by Peach, Hanna
Alyx scanned the shelves in the room. Mayrekk’s bracelet must be in one of these cases.
A familiar silver glinting off a circular object caught her eye. She gasped and raced over to one of the shelves. There was Mayrekk’s apex, Raphael’s charm, Elijah’s pick and Jordan’s lion’s head ring. The only thing missing was the Black Stone sword that Michael had taken off her when he had captured her in the Hollows.
“The apex is here,” she called out. She reached for it but her fingers met a stern invisible resistance. These shelves were sealed behind magic shields. “But they’re shielded.”
Her fingers splayed against the invisible shield. She could almost touch it.
“Maybe this will work…” she mumbled to herself as she thrust Tobias’ pick towards the case in hope. The case crackled and jittered at the sparks coming off the pick like sparks off a welding tool. Come on, work.
But the magic held. Alyx stared at the pick, then the case, her heart drowning in disappointment. They had gotten this far... Surely there was a way in. She pulled back the pick and thrust it forward again. A futile effort. These shields were stronger than anything she had ever seen before. How the hell would she get in? There had to be a way.
“What is the meaning of this?” A cold familiar voice echoed across the chamber, startling Alyx so that she jumped away from the case. There, on the other side of the chamber, was the chilling beauty of Elder Michael.
Michael’s icy eyes turned their full force towards her. They seemed to peel back her mask and made her feel like she was standing before him, bared. For a split second, as he raised his palms to her, she was frozen with uncertainty. How the hell did Michael get from the ceremony to here so quickly? The ceremony couldn’t be over yet.
A pulse erupted from his palms with a thick crackle.
“Duck!” Jordan cried.
The forcefulness and solidity of his voice snapped her out of her state. Alyx leapt to the side and rolled into a crouch as a ball of DreamWalker blew past her, barely missing her. At the same second, Jordan threw a ball back at him. She saw Michael’s eyes widen then narrow. No sooner had Jordan’s DreamWalker hit Michael’s chest than a thick shield of his defenses pushed it skillfully away like water around a rock.
Michael aimed his palms at Jordan, and this time he let out a pulse of magic. It seemed to lash at the air as fiercely as his snarl. It collided with a matching pulse from Jordan in a burst that blew the hair from Alyx’s face and made her skin break out in waves of prickles and her hair rise with electricity. Holy Hell. This was powerful magic.
Michael’s pulse was tinged with a kind of purple fire and his anger seemed to make his magic flare and spark with a greater intensity. It began to push back against Jordan’s. Jordan had to tilt his face away from the spray of the colliding magics as it inched towards him. She heard him grunting under the strain. Michael’s magic would overtake Jordan’s completely if Alyx didn’t do something.
Alyx dropped to a crouch with a leg extended out to her side. Her skirt slid apart at the split on either side of her leg, giving her access to her weapons. She snatched a knife from her boot and hurled it at Michael. He cried out as the sharp point went straight through his right palm, cutting off the magic from that hand.
“Cursed she-devil,” Michael cried as he clutched his injured palm to his chest, staining his dark-colored shirt with blood. She could see the blue DreamWalker magic from the knife soaking into his body, sparking blue electricity as it did. Michael’s other palm was still trained towards Jordan. Now that there was only one pulse directed at him, Jordan’s magic began to push back.
Michael let out a grunt of annoyance and reached to pull out the blade out of his injured hand. His pulse dropped, allowing Jordan’s DreamWalker to slam into him. But he had steadied his defenses and Jordan’s pulse flowed around him.
He ripped out the knife from his right palm with a grunt and threw it at Jordan. Jordan dove aside, his own DreamWalker pulse dropping. The knife missed him. As Michael aimed his palms at Jordan again, Alyx could see that his wound was already healing.
Alyx snatched her dagger from its boot sheath and launched herself at Michael. But he saw her before she could get to him. Michael turned his partly-injured palm towards her and a small bolt of magic flew towards her.
