The Beginning After The End

Chapter 444: A Sword Struck

My sword, conjured of pure aether and held together by my will alone, plunged into the interwoven threads of aether around me.

Revealed by the God Step godrune, the network of amethyst paths connected every point to every other point around me—through the aetheric realm, I had learned from the last djinn projection. The godrune had changed when I made that realization, and the knowledge had sat dormant in the back of my mind ever since, a deepening of insight but without a clear use.

Until the moment of necessity when I had no choice but to translate knowledge into action.

My senses flowed through the aether, the paths, the in-between space that connected everything together.

I saw Cecilia, the final vestiges of her last attack still burning the atmosphere between us, the many-armed silhouette of mana wrapped around the body she’d taken from Tessia. And Nico beside her, his uncertain gaze drifting between us, his hand reaching for her shoulder but not daring to touch her.

The aether blade plunged deeper into the lightning-bolt network of aether.

I saw Draneeve, his unconscious form curled up beneath a chunk of fallen stone from the roof, his shattered mask in the rubble at his side, and Mawar, the inky shield clinging to her flesh not able to hide the steady flow of blood from her hips, and Melzri in front of her, her bloodshot, blood-colored eyes slicing through the air like her blades as she moved focus from me to Sylvie’s back.

The pathways drew my strike into themselves, guiding it through space itself.

I saw the collection of mana particles shrouding the figure in the shadows of the twisted and broken ceiling, the threads of mana under her control spilling across the chamber and down on Sylvie and Chul like probing fingers in their brains.

The blade struck home, and a scream rent the air.

Each point, connecting each other point. The connective tissue of this world, the aetheric realm. A strike delivered from one space but falling in another.

A beam of violet light hovered for an instant in the air. Shadows rippled, and Viessa formed around it, the blade sprouting out of her sternum. She coiled in on herself like a spider, her scream cutting out just as sharply as it had sounded, but her mouth remained open, her silent cry somehow even worse than the banshee wail. As she writhed, waves of purple hair rose up around her face like a ghostly nimbus.

I pulled the blade free, and it retracted back through the aetheric paths, sliding out of her body so that she plummeted to the ground.

Cecilia and Nico had both glanced toward the source of the scream. Mezlri was frozen in place, horrified and transfixed as she watched the other Scythe bounce off the crumbling tiles. The only noise for a handful of heartbeats was the crackling of phoenix fire.

Despite the blood matting her hair to her head from where Chul had struck her, the pieces of Sylvie’s confused mind slid smoothly back into rhythm with the illusion spell broken. She lunged forward to grab Chul’s arm. His face was slack, his eyes glazed over, and he did not fight her as she jerked him out of the way as Cecilia sent twin blades of mana slicing down toward them.

“Cecilia!” I shouted, unleashing an aetheric blast from my open palm.

Nico dodged to the side, but Cecilia took the blast head on, aether rippling over the surface of the mana condensed around her. With one mana-formed hand, she waved away the last vestiges of the blast like smoke. Still, her attention snapped back to me, her spell slicing deep into the floor but missing my companions.

I let the point of my sword dip toward the ground, but my knuckles were white as I gripped the aetheric handle. “Enough of this.” I looked up from my blade, my gaze hard. “Cecilia, come with me. I’ll try to find a way to separate you and Tessia.”

She scoffed, her cheeks turning bright red, her lips twisted in a disbelieving sneer. “As if I could be so easily swayed—or tricked. You are a liar, Grey, and a bad one.”

Behind her, Nico’s mouth half opened. He hesitated, his throat working dryly, then finally said, “We should hear Arthur out…his insights into aether surpass even the dragons. Maybe he can—”

Cecilia cut him off. “Don’t be fooled.” It was Cecilia’s turn to hesitate. Her eyes flicked from Nico to me, then back again. “He's the one that killed me, remember?”

