” Alex choked. There was no mistaking Lintz’s death now. At long last, the professor would get to return to the sister he had sought all these years. Alex just wished they had been able to meet one another again in the real world, with all their futures laid out before them. Julius, and his hold on the magical realm, had robbed so many of that gift, and though he was now gone and his tyranny with it, that didn’t change the devastation that had already been wrought upon so many lives.
“Looking a lot lighter than the last time you saw me, I’ll bet?” Lintz tried to joke, though his heart evidently wasn’t in it. “Goodness me, you look as if you’ve been through the wars,” he remarked, peering more closely at Alex’s face. Given that Alex hadn’t looked in a mirror since he’d left the palace, he had no idea what he looked like. He could only guess it was just about as ghoulish as the way he felt.
“Something like that… Let’s just say it didn’t get any easier,” he admitted, nodding toward the drawer of the diorama, and the book within.
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