The sizzling, slapping boom came again, followed by the electrical zzzzz.
I pulled on Beast-vision from where I stood at the front window and saw the energies of the ward over the house. It was an older model, one Molly had used before, the spell muted blue, green, and silver, the energies growing up from below ground, as natural as leaves and plants sprouting up from fertile soil, but this time the fertile ground was Molly’s earth magic, augmented by her newer, more deadly death magic. The ward was powerful, self-healing from most mundane (meaning nonmagical) attacks, was resilient, and air permeable, covering the house and most of the grounds. And it was sparking blue and red, like sparklers on the Fourth of July.
“What is it?” I asked her. But she just shivered, her eyes lost in a distance I couldn’t see. “We’re under attack,” I said to the Youngers, “but I don’t see anything. Alex, the exterior cameras have battery backup, right?”
“Yeah, working on seeing what we have now,” he said, his voice distracted, coming from the darkness of the house. “I had to turn on the inverter and get everything going. So far I don’t see anything. Bro, get the fridge unplugged.”
Eli moved to the kitchen, following orders.
“Jane,” Molly said, the word garbled as if she was choking.
I raced to her, but I didn’t make it in time. The boom was massive and the windows rattled as the entire house shook. The ward sent out a shower of sparks, like bloody water falling over a waterfall, the red energies blooming light. Beautiful, but also taking power from the ward. The broken magics smelled of char and burned herbs, sunlight on linen, and the dark of the moon on a winter garden. “What is it?” I asked Molly, slipping an arm around her shoulders. “What’s attacking us?”
“Jane?” Alex said. “It’s an arcenciel. A young one.” He spun the tablet to us. “And this time I can see the scar on its side.”
So could I, though the scar was nothing more than a dark shadow along its snakelike side. She was in the visible range, a rippling of light and shadow, with a human-shaped head, showing small, budding horns. Her mouth was open displaying rows of shark teeth that glinted like pearls. Her transparent wings glimmered in all the colors of the rainbow, and a frill around her head was scintillating shades of copper, brown, and pale white. Her body was snakelike, bigger than the last time I had seen her, with iridescent scales the color of tinted glass and thick smoke and hints of copper. As before, she smelled like green herbs burning over hot coals and the tang of fish and water plants. The shadowy scar ran along her side, healed but a potent reminder that she could be hurt. This was the creature we had wounded in Leo’s basement gym. This was the light dragon who had attacked me before, but at least now she had a name.
Did that give us power over her in some way? Could we use her name to defend ourselves? “Her name is Opal,” I said.
“That isn’t its real name,” Molly whispered, her eyes faraway as she studied her ward and what was happening to it, “that’s just its English name.” She ducked her head and slid from beneath my arm. “I’ve been doing research. Her real name will be a lot of sibilants and cracking sounds and an explosion of light in the correct wavelength. I can’t even recognize it as a name, let alone reproduce it or use it in defense of us.” Yet her hands rose and I saw the power of her magical working—what the mundane and lazy, including myself, called a spell—as it sparkled from her fingers and raced to every window and door, building up the ward in the most probable weak places.
“Molly, you don’t have a circle,” Alex said softly.