by John Goode
That threat caused her to pause.
“I mean it, I will turn you into a hideous old woman and no magic in the world will change it. I’ve accidentally erased your face once. Wanna see what I can do when I try?”
“You’re an idiot” was all she said.
I could not argue with that.
I GLANCED over at Ruber. “Oberon has changed the town. He’s transformed people into different creatures. He wants me to kill them.”
My dad and Jewel gasped, but Ruber just floated and thought about it. “It sounds like him, not just an army but collateral damage and leverage against you.”
“Once I take that away from him, he’s going to come after them,” I said, gesturing to everyone else in the room.
“You can’t let those people roam free.”
He was right.
“Watch the door.”
I closed my eyes.
“HOW WAS that woman a behemoth?” Ater asked, sounding unsure if what he was seeing was real.
“Oberon” was all I said. “Cover me, I’m going to take care of this.”
They looked at me, confused, until I closed my eyes.
All I heard was Ater saying, “Take the north side.”
“YOU NEED to watch my back,” I told Demain, knowing this was a bad idea.
“Oh, do I?”
“I need to fix this, and it is going to take concentration. So if you’re going to betray me, here’s your chance.”
I closed my eyes.
“Why would you trust me with this?” she asked incredulously.
“Because I have faith there is a good person in you somewhere, and I don’t have a choice.”
The three of us linked and we all felt the power flow.
I LOOKED down and saw the town.
There were these small points of darkness all over, moving in packs up and down the streets. These were Oberon’s creatures. Innocent people transformed by some kind of reality magic. I didn’t have time to do this one at a time. I needed to fix the town all at once, which meant using real power.
What was that? Haven’t you been using real power all along, Kane?
Good question.
So far I have been doing what would be considered minor-league stuff like magical shields and transforming things from one substance to another. As far as the universe is concerned, that isn’t much, no matter how fantastical it may seem to you and me. What I was about to do was going to change a few things, and the universe was going to recognize that.
How, I didn’t know yet.
Oberon had manipulated reality all over town and not very well, if you’re asking me. When you change a reality it should be seamless. There should be no ragged edges or obvious disharmonics.
All right, I’m not sure disharmonics is a real word, but it works here.
Like when I took Demain’s face off. There was no indication she ever had a real face, which was why everyone in the room who tried couldn’t reverse it. This, this was crap magic playing outside its league, and it showed from up here. Problem was, crap magic or not, what I was about to do required a lot of power to do it on the entire town.
Fortuitously, I had power to spare.
I had to resist the urge to just change things back to the way they were because the seed would try to make that wish reality, and if it did we’d all be screwed. See, I didn’t know everything about the town. I didn’t even know everyone in the town, much less their personal lives and histories. If the seed tried to remake the town in my head, it would make copies of everything, copies that were based on what I knew, which wasn’t a lot.
Instead I needed to unravel the magic that was looped around these people, freeing them from their monstrous state and back to who they were. Now here is where that word disharmonic comes in. The universe has a sound, a tone actually. It’s normally impossible to hear, but it’s there, and each world has its own tone that permeates every person from there. This is how demons and magical creatures are so easily detected. They are normally from another plane, so they are giving off a completely different sound than everyone else.
Each person down there who Oberon had transformed into a monster was giving off the wrong tone because whatever magic he was using warped reality around them. What I needed to do was find a way to strengthen the natural vibration of our universe, shattering the spells.
What I needed was a fifty-foot-tall Mariah Carey.
Now of course a fifty-foot-tall, flawless woman did not appear in the middle of Athens, but there was an invisible one there, and she began to sing a song that was composed of the sounds of our universe. Each chirp, every laugh, the sound of waves crashing on the shore mixed with the last breaths of the people who were dying right now. Every single sound that made us up as a people reverberated through the town on a frequency that no one could hear but everyone felt.
The creatures paused, sensing the tone, and knowing it meant something bad for them. Their bodies began to shake from within, and most let out a howl or a cry that was shock and fear that they were being erased. Anyone who was not transformed heard the song and immediately relaxed as their souls recognized the melody as the one that is sung to each of us in the womb, preparing us for the world to come. This was life, all life itself telling everything not from Athens it was time to move on.
And move on they did.
The grotesque forms shattered into motes of color that exploded outward like dust being blown off, revealing the people from Athens underneath. They were confused and exhausted, wondering how they got into the middle of town naked, but they were alive and human. I’d done it.
I STUMBLED backward, and Ater caught me before I fell on my ass.
“What did you do?” he asked, clearly knowing something had happened but having no idea what.
“I undid Oberon’s magic… the monsters are gone.”
AT JEWEL’S place my dad caught me.
“So you saved the town?” he asked hopefully.
“Not yet, Oberon’s still out there, somewhere,” I said, feeling light-headed.
DEMAIN HELD me up as I tried to catch my breath.
