by Rabia Gale
“Rafe,” Isabella warned.
“On it,” Rafe pulled hooks from his own store of ka, twisted from ropes of hardened green and yellow. He flung them towards Furin. They caught on the ropes of Aliki’s magic. Rafe yanked at the noose, disintegrating it. Furin, clawing at his throat, eyes almost popping, gulped welcome breaths of air.
Isabella was right next to him. She grabbed Furin, hoisted him onto her back, and got him out of Aliki’s range and back on to the platform.
Rafe spared a quick glance at the half-unconscious man. Bruises purpled his neck, the splotches standing out ugly against his skin.
He focused his attention back on Aliki. The ka around the boy roiled in imitation of the wild, tainted ka of the Tors Lumena. Tentacles burst out, reaching for Rafe. He met them with his own hooks. The shock of his own ka clashing with that under the control of another kayan was a punch in his guts.
Rafe held on grimly. Aliki’s ka was slippery and alive, like the arms of a squid. Its touch was corrosive, tearing holes in his own. This was half-purified magic. How could the young kayan even handle it as he did?
This is not good for him. Sweat trickled down Rafe’s cheek. Nor for me.
He was running out too quickly. Green was down to a pale thread, yellow not too far behind.
That Fitz!
Chortling gleefully, the explosive kayan joined the fray. He flung rocks towards the platform with wild abandon, sending dust and rubble into his companions’ faces.
“Fitz!” yelped Justus.
“Sorry!” Fitz yelled back, not sounding it. The miasma around the twins thickened, absorbing the impacts.
“I’ve got him.” Isabella dodged projectiles with frightening speed. A duck here, a roll there, running fleet-footed on the edge of the causeway, she flew down on the kayan.
Fitz’s store of yellow ka seemed boundless, so Rafe stole some. It sparked in his mental grip. Quickly, he added it to his own store, shaped it into arrows. He launched them at Aliki’s tentacles, driving them back almost to their master.
Fitz slapped at Isabella with a sort of crudely-shaped shovel blade. He was too slow; she was in his face. Fitz was a big lad. He planted himself squarely in her path, unholy joy in his eyes, hands beckoning her to bring it on.
He had no idea what he was getting into. Isabella sprang at him, focusing her kyra in her left hand, held stiff like a knife blade. She jabbed his throat, and Fitz flew backwards and landed hard on his bottom.
Isabella was on top of him. She went for a disabling arm lock, but he rained yellow-lined blows at her. Ka curved up and around them, aiming for Isabella’s unprotected back.
The blow caught her unprepared. The shock of her pain reverberated through their shared kyra bond. Rafe twitched, and his own attack faltered.
Aliki pressed forward, ka tentacles driving Rafe’s spells back.
Isabella recovered, but her opponent was quicker to take advantage. He sent her flying with a ka-powered push; she curled into a ball and rolled.
Rafe’s other senses darkened. A leaden weight settled on his shoulders, everything was murky. Even the ka was dull to him, and fast disappearing into gloom. His peripheral sight was vanishing; Isabella a tarnished silver figure grappling with a fading yellow flame. The twins were gone from his sight, while Justus—
Scorch it!
That chill against his side. He ought to have known at once.
Rafe pushed his senses towards Justus. Yes, a snail’s trail of purplish slime oozed between him and the kayan. The boy was messing with Rafe’s mind, blurring his senses, feeding him futility and despair.
Knowledge worked against the memory and sensory magic wrought by that kind of ka. Annoyance at being so nearly and neatly tricked bloomed. Rafe blasted orange at the sticky, shiny tracks. Justus staggered back, eyes widening as it rebounded to him. A moment later, Rafe draped his own veil of purple over the boy. He’d threaded the usual fears into it—being attacked by shadowy beasts with teeth, falling from a great height, showing up pantsless to work. It was crude, but he was stalling for time.
The fog lifted, his tiredness eased, bringing a newfound clarity to Rafe’s mind. The chamber was no longer cold, but uncomfortably warm. Isabella held her own against Fitz; the reckless kayan losing energy fast. She’d outlast him—Rafe could tell she conserved her own strength while making him expend his.
