The oppressive weight of the humid air dropped away sharply as our group entered the passage. The run from Adela’s home to the central ziggurat was significantly less tense now that we all shared in her magic, but I couldn’t help but keep as close an eye on the roving packs of bloodmages. The closer we got to the center of the city the thicker they came, the area directly outside the ziggurat reminiscent of a provoked anthill in the flurry of activity around its walls.

Adela had guided us to a narrow staircase, wedged between the side of a neighboring building and the bottom layer of the ziggurat. It dove deeply into the stone, lit only by the occasional torch flickering in a wall sconce.

We walked in silence, through each patch of total darkness in between torches, until Marika’s boredom caught up with her ability to play along.

“So where are we going, exactly?” she asked, skipping along between myself and Jay at the head of the line.

Adela glanced up at the ceiling, a look on her face like she was trying to look past the stone to what lay beyond.

“We’re under the Well of Souls right now,” Adela explained.

“I didn’t ask what was above us.”

“Let her explain, Mari,” Jay said tightly. He looked stressed, jaw set and shoulders stiff. Marika shot him a glance, but fell silent all the same.

“Every bloodmage who lives is connected to the energy in the Well,” Adela continued. “Every bloodmage who dies, as well as anyone slain by blood magic, is drawn back into the Well when they pass. It overrides the actual destination.”

“Heaven?” Tyler asked, though from his rapid blush he immediately regretted speaking up.

“Agartha,” I said quietly. I was at the front of the group, just behind Adela, but I could tell that I’d gotten the attention of everyone in the group, imaginably for different reasons. I couldn’t imagine that Agartha was something the exchange wizards had been cleared to discuss with Mundanes, and there wasn’t much of a chance that Jay or Marika had learned anything about it on their own. “It’s a...city. At the center of the planet. That’s where we go when we die.”

“Not if you’re one of us. We all draw a small portion of our power from the Well, just like how the rest of the world is connected to Agartha. It was made in imitation of the Rainbow Mage’s soul engine, to grant my father his power, but it was only ever that. An imitation.”

“So what is this tunnel for?” Julia asked from her position near the rear. “Why does he need something beneath his Well?”

“The Well of Souls was only ever a temporary measure,” Adela said. “Father needed to study what the Rainbow Mage had done, get a feel for the mechanics of it, before he could make his next move.”

“His next move being…?” Julia pressed.

Adela’s answer was delayed by us arriving at the end of the corridor. It had been a gentle downward slope, on the way down here, but my understanding of how deep we’d come didn’t prepare me for the chamber we entered.

 The room was circular, though without my power I doubted I would have had the perspective to truly grasp the gentle curve of the walls, because it was also massive.

A- comparatively- narrow walkway ran the circumference of the chamber, a spare ten feet wide save for the area opposite the entrance, which sported an array of complex devices built into and around a raised stone dais. Aside from the braziers that lined the walkway and the guards posted at intervals, the only other feature in the room was the pit.

Beyond the walkway, the stone simply stopped, a sheer drop that continued well beyond the range of even my sight. The altar across the room from us was positioned on an extruding platform that hung over the pit like a balcony. The fact that we’d been going down all this time clashed in my mind with the impression of dizzying height I received by looking down into that void.

Julia hissed through her teeth, and Xander let out a low whistle. He looked impressed, but I couldn’t come up with a better word for Julia and Augustus’ expressions aside from stricken. It was a mind-bogglingly massive pit, to be sure, but I didn’t understand what was so impressive about it. A simple stone shaft, almost certainly magically made, cut straight down into the earth, as if it were trying to reach…

Ah.

“He’s after the heart of the world,” Julia said, as if she could barely believe what she was saying. “He wants to usurp the Rainbow Mage’s power.”

“It’s complicated,” Adela responded, leading our group single-file around the perimeter of the room. The guards stood with their backs to the pit, gazing at the wall just beyond us as we passed them, but they gave no sign that they knew we were there.

“Seems pretty simple to me,” Augustus mused, still staring down the pit as we walked. 

“The Rainbow Nations are deceived in this,” Adela said. “My father was one of the Rainbow Mage’s most esteemed researchers, in the ancient days of the planet. He knows secrets that the Rainbow Mage thought were long since turned to dust by time.”

“Deceived?” Julia asked archly. “Would you deny the Rainbow Mage’s strength? He may be dead now, but the power he wielded is indisputable.”

 “Yes, but that power was never Agartha. It was always his, and Agartha never was. That’s the deception. You all assume the wealth of power at the heart of the planet must have been used, but the souls of the dead always denied his attempts to command it. Most of the Rainbow Mage’s lifetime of efforts were for the sake of finding a way to get control of the reservoir he’d made.”

“So your father thinks he’s going to succeed where the Rainbow Mage failed?”

The skepticism was thick in Julia’s voice, but if Adela was bothered at all by it, she didn’t show it.

“He didn’t fail, necessarily. He just died before he could actually reap his success. You see, the Rainbow Mage wasn’t ever able to take hold of the power in Agartha, but he set about trying to create a vessel that could. An artificial human, crafted of his own flesh, in the hopes that the heart of the world wouldn’t reject a life that came into being on it. This homunculus was strong, and able to wield the Seven Roads by pulling the ambient magic from the world around her, but she too was rejected. She had no connection to Agartha, and her personal ability to wield magic in its raw states was only a fraction of her creator’s.”

Oh, fuck. I saw where it was all heading, and it wasn’t good. If I wasn’t very much mistaken, Adela was talking about Glory. The level of power she demonstrated during the attack on Haden made much more sense now, if I was to assume her to be part...god? Some sort of clone of the being that made the world? If she truly wielded only a fraction of the power the Rainbow Mage was capable of, what purpose could that being honestly have in desiring more power?

“So the homunculus failed,” Julia said dismissively. “It’s pretty much what they’re for. I’ve never known a homunculus to do anything particularly well.”