I couldn’t help but let out a dry, humorless laugh. “Has your mind twisted your memories after all of these years or did Agrona do that for you?” Speaking to Nico, I continued, unable to mask the bitterness in my tone. “The hatred you have for me—the reason you’ve strived so hard to destroy everything I cherish—was based on a lie. I wasn't the one who killed Cecilia. She—”

“Shut up!” Cecilia screeched, the blistering emotion in her voice so raw that it stunned Nico and me both.

“So…” I started, realization dawning slowly, “it isn’t that you didn't remember…but you’ve chosen to lie to and manipulate the only man that has ever loved you—”

Like a sudden hot breath on the back of my neck, black wind slammed into me from behind. A pent-up scream exploded into the air, oozing fury and loss.

I spared a quick glance back, squinting against the storm of void wind.

Melzri was kneeling next to Viessa, the other Scythe’s limp body pulled into her arms. She was rocking back and forth, her mouth half open, disbelief and horror written in every line of her face. The void wind was spilling out of her, a physical manifestation of her grief.

Then her eyes met mine, and she seemed to collapse into herself, the scream becoming a snarl, all that tension exploding downward as she dropped the corpse and leaped into the air, one blade gripped in both hands and trailing soul fire like a dark flag.

Black wind buffeted me, pushing dust and smoke into my eyes, coiling around my limbs and throat, entangling in my hair and attempting to pull me off balance. Tendrils of Cecilia’s mana wove in and around Melzri’s, reinforcing the spell and holding it against my influence.

I felt the regalia imprinted halfway up her spine activate as she channeled mana into it. Mana condensed from the atmosphere and into her spells. Her body swelled with it, hardening and strengthening. The sword blazed darker, the flames roaring ten feet up from the blade. The wind’s claws sharpened, digging deeper and harder. Cold white flames licked her body, a thousand candle flames burning from her pores as her body overloaded on mana.

Aether burst throughout my hips, spine, shoulders, and arms, instantly bringing my blade up into a defensive position with enough power to rip through the clutching wind. The Burst Strike delivered all its potency directly into the center mass of her weapon.

With a gust, the soul flames puffed out like a candle. Steel shrieked, and the sword exploded, sending a shrapnel of broken metal spraying across the throne room. Melzri’s arm wrenched unnaturally, and something inside cracked and splintered.

Her momentum carried her past me, where she stumbled and fell to her knees, clutching her broken hand and arm with the other.

Mana condensed around her, scooping her up and carrying her away from me. “Go,” Cecilia said. “You are no more use here.”

I could have stopped her, could have followed Melzri and struck her and her retainer down before she could withdraw the tempus warp from her dimension artifact, but I had a feeling whatever punishment that Agrona would deal out in response to their failure here would be worse than the quick death I could offer.

As the tempus warp wrapped Melzri, Mawar, and Viessa’s body in mana and pulled them away, I let it happen.

Mana was already coiling around Cecilia, preparing to strike, but Nico flew between us. I was surprised when he turned his back to me. “What did Grey mean just now?” he asked Cecilia.

“It’s all in the past,” she answered, jaw tight and eyes flaring. “It’s not what’s important now—or for the future!”

“I never murdered Cecilia!” I snapped, my ire rising.

Nothing about Cecilia’s or Nico’s actions made sense to me. Nico had apparently made himself a weapon for an evil tyrant purely to revive his dead love, but then he had allowed her to be turned into a weapon as well—a fate identical to that of her last life, which she had killed herself on my blade to escape. In return, she hadn’t even told him the truth and seemed to be using his hatred of me to continue to fuel this confrontation.

He had reached out to me, hadn’t he? Sent me Sylvia’s mana core as a token and a plea so I would help Cecilia—how, I had no idea—but he’d made no effort to stem the violence of this confrontation.

“Liar. I watched as your blade went through her, Grey!” he yelled, bobbing up and down in the air, the mana vibrating around him in agitation.

Cecilia slashed her hand in the air, and I dodged as mana gouged through the floor like a giant scythe blade. “This isn’t even about what happened on Earth! Nico, Agrona wants Grey’s core. That’s it! Grey doesn’t matter anymore, he’s just a road bump between us and getting exactly what you want, don’t you see?”