To his left, the creepy twins knotted the air between their fingers in unnerving symmetry, weaving a dense net of ka from the oppressive cloud surrounding them. Their mouths moved in unison, and a whispery chant crept to Rafe’s ears. Mirados faced them, a puzzle cube in his hands. His big hands blurred as he spun the cube’s faces. His shirt was drenched with effort, but the Preceptor held the twins in check.
The ka around Aliki writhed. Rafe could not make out the boy’s features at all: he was just a shape wrapped in a poisonous rainbow of ka. Karzov, standing beside Aliki, hands folded over his paunch, lips lifted in a smug smile, eyes flat like a predator’s, was too distinct for Rafe’s comfort.
What’d you do the boy, Karzov, to make him withstand the touch of this half-poison? How much suffering does it take before he’s used to it?
Rafe gathered his tattered ka around himself. He glanced at the magic deep under his feet. No time to process it. He waited.
Arms of ka, like the nozzles of a machine, rose above Aliki’s head. They aimed at Rafe. He braced himself.
Mirados’ cube flashed. A shielding ring appeared around their group. Mirados dropped the device with a clatter and pulled the scepter from his belt.
“Keep them distracted, Grenfeld. One more moment and control of this place is ours.”
“Planning on it.” Recklessly, Rafe dissipated his own armor and gathered ka into his hands. He’d let Mirados handle the defense. One offensive strike and…
Aliki launched his attack. Nozzles spat streams of ka. They hissed against Mirados’ ring, eating into it.
“Grenfeld!” barked Mirados, fumbling in his tension.
“I know.” Rafe gritted his teeth. Toxic ka sprayed into his face, stinging his lips and nose and eyes, burning his cheeks.
Too bad for you I’m already blind!
He held all his ka in formless bunches in each hand. Now he acted, compressing the warmer colors into twin cores, slapping illusion-shells of purple on top. Blue to keep them on course, pale green to give them shape.
He flung them at Aliki
They hurtled out of the mist of toxic ka, one slightly ahead of the other. The illusions he’d placed around them showed them slightly more to one side than they were. Aliki’s nozzle-arms were stiff and slow; he wasted a precious moment creating whip-like appendages.
They slapped at the arrows, but the illusions fooled them. The appendages curved back in, deflecting one.
But the second held true.
Straight for the kayan’s heart.
Rafe made a cracking motion with both hands, as if breaking a capsule. Released from a smaller package at the tail of his ka-arrow, yellow propelled the missile even faster.
Behind Rafe, Furin said, in a half-groan, half-sob, “Aliki!”
Shocked, Rafe jerked.
Scorch it! What am I doing? He’s a child!
He yanked hard on his arrow. The blue resisted—it was only obeying the original instructions—but finally yielded. The arrow flew above Aliki’s head and exploded against the nozzle-arms. They crumbled into specks.
Mirados’ protective ring fell apart. Karzov burst out laughing, clapping his hands like a child at a show. “Oh, very good,” he approved.
Aliki looked unmoved. The boy had to know how close he’d been to death, but not a hint showed on his face.
Isabella stood on the causeway, several feet away from Fitz, who knelt, hanging his head. Her hand was on her dark dagger and her glare on Justus. Purple glittered all around her. The twins’ magic circled around the platform, like some snaky deep-sea creature, barely standing out in Rafe’s ka-sight.
Rafe stood, panting heavily, totally spent. He could not scrape up even a fingernail’s worth of ka. His arms were heavy and limp, the walking stick loose in his right hand.
I’ve lost. They had outlasted him.
“Now,” said Mirados. He strode past Rafe, brushing against him. The spent kayan stumbled to one side.
Mirados raised the scepter aloft. Ka crackled around it and ka flashed like lightning below the platform.
“Now,” said Mirados. “Let’s end this.”
The scepter flared to life in Rafe’s ka-sight. He saw the rainbow pattern of it, saw the way it plugged into the rest of the ka-systems of this place.
It didn’t look right.
Mirados brought the scepter down two-handed. Ka rippled, spreading out from the scepter’s stone. “With this,” he boomed, “I now control all the ka of Renat Island. Yield, Karzov!”
