“Don’t be stupid!” snapped Lee. “Zoe is injured! She can’t survive in the middle of this chaos.”
“The Way Gate…” said Harper, in a stunned voice. She pointed across the sand, toward the cliff in the distance that had previously housed an arch over the exterior entrance to a massive cave. It was collapsed, bits of rock still smoldering from one of Eliza’s crimson blasts.
“Ryoko can get us out through the oasis,” said Mira. “But we need to bring Jack with us. She won’t flee if he’s still here.”
“She might already have fled,” Lee pointed out. “I haven’t seen her since the battle began.”
It seemed out of character for Ryoko, who was calm, diligent, and loyal, to flee without her friends, but he couldn’t think of where else she’d be. He shook his head, realizing he was wasting time in a discussion that didn’t need to be had.
“I’ll get Jack,” he said. “Keep Zoe safe!”
“Lee!” Tess jumped up and tried to pull him back, but of course, she was ethereal. Her arms went through him, and he saw the hurt and shame on her face, as though her inability to interact with him was a personal failing.
“I’ll be okay!” he said. “Stay here.”
He was the only one sprinting toward the chaos rather than away from it. To the Order’s credit, their mages seemed to have held their line, though they only watched the fight between Gen and Jack, rather than intervening.
Two Arcane Strikers rushed forward when they noticed Lee, both robed men falling into casting stances in a bid to intercept him. They were fast, but he was faster and didn’t break pace as he exhaled and used dispel. The barrage of fireballs the men had directed at him fizzled before coming within a few feet, and from their stunned expressions, it was far from what they’d expected.
“Out of my way!” shouted Lee. He slammed his knee into the stomach of one of them and pushed the other over. Neither mage seemed keen on giving pursuit once he’d gotten by, and he sprinted toward Eliza, toward the area everyone else appeared to be fleeing.
She hovered a dozen feet off the ground, like a low-flying, artificial crimson sun, complete with an outer corona-like aura of energy that pulsed and blasted anyone who came too near. Lee pushed by it with dispel, his feet fighting for purchase against the crumbling sand as he closed the last stretch.
“Eliza!” he shouted. “Stop this!”
It was eerie how much she still looked like the pretty classmate who’d been so kind to him in his first few days at Primhaven. It was still her, and it wasn’t. She hadn’t undergone a possession, as far as he could tell, but a complete transformation.
“Stop?” She mimed surprise and brought a hand to her chest. “I’ve barely even started yet.”
Crimson energy pulsed out from her, briefly pressing against Lee’s dispel shield with enough power to make his head throb. It drew inward almost immediately, wreathing her in a blindingly bright red, before falling to the ground in little bursts of light, like embers dripping from a fire.
“You were so easy to anticipate,” she said. “No offense meant. It wasn’t your fault. You’re so earnest, Lee. It’s what I love about you, what compelled me to spy on the mansion, listen outside the windows.”
“You keep saying you love me.” Lee gritted his teeth and gestured to the carnage across the desert. “Do you think this is what I would want? Do you truly think…?”
“Reality can be a bitter pill to swallow.” Eliza raised her arms, presenting the same battlefield but with a much more grandiose movement. “I’m doing this for the both of us. For the future of the world and the people in it who matter.”
Her choice of words made him burn inside. “And Tess? What about her, Eliza? You think I’ll just stand here and watch you murder and destroy, and hurt the person I care about most?”
His voice was wavering but his will was firm. Lee lifted his hand up, fingers splayed, and reached out for his holy fire, drawing the surging power from wherever it was it originated, into his waiting palm.
It hurt, like little needles digging into the flesh. Sweat beaded on his forehead. A small trickle of blood began flowing from his nose, one that would no doubt be a veritable river before the encounter was through.
“It always comes back to you and Tess, doesn’t it?” Eliza’s smile was as bitter and brittle as poisoned toffee. “Well, I’m so glad I’ve found at least one way to hold your attention.”