Adela chuckled, the sound chillingly humorless. “You’d be surprised. And though the homunculus wasn’t a suitable vessel, that didn’t mean she was useless. She met a man, and the two fell in love. Together, they did what the Rainbow Mage was hoping for all along. They made a daughter.”

I could see the realization crash through our group in waves. Marika and Julia first, then Jay, Augustus, Xander, and finally my brother.

“You’re talking about Cheri,” Tyler said. No question, just a statement.

As if in response to her name, a flash of light blossomed out into the darkness over the bottomless void. At this distance, she’d be just a speck to the others, but I could see her plain as day. Cheri was sealed inside some sort of black metal sarcophagus, suspended in the air above the altar. Every hair on her head shone with a brilliance that left spots in my vision if I looked for too long, even as her head hung unconscious above the metal of her prison, the only part of her left exposed. 

“Born of the Rainbow Mage’s flesh, but also born of the world. The heart of the world accepts her in a way that they would never accept her creators, either of them. She is connected, and that connection is my father’s goal.”

None of us had any idea what to say to that. I’d imagined the situation was something similar, ever since I’d heard about the Rainbow Mage from Will. Their prodigious power, their rainbow hair...the line was there. It was just a matter of making the connection, though I probably just hadn’t wanted to. It felt like it drove a wedge between my memory of the cheerful, friendly girl I’d spent so much time with these last few months. 

Our group picked up their pace, every one of us quickening their step almost unconsciously, with no communication between us. With Cheri in our sights, there wasn’t any room for hesitation. We were about halfway around the circular chamber, and something that had been eating at me for a while could remain contained no longer.

“Adela, why are you doing this?” I asked. She glanced back at me for a moment, but soon returned her eyes forward, saying nothing. “You used to believe in this. You fought for him, you killed for him. What changed?”

We continued on in silence for a while longer before Adela spoke.

“I guess I just gave it some actual thought for the first time,” she said finally. “I know that doesn’t paint me in a very good light, but it’s the truth. We’re taught so early to put all our faith in the Blood God. In my father. We’re taught that he loves each and every one of us, and we give our all to help his designs, so that he can continue to look after us. None of us ever really had the time or the inclination to consider it. We show our worth when we take lives for our City, we show our commitment by giving our lives for the same. That’s just how it was.”

Cult psychology. I’d caught hints of it, shades of abuse in strange places and the general lack of trust she seemed to carry like a shield, and I’d expressed as much to the group. It was odd to hear it admitted so openly. Even if she was helping us here, there was something uncomfortable about the way she was pouring her heart out to us. It had a hint of resignation to it, an air of finality. Unfortunately for Adela, I had no intention of allowing her to chase an early death as compensation for her crimes. Even if I hadn’t promised her mother, I was too familiar with that road to stand by and watch as someone else began to walk it.

There was no salvation at its end.

“I’ve learned what love actually looks like since then, and my father has no love for any of us. He’s never once sent out a party to rescue a captured bloodmage. He orders us killed at the slightest sign of dissent. We’re all just...expendable to him. To his designs. We’ve been deceived all this time. I’ve been deceived.”

I frowned. “So it’s about revenge?”

“Isn’t that enough?” Adela asked, briefly meeting my eyes once again.

I wanted to argue, but I had the feeling that Adela wasn’t going to meet me in the middle on this one. My five year obsession with seeking my mother’s forgiveness, much less my three day vendetta, couldn’t really hope to compare to Adela realizing she’d been living a lie for her entire life. Julia had a dark look on her face, similar to when she’d spoken to me outside Adela’s mother’s house, but it was a little too much to hope that she’d put in the effort to help Adela like she’d helped me. Too much history there, not enough owed.

“For now,” I sighed. “We’ll have to talk about it some more later.”

Adela snorted, but didn’t disagree. I guess it was a little silly to be talking about later, considering where we were and what we were about to try to do.

Just ahead of us, a short set of stairs marked where the narrow walkway began to widen into the platform with all the apparatuses and the altar. At the top of the stairs, a man with a black robe but no hood drawn stood watch. The magic inside him was brightest behind his eyes, just like it was with mine.

A sensor.

Adela stopped, and the rest of the group stopped behind her.

“Looks like this is as far as we can do this quietly,” she murmured.

“He can detect us?” I asked, moving up to stand next to Adela. She held an arm out to keep me from passing her.

She nodded. “He’s a low-grade detector in his normal sight-range, but he sees through all kinds of deception magics once we get within ten feet of him. We’ve worked together in the past and I can say for certain that he can see me inside that range.”

So we were finally here. The point of no return. Xander and Augustus positioned themselves at the rear of the group, facing back the way we’d come. There were four more bloodmages on the platform itself, two on each side of the altar facing the wall, and two on the opposite wall, facing back at the first pair.

“Won’t we be fine if we just kill this guy?” Marika asked. “They’ll see him die, but what can they do? We’re still invisible.”

Adela shook her head. “From the moment we take our first life, my mother’s connection won’t last more than a few seconds. We’ll be on our own.”

“What? Why does it work like that? I thought killing was what you guys did.”

“My mother’s magic doesn’t have a negative reaction to killing,” Adela said, rolling her eyes. “I know it’s seemed like we’ve had a relatively easy approach, but a response like you’ve never seen is waiting on a hair-trigger. It’s why so many bloodmages were waiting near my mother’s home, since they know her connection to me and the danger of her ability. As soon as anyone reports what might be an attack using my magic, especially this close to the heart of the ritual?”

“They’ll remove her from the equation,” Julia mused. “And you’re certain they’ll move that fast?”

“There’s no doubt in my mind. If anyone is devoted to my father, it’s the Sender. He’ll stop at nothing to see this ritual through to its completion, and I can only imagine how many reactive contingencies he’ll have in place.”

“If this was such a potential concern, why not just kill your mother as soon as he got back?” Julia asked, the cold detachment with which she discussed matricide really doing wonders to highlight how she still felt about Adela.

“Even the highest ranked blood priest in the White City has to be cautious when moving against one of the Blood God’s wives,” Adela answered, the ghost of a smile on her face. “If he were wrong, it would cost him everything.”