Karzov chuckled. “Not likely.”
Ka stretched and strained, rocked and wavered. Rafe’s ears hurt, and he felt dizzy from the sight of those warbling loops.
Fitz whimpered and held his head. The twins stretched out their arms to each other, in a futile attempt to span the yawning space between them. Even Justus looked sick.
Not Aliki. Not a flicker of pain or surprise crossed his closed expression.
Astonishment washed over Mirados’ face. “Wh—how—what?” he spluttered, staring at the scepter. He shook it, as if it doing so would make it do as he said. “This is the master control for the Island! It should obey me.”
“No,” said Karzov with awful gentleness. “It is the self-destruct button.” He pointed downwards.
As ka-systems twisted in ways they were never meant to, something in the pit was coming together. Rafe felt the ka, bright with poison, deadly as a snake in the Talari jungles, coalesce and take form.
Furin and Theo clapped their hands against their ears. The causeways swayed and buckled, the smooth walls ringing the pit began to crumble. Far above their heads, the glass ceiling shattered in a series of cracks, showering glistening dust all over them.
A roar echoed in the chamber. Something large and long shot up from below. It circled over their heads, its segmented body glistening with ka. Unlike the giant squid that had attacked them, this creature was no natural beast modified by magic. The scepter had transmitted the command, and nodules of purplish-black in the ka soup had assembled the creature in mere minutes.
Rafe’s awe grew, even as he ducked. The creature’s eyes were large and multi-faceted. Pairs of dragonfly wings all along its length held it aloft. Small, delicate-looking pincers emerged from its body at regular intervals.
Isabella was back on the platform. She hauled both Furin and Theo to their feet, then sent a sharp jab at Rafe.
He jerked, felt her determination and ferocity. Don’t just stand here! Strands of silvery hair stuck to her reddened cheeks.
He nodded.
Isabella strode to Mirados, still intent on the scepter. “Mirados.”
“Wait a moment,” he muttered. “I can handle this. Just need to figure out how to reverse this.”
“Mirados.” Her voice was a crack, a slap across the face. Like Rafe, Mirados jerked. He locked gazes with Isabella.
“Forget it,” she said, with a harshness that had an odd undertone of gentleness to it. “Let’s get out of here.”
The insectoid creature clung to the walls. Its fragile-looking pincers worked on the ka-systems, snipping and cutting. Ropes of magic, stiff as steel cables, fell into the abyss.
The young kayan on the causeways had retreated. Karzov and Aliki stood on the gallery, ignoring the way the stone disintegrated all around them.
“Come on,” Isabella held Theo and Furin by an arm each. “Move it.”
The insectoid had different ideas.
As their party reached the edge of their platform, it shrieked and pushed off from the wall, launching straight at them.
They fell back, its needle-sharp pincers just inches from Furin’s unprotected face. It circled once and dove for them again.
One of the causeways arched, cracked. Stone groaned and the bridge fell apart, pieces of it dropping into the cauldron below. Plumes of molten rock jetted up, a cloud of steam hissed and rose up, carrying noxious gases.
“Rafe, can you hold that thing back for us?” Isabella was calm, even with walls crumbling and bridges falling all around her. Glass splinters and rubble covered the heaving platform, now sloped alarmingly to one side. Fracture lines spiderwebbed it, and a large chunk broke off and joined the molten remnants of the causeway in the roiling ka below.
“I’ll… try.” They were still in danger, but the adrenalin had retreated, leaving him feeling cold and small. Justus’ magic? But no, there was no foreign ka in sticky strands around him. This emotion was just him, muscles quivering with effort, his limbs turned to lead, the air around him turned to thick syrup.
The insectoid screamed. It tore at the causeways in a frenzy of destruction. The second one came apart in the middle and the platform sloped even more steeply.
Rafe bit the inside of his cheek, welcoming the sharp pain and the swelling tang of blood, willing himself to feel something—anything.
He reached for the insectoid. It was built compactly, with not much for a kayan to grab a hold of. He got his mental hooks on a knob and yanked.
