The regular praetorians fell before Kaine, whose magic fed all of them, and one by one they were sucked into the tornado of tiled change as I pulled sections from each layer to destroy Stavros and his puppets of death.
Kaine, in shadow form, flew between the bits and pieces of debris—flying against the world-ending current—strangely riding the currents. And when each remaining praetorian flew by, he opened his shadow-encased maw and swallowed the shadows coursing with my magic.
Energy rippled through him, making him grow, not in size, but in presence with each consumption.
It was horrific enough to pierce my veil of rage.
A stone statue struck him, cracking an arm, and Kaine fought to right himself, smile growing, as he landed unsteadily. “Soon, I will have enough of your magic to make me an Elite. We will have real fun then.”
Stavros flickered across his features. “Rafi was always such an astute pupil.”
“You don't get to call him that,” I said tightly, opening my palm. A remnant feather of the hummingbird tattoo Greyskull had given me fluttered fiercely across my skin.
Stavros smiled. “I can call him whatever I want. He's mine. As you will be. Friendless, overpowered, and alone.”
“Like you?” I flipped our positions, disgorging myself into the layer space behind Kaine, and plunged the tattoo like a knife into his back.
He shrieked, and shadows spewed from his mouth. Rage and pleasure filled me.
The separating shadows dove toward me.
I grabbed the tile before me, spinning it downward to trade with the first point that came to mind—because what difference did familiarity make now?
It made a lot of difference, I discovered a half second later when Axer and Constantine reappeared on the flip side of the tile. I stared at them in horror and channeled magic a second too late to flip them back. The two were already diving for me.
“No, no, no!” I said, trying to twist and bend, to whoosh them away—stirring the blizzard into a tornado.
Bursting with malevolence and power, Kaine converged on them from behind. And I could see the moment where Axer was forced to choose—from hiding his magic signature to giving up the ghost. He rotated in the air and shot Kaine into the tornado as Constantine tackled me to the ground.
“Ah, Alexander Dare. With a logged signature. Lovely, lovely to see you here, my boy,” Stavros said, grotesque features alight with pleasure, his decomposing face whirling through the tornadic destruction attached to Kaine's breaking shadows. “Aiding the Origin Mage in destroying the world. Probably with the goal to take her to your island for a bit of experimenting. What a Bridge Mage could do with an Origin Mage...” His voice was filled with pleasure. “I’ll know soon. Just as I know the powers of all Awakened mages.”
Rage. White and blistering. “You killed my brother.”
“An unfortunate occurrence in one way, and yet at the same time—look at you. Do you think you would have achieved this type of power if you hadn't stolen it from your dead twin?”
Nausea rose swiftly, and paint bubbled up from my throat and over my lips.
“Oh, poor thing,” he said with perfectly executed, false empathy. “Archelon got the whole sad story from dear Rafi when they merged. Do you prefer to think that your brother gave you his magic? His magic remade you.”
“He’s lying,” Constantine yelled harshly in my ear.
Stavros smiled. “Am I? I Awakened your brother. And I killed him.” He leaned forward. “You’re welcome.”
The world turned black.
Symbols flashed across my vision. I grabbed for one and broke it. Paint—every drop of it that had been gathering inside of me—burst forth, coating the world. Stavros would die.
Two sets of familiar hands banded around my wrists. Magic flowed through Constantine and Axer to me—magic from our entire community—but there was something broken in it—as if the circuit was almost complete, but not quite, and that meant their magic and manipulations couldn't stand up to mine.
“No, Ren. Revert it,” Axer commanded, his normal ready state overtaken by urgency. His cloak started to sizzle as paint ate through it.
“I will end him,” I spit, yanking at the hands and magic holding me.
Stavros smiled. “Commencing the first part of the operation.”
Axer threw back his head, throwing off his hood, and his ultramarine gaze, uncloaked completely by the loss of the magic protecting his identity, bored into mine. “And with it the world. The world is breaking, Ren.”
He pressed a paint streaked palm against my forehead and I could feel the agony beneath his skin. He had a dozen shadow-filled stab wounds and necrotizing magic was eating away beneath.
“Look.”
I looked around me, and it was as if I were seeing the devastation through new eyes. The sign of a First Layer home flipped by me—257 Maple Avenue. We had a Maple Avenue around the corner from my high school.
A tiny mote of horror seeped around the edges of my rage.
But my horror was not enough to assuage the deep blinding hatred that had been building in me for months and those emotions separated—breaking out and away. My fury was a living, livid thing in the tornado of hell exploding around us. My magic wanted Stavros to die. Even if it meant that everything else followed.
I didn't know how to calm such fury. I had accepted the death of my brother. Accepted that he would no longer be with me in this life. But his murderers...
The ones that were murdering ferals? They had to pay.
“You will kill us all,” Axer said calmly, eyes the same hue as they’d been the night my brother died. He pushed the images of all my friends across a connection that he was pulling from Constantine—a connection that had never been stronger. Alexander was weaving the connections into a thick rope instead of a multitude of separate threads. “Rage has a price.”
I sobbed.
“You have to decide.”
“Weakness,” Stavros spit. “Your friends will be the first thing I rid you of.”
Constantine looked at me calmly, resignedly, like he had long anticipated this and was ready for this death. The edges of the tornado sucked in closer, licking at his skin, pulling at it, ready to deconstruct.
The sob caught in my throat.
I didn't know how to stop what I had started. But there was something that did—something that was removed from my emotions.
As soon as I pulled, Ori came streaming through the whirlwind—papered wingtips catching the edges of all the tiles. It looked down at me, then looped backward and dove sharply through the funnel, pulling the entire storm down with it, open pages flaring skyward as its spine angled toward me, sucking magic from me in a violent pull.
Reverse.
It drew each tile, animal, and piece of the world that I had mismanaged against one of its page tips, mixing it with a splatter of paint, before casting it like a whirling frisbee through slits in the layers that opened like scattershot holes blown through a target.
Crelobsters plunged into blood red oceans glimpsed through a resealed tear.
Wyrms dove into the boiling sunsands to rejoin their offspring.
Banyontees replanted themselves in starlit glens.
The Great Pyramid reconstructed itself.