“So what’s the plan?” Jay asked, rummaging around in his backpack. He pulled a collapsible baton from its depths, which he handed to Tyler, and a large hunting knife which he kept himself. Marika was binding her hands with cloth, though I was certain someone had told her how much of a bad idea it would be to try and strike one of these men with a closed fist. Julia had produced two small blades, each a little longer than your typical knife, but shorter than any sword I’d ever seen, while Xander and Augustus remained empty-handed.

“We need to get Tyler to Cheri,” Adela said, stretching one arm over her head before switching to stretch the other. “She’s out of our reach, so we’ll need the boy to call out to her. The rest of us just have to clear the platform, protect the entryways, and buy him as much time as we can.”

Adela started forward, and I caught her by the shoulder.

“Are you sure about this?” I asked. “Shouldn’t we try to find another way, if-”

“Grow a backbone, Emily!” Adela hissed, jerking out of my grip. “I know what’s at risk, I know what the cost is, and I’m prepared to pay it! If you’ve got the spare brainpower to think about other ways to do this, I suggest you turn it toward keeping your friends safe.”

She took a step forward, stopping once she was out of my reach.

“Save the ones you can,” she said softly.

There was more I wanted to say, but I held my tongue. She wasn’t entirely wrong, either. I already had a pretty difficult task ahead of me, if I wanted to make it out of this with everyone I cared about alive. Not to say that I was looking to abandon Julia or her friends. They didn’t have the same bond to Cheri that the rest of us did, but they came anyway. I owed them something for that. Not to mention bearing the weight of protecting a girl who seemed pretty convinced she should die in the next hour.

Adela squared her shoulders.

“Go!”

We burst into action. Augustus raised a hand and the torch nearest to him guttered out, the flame sucked through the air to his outstretched palm. At the same time, Xander ducked low to the ground and, in the total darkness that enveloped him, I could see a pair of inky black wings sprout from his back. He stepped off the edge of the walkway and disappeared into the void below.

Ahead of me, Adela broke into a run, fortified body accelerating at a speed that belied her slight frame. I could hardly imagine how much of a surprise it had to be for the bloodmage on guard. One moment you’re looking at an empty walkway in a quiet chamber deep beneath the earth, and the next a girl appears out of nowhere, leaping the eight or so steps in a single bound.

Adela struck the bloodmage like a cannonball, knees pulled up, arms protecting her face. The impact knocked the unfortunate man straight from his feet, Adela landing on his chest. Before he managed more than a surprised cry, she hauled him up by the cloth at his neck and slammed his head back into the stone. Once, twice. On the third time, something gave and the man slumped lifeless to the floor.

Jay and Marika passed Tyler and I on the way up the stairs, rushing across the platform to get as close to the guards before Reina’s enchantment...ended. I was halfway between the stairs and the altar when I stopped hard, catching Tyler as he almost passed me.

“Do what you can,” I said quickly, leaning in to make sure he was looking me in the eye. “But watch yourself. Fight with me where you can, but stay safe. These men are dangerously strong, and their magic is made to kill you. Understand me?”

I could sense the impatience in him as he processed what I’d said. Still, it was a necessary step. Even if this were a regular combat situation, humans were such fragile creatures. Things could go from controlled to deadly in a matter of moments, and it was so much worse when magic was added to the mix.

“I get it, Em,” Tyler said. “Let’s get this done.”

“I mean it, Ty. Don’t go for killing blows, leave that to me. If you absolutely have to fight, go for the eyes or the throat, they might be the only points soft enough for you to harm with that knife. And don’t stay near anyone with an open wound. Their magic is in their blood, so they’re most dangerous when-”

“Em! I get it!” Tyler hissed. “Do your job, and I’ll do mine!”

I froze for a moment, taken aback by my brother’s tone, and he used that as an opportunity to duck under my arm and stride out ahead of me. I hadn’t had a chance to speak much to Tyler since...since I told him that Dad died. Maybe it wasn’t that I hadn’t had a chance, maybe I’d just been avoiding it. Maybe I didn’t want to face that anger, the blame that-

No, I thought, shaking my head. Don’t dwell on it, it wasn’t your fault.

Tyler was angry, just like I was angry, but right now he was focused on the mission. I would do well to follow that example. The bloodmage nearest me was drawing his machete, his attention focused on where the sentry had just met a grisly end. The uncertainty in his stance and the moment of hesitation as he got his blade in hand told me that he didn’t know exactly where his enemy was, but was aware enough of being under attack that he didn’t want to be caught off guard.

I felt a jolt run through me, and I could see everyone in our group react to it. At the same time, I saw the surprised, almost panicked reactions of the four remaining bloodmages on the altar platform, as well as the rapid approach of the guards we’d passed earlier. A weight settled in my stomach. It had truly been mere seconds after we’d engaged. 

Adela rose slowly from where she’d finished with the sentry, and I saw the look of pain and grief fall over her face like a shadow. When it had passed, it left a blankness that was somehow more frightening to behold than anger, more unsettling than bloodlust. She advanced on the guard near the wall, leaving me with the guard near the altar, both of whose attention was squarely on myself and Tyler.

I had to trust Adela would deal with protecting my back, since I couldn’t realistically engage both men at once or afford to leave either of them alone long enough to call on their magic. I raised my sword over my head, bringing it sweeping down in a vertical strike which my opponent moved his own blade to meet, seeking to overpower me with a perpendicular, horizontal guard.

Rather than pit my strength against a fortified opponent, I utilized a trick Marika had shown me back when the Tryhard Club had been practicing Kendo with her. Instead of clashing uselessly against the waiting block, I pulled my strike back just a touch, maneuvering my blade so that its tip missed the machete entirely. Once the tip of my sword had passed beneath my opponent’s guard, I thrust forward.

