by Rabia Gale
What happened to the white ka, the parts the kayan believed diluted the power flowing into their domain?
There. Rafe followed the waste disposal subspell, to the place where the white coiled in pale fragile spools. As he watched, the white ka disintegrated into nothingness, to be replaced by more. It was too delicate to survive on its own.
But it was the key piece. Without it, ka destroyed.
Rafe examined the device again, focusing on the console. There was a space in it where the key Isabella had gotten from the krin fitted.
He had a way to shut off the machine.
If only he could get loose in time.
Gloriana’s spellwork covered the device, funneling all the concentrated ka into the powered armor. Beleia’s Sphere gleamed a shiny black, colors he had no name for swirling within it. It emitted a high-pitched whine, one which set his teeth on edge and rang in his skull.The ka around the Sphere flapped and fluttered, twisted into shapes he wouldn’t have thought possible. They hooked into a dimness around them, and began to pull.
“It’s working,” Gloriana announced. “We should enter the vehicles. It’ll be a bumpy ride.”
Karzov patted the armor fondly. Rafe wondered how he could stand to be so close to the center of that unraveling reality. His insides had tied themselves into knots, and even Isabella was having trouble keeping her composure.
“Time for us to meet our Maker, eh?” Karzov remarked. He stood in front of the armor, facing away from it, and held his arms out to the sides.
“Come,” he said.
Behind him, the armor flew apart.
The pieces of it hung suspended, outlined in gold. Then, swiftly, the armor reformed around Karzov. Great legs raised him several feet off the floor. Gloves and guards snapped around his hands and arms. Rings encircled his torso. A helmet covered his head.
Last of all, the great breastplate with the reality-bending orb snicked into place.
A manic grin covered Karzov’s face. He turned in one fluid movement and crashed a fist into a nearby console. Pieces flew into the air and wires sizzled.
Bryony covered her head with her arms. “Stop that!” she called. Gloriana looked at the remains of the console and shook her head.
“Why?” Karzov stamped his armored foot. Metal beams groaned from the impact. Gorvich wedged himself under a desk. “We’re leaving this boring place, anyway. Better get going, girls, before it collapses around you.”
With another laugh, he swung at a support, bending the column into an angle. Bryony gave a small shriek, grabbed Gloriana’s hand, and ran, dragging the girl behind her. Gloriana staggered, struggling to stay upright and keep up.
We’d better move now, Rafe.
Understood. Here’s the plan. Quickly, he outlined it. I know I’m asking a lot, but…
You’ll have it. Of all the people he’d known, Rafe could think of no one he’d rather have at his back than Isabella right now.
Bryony wrenched open the hatch of the aether ship and threw Gloriana into it ahead of her. For one moment, she looked towards Rafe and Isabella, then shook her head.
Rafe saw, through Isabella’s sight, that her brow was furrowed and her face solemn.
For one moment, hope flared. Would Bryony come back for him?
Did she care, even an iota?
Bryony slammed the door shut.
Rafe closed his mind to Isabella’s kyra-sight for one brief moment.
This was farewell for good.
What of Gorvich? Isabella asked, pulling him back to the present.
Trust Max. We must act now. Ka poured into Renat’s powered armor and Belea’s sphere. Waves of heat radiated out from it, making it glow white-hot.
Greater quakes rattled the chamber, sending loose objects thumping and rolling. Isabella swayed, kept her balance. Rafe was thrown against a panel. He knocked his head painfully against a thankfully blunted edge.
You all right?
Yes. Only thing bruised is my dignity.
That’s all right, then. You should be used to that by now.
I like you, too, Isabella, he said, knowing that her reaction would be mock exasperation.
She surprised him. Really? Well, that is a conversation best left for later, don’t you think? Once we save the world.
Once we save the world. Rafe allowed himself a smile. Go.