The insectoid screeched and writhed. Rafe tore at the ka-system—the controls to stop it had to be buried somewhere here. Its defenses—swarms of stinging ka-bots—pinpricked his skin.
Rafe yelped and jumped. His hold loosened, he slipped, and the creature shook him off and threw itself at the causeway again.
“Grenfeld!” snapped Mirados. “Hurry up!”
“Shut up, Mirados.” Rafe gritted his teeth and tried again. The ka-systems moved all over their creation, hard to get a grip on. They teased him, whisking out of his reach. He was slow, too slow.
Ah, there! Rafe grabbed the place he’d been at before. Ka-swarms stung him, but he hung on.
He could not shred it apart. But he could hold it back for a bit, long enough to let the others go.
“Go on!” he yelled.
Mirados cursed and threw aside the useless scepter. He threw Theo over one shoulder, shoved Furin ahead of him with a large hand planted on his back. They hurried down the causeway.
Isabella remained, hands at her daggers, watching narrow-eyed.
The creature saw its prey escaping. It fought Rafe like a rebellious mount, straining against his hold, bucking and twisting its sinuous body.
No, you don’t. I’m not letting you escape. Rafe plunged deeper into the ka-construct’s body, shoving aside systems, burrowing in.
A complex ka-system, built in that egg shape so beloved by Renat, lay just beyond his reach. Like a Renat Key, intricate patterns covered its surface. If he could just… get… a hold… of it… he could…
Rafe stretched his magical faculties to the fullest. They just brushed against the surface of the core ka-system.
It blazed white-hot. Fire traveled along his nerves, blasting him back. The creature wrenched itself from his control, and Rafe went tumbling. He hit the ground with a slap that knocked the breath out of him and jarred every bone in his body. His ka-sight was a smear of brilliant light and a scorched smell was in his nose.
It took him a full few moments to realize what had happened.
“No!” he yelled.
The ka-construct, an enraged arrow of fire, pulsing in shades of yellow, lunged for the group on the causeway.
There was nothing he could do. Nothing but watch helplessly as that small desperate group tumbled off their narrow, buckling path and fall into the pit below.
Except they didn’t. Isabella was there, light dagger a solid line of silver in one hand, the dark a shadow-formed blade in the other. She met the construct with a slash of the first, followed it up with a blow from the second.
The construct’s ka-systems buzzed alarmingly. It fell back, then g
athered itself and attacked Isabella. She dodged, swift-footed, and backed up. It pressed her again and again, all the way back to the platform.
Rafe fumbled for his walking stick, used it to lever himself shakily up to his feet. His skin felt sore and tender, all his soft insides felt bruised from the shock of the backlash.
“Rafe,” said Isabella, “go.”
“But—”
“Just do it. You can’t help right now.”
He flinched at that. No indictment in her voice, just her stating a fact. That didn’t make it sting any less.
He’d failed his job. A series of distant booms echoed as entire sections of Renat Island broke apart and plummeted into the sea.
He gripped the walking stick—the only solid thing in his world of haze and flickering ka-systems right now—and hobbled to the bridge. Even with his kyra bond with Isabella showing him the way, he picked his way across slowly.
He told himself he had to be careful, but he knew it was really his reluctance to leave her to do the work.
Scorch it, Rafe. You had your chance and you blew it. Now stay out of her way!
For Isabella was having better luck than he had with the ka-construct. His strategy had been to dominate it; hers was in keeping it occupied, rushing in for a stinging slash here and a well-placed cut there. Ka-systems came apart and the creature unraveled, a piece at a time. It had lost half its deadly pincers and become sluggish.
It was the death of a thousand cuts.
Rafe gained the end of the causeway where Mirados waited with Furin and Theo. The rohkayan glanced at him, lips tight. He didn’t say anything and neither did Rafe, but shame and failure hung thick in the air between them.
Karzov and Aliki had already left their vantage point. Beyond the doorway, the rest of Renat’s fortress suffered the same fate as the vast cavern behind them.
Cracks zig-zagged crazily in the corridor floors. The ka-made murals were washing away, detailed figures melting into amorphous blobs. The whole structure shuddered and a deep groan from beneath indicated the collapse of some massive supports.