My blade bit into flesh, but I knew better than to go for a killing blow so quickly. Not only would a wound that might incapacitate a normal human likely be nothing more than a nuisance to a bloodmage, every bleeding injury was another avenue of attack. Instead of pushing my weight forward to run the man through, I widened the wound slightly and pulled my sword free with a flick of my wrist. 

On the other side of the platform, Jay and Julia had one bloodmage trapped between the two of them, Jay doing his best to hold the man’s attention with wide, aggressive strikes while Julia struck quickly and retreated out of reach every time an opening was presented. Wherever the man’s blood fell, clouds of acrid smoke began to rise. All I could do was hope that Julia and Jay were aware enough to notice and careful enough to avoid being burned.

“Cheri!” Tyler called out, standing as close as he could to where the girl hung frozen in the air, which happened to be atop the stone altar. “Cheri, you need to wake up!”

If Cheri heard Tyler, she gave no sign. He had managed to get the attention of the last remaining bloodmage on the platform with no opponent, though. The man approached Tyler, hands emerging briefly from his sleeves as he used sharpened nails to tear holes in the flesh of his own wrists.

The blood that dripped from the wounds fell away from his arms, but the streams remained solid, writhing like whips as they shied away from the ground beneath him. I put my sword up in a standard ready position and advanced on him, but hadn’t taken a single step before the man I’d just injured took a swing at me, forcing me to sidestep away from the man advancing on my brother. I’d never lost sight of him, regardless of which way I was facing, so there wasn’t ever a moment when I was in danger of taking the hit, but it meant I wouldn’t be able to disengage to help Tyler without finishing off my first opponent.

Which...wasn’t going to be easy.

Starting from the wound I’d opened in his abdomen, the man’s robe was being covered in some sort of armor, the dark red of dried blood. It flowed outward in a ridged, almost flower-like pattern, as high as his collarbone and as low as his knees. It split at joints, and as I watched it reached over and around his shoulders, bladed pauldrons forming before the blood flowed down the man’s arms, similarly armoring them.

I took a deep breath, trying to get into the right mindset. We’d had faux tournaments at the Tryhard Club, martial contests of a variety of types, so I wasn’t exactly unaccustomed to one-on-one competition. It was just a different animal to the battles I’d taken part in before, where I’d ensured I had an overwhelming advantage before moving to engage at all. Here, it was just me versus one armored opponent, starting from equal positions assuming that the stomach wound I’d dealt him was probably bound tightly by the armor he’d formed.

I bounced lightly on the balls of my feet, shifting my weight back and forth as my opponent stalked forward. I did my best to test his guard, the tip of my blade flitting around the gaps in his armor and some of his more vulnerable areas, but he seemed almost willing to let me draw blood. Which figured. Whenever I aimed a feint at a protected area, he would simply shift his weight to counterstrike if I over committed. He could afford to play the waiting game, since he was only becoming harder to hurt with each moment that passed and each injury I inflicted on him, and my brother and friends came closer to being overwhelmed with enemies.

Thankfully, with Jay and Julia holding the staircase on the other side of the platform, it left Marika free to engage the man with the blood whips, which she did in classic form. It didn’t look like the man’s weapons could reach Tyler from the edge of the altar, so in order to get in range to seize him the bloodmage hopped up onto the raised stone.

Marika skipped over to him, drawing a collapsible staff from her belt. With the press of a button, the compressed foot-long baton snapped out to its full six feet. I doubted the hollow metal staff would do much even with a direct blow, considering how tough the average bloodmage’s skin tended to be, but Marika didn’t hit him with it. Instead, she spun about once and planted a kick in the back of the bloodmage’s knees, timing the kick to land the moment he’d fully straightened.

To my surprise, the blow had the same effect it would have had on an unfortified person: the bloodmage toppled over, arms windmilling as his legs crumpled unexpectedly beneath him. It stood to reason, now that I thought about it, that the fortification that made their bodies tougher wouldn’t necessarily make them any heavier, wouldn’t make their balance any stabler. Their joints were probably a bit more resilient than mine or Tyler’s, but that didn’t mean they could shrug off a well-placed blow without suffering the body’s normal physical responses.

I was more worried about what was going to happen when the enemy finished falling. Marika, it turned out, was less worried. She skipped a step closer to the edge of the pit, positioning not quite out of the falling man’s way. Her free hand came up and caught a handful of the man’s robe. A quick tug, and Marika transitioned the man’s fall into a graceful throw, pulling him over her hip before he’d even touched the ground.

Hands scrabbling desperately for purchase, the man bounced once on the edge of the platform before slipping over the edge into the pit. A mischievous smile appeared on her face as she leaned over the edge, watching the man disappear into the darkness. I could see him fall for a lot longer than Marika could, so I was in a position to see him bring his hands together, his fingers tearing into the small wound he’d created for his blood magic to flow out of. With a jerk of his arms, a spray of blood shot out of both wrists, instantly tripling the amount of blood he’d been working with previously, with more appearing as each moment passed.

As I opened my mouth to cry out a warning, Marika held her staff out over the edge of the pit, at arm’s length with an equal amount of the weapon’s shaft extending on either side of her hand. The newly lengthened blood tendrils snapped out of the darkness, latching onto either end of Marika’s offered staff.

There was the briefest of moments, so short I’d have thought I was mistaken were it not for my magic sight, where Marika’s expression twisted into something more inherently cruel than her normal mischievous look. Joy glinted in her dark eyes, and her grin stretched just a fraction, teeth showing in a way that reminded me more of a skull than a smile.

Marika opened her hand, and the weight of her opponent tore the staff from her grip. Without his last hope for an anchor, his black-robed form and flailing blood magic plummeted from even my view.

She stepped back from the edge, and glanced around the platform at several things in turn. Jay was first, as always. I didn’t need three-hundred and sixty degree vision to know that Marika would always check in with Jay before anything else. To see if he’d seen, to see what he thought, to see how he felt. Then, a quick scan of the platform. 

Her eyes alighted on the side of my head. I was still facing my opponent, since any purported lack of attention on my part would only make him attempt to press his advantage, ignorant of the fact that I could always see him. Still, as her stare grew longer than a simple scan, I spared her a glance. It wasn’t reasonable for me to expect her to communicate with the side or back of my head, even if efforts like that were possible for me now.