The holy fire had manifested above Lee’s palm, dancing and flaring as though the fuel behind the flame was being varied wildly. His head felt like it was spinning. The hairs on the back of his arm actually were spinning, whirling around in perfect little counterclockwise rotations.
It was more power than Lee could have guessed Savoire Solaire had held, despite the weapon’s legend. It was more power than he knew what to do with, perhaps more than he could handle. He shifted his stance, almost falling off balance as he realized that the hand he was using to gather the holy fire was nearly locked in place.
He was uncertain, unsure of whether releasing the blast would kill Eliza, or both of them, or everyone within a half-mile radius. The level of power he was flirting with was beyond what he could easily conceptualize the outcome of.
Eliza laughed. “You can’t do it, can you? I sense your hesitation and trust me, it’s warranted.”
Her words cut into his resolve. Lee tried to fling his hand forward while he was still riding the wave of his focus. Several bursts of white-blue fire erupted from the central flame above his palm, shooting out at off-angles like poorly aimed fireworks. Eliza waved a hand, and a lasso of crimson energy yanked Lee off his feet. He landed face-down, tasting sand and feeling it sticking to the blood on his upper lip.
“I really want you to survive what’s about to happen,” said Eliza. “Run past me, Lee. You’ll be safe there.”
She rose higher into the air. The crimson surrounding her pulled inward, swirling around her form in snakes of white-red. Lee sensed her gathering power, aiming in the direction she was facing, preparing to level what was left of the battlefield with the fighting strength of three supernatural factions along with it.
“Lee…” Tess’s fingers phased through his as she desperately tried to take his hand.
“I have to do something!”
He ran opposite the way Eliza had indicated, into the path of the imminent destruction.
CHAPTER 33
Lee ran as fast as he could, searching the sand for his friends, fighting the sense that it was just too little, too late. He heard cracks and booms like thunder as Eliza consolidated her power, preparing for what would, one way or another, be the final stand and final attack.
The wind came first, reaching him just as he spotted Harper in the distance, crouched by Zoe’s unconscious form, back to back with Mira who fought on her other flank.
Lee fell forward, sand sweeping across his shoulders and back, crimson light pulsing and making his shadow several times as long as it should have been.
“What can I do…?” he muttered.
There was only one answer to that question, and it was less than ideal. Lee took a deep breath, lips narrowed to keep from sucking in windblown sand along with air; he began to use dispel.
He put everything he had into forming a shield with his ability. Its natural tendency was to shield in a circle, to form a sphere of anti-magic around him. He tried to reshape it, turning it into more of a curved barrier that he hoped he could use to force Eliza’s destructive spell back.
“Lee!” Jack’s shout came from just behind him. He glanced over his shoulder in time to see the vampire falling into position at his left. More footsteps came from his right, and shockingly, Genevieve Laughton took up a similar position on the other side.
“We have to shield as many people as we can!” shouted Lee.
“I know,” Jack snarled, pushing shapeless shadow magic forward to reinforce Lee’s anti-magic. Gen had created an advanced spell shield just in front of Lee’s dispel, at an a
ngle to keep the effects of the magic and anti-magic separate.
“It’s coming!” cried Gen.
Lee barely had to glance back and confirm that Harper and the others had shifted behind them, to at least temporary safety. The blast came on them like a sudden onset storm, blindingly bright crimson energy, black smoke, crackling power accompanied by the screams of those unfortunate enough to be in the killing path.
The force against Lee’s dispel shield was more than anything he’d tried to hold back before, more than he could handle for a few seconds. Blood leaked from his nose and mouth, and from the way his eyes burned, he suspected it wanted to start escaping from there as well.
His fingers were splayed out in the direction of the blast, as much to shield his gaze from the light as for any real practical reason. He heard Gen start screaming from the crush of pressure of holding back the spell. Mira and Harper had joined in, creating another layer of shielding to either side. Even with five of them, hell, even if everyone left in the battle had joined in, he doubted it would have been enough.