“This was a mistake,” she said, looking around. “That was too easy.”
“You think that was easy?” I snapped.
“Yes. What was the purpose of all of it if you can just…,” and she stopped talking.
“It was to weaken him, of course,” Oberon said from behind me, Thanthos, his Soul Blade, in hand. “Get away from him, Red Queen. I have no quarrel with you.”
She looked like she wanted to argue that, but I shook my head. “I have this.”
I so did not have this.
I stood and turned to look at him.
“Wow, you got tacky all over your belt.”
He was wearing this horrible wrestler’s belt that had been attacked by a BeDazzler in a big, bad way. Worse, there were stones missing from it, making it look just too disco for me. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I can love an Olivia Newton John song all day, but you get into Gloria Gaynor and all that crap and I am just done.
Where was I? Right, the belt.
Oberon sneered at me. “Are you going to fight or talk?”
“I can do both,” I quipped, drawing power around myself, not wanting to waste any time on this jerkface. I was going to turn him into a toad and then convince myself not to step on him. Reality flared all around us, but I could feel sparks come off the belt when nothing happened. I just stared at him, thinking rapidly through possibilities.
“I do not know what ‘tacky’ means, but if it stands for ‘makes me immune to your power,’ then, yes, very tacky.” I tried to summon up something to protect myself when he grinned and said, “My turn.”
There was a sound behind me, but I had no time to dodge as he plunged his sword right through my chest. “I told you I would kill you,” he sneered in my face.
And then I died.
FERRA ROARED, “No!” and sent a lance of ice at Oberon full force.
The fairy king barely had time to deflect it with his sword before she pressed the attack. He had never faced the barbarian before and was caught completely off guard by her ferocity. Normally Ferra wouldn’t have thought it possible to stagger the fairy king, but his blade barely kept up with her attacks. Perhaps his martial skills had been overrated?
“Kane,” Hawk said, dropping to his knees, cradling the body. “Please….”
And right in front of his eyes, the body turned to dust and blew away.
A rage kindled and flared inside the prince. Shaking with it, he pushed himself to his feet.
Caerus wasted no time in backing Ferra up, throwing arcane bolts at Oberon. His belt had to be some kind of magical artifact because it was blunting her spells as if they didn’t exist.
“Don’t waste your magic,” Demain called out. “That is the Gnome King’s belt. It is immune to most magic.”
“It has other properties,” Oberon snarled at Ferra, dropping one hand from his sword to the belt.
She was seconds away from making him pay for that mistake when he pulled something off and flicked it toward her. Out of sheer reflex she stopped her attack and slapped the object with her spear. A bright purple amethyst went flying across the school’s courtyard, hitting the stone fountain at its base.
Instantly the fountain melted and reformed into a massive minotaur that came charging at Ferra.
“You have a friend,” Oberon said, taking a step backward.
Ferra took a half step back and prepared herself for the bull-man’s charge as the fairy king laughed and darted into the school.
“He’s getting away!” Hawk began to run toward the school.
“Wait!” a voice called to him from behind. He turned and saw Kane, Ater, and Kor walking up the road. “It’s a trap!”
Relief surged through Hawk’s body as he ran toward Kane.
“DAMMIT!” I screamed, clutching my chest like I was having a heart attack.
“What is it?” Kor asked. “Are we under attack?”
“Oberon just killed me,” I said, trying to convince my mind there wasn’t a sword through my chest and I was really all right.
“I had no idea what kind of life you and Pullus led,” Kor said to Ater, looking as tired as I felt.
“In all fairness, it was never this insane until I met this one.” Ater gestured down at me.
“You started it,” I countered, trying to stand. Suddenly, a familiar feeling echoed through my mind: a rage that burned like a sun and the righteous indignation that came with it.
“Hawk’s here!” I said, trying to stay calm and focus my thoughts so I could contact him. My attempt wasn’t working. Through the pain and exhaustion, I just couldn’t do it. “Come on, we need to get to the school.”
Ater helped me up. “You know I have no idea where that is, correct?”
“That way.” I pointed as the three of us began to run.
People were wandering the streets, dazed from being monsters just a few minutes before. Luckily it looked like the worst had passed. All that was left was Oberon. I tried to reach out to Hawk’s mind, but he was too angry and grief-stricken to hear.
The closer we got to the school, the better I felt. I don’t know if it was just time or getting closer to Hawk, but the pain was fading and I could feel the anticipation of seeing him again. We rounded the corner, and I could see most of them were fighting a minotaur while Hawk was running into the school. In a flash I got an information dump of everything that had happened to him, and I called out to him and what he was about to do.
“Wait!” He paused. “It’s a trap!”
I tried really hard not to sound like Admiral Ackbar, honest.
He saw me, and I could feel his great relief followed by an almost overwhelming sense of love and need. He was hurt, badly. So far he had been playing the wound off as nothing, but when he ran toward me, I could feel his strength wane as he realized we were together again. His pain was my pain, and I could not believe he had hidden it so well.