As our eyes met, she mouthed a single word, enunciating the physical form of the word with her mouth like we’d all done when practicing lip-reading.

Predictable.

As if to highlight her point, my opponent roared and stepped forward with a two-handed overhead swing, seizing the opportunity presented by my being ‘distracted’. I sidestepped, hopping a short distance into the air as the machete smashed into the stone where I’d been standing a moment before. As I came down I stomped with one foot, catching the machete right at the handle. The blade wasn’t well-made enough to hold my full weight, amplified by the force of the kick, so it’s wielder was forced to choose between letting go of the weapon or being a part of the leverage that broke the blade.

He chose the latter, though either result was enough of a victory for me. He adopted a slightly more careful stance as he retreated, tossing aside the haft of his broken weapon. I held my sword out at arm’s length, tip angled at the man’s eye level, and the two of us circled each other slowly. I stopped once I’d managed to put myself between him and Tyler. At this point, my job was to keep him safe while he continued trying to reach Cheri.

“Cheri! We’re all here! We’ve come to take you home!”

It might have been my imagination, but I thought I saw the magic encasing Cheri fluctuate at my brother’s words. It was a tiny movement, more like a vibration, like the sarcophagus had shuddered ever so slightly, but it was something.

“Keep at it, Ty!” I called over my shoulder. “She heard you!”

My enemy’s eyes moved between me and my brother behind me. I saw now that the blood armor had made its way all the way down his arms, leaving each hand wrapped in a gauntlet tipped with razor-sharp claws. He now raised those claws, bringing them up to his face and setting the claws against his skin.

My stomach tightened as the bloodmage drew his claws across his own face. Each cheek was split from cheekbone to jaw, revealing bone and muscle before a tide of blood overflowed from the cuts. The last I saw of his face was a maddened, crimson-stained grin before the flowing blood hardened into a mask, then continued stretching around his head like a helmet.

This wasn’t going well. As it was, the only part of the man that still seemed vulnerable were his legs, below the knee, and I couldn’t imagine the blood flowing from his face would take long in getting down there to finish armoring him completely. After that, my only real hope for defeating him lay in something similar to what Marika had done, but judging by the way the man was moving, the blood armor was adding a considerable amount of weight. I wasn’t certain I’d be able to throw him, even if I was willing to get that close to those claws. Embarrassing as it was, at this point all I could do was wait for…

I frowned.

Augustus and Xander were doing a spectacular job holding their side of the ring: Augustus harried the approaching bloodmages with a seemingly unending barrage of fireballs while Xander surged out of the darkness of the pit to strike unpredictably at random targets. Neither of them could come to my aid, since without Augustus’s pestering the enemies could afford to pile onto Xander as soon as he appeared, and without the threat of Xander’s sudden and merciless assault Augustus wouldn’t be able to lay enough hurt on the bloodmages to keep them from overwhelming him.

Jay and Julia were similarly holding the left-hand approach, though the pair, with Marika covering them, seemed a bit more pressured than their counterparts on the other side. Tyler was still doing his best with the most important task any of us had, so...Who did I think would come to my aid?

As if in answer to my question, Adela flickered back into my scope of awareness. Across the platform, her opponent was a crumpled heap on the floor. She nodded to me once, jerked her head at the armored bloodmage, then disappeared once more.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Working together with the girl was hard enough on moral grounds, without having to throw this sort of thing into the mix. Better than nothing, I guess. I set myself a short mantra, more or less all that I could do in an effort to keep track of Adela.

Engage the enemy, someone will help you. Trust yourself.

I swiped my sword back and forth, expelling some of my nervous energy as I began to edge forward.

Engage the enemy, someone will help you. Trust yourself.

I grit my teeth. A cursory glance showed that everyone on the platform was occupied. No one was in a position to help me, even if I were a moment from death.

Engage the enemy, someone will help you. Trust yourself.

With my brain screaming at me to create more space between myself and the armored death-dealer in front of me, I took a stride into my opponent’s range and raised my sword to strike. The bloodmage needed no further encouragement to engage, pushing forward with a flurry of swipes. He attacked like I imagined a panther would, if they could balance on two legs.

The first two attacks were easily deflected, but it wasn’t sustainable. Each clash of claw on steel nearly saw the weapon fly from my grip, and every impact sent a shock of pain up my injured arm. It was made worse by the dedication to offense that my opponent was capable of, armored as he was.

Engage the enemy, someone will help you.

My hands trembled, and I tightened my grip on my sword to quiet them.

Trust yourself.

Marika’s message to me made its way to the top of my brain. Predictable, were they?

Let’s see, I thought grimly.

I swayed out of range of another swipe, then stepped in, putting my weight behind a thrust. I was aiming for the eye-slits in my opponent’s helmet, the only vulnerable part of him left, but I didn’t imagine for a moment that the blow would land. He seemed content to let me waste my blade’s edge on his armor, but when faced with a blow that would be lethal unless avoided or intercepted...

The bloodmage’s body blurred into rapid movement once more, his uncommitted hand flashing up to catch my sword by the middle of its length. If your choices were to die, turn your face to avoid an attack, or demonstrate your overwhelming skill, speed, and impenetrable armor in the most aggressive way possible?

It wasn’t until that moment, standing transfixed with my weapon firmly in the grip of my enemy, that I understood exactly how accurately Marika had assessed the bloodmage mentality. Then again, from what I’d seen outside, the White City hadn’t ever interacted with the rest of the world the way the Rainbow Nations had. I supposed that was necessary, for them to maintain such a high level of indoctrination for so long. It left them in an unfortunate position when it came to adapting to new tactics, or realizing that their tactics left them vulnerable. To a certain extent, I imagined that changing the way they dealt with enemies could be seen as cowardice or insubordination. They were representatives of a system that could show only haughty, savage aggression to things that were different, or even the slightest bit weaker.

