I looked at the marble column closest to us and watched little stardusts flicker over it. “The gold and marble are a little much, but it is beautiful. I know so little of Valeris,” I murmured. “The Second Layer only highlights his downfall and the Third Layer whispers about him like a fallen god.”
Axer looked down at me briefly, keeping his gaze mostly focused on the moot between rock and the book he couldn’t see. “Valeris was a showman. Tales say that he was just as serious-minded and caring as the rest of your breed, but he understood the value of perception. And he made a lot of friends in high places.” He ran a finger along a buckle on his chest and I could see magic spark, ready. “Of course, they all died with him. Took the brightest minds of the Third Layer out in one fell swoop. But he was quite the hit at parties, they said.”
I grimaced. Great.
“I can only imagine what it was like, though.” He looked up at the ceiling, his gaze distant. “What they saw before they died. They wouldn’t have even felt that death. Only the wonder.”
I touched his arm and let my magic connect.
He inhaled a gasp. Gaze already glued to the ceiling as it changed to my view—watching as a galaxy was born, cosmic events swirling in endless lines and patterns around it. Endless possibilities and explorations. I reached out with my other hand and grabbed Constantine’s.
He didn’t inhale at all. I looked over and saw that he was staring at me instead, gaze indecipherable. Then he looked upward, and I saw his lips part. Magic fluttered over his eyes in a pattern almost too quick to see.
Both pulled away, and their fingers went to their eyes.
“What a rush.” Axer’s hand moved to his forehead. The magic fluttering over his gaze steadied into a slower pattern, then stopped. He touched his nose and the suddenly dripping blood there disappeared.
“Oh my god.” I reached for him, but he waved me off.
“Worth the ride,” he said.
Constantine’s nose was bloody too, and I stared at them aghast. I started to step back, but Constantine caught me before I could complete the motion, hand clamping around my upper arm, waves of calm running through his fingers and into my skin.
“As Alexi said, worth the ride. Do not worry over being exceptional, darling.”
“You’re bleeding.”
He waved a hand and his face was once more immaculate. “And now I’m not.”
“I can see the book,” Axer said, gaze affixed on it.
“As can I,” Constantine said. “Hopped up on Ren’s magic as we are. And her magic is back—nearly cleaned even. Interesting, don't you think?”
Axer’s calculating gaze lifted to the ceiling. “Not many know the true aim of the experiments Valeris was running. The speculation was that he was trying to get humanity off Earth. To deal with the population crises that the Second, Third, and Fourth Layers had started to worry about back then. To explore the unknown far from where the magic as we know it in the layer system reaches.”
I frowned. “You think that’s what happened that day? An experiment to leave Earth gone wrong?”
We were all made of elements. I looked up. Of stars. All the same elements, but in different combinations and concentrations across the galaxy. Therefore, magic must exist beyond Earth. It would make sense that we’d somehow be able to travel using it.
“I don’t know.” He looked around with my magic filling his eyes. “Valeris is seen as a grandiose eccentric now more than anything. The pertinent piece to present day policy isn’t what he was doing but that whatever it was, the experiment failed. Badly.”
So badly it had killed millions of people and devastated an entire layer for 70 years.
Guard Rock padded back. I scooped him up on my shoulder.
Guard Rock motioned at the book again, his pencil making the gesture at the side of my view.
The book tentatively hopped a step closer. There was no writing anywhere on its cover. An untitled book was unusual. And there was something otherly about it. Like it held a concept too large to comprehend.
“You know this book,” I murmured to him.
Guard Rock tapped an affirmative against my shoulder with the eraser end of his pencil.
The book hopped a step closer, looking nervously at the boys. I touched the undersides of their arms carefully with my fingers. “They won’t hurt you,” I said to it.
Constantine raised an eyebrow.
But the book was looking between where we were physically connecting, and it hopped another step—this one a little more eagerly.
“I can’t see a title,” Constantine said. “What do you see on its cover?”
I shook my head slowly. “It’s blank. Or maybe not blank—there's something otherworldly about it—but without a visual concept that makes sense, the way something that is incomprehensible might appear.”
Axer shifted, his attention sharpening in the way it did when danger was near. “Hunters are here,” he said. “They have one of the Origin Elite. They just broke through an entrance in a courtyard below. We have five minutes.”
Axer pulled the new portal pad from his cloak. We’d get ten more minutes somewhere else, and then another ten—a series of endless jumps until we could find a safe port. Maybe.
The book hopped forward frantically, then motioned at me, then at the seal. Then it reached forward with a tentative corner.
I let go of the boys and reached out slowly, and made contact.
An image of protection and hidden worlds bloomed, then one of my magic swirling down the hole in the floor. My breath caught. The book hopped the last foot closer, anxiously, its spine twisting a bit as if listening to something in the distance. It opened its covers and a staircase built itself upon the page, tunneling downward.
I extended my fingers toward it. They were suddenly gripped in a larger hand.
“No,” Constantine said, staring at the book with both distrust and a sharp, darkly-edged interest.
Guard Rock leaped from my shoulder. Constantine reached out to grab him with his free hand, but like a cliff jumper entering crisp water, Guard Rock had already become part of the page. His small legs pumped down the papered staircase and out of sight.
“Stupid rock.” Constantine frowned fiercely at the book, gripping me more tightly as if expecting me to jump in next.
“The book said it will help us. Protect us,” I said.
“And we are going to beli—”
“We have no time.” Axer touched a finger covered in magic to the book’s edge and the book stiffened. “If we enter, can we leave at will?”
It stiffly dipped the top of its spine.
Axer handed the portal pad to Constantine. “If I don’t return in ten seconds, go.”
Constantine’s hand let go of mine and planted itself on his roommate’s chest, eyes dark with irritation, before Axer could step inside. He shoved the pad back into Axer’s hand.