Before Nico could respond, the mana around Cecilia surged. Thousands of fist-sized chunks of rubble jumped up into the air, flying high above our heads. In an instant, they were burning bright orange, heated from within by her power. I saw what was coming before it happened.

Shield yourself! I sent to Sylvie.

The dark sky was alight with ten thousand new stars. Then the stars began to fall.

Burning meteors punched through what little remained of the ceiling and burst against the floor all around me. The throne room vanished in a cloud of dust and the heat-haze afterglow of a thousand burning projectiles streaking the air.

I sensed more than saw the swelling of mana around Sylvie and Chul as the first of the meteors struck them.

I dodged back from one meteor, pivoted as another glanced off my shoulder, then slipped into the woven paths of God Step to avoid a cluster of the projectiles.

The palace was crumbling, the air choked with heat and dust. My ears rang from the concussive blast of the meteor shower, and sulfur burned my nose and lungs.

The beating of wings sent gusts of wind billowing through the palace, carrying away the dust in large swirls and revealing a towering silhouette.

Dark scales reflected starlight and huge golden eyes glowered around at the wreckage. Sylvie’s graceful draconic neck lifted high toward the heavens, and she bared rows of fangs like swords. A long, serpentine tail shifted through the rubble, sending broken stone cascading into the many gouges ripped through the floor.

She gave a shake of her neck and wings, dislodging the meteors that had penetrated her mana shields to lodge in her scales.

Chul stepped out from her shadow, unhurt as he gazed up at the dragon in amazement.

The beating of Sylvie’s wings had revealed the full devastation of Cecilia’s spell. The entire center of the structure had been leveled; the throne room was all but gone, just a pit in the ground.

I felt a shift in the aether around me. The relic armor had left Sylvie when she transformed, and I could once again feel it tether to me. Touching that tether, I conjured the armor.

Cecilia gazed down at me in disappointment as the black scales feathered into being over my flesh. Beside her, Nico was pale and fidgeting nervously.

I held his dark eyes. “How do you expect me to help someone who doesn’t want it?” I asked, unconvinced he would respond. “Or was your message just meant to throw me off…”

“Message?” Cecilia snapped, looking sharply back over her shoulder at Nico. “What message?”

I wasn’t surprised that he hadn’t told her, but I seized on the opportunity to keep them both talking. “Nico sent me a gift and asked me to help you. He said I ‘owed you a life.’ Because you never told him what you did.” My tone grew sharper as I spoke, my anger burning just below the surface. “You killed yourself on my blade, Cecilia! Do you even remember why?”

She blanched, and I saw in her haunted gaze the memory of that moment, and I knew she remembered all too well.

“W-what?” Nico choked out.

Cecilia turned her back on me, reaching for Nico, although her fingers stopped just short of touching him. “It’s more complicated than that, I—”

“You knew they’d use him against you, Cecilia,” I cut in, unable to mask the frustration and bitterness in my voice. “You made me kill you because you knew there wasn’t any other way out, not for you, not for Nico. You died to protect him!” I scoffed, clenching my fists so hard that the bones ached. “Damnit, I don’t understand either of you. There is nothing to justify what you’re doing for Agrona—”

“Enough!” Cecilia screamed.

The word resounded throughout the ruined palace, growing louder and louder with each reverberation. The few remnants of structure around us collapsed. My hands clapped to my ears. I felt blood trickle from my nose. To my right, Chul leaned on his weapon, his arms wrapped around his head, his teeth bared like an animal. Above us both, Sylvie’s head lowered, her eyes closed against the punishing volume.

Taking a steadying breath, I reached for the mana with my aether. The manifestation was wild and uncontrolled, lacking the overpowering force of Cecilia’s focus. I broke it, and the noise faded away, leaving an echo ringing in my ears.

Cecilia had already turned back to Nico. “I’m sorry! I was afraid you were still under Agrona’s influence, and that something bad might happen if I told you.”