The shields began to break, each one cracking or disintegrating in its own unique way. Jack’s shadow shield became porous, like a curtain riddled through with machine-gun fire, each hole letting in bursts of horrific crimson. Gen’s spell shield flickered, burning out as the essence powering it ran dry.
Lee held his dispel for the longest, clenching his jaw muscles until he thought his eyes were going to pop out as he tried to accept the burdens of the others. The spell couldn’t go on forever. There had to be an end, a reprieve, something, on the other side.
“Lee…” Jack’s voice was pained and gritty but resolved. “It’s almost over. I’m leaving them… in your care.”
“Jack, hold the shield!”
“I can do more than just hold it,” said Jack. “Keep them safe. It’s… better to live for the people you love than to die for them. But eventually, we all have to die.”
A ragged scream came from behind Lee, Mira’s pain taking form as she realized what was about to happen. Jack leapt forward, pressing himself against his shadow shield as though he could use his own body to shore it up. The crimson light pulsed, swallowing him whole, and then retreated ever so slightly.
There was an empty moment, a breathless instant, hope taking form and spreading its wings. Lee knew it wouldn’t be enough. He doubted anything would be.
“Well then,” muttered Gen. “Here we are.”
The Vice Magister of the Order of Chaldea, a woman Lee had feared more than respected, began taking slow steps forward. Each one put her further into the ambient power of Eliza’s blast, while also increasing the fortitude of her spell shield. She hopped upward for the last one, rising along the same trajectory Jack had disappeared into.
She screamed as the power consumed her, her spell shield flaring up for one final defensive push fueled by her very life. It was just him, then. He’d already felt Mira’s and Harper’s strength wane, tired as they were from the battle. It was him, Lee Amaranth, freelance mystic and breaker of legendary weapons, against the full brunt of an ancient demoness’s power.
He did it with his eyes closed, aware enough of his ability and the overwhelming force he was holding off for the rest of his senses to fall by the wayside. He fell to his knees at some point, continuing to hold dispel while being past the point of standing.
His fingers felt like they were broken, twisted into knotted, tangled mockeries of what they’d once been. His palms felt like they’d been pierced through the center, stabbed through with nails in preparation for the inevitable sacrifice.
“You can do this, Lee!” whispered Tess. “I believe in you.”
She was in front of him. Why? Why was she in front of him? He felt her arms around him, the genuine pressure and softness of her body against his. He’d pulled her into his mystic stream, or perhaps it had happened automatically as a result of how fully he’d committed to his abilities.
“It’s okay,” she whispered. “I love you, Lee.”
It was in the moment, with the knowledge that she would be the first to be destroyed if he died, that Lee knew he would manage to hold out. Lee Amaranth, freelance fucking mystic. He’d bleed every drop of blood out through his nose before letting his dispel drop.
He licked his lips, tasting blood and wondering if he was perhaps closer to that point than he realized. His face felt hot, and the crimson crush of Eliza’s death spell felt like it was mere inches from consuming him.
Blackness.
***
“He’s waking up.”
Ryoko’s face was first to come into view as Lee blinked his eyes open. Her eyes were red around the edges, and her face was smeared with bits of black and white ash. He could hear the sound of Tess crying, along with someone else’s angry sobs. Mira, he realized, as he sat up.
Harper was crying too, though it was only a few lines of tears on an otherwise stony face. She immediately moved to Lee’s side, squeezing his hands and staring fiercely into his face.
“Are you alright?” she asked.
“Headache,” he mumbled. “Body ache. My fingers… and hands.”
He looked at them, feeling no small amount of relief as he realized he’d imagined them becoming mangled by holding dispel. The sun was finally above the horizon, though only just. He couldn’t have been unconscious for more than a few hours.
“Where is everyone else?” he asked. They were by the oasis, and the Sahara Base and the battlefield should have been visible as he shifted to look out across the desert.