Chapter Twenty Nine
Rafe
ISABELLA MOVED, FOCUSING ALL of her kyra in her wrists and hands. She pulled her arms apart and the bands snapped. She pulled her legs out in front of her and tore away the manacles at her ankles.
The chamber shuddered, and the cuffs clanked and rolled away, joining a debris of snapped metal parts and loose wires. Gorvich clutched the railing with his unhurt hand.
Isabella yanked at the chains joining Rafe’s hands and feet together. They broke in a scatter of links, their tinkle lost in the scream of tortured metal.
Karzov, stomping and punching in gleeful abandon, paid them no heed. The floor under his feet groaned apart, shriveling into itself. Rivets flew loose; Isabella shoved Rafe aside before one almost took off his head.
Thanks.
Stop Karzov and we’ll call it even.
Rafe staggered to his feet, shaking the numbness out of them. Holding onto twisting railings and crumbling columns for support, he wound his away over the kayan device that had started his world’s troubles.
The floor under it tilted. It listed, still humming, still feeding Beleia’s Sphere more power. Ka strands around the powered armor tore apart. A nearby console shivered into fragments, then dust, then disappeared into a small but expanding hole.
Isabella ducked and dodged her way over to Karzov and Gorvich. She’d hold Karzov at bay if he turned his attention to Rafe. Rafe hoped he wouldn’t—with that powered armor warping reality all around it, Isabella ran a good chance of ending up the same way as the console.
The metal under his feet buckled, pitching him forward. He hit the device painfully with his shoulder. Another shudder banged his elbow against a chunk of amethyst embedded in it.
An engine noise joined the general mayhem—the aether ship with Bryony and Gloriana in it was readying its own departure.
Grimly, Rafe concentrated on the device and its flow of toxic ka, bristling with malice. There was no way to bypass that structure without impaling himself on its thorns and spikes.
Except with the key.
The spellwork had a perfect place to slot the old key the krin had given Isabella for him. Inert and devoid of any spells by itself, it would act as conduit for Rafe’s own magic. He had no time to deal with the layers of angry ka that had built up around the device over the centuries.
It took him three tries before the key fit into its hole. Dimly, he was aware of Karzov lazily swinging a punch at Isabella, and Isabella dodging it by a hair’s breadth.
He couldn’t afford to be distracted by that.
He was into the spellwork, lacy and intricate. Even Gloriana hadn’t been able to lay it all bare. But he was here for only one purpose—the best way to shut it all down.
His first instinct was to start yanking, to misalign the whole system. But the magebane sentries waited in his blood. He didn’t have many chances. He had to make them all count.
There. Three twists and he’d break the device. Three twists was all it took to send the ka that came from the deeps of the universe shooting back up its original course, unchanged from whence it had come.
Be ready, Isabella. It’s coming! He waited only for her faint agreement before he reached in and tugged.
Pain exploded in a dizzying wave, nearly knocking him off his feet. Isabella grabbed it through the kyra bond, taking it into herself, along with a legion of magebane clots.
Rafe nearly collapsed, every joint screaming agony. He felt bone break and tendons snap.
Once more. This was a delicate move, and he missed the first time. Fire roared in his body, leaving his skin tight, his insides dry, his
limbs shaking. Isabella countered with healing, her touch cool and form. He clung to her presence, gathering strength.
Then he lunged out again.
This time his groping fingers caught. This time they moved with sureness. This time he had beaten the magebane sentries.
They were not impressed by his insolence. Their vengeance came a moment later, and it was vicious. They tore at his organs, in an agony of shredding. Blood and bile rose into his throat.
Rafe! Isabella’s voice echoed with horror. She pumped her life force into him, ready to spend it all in patching up his dying body.
No. Gently, but certainly, he pushed her out. I don’t want you to share this end. And for the first time, he broke all contact with her. Her voice, her emotions, her presence—they all vanished.
