“But it’s so weak. So weak. I’m trying to latch on, trying to pull him closer. But I don’t dare try to fully wink him in yet. His body could literally tear apart and turn into an atom soup.”
Lisa’s heart dropped. “Mom, please get him. Mom, please.” She’d never realized until that moment how much she loved that stupid brother of hers.
“We will, baby,” her mom said. “I swear it.”
The buzz and hum and orange light of Chi’karda filled the room like a nebula.
Things started to change around Tick, even as the pain inside his chest grew worse, like needles piercing his heart. His shoulders shook from the ache of trying to muffle the sobs that wanted to escape him, but he tried to push aside all the pain and focus on his surroundings.
The gray mist had thinned out, allowing his vision to reach much farther away. The bolts of white fire shooting through the air had not ceased at all, and he saw more of them than ever—a rain of lightning that continued for miles and miles. Violent sounds shook the gaseous world and continued to hurt his ears and splinter his brain with the worst headache he’d ever experienced.
And in the distance, coming straight toward him, were . . . things.
Dark objects. Huge objects. They looked like bulky chunks of broken spaceships, destroyed and shredded, hurling through empty space. There were dozens of them, flying through the gray air, rushing in. As they got closer, Tick could no longer tell if that was true or if he was actually hurtling toward them. But then he saw that they were less like spaceships, and more like floating mountains torn from their foundations—the edges rocky and broken, the centers filled with vegetation and trees.
He didn’t understand why, but he felt a weighty sense of dread, and not just from the prospect of smashing into the stony chunks of land. There was something ominous about those massive rocks, like they were alive and wanted him dead.
The nearest one was only a few hundred feet away when hundreds of vines shot out from the nooks and crannies of the rock’s craggy surface, like an army of snakes striking out at a predator. Their tips tapered to a point. The vines coiled in the air then came for Tick.
Lisa jumped when her mom suddenly cried out, a sound that was impossible to tell whether it was good or bad. She was tight-faced and sweating as she ran her hands up and down the Barrier Wand like it was some kind of musical instrument.
“What’s going on?” Lisa asked.
“I’m latched to him,” her mom responded. “I just can’t seem to wink the boy in.”
Chapter 18
Cords of Light
The vines flew through the air, coming at Tick as if they were magnetized ropes and he was a big piece of metal. He’d been sort of complacent since being pulled into the massive gray void, watching and observing, wondering what Reality was going to do to him now that he’d solved the riddle his consciousness had presented in his mind.
But the vines looked deadly, the massive structures of rock and vegetation were hurtling toward his body, and he had no more time to sit back. He’d mastered his control over Chi’karda. It was time to use it.
The ends of the first vines reached him and quickly coiled around his arms and legs. They cinched tight and jerked him forward even faster, throwing his body at the rock from which they’d emerged.
Tick struggled against the strength of the ropy chains, looked at the jagged granite chunk rushing up at him, and tried not to panic. He relaxed his arms and legs, letting his body go limp. Reaching down, deep inside his heart, he found the spark that had become so familiar to him, that burning flicker of flame that he knew he could ignite into an inferno.
Pure power exploded away from him, streaks of orange light and fire. The surge of Chi’karda slammed into the massive rock, detonating it into a million splinters of stone, which Tick whisked away with a single thought. Like a flinty cloud of smoke caught in a gust of wind, it flew to the right, gone from his vision. The vines that had imprisoned him were incinerated; not a single trace was left.
But there were dozens more of the floating mountains, and each one had more of the vines popping out of their surfaces, pointy ends focused on Tick. He took hold of his power, pulled it all back within his chest, sucking it in like a great vacuum. Then he used his eyes and mind to start destroying.
Looking this way and that, he hurled streaks of Chi’karda outward with each glance. They shot forward like streams of fire, arrows of might, smashing into each of the massive hunks of stone, dirt, and vegetation. The flying structures exploded, obliterated into dusty clouds that whipped away like the first one had. Tick barely had time to make sure he’d succeeded in destroying one before he had to look at the next threat.
Explosion after explosion, he destroyed them. Reaching with all his strength, he was able to send the Chi’karda beams farther and farther out, killing the vines as soon as they came into view.