What he found was almost unrecognizable, with only a few crumbled strips of the base’s wall serving as a landmark for comparison. The sand had been scorched and melted, with small craters in places that made it look like a bombing run had taken place.
“We haven’t found any other survivors,” said Ryoko, her voice apologetic, guilty, even. “I was on the edge. I had to sneak away when the Order of Chaldea first came through the Way Gate, and when I came back…”
She blinked several times in quick succession and shook her head. Lee put a hand on her shoulder.
“It’s okay,” he said.
“It is not okay!” screamed Mira. “That bitch! What was the point of this? Jack… Zoe…”
Her shoulder shook with emotion. Hearing his sister mentioned in the same breath as Jack made Lee’s heart skip a beat. He glanced toward the oasis and saw her lying, still unconscious, next to the water.
“Is she okay?” he asked.
“She hasn’t woken up at all,” said Harper. “She doesn’t appear to have a serious head injury, so we can only assume…”
She trailed off, shaking her head and seeming to wilt at the fact that she had no answer, either for her former apprentice or for herself.
“We spent years building the House of Shadows,” muttered Mira. “We had a vision, and… in a single morning, all of it was just…”
“We can’t stay here,” said Ryoko. “We have to leave. She could come back, or someone else could arrive. Lee, can you help me with your sister?”
“Of course.” He staggered to his feet. “I can carry her.”
The air smelled burnt and awful, still thick with smoke despite the burgeoning desert heat. He kept expecting to glance across the scorched sand and see another group of survivors hurry forward, teenage mages from the House of Shadows or agents of the Order, or even Eliza herself.
In truth, it was just them. Just the few people who’d been nearest to him, specifically. It made Lee wonder if he’d really saved anybody, or if Eliza had spared them in order to work them into her sinister machinations in the future.
“We still have one enemy left to deal with!” Mira snapped her gaze toward Harper and bared her fangs. “She came here with Gen, with the Order. If they hadn’t attacked us, none of this would have happened!”
“Mira…” said Ryoko. “Please. There’s been enough death.”
“If we hadn’t attacked the Sahara Base, none of this would ha
ve happened,” said Lee. “If you want to blame somebody, blame me.”
Tess set a hand on his arm, warning him away from a confrontation Lee knew they couldn’t afford. Mira still bristled with anger, but she turned her back to the others and said nothing in as much a show of contrition as she could apparently manage.
“Harper,” said Lee. “Will you come with us?”
He saw Mira’s shoulders tense out of the corner of his eye, but his gaze was focused mainly on his former master. She’d wiped the tears away, along with most of the dirt and ash. Strands of blonde had come loose from her braid, hanging askew in a way that framed her face and made her look like she’d been working hard, for once.
She seemed confused and more than a little uncertain as she shrugged. “It hardly matters where I go, now. Eliza… was carrying the head of the Executive Magister. Gen was the Vice Magister, and she died in this fight. The Order of Chaldea… I’m not sure if it will survive this.”
Mira let out a snide laugh. “Forgive me if I don’t shed a tear.”
“Harper, come with us,” said Lee. “With the Way Gate collapsed, I don’t see any other real choice for you, other than dying in the desert.”
“I have nowhere else to be.” She blinked and turned to meet his gaze. “I’ll… go with you, Eldon.”
They’d collected various injuries during the fight, though none serious aside from Zoe’s affliction. The Oasis wasn’t far, but they still traveled at what felt like a snail’s pace, with Lee carrying his sister, Harper walking with a heavy limp, and Mira stopping every few minutes to stare back at the battlefield.
Ryoko began the transfer as they reached the oasis, only stopping to give the rest of them a small, reassuring smile before dropping into the tiny pool of water without a splash. The surface began to churn as the whirlpool took form, and she poked her head back up, wiping black hair out of her face.
“We should start with Zoe,” she said.
“Will she be okay?” asked Lee. “If she’s going underwater, how is she going to hold her breath?”
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