In short, they were just bullies. I’d dealt with my fair share of bullies.

I hauled on my sword, and the bloodmage pulled back, though he kept the pressure equal. It would have been a simple effort for him to tear the weapon from my grip, but where was the fun in that? Better to watch me squirm, see the last bits of hope flee my expression as I realized I couldn’t win.

The bloodmage raised his free hand, clawed fingers spread wide.

I stood my ground.

He hesitated slightly, as if he were expecting a different reaction. A whimper, a flinch, dropping the weapon and fleeing...I could imagine a person like this growing accustomed to those sorts of responses. He wasn’t used to dealing with people who refused to buckle. He wasn’t used to dealing with me.

Or Adela.

She appeared in between the two of us, standing next to where my sword was held in a deadlock. God, her magic was annoying. It felt like scratching a particularly persistent itch, except that I hadn’t known I was itching until the moment that I scratched it. A vague sense of relief that created a sense of anxiety in the moments before it, but only after it had been felt.

Adela tapped the length of my blade a few times in the moment she appeared, activating a series of runes that I hadn’t realized were present. As soon as they were activated, however, I knew what they were for. The magic contained in the blade, what was normally used for its connection to whatever strange storage magic let me summon it and the inherent magical strengthening of the blade itself, was going critical, building up along its length to the point where I was pretty sure the glow was visible to anyone watching.

The bloodmage’s gauntlet, where it gripped my sword, visibly cracked, then shattered. The magic that was flowing through the sword was pulsing outward, visibly corroding everything it was in contact with. The man let the sword go, staggering backward with a cry of surprise, but Adela wasn’t finished with him just yet.

She placed her hand over mine, gripping the sword along with me, and dragged it forward, hauling me unceremoniously forward with it. As if it were hardly an effort, Adela drove the sword into the enemy bloodmage’s chest one-handed, even as I staggered to avoid being dragged off my feet. Where my attacks had been deflected easily, Adela’s thrust, mixed with my empowered blade, passed through the bloodmage like he wasn’t even there. 

Then, the magic in the blade exploded. The outpouring of energy was directed in the same general direction of the thrust, but the result was still gruesome. Most of the bloodmage’s torso disappeared, disintegrating into a cone of gore that sprayed out into the pit.

No armoring that, I thought.

The man collapsed, his body no longer bearing the structural integrity it needed to hold up what remained of his upper half. Adela released her grip on the handle of my sword, which had shattered during the strike, leaving only a few inches of blade above the grip.

“Good kill,” she said quietly, turning to join Jay and Marika on the left side of the platform.

I examined the remnant of my sword. “I didn’t know it could do that.”

“I learned it earlier this year,” she answered.

“How?”

Adela met my eyes briefly, then continued on without answering me.

Fair enough.

Still holding my broken bit of sword, I took up position just behind Tyler on the altar. He was still shouting to Cheri, had been that whole time, but nothing he’d said had managed to stir her in the way it had a few minutes ago. 

“Cheri! We don’t have much time! We need you to wake up!”

Nothing.

Xander and Augustus were still holding their side, but the influx of bloodmages from the entrance had tipped the balance such that Augustus could no longer harry their foes. Rather, it seemed like all of his attention was now focused on simply meeting their assault, striking incoming enemy projectiles out of the air with his own. Xander was doing his best to strike where he could, but every engagement saw him engaged a little bit longer, the hit-and-run strategy a little less effective every time he tried.

“We all came for you, Cheri! We’re all here!”

Nothing.

Even with Adela reinforcing them, Jay, Julia, and Marika were being overpowered. Periodically, Julia would say something, the other three would clap hands over their ears, and the wizard girl would shout a command. This usually disrupted the assaulting forces long enough for Jay and Marika to move out, dispatch the more vulnerable bloodmages, then return to their relatively defensive position at the top of the stairs. Still, the longer they held, the more bloodmages would build up on the walkway approaching them, the higher the chance that they would eventually draw someone there with a type of magic that could turn the tables.

“Cheri!” Tyler shouted at the top of his lungs, a hint of panic creeping into his voice. “We need you! I need you!”

There.

The same flicker of magic from within the sarcophagus. Cheri could hear us, she was just so inhibited by the containment that she was barely able to grant a detectable response, even to me. Was there a pattern to her responses? Something that gave her more strength?

I stepped up onto the altar next to Tyler, who shot me a concerned look.

“I’m not getting through,” he said miserably. I could tell from the tremble in his voice that he was close to tears. It was almost a relief, to be honest. That was the little brother I knew. He’d extended himself as far as he could go, so far it was hard to believe. He’d come across the world, shedding comfort and shelter, pushing through fear and carnage to reach the girl that floated just outside our reach.

“You are,” I answered, squeezing his shoulder with my free hand. “She’s struggling, just like we are. Don’t give up yet.”

He nodded, then sniffed hard.

“Remind her who we are. Who she is. Remind her what’s waiting for her back home.”

Shoulders squared, Tyler took a deep breath.

“Cheri!” he called out. “It’s...it’s Tyler. I wanted to say…”

He glanced at me, embarrassment flickering over his face before being replaced by something more resolute. Committed.

“I love you, Cheri!” Tyler shouted into the darkness. “I want...I want to go back with you! To the clubhouse! I want to hang out and do nothing and talk about meaningless nonsense again!”

A response. More than a glimmer, too. It flared to life inside the oppressive black energy within the sarcophagus and stayed, fighting against the darkness that tried to swallow it up.

“You think you’re done teaching us about magic, Cheri?” I called out. “I bet Roman’s forgotten half of what you’ve said so far!”

There was a pulse of energy from within the binding, the struggle of light against darkness, and then something touched my mind. I recognized Cheri’s voice, so small and quiet that I wasn’t immediately sure I’d heard it at all.

I want to go back.

Tyler and I exchanged glances, and I could tell from the mingled pain and hope in his expression that he’d heard her too. 

“Of course we’re going back!” Tyler shouted. “But you have to help us, Cheri! You have to fight!”