And finally. The last action was just a press of a button. Put his mental fingers here, in the center of this rainbow-colored knot and…
The kayan’s spell—the one they had painstakingly set up to refine ka into its more potent form, the ka they’d hoped to use to power their most ambitious projects, the ka that had turned Salerus into the monster that had brought about the Scorching and undone them all—
—fell apart
And the magebane bots, waiting in their millions, sharpened spears at the ready, attacked.
Sorry, Isabella. I won’t be coming back.
A great current of magic overtook him.
Isabella
She felt him die.
Nearby, the nauseating effects of the distortion eased. The sense of reality being bunched up and torn through lessened. The glow of the Sphere faded. Karzov stopped mid-swing and punched buttons on an interior console.
Isabella didn’t care. She dived back for Rafe, the kyra bond turned to gum, resisting her efforts.
As she fought her way back to him, she felt his body unravel. Felt his vessels burst, his organs shred, his bones unknit under the assault of the multiplying magebane.
He’d slammed the door on her—for the first time ever—but she couldn’t just leave him be. She had to help.
Scorch it.
I didn’t save your life back at the Tower of Light just to let you die now. She yelled the thought at him, but he was beyond hearing now.
And then the wave came.
She couldn’t see it, but she felt it and saw its effects. A different kind of pressure flooded the chamber. It flowed into every crack and crevice, smoothing and bonding. Crooked supports straightened, ripped floors melded back together. A glad shudder ran through the entire structure, a kind of relieved sigh like stretching tensed muscles after a long day.
It pushed Isabella back bodily. A distant part of her registered that it didn’t hurt—in fact, the throb on her arm ceased. Through a haze of dust, she saw that Rafe had collapsed. She reached back out to him through their bond…
It wasn’t there.
Her kyra lay inside her core, complete and spherical. It no longer stretched, no longer spun fine threads towards another person.
They’d been disconnected.
Cut off from each other.
Shock froze Isabella. She was alone again. No Max, no Rafe. Whole and solitary, the way she’d been most of her life.
It was what she’d wanted for the past two years.
So why did she feel so empty?
Karzov howled, suddenly. Isabella spun to face him, eyes screwed up and blinking away sudden tears.
It was the dust. She was not crying.
“I still have enough!” Karzov roared. The armor’s gauntleted fist crashed down on a console. “Still enough to see this through!”
He flung himself to the wall and punched through a window. It cracked, shattered into shards of translucent substance. Aether gusted into the room, coating Isabella’s lips with ozone. She flinched from an expected blast of heat, but felt only a warm gust on her face. The ka-spells insulating this place must still work.
But for how long?
Karzov stood on the edge, a stomach-churning distortion undulating all around him.
“Hear me, Machinist!” he yelled. “I’m coming for you!” He braced himself, booted feet biting into the floor, gauntleted hands denting metal, preparing for a leap. Thrusters roared to life at his heels and back.
Isabella sprang for him, but she wasn’t close enough.
She couldn’t make it.
She didn’t need to.
A solid figure grabbed the power suit’s leg and clawed its way up its back. Karzov craned his neck in astonishment. Gorvich, face fixed into a snarl, stabbed a window shard into the top of Karzov’s head.
“Die, you monster,” gasped the stazi captain. “Curse you to all eternity for what you made of me. What you made of the others.” Again and again he stabbed. Blood covered the shard, spattered his face.
Karzov’s expression was fixed in astonishment. “Why—?” he began.
And then the armor leapt.
Afterwards, Isabella could never tell if Karzov twitched or if he had already input the command. The powered armor jumped, but it was off-kilter. Gorvich hung on grimly, clawing at whatever he could reach. Thrusters shot the suit further into the aether—straight at Salerus.
As Isabella watched, Salerus reached out long arms of fire. They engulfed the powered armor as she shaded her eyes from the glare.
When she looked again, they were gone.
Not Max, too, she thought sadly.
Isabella… The krin’s voice, soft and distant, spoke from behind her. Isabella turned and drew in her breath sharply.