He paused in front of me, and I held my hand out to his chest, where the figurative hole in his heart was aching. “I am so sorry.”
And that was it; he broke down sobbing. I glanced over his shoulder and could see people staring at us, so I did what anyone would do in that instance.
I froze time for a little privacy.
What? You don’t do that?
“It’s going to be all right,” I told Hawk as I put my arms around him and just rocked him.
“How? I lost something… part of myself.”
“We can fix this,” I assured him.
“How?” he snapped, his eyes red with tears. “How can we fix part of my soul burned away?” His voice was ragged, and I could tell he was running on fumes. This wasn’t a wound that was going to heal itself or could be worked around. This was a wound that was going to eventually kill him because he was going to try to ignore it one too many times.
So it had to be fixed.
“Simple,” I said, cupping his right hand with both of mine. “We share.” And I pulled his hand into my chest. It passed through the skin harmlessly even though we both remained solid.
His first reaction was to jerk back, but I held his hand steady. “No, don’t fight this.”
“I don’t want your soul!” he cried, on the verge of panicking.
My smile would have made the Buddha proud. “You dummy, you already have it.”
I felt him relax, and I pulled his hand all the way into my chest. I could tell he had no idea what I was doing, but he trusted me, so he went along with it. I closed my eyes, and instead of focusing my power, I just thought of Hawk. The moment I saw him in the hall, the look on his face when he tried to stab me, him sitting in my house, eating leftovers, everything, every single second of our time together and just let the feeling flow.
Sensing what I was doing, he did the same, and I could see image after image of me flash before his eyes. We were reliving our time together in a matter of seconds, yet every single emotion we felt was felt by both. It was so intense, we both gasped as there ceased to be two beings in love and just one person who was complete.
And in that moment I used my power, and Hawk felt it.
Between the two of us, we used our souls to make something out of them. Something solid, something tangible… a symbol of our love literally forged and brought into the world. Since I had no idea how to make what he needed, I let him take the lead. His eyes flew open in surprise, but I continued to smile at him and waited for him to understand what was going on by himself. Slowly he began to pull his hand out… and in his hand was a hilt followed by a sword.
A Soul Blade.
Our Soul Blade.
The metal was a violet-silver that I had never seen anywhere else, and runes were engraved around the edge in Ancient Fairy and Latin—both sets declaring that we were this sword and that it was the physical embodiment of us and our love. As long as that love flourished, the sword would be indestructible.
Hawk swung it in a slow arc, and I could tell he was more than impressed with its design since it came from his mind. “What’s it called? I mean, does it have a name?”
The second he asked, we both knew.
It was Promise. That was its name because it was our promise to each other. More than any ring or ceremony could make it, this sword encompassed everything we were together and how eternal we thought our love was. After a second, Hawk concentrated and the sword vanished back into our souls.
Hawk looked around. “Are they supposed to be frozen?”
“Whoops.” I started time again.
“How do you feel?” I asked him.
“Better,” he answered, his smile so wide it looked like it could split his face.
I knew he wasn’t just talking about the sword.
“So now what?” Ferra asked us. “He took off into that building, which means it has to be filled with traps.”
“That belt will protect him from nearly all our mag
ic,” Demain said.
“And he is my father, so whoever he encounters will have to know how to defend themselves.”
“So, together?” Caerus suggested.
“The longer he takes planting that seed, the more chance Glinda has of grabbing it,” Olim said her sister’s name with such disdain, I no longer wondered which side she was on.
“I can do it,” Molly said from behind everyone else.
We all looked at the clockwork girl in varying forms of disbelief.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Ater said. “Kor and I are the only ones skilled enough—”
“You have no protection against his magic,” Molly stated. “My shell is laced with cold iron to protect against magical spells.”
“And how do you plan on fighting him?” Ater asked.
Molly looked up at Ferra. “You know how to do it, right? How to activate the other me?”
I would have thought with Ferra’s light blue skin that it would have been impossible to tell if she went pale, but I was wrong. When Molly asked that, she went from looking like an ice barbarian to a corpse in nothing flat.
“I know how to turn you off but not how to—”
“Green,” Molly interrupted her. “Instead of yellow, it’s green.”
“You’re remembering,” Ferra said with real dread in her voice.
Molly just nodded.
No one said anything for what seemed like forever. Finally Ferra began talking without ever taking her eyes off Molly. “We can do it, she and I. We’ll go in and flush Oberon out. Take who you need to start the seed ritual or whatever. We have this.”
I took a step toward them. “You’re sure?”
Ferra looked at me and smiled. “Consider it done.”
I looked over at Olim. “Okay, we need to get over to my other self and we can start.”
I was pleased to see the confusion on her face as I began walking toward Jewel’s house. It was nice to keep people on their toes.
