The Conservatory of Ten sealed shut.
A possum backflipped neatly onto a branch.
The book pulled harder in the sucking whirlwind of a storm, pulling on my magic—my very being. Flipping each tile back into place, resetting each section, each animal, each magic, reading me and reversing the way that I had pulled it.
“No!” Stavros shouted as the book returned everything to its rightful place.
Except for me. For I had no place to go.
And I was… God, I was dangerous. Too dangerous.
I readied myself to release the boys. To do whatever I needed at the end. Guard Rock dove down the back of my cloak, embedding himself in the spells woven too closely around me, and I brokenly regretted that he was too close to send to safety.
“Flip the tile, Ren,” Axer commanded. Their papers and protections pulled into their cloaks.
I couldn’t. I had to end this. To be here until the last pull of the book signified the end. “Let go,” I whispered.
“No.” Constantine threw a cat’s cradle at Kaine’s reaching hand and his shadows shrieked as the strings ignited around his shadowed fingers, tying them together.
I couldn't flip the boys without taking myself, too. There were too many ties between the three of us for me to separate us this close.
I could feel the pull grow tighter—the book was almost done. I could see Kaine again, wearing Stavros' enraged face as he watched the book undo all my terrible work. He looked at me and held up Kaine's shadowed hand.
“Let go!” I tried to shake them loose, but my magic was under the book’s control, fixing the world.
Brilliant ultramarine, turquoise and copper connections bored into my heart. “Flip. Us,” Axer demanded.
Black magic jetted toward us as Ori sucked in the entirety of the tornado's whirlwind. Parchment burst around us as I pulled both boys and the imperial leather spine into my arms, and forced us through the earth.
Chapter Eleven: Commencing in 3...2...1...
We landed in a knotted mass in the atrium of the Western Territories' compound with a crack of at least one broken rib a piece.
Five layers of the earth shuddered, then stilled.
An object cracked the stone floor next to me. Five pieces of burnt paper fluttered down next to it. Ori lay dormant on the ground, pages splayed in the least regal way I had ever seen from it.
Its pages were blank.
“No, no, no.”
Tears falling, rage irreparably broken, I fought halfway free of the boys and pulled the book toward me.
I pressed the healing magic I had stashed in the wards over the past few weeks against the book. But the abundance pooled on top.
Empty. The book didn’t stir.
Healing magic flowed from my hands, and pulsed everywhere around me. Patterns and paint and possibilities appeared, but my mind was blank and broken on how to use it to fix this. I pressed my hands against the book, dragging my fingers down its pages, trying to inject the fibers. But the magic simply spilled over the edge like water poured over wax.
“Not that I don't enjoy your body pressed against mine, darling, but I’m going to require a stomach transplant as well, if your kneecap continues carving it from my body.”
I disentangled myself completely, wheezing as I completed the cracking of another rib in the process. But as soon as I was free, I turned shaking fingers overflowing with magic against Constantine's fibula and the fracture I could feel there, as well as Axer’s broken ankle. The magic reached into the air like a mushroom cloud, spilling down to fix their ailments.
Axer gently cut off my flow of magic to him before the magic touched the multitude of stab wounds he possessed.
No, of course. Why was I trying to…? It was dangerous healing Kaine’s strikes, as one risked sealing the shadows inside.
My thoughts jumbled, and I turned the entire flow to Constantine, who was a mass of bruises and internal ruptures. His eyes were shut tight, and he was mentally walled, as if he was thinking unpleasant thoughts.
He cut off the healing magic from me with far more force, making me stutter on the cold floor as the magic abruptly curled into the air, sparking, with nowhere else to go.
I couldn’t be trusted. Magic whispered from every corner about all the ways I could use it.
I clutched the book. Untrustworthy.
Axer was unsteadily pressing a cloth against each stab wound. Each time he pulled the cloth away, another shadow pulled free, snapping to the cloth where they wriggled in a half-Velcroed fashion.
Infected because of me.
“Does that get rid of the shadow entirely?” It hurt to speak, but it hurt more to think about the infection eating him away from the inside. I held the empty book against my midsection, magic pooling uselessly around it and me, like a cape of curling smoke.
This was why it was better to fight alone.
“Yes.” He winced, as a shadow the length of a sword popped free. “Worth the time we spent developing it spring term.” The words weren’t just addressed to me.
I looked at Constantine “You and Axer?” I wheezed.
Constantine jabbed two fingers against my sternum. “Fix your ailments. So help me, I’m going to murder you.” Magic sucked from the cloud surrounding me to the point of contact, then through my sternum out to my ribs.
My ribs knit back together, and I took a gasping breath. I felt him grab something in my brain—a point that controlled healing—and set the rest of the channeled magic free in a whirl that swirled out all the way to my hair, fingers, and toes, fixing everything wrong in my body according to some health map that existed in my subconscious mind.
“Trying to fix everyone else while you sit half dead,” he said darkly. “Trying to save everyone but yourself.” Lips tight, he fished out a bottle of elixir and drained it. He shuddered as it did whatever it was supposed to.
Trying to save everyone? I had nearly ended the world.
I sat with empty hands clasped around an empty book, restored to empty, full health.
Axer stuffed the shadow-writhing cloth into a Level 10 jar and sealed it, then let both the jar and his head fall against the floor as he painfully healed the rest of the injuries, closing each in turn, fingers pulling magic from the compound through the channels he had clearly identified as mine.
A cat meowed, and I could feel Guard Rock digging around under my fitted cloak, trying to inch his way out. Safe. The book would have been happy that Guard Rock was safe.
I looked at its blank pages, wiping my eyes against my shoulders.
“Breaking News” appeared on hundreds of holos lining the walls.
“Today, the Origin Mage tried to destroy the world,” a reporter announced.
With Ori cradled in my arms, I stared numbly at the wall. I stared at the millions of atoms of magic that made up every piece and component of the compound’s wall.