“It’s true?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper. “Grey didn’t—”

She shook her head, her body tense, her limbs pulling inward like she wanted to curl up into the fetal position.

Nico pulled away, aghast. “But I saw…”

“I’m sorry,” Cecilia repeated quietly. She waited for a moment, watching him carefully. “Does this mean your mind isn’t controlled by Agrona?”

Nico dragged his hands down his face. “Whatever he’d done to inflate my rage and bury the talents of my previous life leaked out of my core when Grey pierced it at the Victoriad.” His voice was flat, totally devoid of emotion. “But I knew what he’d done to your memories, Cecilia. I knew—I helped…and I thought you were still…” He hung his head, his staff dangling limply at his side. “I’m so sorry…”

They were completely engrossed in one another, their worlds having shrunk to the few feet around themselves in any direction. A cold, distant part of my mind—the piece of King Grey that I had resurrected to survive my trials in Alacrya—recognized the opportunity. A quick thrust of my aether blade and I could end the threat they each posed right there. Whatever Agrona planned for the Legacy made even Kezess Indrath fearful. Striking them both down would end that threat, and possibly the war.

After all, I hadn’t discovered some fatal flaw in Cecilia’s magic. Fighting her had brought me no closer to understanding how to separate Tessia and Cecilia. Tess was a warrior, no stranger to risking her life in the field of combat. She had been ready to die fighting in the dungeons beneath the Beast Glades, in the forests of Elenoir, in the city streets against Nico and Cadell…

She would understand. She would forgive me.

But could I ever forgive myself? I’d already denied myself the chance once, choosing to strike out at Viessa instead of Cecilia when the opportunity had presented itself. Did I really think I was prepared to end Tessia’s life alongside Cecilia’s?

“How can you be so certain?” Nico asked, his voice raising in frustration and drawing my attention back to them. “Because I don’t know anymore.”

After a beat of hesitation, Cecilia took Nico’s hands in her own. “Those are just the words of that awful Scythe sticking in your head. If Agrona can reincarnate us from across the universe—bring us into this world and make us powerful with only the resources he has now—why wouldn’t he be able to send us back with all the power of Epheotus at his disposal?”

There was a pause, and she dropped his hands, turning to look at me with dawning realization. “Is that why you took that dragon’s core? To ask Grey for help? You…want us to turn against Agrona?”

Nico’s pale face went even whiter. “No, of course not—”

“Grey can’t help us!” she shouted, her voice magically amplified but lacking the crushing resonance of her last sonic attack. “We’ve given everything to this, Nico, to Agrona. And we’re so close! Don’t let Grey manipulate you, he just wants his precious elf girl back. He’d kill me to get to her, you know he would.”

Nico also looked at me, frowning with confusion. “I…”

“Maybe I would,” I interjected honestly, my tone bitter cold. “I’m sorry I couldn’t save you back then, Cecilia. I was so engrossed in my stupid quest to reach the top—to be powerful enough to right the wrongs that happened to our home, to Headmaster Wilbeck—that I ignored everything else.”

The air between us changed, becoming charged with aether as I reached inward, pulling at all the strength and determination I could manifest. My gaze sharpened, aether swirling in response to this pull, as if it was acknowledging my will. All my focus and energy honed in on Cecilia. She stared back, those turquoise eyes hard and unyielding.

“And I'm sorry, Nico. I don't think I can do what you asked.”

God Step wrapped around me, and I appeared at Tessia's side, aetheric lightning racing across the scales of the relic armor. A blade shivered into being in my fist, poised to plunge into the hollow at the base of her throat.

Cecilia’s arms, both flesh and mana, flowed smoothly into position to block the strike, just as I’d anticipated.

Aether hardened beneath my foot, and I pushed off it with all the well-orchestrated force of Burst Step. The platform shattered, but not before I took the near-instant step to Nico, my arm moving faster than sight as I simultaneously activated Burst Strike.

Barrier after barrier of mana hardened the air between my blade and its target. Each one cracked and then shattered, one by one, the air between us bursting with showers of mana-like fireworks. The blade came down on Nico’s shoulder.

