“It was nice of fate to pitch me into my first legitimate battle with a ready supply of water all around. And already frozen!” Calypso remarked.
She waved her hands, and the snow obediently rose to her command. Globs of it formed into cones and condensed into spikes. She fluttered her fingers, and the spikes whisked into the screeching wind. Icy shards peppered the struggling dragoyles, shattering their hides and reducing them to broken rubble to rain down over the surrounding field.
#
Ivy tried to dig her toes into the ground and fight the force dragging at her. The same mysterious influence Deacon had summoned to keep Myranda and the others away from him was working to pull Ivy toward him. She was slipping. Flickers of blue light marked her mounting terror. For years she’d been keeping her emotions in control, but something about seeing her friend turn upon her and the others had pulled the rug out from under her. A part of her wanted to give in to the fear, to let it carry her far, far away. But she was clutching an object of profound power, and letting herself lose control with it in her clutches could do just as much damage as Deacon could.
Finally, she lost her footing and went sliding toward Deacon and the sword. She tucked the sigil under her arm and scrabbled against the icy ground, but she couldn’t regain her footing. When she was near enough to him, Deacon pulled his hand from the sigil he’d been manipulating. The force tugging at her vanished, but before she could attempt to escape again, she felt Deacon’s will curl about her and pull her closer. She fought against it—and began to make headway. But he rushed toward her and grabbed the sigil in her grasp with both hands.
“Give it to me. Things are getting out of hand,” Deacon commanded.
“You’re getting out of hand!”
“I’m doing what I need to do to keep the world safe.”
“You’re tearing the world apart. You’re attacking your friends.”
“You’ll understand when it’s done.”
He focused a spell about her. Tendrils of light coiled around her arms, wrenching them away from the sigil. With a flick of his mind, she was thrown to the ground beside the sword. Deacon began to manipulate the space sigil. The still-open windows to other parts of the world started to shift. Ivy looked to the orbiting array of abstractions just above her. Then she looked to the ground, where the expended artifacts had fallen. Among them was the seemingly innocuous object that Deacon had focused all of his power into to make this madness possible, the Kenvard coin.
“Deacon!” she shouted. “You want proof? Test yourself!”
She grasped the coin and threw it to him. Deacon raised a hand and caught it. Savage flares of light sizzled between his flesh and the coin. He recoiled and dropped it. When it fell to the snow, the Mark of the Chosen on its tail face was still incandescent with heat and power.
Grim realization twisted his expression. True clarity, for the first time in too long, gleamed in his eyes. He’d abandoned his friends. He’d attacked them. His mind was no longer his own, and it had made a traitor of him. In that moment, he might just have had the strength to pull himself from his obsession. He might have had the strength to put the sigil down and allow the others to undo what he had done. But alas, for all that had gone right to allow the instant of clarity, there was one thing that had gone very, very wrong.
Deacon was holding the sigil in his afflicted hand.
A tremor shook him. His fingers clenched. The sigil fractured. And then…
Nothing…
#
Myranda’s eyes opened. She didn’t recall closing them. Whatever had happened, it had happened swiftly and forcefully enough to rob her of her wits. Her vision was blurred, and there was a brilliant white light before her. She tried to blink her vision clear, but no matter how she tried, she saw only white. Slowly, she realized that it was not a light, it was all there was to see. The world had vanished. She was alone in a white void stretching out in all directions. Despite the fact that she felt as though she was lying on a surface with the texture of polished marble, even beneath her was nothing but white.
She took stock of her condition. She was weary, but her spirit was still strong and she was uninjured. Her staff was still in hand. Her mind and her mystic focus had always been enough to see her through before. And this was hardly the first time she’d awoken in a situation she didn’t understand. There was nothing to do but climb to her feet and press on.
“Hello?” she called.
Her voice didn’t echo. Though there were no walls, the sound seemed tinny and stifled. She shut her eyes and focused. Her mind beheld a landscape nearly as featureless as the one she had seen. There was but one vague notion, something distant and difficult to focus on. With nothing else to do, she marched toward it.
This wasn’t death. She was no stranger to death. By most measures, she had already experienced it. And she doubted this was oblivion. In oblivion there could be no thought, no action. What chilled her wasn’t the thought that she had been killed or that she had been wiped from existence. What struck her to her very soul was the possibility that she was precisely where she had been when Deacon had broken the sigil. This might well be what had become of the world.
#
Ivy struggled to stand. As had been the case for Myranda, the world she’d awoken in was not the one she knew. But she had been nearer to Deacon when the sigil was damaged. What shreds of existence were still hanging together clung more closely to this point.
Fragments of the field remained. They scattered around her, bits of snow, land, and sky spread thin in her vision. They were faint, like half-forgotten images of a strange dream. She stumbled along the ground toward a stone twisting in front of her and reached out. Her hand passed through it. It wasn’t real. She could see it, and in her heart she knew what it was and where it belonged, but there was no place for it to be. Deacon had broken the sigil that allowed for such things.
“There must be something,” she murmured. “I’m still here. I’m still real. There must be something here. Something I can use. Something I can do.”
