Constantine pulled the shimmering flap back into place in a reversal of movements.
My breath caught to see Raphael leaning against a tent directly opposite our position. Face half-hidden beneath the tilted brim, he smiled. The hummingbird buzzed his lazily circling hand.
My view of Raphael disappeared with the rest of Corpus Sun’s outer frontier, and the lack of magic inside the containment dome gripped me immediately.
It wasn’t like a control cuff, where magic was still available, just hard fought. This was like a null cuff—a null zone without magic at all. Even my ability to feel the boys was absent, even though they were right next to me.
I gripped my panic tightly. Raphael was outside; we were trapped within without magic. Keep going, keep going, Ren. I unhooked the control cuff, though it didn’t matter here whether I had it on or not. The null air around me provoked a numbness, like I'd never feel part of myself again.
The null field wasn't like the wards meant to alert others of our presence. No magic could be created within it. However, it was just that, a field—an unwanted dressing spread thinly on a sandwich, and we just needed to pass through it to find the deliciousness beneath.
As we approached the inner dome, light flashed around us in a sudden intensity that was stunning and purposefully disorienting. A barrier, thick and dangerous, swirled in front of me—full of magic, but not part of the zone.
I swallowed. You can do this. You can. Calm. Creation. Creation with purpose.
I opened my palm and let the rays of light touch the cradled marble. Let the touch unlock a light-filled doorway on the other side of the field. We quickly stepped through.
Into paradise.
Magic whooshed back fully into my control and immediately reached for the boys in a debilitating, almost violent relief. The control cuff slipped from my fingers. Axer caught it and me before I hit the ground.
After two days of travel with limited magic means and in such close quarters, my freed magic immediately sought the two of them and vice versa—filling me in on all the things I’d been missing—then spread to the world around us, already filled with my magic and bits of theirs.
A soaring sky rose in the center of the immense dome, the edges of the clouds and sky tapering gently downward to the ground.
Inside was just as I had imagined it in the pushes. Plants lush with new life spreading their fingers in all directions. Mushrooms and vegetables sprouting from the soft ground. Insects rising with the soil—awaiting predators.
It was a silent landscape, but one brimming with life and possibility.
Once opened, birds and small magical animals would migrate here. Then bigger animals. Then humans.
An Eden waiting to be filled.
The magic in the marble grew more vibrant, pushing against its constraints. I released the last vestiges of all that I had been collecting inside of it.
Magic rich with life lit every surface, glistening on the leaves and vines; on a beetle's wings.
Guard Rock leaped from my hood, and the cat landed on a synthetically-sunny patch of green.
Axer smiled, shook out his triceps, and let the magic he'd been holding inside slowly connect and recycle with the city dome in a long, slow exhale.
Constantine shivered and whispered my name. For once, his emotions were calm, not raging, as he, too, connected to the magic. Aching wonder and bitter triumph mixed with sadness. The dinginess that had been gathering along his skin—forming a muddy gray aura—peeled away.
I let relief override the unease I still felt over Raphael’s presence outside the dome. I let relief overtake the sorrow of what would happen now that the dome’s magic was activated—of what I had set in motion—this event spurring several others that I hadn’t disclosed ahead of time.
Let anyone try and take this relief from me now, though, I thought fiercely, watching the health of both boys renew along with their magic.
“How did you progress this far?” Axer asked, taking it all in with calculating eyes.
“The paintings. I’m not in full control of what I paint, but how it happens...well, I learned how to speed forward the natural cycle within the creation. A day in a minute, a week in an hour, a year in a day.” I let the marble roll around my palm as it spread its light on a sunflower growing, wilting, turning to seed, then growing again with a dozen companions, then a dozen more. Creation. The opposite of destruction. “I now just need to slow the flow. Bring it back to normal.” Root out the destruction.
If only I could do the same within me.
“Speed the natural cycle.” Constantine shrugged in feigned indifference. “No problem. Create a whole new world. Easy.”
I looked at the beetle. “But with the same materials. In the same vacuum that creation first encounters. You gave me those parameters.” For the Second Layer and for the First Layer.
Axer crouched down and dragged his finger through the earth beneath. “If you use too much oxygen or too little nitrogen… You could get dinosaurs. Giant insects. Fish-like beasts.”
I smiled at the marble, holding it up to the light of the sky—a reflection of the real one outside, bending around the null void. “Maybe we will in one of the domes. Couldn't that be marvelous?”
“No,” Constantine said shortly. “And I knew the moment you had me give you the composition of Excelsine's elements, what you planned. That doesn’t mean I think you owe any of this to anyone.”
“You said you didn’t promise anything, was that incorrect?” Axer asked, voice far too mild.
I watched the marble flicker as it released its last gusts. I let my hand slowly fall—memories and bargains swarming me.
“Show us, Origin Mage, show us where you have started.”
Half-formed sentences were immediately on my lips—it had only been a month, they should take the kids anyway, humanitarian laws should apply, I was barely more trained than the kids I was bringing in each day, why did it fall on me to save the world?
I held each tumbled, unsaid word in a breath against the roof of my mouth.
I opened my palm, letting magic swirl above the whorls in bubbled domes connected by lightning fast magical routes. “I propose this.”
I looked at the nearly empty marble, not Axer. “I never had to formally promise. I was going to fix everything. A little here, a little there. Steady. In a way not even the Second Layer could object. The Western Territory scientists have been monitoring the external progress here. I wanted to...prototype the internal before I showed anyone. Needed to know if I could do it. And with the layer shifts able to hide small things it seemed... Opportune.”
I let my shoulders slump. “Worrisome thoughts.”
“Your prototype is perfect.” Constantine felt heavy with a relief that wasn't just due to his magic being able to relax and connect without control.
I tilted my head at him. “I didn’t think you were that excited about this project. You never seemed to care about fixing the layer outside of the scientific.”