Rafe stood in the middle of the chamber, outlined in light. She thought she could almost see colors dancing in it. Next to him was a faint shadow that just might be a krin.
Isabella tensed for the explosion, but it didn’t come. She looked at Rafe’s face, at his sightless eyes turned silver.
In that moment, he was not of the world as she knew it. She couldn’t move. Aether whistled around her, sent her hair flying. She clung to the edge of the gap Karzov had made and stayed where she was.
A greater magic than she had imagined was taking place.
Rafe
Rafe came to himself in a river of ka. Not angry, not malicious, not threatening—but not a safe place regardless. It held the ferocity of joy, the piercing radiance of utter rightness. It rushed over him and under him and through him, and whatever it touched, it knit back together. The magebane bots disintegrated under its touch, turning back to strings of ka, swooped upon and enfolded into the whole.
He looked around, wonderingly, as if seeing ka for the first time.
In a way, he was.
Jeweled colors frolicked and leapt. They rushed to fill in gaps left by Beleia’s Sphere, joining a chorus of reality. White tendrils subtly guided them, maneuvering them into place, showing them where they belonged.
And he understood what that white ka was. The ka the mages had thought was useless, extra material diluting their power.
The white was a schematic for their world. A manual, a guide.
But it was more than that. Watching it at work, Rafe was awed by how it transcended the physical and the mechanical.
It was like a hymn-book, teaching the world how to sing together.
He saw this clean ka, this right ka, rush through the arms of Salerus, Selene, and his own world above. He saw it heal and repair.
And in it were cavorting and laughing beings.
Krin.
No longer shadowy blots, but wisps of light. They swept up a greyish being nearby, surrounding and welcoming it.
Max, he realized.
Darkness bleached out of the krin till it was only distinguishable from its fellows by a familiar taste. Tell Isabella, it said, farewell.
I will, he promised and then Max was gone, carried away in a gush.
Ka bumped against Bryony and Gloriana’s vessel, covering its spellwork with its own.
Rafe wanted to call out to the young kayan, Come out! And see the wonders of ka! There is more to
explore in this world of ours.
But the aether ship’s engines suddenly roared. The ka-systems of the vessel pushed away the magic that surrounded it. The whole thing lurched away from the chamber, tearing a great hole in the wall.
No! Rafe shouted, but they couldn’t hear. Don’t fight it!
The aether ship’s engines spluttered and wheezed. Its body tilted, nose pointing down. Rafe struggled to shape the colors of magic, but they whipped out of his hands. The vessel gave a groan and a shudder and wrenched completely out of its mooring.
For a moment, it hung there in empty space against a backdrop of distant stars.
Then its nose dipped down, ponderously at first, then faster.
The whole craft fell.
Everything in the universe fell down. It was the nature of things, and the vessel was no exception.
It plummeted to the deeps of the universe, leaving Rafe standing in the rush of ka.
Bryony. Gloriana.
After some time—a second, an eternity, he could never tell—Rafe realized the ka flowed around him, leaving him as an island. The gush became a steady current, one that sank into its normal channels, retreating from the chamber.
He raised his hands, covered with dissolving ka. It had done its work in putting him back together. He was the way he should be.
Except for…
Ka shone against the gloom.
He was still blind.
And he had lost Isabella’s senses and Isabella’s bond and Isabella’s presence. The thought weighed on his shoulders, bringing home the full impact of his sightlessness the way it never had before her.
A warm hand slipped into his. An arm brushed against his side, hair tickled against his chin.
“You’re back,” said Isabella.
His own hand tightened around hers. He could feel the smile on his face. “I am.”
They stood there in silence, neither one willing to break it.
Then, Isabella said, clearing her throat. “Karzov is gone, with Renat’s powered armor and Beleia’s Sphere. It was Gorvich who took him down, after all, and Salerus did the rest.”