She continued forward. In her mind, she was walking toward where the sword had been plunged into the ground. For all she knew, direction had no meaning anymore. But moving toward something, even something imagined, was better than staying still and giving up hope.
And there was something there. An insignificant speck in the distance. It may as well have been a mote of dust, but it was solid. In the midst of the half-reality she was lost in, anything genuine and unmistakable loomed large as a mountain.
She quickened to a run. The thing approached with aching slowness, but time was as unreal here as distance. She could have been running for an hour, she could have been running for a heartbeat. It was all meaningless in this place. The only thing that mattered was the fragment of reality she was dashing toward. Its color became visible, gleaming gold and silver. Then its shape. She recognized it.
“Of course…” Ivy said, reaching out to it.
Ivy had manipulated only two of the sigils. One had been broken. This was the other. Music. It seemed only right that in this moment, this was what she would find. The very thing that had rescued her so many times before. The thing that had soothed her and brought her comfort when so few things could. The thing she had used time and time again to bring people together. And it would bring people together again.
She took the sigil in hand. Her claws gently raked across it. She coaxed a glissando from the instrument. It wasn’t just beautiful. It was beauty. It wasn’t just soulful, it was soul. For Ivy, music had so often been everything. Now it quite literally was. She plucked out notes until she understood the voice and feel of the instrument. The melody formed itself, drawn from her mind through her fingers. It was haunting, subtle, solemn.
As she played, she became more familiar with the instrument. She layered more depth into the melody. At the edge of her hearing, something beyond the music reached her. Motion. The click of footsteps. S
omeone was approaching. She opened her eyes to find Myranda walking toward her. With Myranda’s approach, the tone of the music grew stronger. Ivy could feel the tiniest breath of a breeze on her fur. She stirred the song to a livelier tempo. The flap of a dragon’s wings came next. Myn set down beside her. Then the crackle of an elemental flame.
Like candles coming together to push back the darkness, each of those who heeded the call of her song brought a bit more reality. Ivy could feel the crunch of snow beneath her feet again as she swayed to the song. Ayna flitted to her side, and a bit of color returned to their surroundings. She put more spirit into the song. By the time Calypso joined them, the melody was soaring and triumphant. She brought it to a final flourish and wiped the tears from her eyes.
The pieces of reality had gathered about them, forming into an island of existence in the middle of the white void like candles gathered in the darkness. Ivy’s song hung in the air for a moment. As it began to fade, the vibrancy of the patch of ground surrounding them faded too, and it began to recede into the void. She idly plucked a few more notes, invigorating it again.
“It looks like you’ll need to keep the music flowing,” Myranda said.
“That I can do,” she said, strumming softly with a blissful look on her face.
“I never would have dreamed Deacon could be capable of this,” Calypso said.
“And you were in favor of allowing him into the good graces of Entwell again,” Ayna said with her arms crossed.
“This isn’t Deacon. This is what that sickness has done to his mind,” Myranda said. “How could he have kept this to himself…”
“We have bigger problems than worrying about Deacon’s state of mind,” Ether said.
“Considering what he’s done, I’m not sure I agree,” Ayna said.
“Have we left the world, or has the world left us?” Calypso asked. “And if all of creation has been shattered, why are we still here?”
“If we are still here, then there is something left. And if there is something left, there is still hope,” Myranda said. “If the music sigil survived, then the others must have. We survived, and we were at the center of what happened. We must assume the rest of the world fared better.”
“A weak assumption,” Ether observed.
“It’s what we have, and it’s enough. Somewhere out there is the center of all this. The sword, the remaining sigils, and Deacon. We have to find them. We have to piece things back together, and we have to put this to an end.”
Ether approached the edge of the island of reality around them and crouched. She reached beyond it and shut her eyes.
“It will not be simple. There isn’t anything there. We can travel as far as we like, but we will never draw nearer to anything else, because the distance between us isn’t real.”
“I don’t understand,” Myranda said.
Ayna and Calypso joined Ether in investigating.
“She’s right,” said Calypso. “I’ve never felt such vacancy. The very firmament is gone. If we survive this, there are volumes to be written in trying to work out just how it’s possible we exist when the world around us doesn’t. But we certainly can’t go toward something when the very concept of location is fractured.”
“We found Ivy,” Myn said.
“We found Ivy because she was calling to us. In essence, she created a place for us by drawing upon one of the elements of existence.”
Myranda drove the tip of her staff into the snow at her feet. The gem kindled to life. She held out her hands. “Join me.”
Calypso paced to her side and took her hand. Ether took her other hand. Ayna landed on her staff again.
“Play with spirit, Ivy,” Myranda instructed.
“Gladly.”
The malthrope increased the tempo of her song. Wisps of a golden aura wove around her. Ivy’s music had always had a profound effect on her, and through her, it had a similar effect on the others. For the first time, Myranda could feel the power of the music itself. It stirred her. Fueled her. She was experiencing music in its purest form. In its elemental form. If Ivy felt even a fraction of this beauty and truth when she played, Myranda fully understood her love for the art form.
