I worked on the glass film and dolls until my eyes started to cross and Neph was leading me to the “nest.”
We passed Will and Mike, who were engaged in an intense conversation inside a constructed hologram of their room. Will was sharing memories en masse. “I know you are worried. Whenever you need a good memory, take one of mine,” he said. “Full access. If I know it, you know it.”
“Your family—”
“I don't know where they went.” Will smiled sadly. And I heard what he didn't say—It's better that I don't know.
Mike closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. “We'll get them all back.”
“I don't want—”
“Stop.”
Will looked down and nodded, swallowing roughly. He deliberately didn't look up as Neph and I passed—deliberately staying walled in the facsimile of their room. When he looked back up at Mike, he was determined.
“Take the memories. Look, I have this one from Ren's birthday party. Olivia karate chopped my arm and Neph, Ren, and I all ended up in a pile in the hall. Oh, and Ren's mom hit me over the head with a broom the time before that. And Ren carried me around in a paper where—”
I could see the memory of it as he displayed it to Mike—with Will's papered view of dropping from the window, going on adventure, and heading back, all while he was strapped to my chest. I could see the street signs and house numbers as we jogged past. 257 Maple Avenue was even in the right spot—not as I had last seen it, flying through a tornado.
I looked over to see Patrick watching it all through narrowed eyes—a book on broken bonds hovering nearby. Saf, who was working memories into a pair of his own augmented reality glasses, clasped his hand on his roommate's shoulder. Patrick allowed it for a moment, then shrugged it off and stalked over to the other side of the room, the book following in his wake.
“You want to know if he's okay?” Saf asked me, as Neph and I drew nearer. Saf's eyes remained on his task. Eight completed game controllers sat on the table next to him.
“No. I know he's not okay.” I knew what it was like to have a brother attacked. “Can we do anything, though?”
“I don't know,” Saf murmured.
“I don't like this.”
Saf looked up and his gaze gentled. He gave me a sympathetic glance. “That's why we are willing participants—above and beyond it being the right thing to do. Thought you knew that, Crown.”
I looked at the memories he was weaving together, along with the echoes of our bonds, just as Neph and Constantine had done for me. “I don't like sacrifice,” I whispered.
He didn't say anything for a moment. “We are all called to moments when we have to choose.” He twisted one memory around another. “When we have to decide between easy and hard. And sacrifice should never be easy, Crown. But sometimes it has to be made.”
*
By the next afternoon, Neph and Ramirez were finished with their project and ready to set everything in place with Camille and Delia to one side, Green and Lifen to the other, and Lox and Adrabi helping secure the ends. Suggestion, duplication, illusion, hidden, metal device, righteous belief...
Constantine was finishing the null cuffs and control devices with Will, Asafa, Patrick, Loudon, Dagfinn, and Mike.
Axer had been working with them, but when I was shooed away to paint, he detached himself and came with me.
I removed a canvas. Axer pulled a club chair into existence.
“You got stuck on apocalypse duty? Makes the most sense of anyone.”
“Stuck? Hardly.” He let himself slouch down, his head on the back of the chair, looking up at the domed ceiling. I didn't look up. I knew what I'd see. More imposters wearing Christian’s face, trying to find us. “Watching you paint is a rare treat.”
I twirled the brush in my fingers. “You are going to like the monsters I make.”
“Of course. You'll have made them.”
My cheeks warmed. He was still looking at the ceiling, but I saw him smirk.
I sighed and opened my paints.
I looked at my paints, at my brush, at the canvas, waiting for the overwhelming urge to overtake me.
I'd been shooed over here, but I felt no need to paint. I wanted to paint. But I hadn't needed to paint since...
“It's all of you,” I said softly, looking around. “Of course...”
Axer looked up.
The desperate urges had gotten better with Constantine. Better again with Axer joining us. Better when we'd hooked into everyone, then when Constantine had regenerated every connection, and settling fully when everyone was together.
I shook my head and looked back at the canvas. And let it come.
Let it flow from my brush—the hopes, the dreams, the fears, the plans, the connections, the crippling terror of Stavros. Victory. Defeat.
It swirled in a mass from my brush onto the canvas in glittering silvers and golds, exploding everywhere on the surface until I was gasping with the effort.
And then Axer was next to me, pulling his finger through a line of silver that signified him.
“What, I, how did you—?”
He gently turned my chin, forcing my eyes to follow the direction of my head. The contents of the entire room were swirling in a funnel around us. Guard Rock's limbs were splayed out as he swooped around and around. Books were fiercely flying through the currents like big wave surfers who had finally caught the swell they'd been waiting for.
Every single mage inside was staring, mouth agape, eyes lit by the flashing gold and silver lights. Except Constantine, who was smiling and Axer, who looked triumphant.
“So connected you didn't even realize,” Axer's voice was strangely soft, as opposed to the harsh tornadic wind forming the background beat of the room. “Look at this. Effortless.”
The magic streamed from me in patterns that all hooked together. Everything made sense in the swirl, and the beauty of it vied with what it had taken to create it. What had been needed to bring me to this point. The swirl caught more speed with my emotion. “Did you see what I painted? Did you see what I might do?”
“Yes. And I can see you right now—lit up from the inside, creating world-ending magic like it was an easy broom sweeping enchantment.”
I thought of my earlier paintings, of the death and despair. The swirl turned darker. I thought of Kinsky's painting. Of the longing and loneliness.
“What the hell is going on?” Olivia demanded, picking herself up from where she'd just been ejected by Temporal Physics and Interdimensional Travel in the Physical Age. She'd been discussing last minute “things” with Marsgrove.
I jolted. Axer didn't move. But then, the number of times I had seen him surprised could be counted on one hand with fingers to spare.
“Ren is painting.”
“Ren is painting? What, the air?” She plucked Guard Rock from the tornado, tossing him safely onto the table. He landed on his feet and took two steps across the papers strewn on top, as if he was going to dive back in, but Olivia shot him a stern glare and he slumped his rock and sat. “What is going on?”