Scared…

“We’re all scared, Cheri!” I joined in. “But that’s why we’re all here! You know why!”

Strongest…

There was a pause, and then the entire sarcophagus shook, like something heavy had struck it from the inside.

Strongest together.

Another loud crash, and a crack appeared in the sarcophagus, though Cheri’s head had yet to raise. Rainbow light shined through the small fissure, and the entire structure seemed to vibrate with the energy.

The sound of Cheri’s struggles echoed through the chamber, and I could see the effect it had on both sides. My friends and allies redoubled their efforts, bolstered by the hope that Cheri might soon be released while demoralization, doubt, fear rolled through the ranks of the bloodmages.

I want to goof off with Roman.

Crash.

I want to laugh with Marika.

Crash.

I want to train with Jay and learn from Emily.

CRASH.

I want to kiss Tyler.

Each impact widened the cracks in the sarcophagus, allowing even more light through. It pushed back the darkness in the pit, illuminating the white

stone as far down as even my eyes could see. Not only that, but just as the shadows beneath us were banished, the light seemed to harm the bloodmages that still fought to push forward onto the platform. They shied away from it, hid their faces with hands that burned for the shielding, and the least bloodthirsty even began to retreat.

Cheri’s voice swelled in volume.

I.

WANT.

OUT.

With one final crash, the sarcophagus exploded, leaving Cheri suspended in the air above the pit, her hair and scarf floating around her like she was underwater. The light around her was so bright that I had a hard time picking out what exactly was going on with my magic. She stirred, like she was rousing from a nap and not floating above a hole that ran to the center of the planet, blinked blearily, saw us, and smiled.

It wasn’t until the light around her dimmed that I saw it.

Runes had begun to glow in the darkness that had returned to the pit below. They shimmered with the same energy that Cheri had been emitting moments earlier, and the rainbow light was spreading from them, activating smaller runes in a complicated network that soon circled the entire pit, continuing downward as I watched.

The magical symbols were clustered around four main points, where the runes were largest and brightest, equidistant around the perimeter of the pit and perhaps thirty feet down. The part of me that thought, hoped, that what was happening was Cheri’s doing vanished when the first chain appeared.

It snaked out from the wall, tentatively at first. A jet-black chain tipped with a wicked-looking barb, it coiled briefly in the air before emerging at speed, making straight for the floating girl.

I was halfway through forming the first part of “Look out!” when the chain struck her, piercing her beneath her right shoulder blade, the barb emerging near her left collarbone. Even as she and Tyler gave matching cries of pain and shock, I could see what was happening: the chains were siphoning Cheri’s energy away, down into the pit and into the runes that lined it.

“No!” Tyler howled, though he and I were helpless to do anything, standing at the edge of the pit, bound by the most Mundane of laws. As long as gravity existed, as long as Cheri floated transfixed above the pit, we were mere spectators in what was about to happen.

Cheri coughed, the action producing a startling quantity of blood. She turned, gripping the chain behind her back and trying to haul on it, but the barb’s flared head gripped her flesh, and I could see the strength go out of her as she pulled anyway. The second chain hit her just above her left hip, exiting on the right side of her stomach.

Left wrist, right ankle.

I saw each impact send a pulse of shock and horror through Tyler. Tears ran unheeded down his face as Cheri struggled weakly, transfixed by the four chains.

I barely noticed Jay and the rest rejoining us. The bloodmages who had pressured us so constantly up until now were simply standing around the rim of the room. Watching.

This was the plan, I thought, my heart sinking.

They’d needed her to awaken. They’d needed her to fight against the containment, to draw out the power of the Rainbow Mage. They’d needed a connection to Agartha, and I had delivered it straight to them.

Adela, for her part, looked just as stricken as the rest of us. There was no longer any need for her to play us, if that’s what she’d been doing, but her face was twisted in shame and painful realization.

“He knew,” she said softly. “He knew all along that I’d choose this path, and he planned for it...He needed me to lead you here.”

“Isn’t there-” Tyler started, cutting off with a sob as Cheri screamed in pain, one short, strangled cry. “Isn’t there something we can do?”

Julia and Augustus crouched at the pit’s edge. She nudged him and pointed, and he shot a series of fireballs at the points where the chains were attached to the wall. That caused a small stir of movement in the watching bloodmages, but as the fireballs impacted an invisible wall of force surrounding the four critical runes, they resumed their silent vigil.

A barrier. It didn’t look terribly strong, not like the one I’d seen Liara use, but it didn’t need to be that strong. Not when the best we could come up with for offense was something like Augustus’ fire.

Unless…

“If we could destroy one of the chains, what do you think would happen?” I asked Julia.

She made an uncertain humming sound. “Most rituals require stability, balance. You don’t want to set a ritual up with any more or any fewer conduits or runes or whatever than they absolutely need. That being said, I’ve never seen anything quite like this. There’s no way to say what rules apply.”

Jay, Marika, and I exchanged glances.

“No coming back from that,” Marika said quietly.

I looked Xander over, where he stood behind me. He had a few minor wounds, but the inherent light being emitted by the runic array in the pit had raised the light level too high for him to be even minorly transformed. No strength, no claws, no wings.

Cheri had gone limp, hanging transfixed while blood seeped from her wounds. At the very least, it didn't seem like she was bleeding nearly as badly as wounds like that should have been. Whether it was due to some unique physiology or simply a factor of her potent magic, I was grateful for the extra time.

“How would we even hurt it?” Jay asked. He glanced at the sword I held, or what little remained of it. The overcharged strike, or whatever it was that Adela had activated on my blade, would probably have done the trick if the weapon weren’t pretty much garbage at this point. 

“My daggers can overload the same way your sword did,” Julia said, meeting my eyes. “There’s less force behind it, comparatively, but it should still be enough.”

So that was the how, and the what. The why was obvious, since rescuing Cheri was the mission and it wasn’t likely that they’d be able to make it back out without her. The where was equally clear, glowing brightly and growing brighter by the second. The when was now, if not sooner.