It was too late to spin out of the way. Alyx pulled at her defenses like she had been trained to as she met the bolt of magic face on. It hit her square in the chest and she was thrown back in the air. She fought to keep her defenses up, but Michael’s powerful magic was seeping in, wearing down sections of her shield. She felt her body growing heavy as if filling with lead as she fell from the air. The rocky floor came at her with a thud. She felt the air rush out of her lungs.
“Alyx!” she heard Jordan cry. “You bastard. If you’ve hurt her…”
Alyx squinted through blurring vision. With her cheek laying heavily on the wooden flooring, she could see Michael redirecting his magic over her head towards Jordan. Jordan. Her stomach lurched at the thought of Jordan fighting against this powerful Elder alone. Alyx struggled to move, but her legs were heavy and her arms felt like she was trying to pull through cement.
The air again grew thick and hot with DreamWalker magic as Jordan and Michael faced off again. Her vision wavered behind heavy eyelashes. An object on the floor came into focus. It was her fallen dagger, just to her right. If she could only reach it…
Alyx focused on drawing herself out of the DreamWalker influence and pulling herself back to wakefulness. She gave an internal cheer when she felt her mind clearing. She tried to reach out again, but it seemed the DreamWalker effects on her body were taking too long to wear off.
If she could use her mind could she use her bloodink? Alyx cast her mind to the marks hidden on her ribs. Half an Animale and partial WaterBearer, EarthSifter and AirWhisperer… An idea came to her as she remembered the glass shards that Israel had used to attack the Darkened at the demon den with his burgeoning Air magic. That memory felt odd in her mind. Frayed, almost. But no time to worry about it now.
She pulled at her bloodink and was relieved to feel the lightness of the Air magic blowing through her body. She drew it into her palm. She put all her energy into flicking her fingers, and the magic swirled, cool and contained in her hand. She pushed out the Air magic. She directed it carefully towards the fallen dagger like an extension of her hand. The soft white haze curled the handle like an ethereal snake.
She let part of the magic spread across the room in a light sweep. The magic curved across the two life forms standing off against each other so that she could sense them both. Jordan and Michael. Symon’s words echoed again in her mind.
“Always focus on where you want it to go, not on where you don’t want it to go. Magic doesn’t understand negatives. It just sees what you focus on. It will just as easily aim exactly for what you don’t want to hit as what you want to hit.”
Alyx closed her eyes. Focus. Trust. She didn’t have to open her eyes to see the Air lifting the dagger from the floor. She could feel it as if the air was part of her. Alyx directed her thoughts to Michael. And only to Michael. She drew the last of the Air from her skin in a single burst. In a violent release her mind threw the dagger towards its target.
She heard a cry as her blade found its mark. She felt the room grow warmer. She felt the reverberation in the floor when a body hit it. Then the room became still.
Please, let it be Michael who had gone down. Alyx pushed again with her limbs, awkward and heavy like a baby elephant. She heard movement, then felt two strong arms pulling her into a sitting position. Her head rolled back to see Jordan’s concerned face peering down at her.
“Alyx, are you okay?”
“Did I get him?” she croaked out. Even her throat felt stiff and dry.
A smile broke out across Jordan’s face and he laughed. “You’re okay. Yeah, you got him.”
Alyx felt a cool pulse travelling through her back. Jordan was using his Drea
mWalker to pull her out of the cloak of Michael’s magic. It spread across her body like a crackling frost and it cast aside the heaviness to her body. Within seconds she felt the life return back to her, and the sensations in her skin sharpened. She could feel the warmth where Jordan’s hands lay flat across her back, especially where they lay on bare skin, where there was no fabric.
She gasped a little in surprise as Jordan pulled them both up in the air, then he set her down to her feet.
“Can you stand?” he asked, still holding onto her.
“I think so,” she said.
Slowly, hesitantly it seemed, he pulled his arms away from her. Looking around, Alyx could see a fallen Michael, eyes shut, her dagger sticking out from his shoulder and a pool of blood staining the wooden floor. He looked dead but she knew he wasn’t. He deserved to be. Her chest suddenly filled with resurfaced anger.