Their focus and power joined together, widening the reach of their minds and spirits. Each had a distinctive color and texture to their spirit as they pulled themselves to the task. Ether was tight, controlled. Calypso was fluid and elegant. Ayna’s mind was a diamond-clear point held viciously in focus almost out of sheer spite.
“What are we searching for?” Ayna asked.
“We’ll know it when we find it,” Myranda said.
The images that filled their minds were chilling. Not since the earliest days of her training had Myranda felt so little from the world around her. Even when pains had been taken to shield things from her, she’d always felt something. But not here. They strained and stretched their focus. Still, there was nothing. Magic was about manipulating the forces around you. There were no forces to manipulate. What little power they had at their disposal came from within, and from Ivy’s music.
Myranda shut her eyes tighter. She guided her mind further, choosing a direction based solely on intuition. The others followed her lead. Their minds shone upon the emptiness. Their influence rolled outward like waves. In time, as Ivy’s song slid into a soft lull, they felt a ripple in response. It was weak. If the world were still in place, they would have missed it. But Myranda felt it. It was Deacon. She could feel his spirit tugging, struggling as if chained.
“There,” Calypso said. “It’s him.”
“He is far. If we are going to reach him, we’ll need a way to travel,” Ayna said.
The group let their focus subside.
“We’ll need to build a bridge of reality,” Myranda said.
“How does one do such a thing?” Calypso mused, fingers to her chin.
“I wish Deacon were here. He’d jump at the opportunity to work it out,” Myranda said.
“Plus, if he was here, we wouldn’t have to find him,” Ivy helpfully added while plucking at the strings.
Ether stepped to the edge of their little sanctuary and gazed out into the void. “Deacon believes that reality is defined by these abstractions, rather than the earth, fire, wind, and water that surrounds us at all times.” She turned. “In his meddling, he has shattered reality. This reveals the truth of his belief. But more than one thing can be true. What am I if not a will crafted to harness power and create the elements?”
She planted her feet and set her eyes upon their unseen target. “This will require all my attention. One of you will have to guide me. The rest will have to empower me. But I will build the bridge.” Ether turned to Ivy. “Play well.”
“If only this were a violin, you would see just how…” Ivy began.
Before she could finish, the instrument in her fingers obliged her. The change managed to be subtle. It was less a matter of the shape of the sigil changing as existence changing its mind about what it had always been. It was still intrinsically, fundamentally, and unquestionably the same embodiment of magic. The actual shape it took was its least important trait.
Ivy didn’t question the change. She simply flashed a smile, flourished the tip of a bow that hadn’t been in her hand until a moment ago, and raised the violin to her chin.
“This is going to be a song for the ages.”
Bow met strings. Joy and triumph themselves leaped from them. The power of it surged through her, radiating like beams of golden sunlight. Ayna flitted in front of Ether, hanging just above the fringe of their little piece of reality. The elemental changed first to wind. She let flame, earth, and water slowly separate until she was a churning mass of each. The flame did not sizzle the water. The air did not scatter the earth. They blended like the colors of the rainbow. It was precisely how Ether had looked on the day Calypso, Ayna, and Myranda had helped to summon her. But now, rather than coming together out of those elements, sh
e was splitting apart, returning them to the world around her.
Streamers of the elements curled out, weaving into earth and snow. Ayna drifted forward slowly. The icy field that should have occupied this place formed beneath her. Ether wasn’t creating the ground out of whole cloth. The way it appeared felt less like it was being crafted and more like it was being revealed. This place was a vessel that had been emptied of its contents. Ether poured fragments of herself into it, and those fragments filled the vessel and took its shape.
The music and the wills of the wizards behind her replenished Ether’s strength, allowing her to craft more of the elements and continue.
“Onward,” she said. “Quickly.”
#
Elsewhere, the effects of the magic had taken their toll. The world had, for most of its inhabitants, ceased to be. The subjects of the northern kingdoms found their homes, their places of business, the very ground beneath their feet torn away. Like the Chosen, they found themselves afloat in a vast, featureless sea of white. Unlike their defenders, they knew not why. Most were adrift, isolated. No scrap of land or sky could be seen. Not another soul could be felt. Millions of people, suddenly alone. Single points of life.
Those with stronger wills and steadier nerves managed to keep grasp of some shred of reality. In Entwell, the masters stood atop fragments of their homeland. They could feel the distant flicker of other minds and spirits. Places of power drifted like islands in the void, held together by a sort of self-imposed reality. Wolloff’s tower and the clearing around it refused to succumb to the nothingness. The long strip of land at the Tresson border, where so many lives had been lost, clung to existence.
In a tower of the castle of Kenvard, a frightened young servant of the Crown stood with a child in her arms. She gazed in terror at the hazy edge of the floor before her.
“It… it’s going to be all right,” she murmured to Leo.
She tore her eyes away from the nothingness to offer what little comfort she could to the boy. She didn’t understand what had happened, but she had a duty to the child. Yet, when she looked to him, she found no terror, no confusion in the face of her charge. Leo was not afraid. He held out his hand and pointed a chubby digit.
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