All that was left was the who.

I gestured to Julia, hand held out for the dagger. When she turned to hand it to me, I gripped her by the wrist and leaned in close, whispering a few quick words in her ear. 

Julia gave me an odd look.

"You're sure?" She asked.

When I nodded, she shrugged.

"Adela, sit on the floor and don't activate your magic unless I instruct you." 

Adela gasped, straining with grit teeth against the sudden command. I was surprised with how long she managed to resist, but eventually she succumbed to the compulsion, sinking to the floor on trembling legs.

“What…” she said, teeth still clenched, “...the fuck...are you doing?!”

Marika and Jay were both giving me looks, so I turned to address Adela.

“Sorry,” I said, and I truly meant it. “But I felt like it was pretty likely that you were about to grab a dagger, use your power, and take out that chain without anyone knowing what had happened. Am I wrong?”

She glared at me, but remained silent, so I continued.

“I promised your mother that I would look after you. I could smell this on you, so you know damn well that she could, too. I’m not about to let you die like that. This isn’t how you make amends for what you’ve done. This isn’t how you repay the people who've helped you, and this isn’t how you help us. You think we’d be happier, forgetting you existed? You really think we wouldn’t rather remember the good times we all had together, even if it had to come to an end?”

I knelt down, and the anger in her face dissolved, leaving something broken in its place. Something cold and alone and painfully familiar.

“Please,” Adela whispered. “Let me do this. I’ve been around you long enough to know this for certain: You all need each other. If you die, what will it do to Jay? To Tyler? To the rest, who look up to you? What will Jay’s death do to Marika? What would Tyler’s death do to Cheri? What would any of their deaths do to you? You have no other options.”

“Roman would miss you,” Marika said, her face carefully blank. “Roman would blame himself.”

“Roman would forget,” Adela hissed.

“And you think he’d be better off for it,” Marika said scathingly. “Idiot.”

I turned to the three wizards who had come with us. “I can’t ask you to make this sacrifice. This wasn’t your fight to begin with, and you’ve done more than enough in helping us get this far.”

Augustus shrugged casually and Xander shook his head.

“We didn’t do much,” Xander said. “But I appreciate the gesture, all the same.”

“So how will you decide?” Julia asked, holding the dagger out once again.

“Rock-paper-scissors?” Jay said, a forced levity to his voice that I knew none of us felt, despite the silliness of the suggestion.

“Three-way R.P.S.,” Marika agreed solemnly. “Just like the old days.”

"Four ways," Tyler said, tearing his eyes away from Cheri's still form.

“Don’t even think about it,” I said instantly.

Tyler opened his mouth to argue, but Julia cut in.

“I agree with Emily,” she said. “It wouldn’t be wise. After the ritual is disrupted, we might need you to call to her again. It’s your Connection to her that strengthened her the first time, we could need it for the second.”

I felt a surge of gratitude for Julia in that moment. Her words connected with Tyler, when my saying something similar would only have caused him to dig his heels in harder.

“On three, then?” Jay asked. He spoke calmly, but I could see the tension in him, in his face and shoulders.

“On three,” I agreed.

“One…”

I was through blaming myself for things I couldn’t control. I was finished seeking salvation through suffering for the mistakes I’d made. My only goal in that moment was defending the future of the world as we knew it, of my world, and the important people in it.

“Two…”

I looked over the two of them, though my quiet study was hidden by the magic that let my eyes appear focused on the space where our three hands would meet. Jay, who had stood by me through everything that had gone wrong, who had been responsible for nearly everything that had gone right. He sided with me, even when I was weak and petty, and having him there with me in that moment meant more to me than I had time to express.

Marika, whose chaotic whimsy kept me on my toes, who was always willing to play devil’s advocate when I needed to be put in my place. I didn’t have any illusions about where I stood with her, in relation to Jay, but I could still count on her to be there when the chips were down. With a smile on her face.

They were my closest friends in the world and, for the first time in a very long time, I decided to exercise my right to be selfish. For reasons that had nothing to do with redemption, that finally seemed like they were my own, honest feelings, I made my choice.

“Three!”

Jay threw rock.

Marika threw scissors.

I grabbed the knife.

There’d been a time when trying to face off with Jay and Marika simultaneously would have been a hopeless endeavor. We were too close in skill for a match between any two of us to be a sure thing. So, outnumbered as I was and with my destination so clearly established, the old Emily Browman would have been dragged down in short order. 

But the old Emily was gone.

As I turned for the edge of the pit, Jay’s hand reached out for the back of the collar of my armor, but I elbowed his wrist without turning, knocking the hand off to the side as I sprinted out of reach. Marika lashed out with one leg, seeking to tangle mine as I passed her, but in this situation falling was my goal. I toppled, but threw my weight forward as I did, extricating my legs from hers by tucking them to my chin.

I rolled back to my feet, so close to the edge that I could feel the void beneath my heels. Jay and Marika froze, too far from me to be able to stop me from jumping, unwilling to make any movement that might set me in motion.

“Emily…” Jay said slowly, hands raised like he was surrendering.

“Jay Jefferies,” I said in response, “I officially cede presidency of the Tryhard Club.”

He grit his teeth, helplessness written all over his face.

“The Tryhard Club is gone, Em,” he said.

I shook my head, smiling sadly. “The Clubhouse is gone, sure. But the Club will survive as long as at least one of us does. It’ll carry on, as long as

we’re out there trying our hardest.”

“Hear, hear,” Marika murmured.

A tear escaped from Jay’s eye, tracing a line through the sweat and grime I imagined caked all of us.

“I’ll look after him,” Jay said, and I didn’t need any specification to know who he was talking about. “I’ll look after them all. I swear it.”

I glanced at Tyler, who was openly weeping.

“I’m prouder of you than I have time to describe,” I told him. “Take care of yourself, and don’t be a jerk to Cheri.”

He made a choking sound, somewhere between a sob and a laugh. When words failed him, he simply nodded.

I jumped.