“That blade needs to be repositioned just a few inches down and to the left.” Through the heart. Even the Seraphim don’t recover from a heart wound. In the time it took for the body to heal it, it would be too late. She advanced towards him.
A warm hand on her arm, firm but gentle, stopped her. “Alyx, we can’t kill him.”
She spun towards Jordan, her fury redirecting at him. “What the hell do you mean ‘we can’t’?” She pushed his arm from her. “What he did to Mini, to my parents, to you… He has caused so much death, so much pain…” Her vision narrowed as she frowned at him. “Whose damn side are you on anyway?”
“God damn it, Alyx.” He shook his head, composing himself so that his face returned to calm and his voice leveled. “I despise him as much as you do. But we need him alive so we can get him to open the shields. Remember why we’re here.”
He was right. Alyx felt her anger begin to deflate within her. She took a steadying breath and nodded. “Okay. But after we find it, he’s getting a blade to the heart.”
“Done.”
“Then maybe a haircut at the neck.”
“Got it.”
“Then chopped into little pieces and burn each one.”
“Have I ever told you how incredibly sexy you are when you talk dirty?” One of the corners of Jordan’s lips was pulled up in a half smile. He must be joking. Sort of.
“I’m going to secure his hands so he can’t point his magic at us.” Jordan pulled a length of rope from under his long jacket. “Then I’ll wake his mind but keep his body asleep. You’ll have to make him open the shields.” He pulled out Alyx’s dagger from Michael’s body, wiped it on his shirt and tossed it at her, handle out. “Catch.”
She caught it and resheathed it. She found her knife laying at the edge of the chamber and tucked it back into her boot.
Jordan rolled Michael’s body onto his stomach. “You have any ideas on how to make him open the shields?”
She shrugged. “Ask nicely?”
Jordan stopped tying Michael’s hands together behind his back to raise an eyebrow at her.
“Or we could just beat it out of him.”
Jordan grinned. “That’s more like it.”
When he finished up tying Michael’s hands, he lifted Michael’s slumped body and threw it so he was sitting against the outer chamber wall. Michael’s face fell to one side, his jaw slack, his eyes half-open as if he was dead.
“You ready?” Jordan asked.
Alyx gritted her teeth. “Do it.”
Jordan directed a small pulse at Michael. Unlike the pulse to put him to sleep, which was warm and thick like a blanket, this pulse, designed to wake him, was cold and fresh. Within seconds, Michael’s eyelids began to flutter open.
“What the…” his features hardened as he caught Alyx’s eye. “Come back to me did you, pretty? What? Did you think I wouldn’t recognize you under that mask?”
Alyx’s fingers went to her face and touched the lace of her mask. Even with it on, she now found herself feeling exposed.
“You’re not even supposed to be here. We saw you…” Alyx’s voice trailed off when she realized, “that was someone else. Under a mirage.” Alyx frowned. “You would miss entwining your own son?”
The side of Michael’s lip twisted up, which left no doubt in Alyx’s mind how little Michael thought of his son, Daniel. For a moment Alyx felt a little sorry for Daniel. Then she remembered how he had pretended to care for her in order to extract her secrets. Her pity faded.
“You’re a very clever little thing, aren’t you?” Michael was staring at her with eyes like ice. “However did you find my chamber of Eden?”
His chamber of Eden. “What the hell is this place?”
He laughed. “No, no. I shall keep the secret of Eden and its Tree of Knowledge all to myself.”
Alyx glanced up to the structure taking up the center of the chamber. Tree of Knowledge. What did that mean? What was it for?
Alyx fought off a chilling shudder.
“Clever. And brave, like your mother was. Pity both of you have to die.”
Alyx’s vision clouded with the pale image of her mother’s face from Michael’s “garden” DreamScape, so like her own face but with chocolate eyes which stared lifelessly back at her. Alyx let out a small hiss and sprang to grip her hands around Michael’s neck. Even death would be too kind a fate for him.
Jordan leapt forward and gripped a strong hand to her arm, preventing her from getting at Michael. “Alyx. Remember why we’re here,” he said firmly. His words broke through her hazed anger like rays.
