Magic blew through me like a thing of smoke and fury, and a stream of glowing, ultramarine paint ejected from Constantine’s forehead onto the shadow. The shadow hissed and sizzled, flailed and staggered, then seeped into the dirt like the Wicked Witch after being doused in water.
My brain scrambled for a moment, but there wasn't time to think. Four praetorians swooped toward Axer as Kaine thrust another shadow spike toward his chest. I used the magic gushing through me to pull the paint from the fibers of the anti-Kaine paper and cast them out in a splatter of Pollock-like flare.
Kaine evaded it, but the other shadows dropped, twitching to the sand, their human forms convulsing as their shadows coiled and attempted to seep inside their hosts again. Another four took their comrades place, and four more swept behind.
“There are more, Origin Mage. There will always be more. You can’t defeat the shadows even in the sun.”
“We’ll see.”
“Excellent,” a horrible voice said from the man on my right, features dripping to form another set. “Cast out the weak, Origin Mage. Thin our forces to only those that deserve to be my guards.”
“Sacrificing people is your gambit.” I shot viridian paint at Stavros’s host. The body dropped but Stavros’s face appeared on another.
“Our gambit soon, I think.”
Kaine and Axer moved at uncommon speed. Their fight was almost too fast to process. Three shadows were swooping around them, waiting for their chance to attack. Constantine was trying to help, while not moving from my side. But even I wasn’t certain how to help without taking both out.
“I have to thank you, Miss Crown, for your lovely hand delivery of three ferals. The first, trussed and waiting for us with stars in her eyes.”
Chilled water rushed from the top of my head down my spine to settle ice cold in my stomach. “No.”
“And the boy with such a special skill set—one that we might not have secured without your help according to the eyes I had on scene. He will make a formidable ally, if I twist those skills and decide to let him live. And the girl who killed her brother. Power there. And so much emotion. Delicious, it will be to digest.”
Constantine’s hand wrapped around my elbow, alarm striking through him like a lightning bolt, as he channeled our entire community. I pushed away the group magic like I was swatting a fly, focused only on Stavros’s parasite.
A media report resounded through the air.
“The Department has rescued six of the twelve Awakening mages. The Department secured three of them at the site where the Origin Mage illegally and irresponsibly pushed them, likely planning to consume their magic later. The damage toll—”
I pinched the report dead with a shake of the layer. “No.”
I had assured Rosaria it would be okay.
Stavros smiled. “You have a particular affinity for returning to the same places over and over. Do you seek solace? Comfort? Home? Weakness. Makes tracking you disgustingly simple. But you think yourself powerful enough not to worry. And what do a few ferals matter?” He shrugged. “Not at all. A winning mindset. I must say I'm pleased.”
Unwittingly, I had shoved them right into the Department's net. The hunters had probably stood there waiting for the next to appear before trussing, tagging, and taking—or disposing—of them. Like they had with Christian.
The image of the siblings clutching each other blighted my view.
“We’ll get the girl’s brother, too. She might survive a few days’ more in her present circumstances, and watching us work over her brother—well, mental torture is the best kind.”
Blackness swirled inside me.
“No.” Darkness, rage, certainty.
Stavros smiled. “Oh yes.”
I thrust Constantine through the air and into Axer’s chest with enough magical force to send them both skidding fifty feet away from Kaine.
“Ren, don't—”
Then sent the ground beneath them whirling through flipped space—taking Axer and Constantine far away. The book dove between the layers as the layer broke and shifted around me. Beneath my feet, the sand shifted and trembled. Fifteen shadows dove at me simultaneously, and I pulled.
The Second Layer Sahara was nothing like the Fourth Layer Sahara—overflowing with nightmarish creatures living under the sand and creeping through its individual particulates to invade new hosts—but it held a few nightmares that the non-magical desert did not.
And no longer was I limited to dealing with a single layer. Not anymore.
I smiled grimly and flipped a section of the Fourth Layer into the Second—like a Midlands tile that was being reordered.
A giant lizard with wings erupted from the tiled dune, roaring and diving toward a praetorian, then another hit the empty sand near Kaine, who swirled into the shadows of a cactus as the lizard gave chase.
“Is that it, Origin Mage?” Stavros appeared on the face of another praetorian. “Is that all you have?”
“You will die,” I said. “I will not let you live.”
I pulled at the layer again, making it wave along its axis, pulling the bright spots the wyrm dragons called home in the Fourth Layer toward our position. I couldn't call the animals to me directly, but I could influence their environment—the magic upon which they relied, and the paths upon which they traveled.
Wyrms gravitated toward the hottest sunspots in their wretched desert sands to coil and nest. A few showed up occasionally in the Midlands and Axer had long ago taught me about them. Run from the hottest points in the sand, as those are always nest markers.
I pulled the heat signature. Home is here.
The wyrms immediately followed the magic.
And as soon as they were within range, I obliterated the bright spots, turning their feeling of home into feelings of rage. Someone had taken their nests, and I had pointed them straight at us.
They burst through the sand in a flurry of terrifying teeth and horrible shrieking sounds. Razor-blade scales ripped through the concrete as one grabbed a praetorian, then another was caught in the teeth of another.
Stavros face flipped from one screaming guard to another, and with each one, I remade the layer—leading the wyrms on a rage-filled quest to devour the intruders.
The rage ran through me as I took out each one.
A decrepit, delighted sound emerged from his throat. “Do you think I inserted my soul? Only the na?ve think that giving their soul will return something lost to them,” he said with a pointed, cruel smile.
No, not death. I'd unmake him.
Tiles from landscapes in each layer of the world lifted and flipped in a blizzard of destruction—trees ripping from one, water and sea creatures splashing from another, desert vistas churned, skyscrapers broke, memorial buildings collapsed inward, four-headed beasts, creatures, beings, and plant life swirled, all with living mountain zephyrs fueling the surge.
Strands of hair swirled around me in lashes of brown and red as power cascaded everywhere in electrified bolts.