Michael sneered. “And the prodigal Rogue, Jordan. Always have to be the hero. I thought I recognized that air of righteousness about you. Too bad you couldn’t save… what was her name? Such a pity. I liked her. She made such pretty noises for me.”
Alyx could see the muscles tensing in Jordan’s jaw. She prepared herself in case it was her who now had to hold him back from strangling this truly awful seraph.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jordan said as he shook his head as if to clear his thoughts, although he couldn’t completely hide the quiver of anger in his voice. “How do we open the shields containing Mayrekk’s prisoner’s apex?”
A look of amusement spread across Michael’s face. “You’d risk your life for that old fool? And here I thought you were smarter than that.”
“You’re not in a position where you should be baiting us,” Alyx snapped. “I thought you were smarter than that.”
Michael began to laugh. The sound was like a flame to her blood causing it to boil over. She dodged Jordan and launched at Michael, unsheathing her blade as she bent over him. She leaned her dagger across his neck, cutting off his laughter.
“You are one wrong breath away from finding out what happens when we die, Elder,” she spat. “Now, open up the shield and I might let you live.”
Michael stiffened under her blade. “If you kill me then you’ll never get inside the shield.”
“You’re right, we can’t kill you.” Alyx dropped her blade to his crotch. His eyes widened as he followed her blade down. “Wanna test whether our healing powers will let you grow this back?”
“Fine,” he hissed. “I’ll open the damned case.” He looked over to the wall. “You need to carry me to it.”
Alyx raised an eyebrow.
“Or you could let me walk.”
“Ha. Fat chance.” Alyx narrowed her eyes at him. “This had better not be some sort of trick.”
Michael smirked. “Would I do that to you?”
Alyx gave him a vicious grin and grabbed a handful of his pant cloth in her fist.
“W-what are you doing?”
Alyx enjoyed hearing the shake of fear in his voice.
Slowly and deliberately, she sliced the fistful of cloth away leaving a hole in his pants. Lifting up her hand she showed him the severed cloth. Then she shoved the cloth in this mouth making him gag, a promise of what she’d do to him if he were lying.
“Of course you wouldn’t try anything. Not if you know what’s good for you.”
He spat the cloth
out from his mouth and looked to be straining to hold himself back from yelling. “Just move me to the damn shield.”
Jordan dragged Michael’s limp body before the shelf containing the precious items and held him up.
“Now you’ll need to get the keye from my neck.”
Alyx found the chain and yanked the keye from him. He hissed when part of the chain caught on some of his hair, ripping it out. She ignored him and thrust the keye at the shield. Nothing happened.
Alyx turned to Michael snarling. “You lied.”
“The keye is voice activated but it only responds to my voice.”
Jordan hoisted Michael up by his shirt and shoved him at the shelf. His face collided with the shield with a satisfying thud.
Alyx held the keye up to the shield. “Go on then.”
Michael mumbled something that Alyx couldn’t quite catch. Nothing appeared to have happened. He mumbled something more. The keye glowed in her hands. The shield dissolved and Michael’s face fell forward into the space. Jordan pulled him back and let him slip to the floor.
As Alyx began to collect the objects from the shelf, Jordan flew up to the tree-like structure and looked to be studying it. Raphael’s charm went first around her neck, then Elijah’s pick and the Saint’s bracelet around her wrist, Jordan’s lion’s head ring on her finger and finally she closed Mayrekk’s prisoner’s apex around her calf and tucked it into her boot.
She spun and moved so she was standing over Michael’s head. He was glaring at her with blatant hate in his eyes. She unsheathed her dagger and nudged the tip of the blade under his chin.
“Would love to stay and draw out your death, but I’m afraid we’re just going to have to do it and run.”
Michael scoffed. “You’re a fool if you think you’re getting out of here alive. It’s only a matter of moments, my dear.”
Alyx frowned. Matter of moments?
“Oh my God, Alyx. You need to see this,” Jordan called from high amongst the structure’s branches.
She was about to reply when she thought she heard a faint noise coming from behind the mirage wall where they had entered. Jordan’s head cocked. He heard it as well.