The last layer of mana surrounding him quaked, and Nico hurtled down into the rubble with a crash. A second later, I landed lightly next to the crater, my defenses already turning toward Cecilia.

The ruined palace burst into motion.

Cecilia, her eyes bulging as she stared down at the crater, and her mouth open in a silent scream, took hold of all the mana around us and dragged at it, pulling it to herself. Aether spilled from me in response, fighting to shield my companions from being drained in an instant.

Even as I warded her mana-draining spell, I felt mana condensing as she prepared a second attack.

A flash of bright orange flame drew my eye to Chul’s weapon as it flew like a meteor toward Cecilia.

All of her mana arms flowed around her, stopping the weapon midair.

It exploded into a golden fireball as a beam of pure mana bisected the crumbling throne room. Phoenix fire and dragon mana whirled, combining into a maelstrom of destructive force, and Cecilia vanished inside the detonation.

Setting my footing, I conjured a second aether blade above my left shoulder, then a third in position to shadow the blade in my hand. Finally, a fourth appeared near my left hip. Aether exploded in sequence throughout my body, driving me forward. With all my concentration, I swung all four blades.

Something impacted against my chest mid-Burst Step. The world turned faster than I could make sense of, and I impacted something hard. I was back on my feet before I’d made sense of what happened, with Sylvie towering over me, one claw supportive against my back.

I winced as the last of the combined magic of Chul and Sylvie swirled into Cecilia’s body. She had absorbed it all.

Through Realmheart I could see how her body broke down the lavender-tinged pure mana that Sylvie had projected. The sight sent cold shivers through my body; without a core, the process seemed much faster—almost instant—and much more horrible.

‘She can absorb even formed spells?’ Sylvie thought, aghast.

Cecilia’s hungry eyes drank in the sight of purple-tinged mana flowing over her hand and between her fingers—dragon mana. For an instant, she seemed lost in thought, almost…amazed.

From the corner of my eye, I saw Chul leap into the air, his fist wrapped in a claw of shaped flames. Cecilia, intent on the mana she’d absorbed from Sylvie, was slow to react.

Blood iron spikes manifested from her shadow as the claw slashed across her throat, catching and deflecting the strike. The heat of Chul’s spell cut through the black metal and slashed across Cecilia’s jaw as she jerked away. Mana condensed into a battering ram that slammed into Chul and sent him careening away.

Cecilia lifted her hand to her jaw, but the blow had left only streaks of ash across her fair skin.

Nico rose from the crater his body had formed, his staff in hand, all four gems glowing. Blood ran freely from his nose and mouth, and his arm hung limply at his side. And yet, as he watched Chul land heavily on his feet among the rubble, he still had the energy to fly after him, blood iron spikes firing ahead of him like a dozen black arrows.

With a heavy beat of her wings, Sylvie launched into the air, whirled above, and then dove at Cecilia, claws, fangs, and tail flashing.

Resummoning my aether blades, I rushed to support my bond. Bright beams of violet energy hacked and thrust at Cecilia from every direction. One struck her shoulder but rebounded off her natural barrier of mana. Another thrust into her thigh but slid aside. Sylvie’s tail batted her off balance, and my third strike landed solidly across her ribs.

The mana gave way, and the aether blade bit into the flesh there.

She hissed out a curse, and the ground vanished from beneath my feet. Leaping off a shaky clump of hardened aether, I drove forward with all four aether blades at once, knocking Cecilia back into my bond. Sylvie’s claw came crashing down on Cecilia, whose legs gave out as she sank down to one knee.

Bolts of mana burst outward from Cecilia, peppering Sylvie’s huge body. I could feel her weakening with each blow.

Chul’s battle roar filled the air as I sensed Nico attempting to fly in our direction. I split my attention, hacking and slashing at Cecilia with my conjured weapons with most of my focus, but turning a sliver to the battle between Chul and Nico.

Chul was wrestling with Nico in the air, the staff pulled back across Nico’s throat. With a downward thrust, he slammed the much smaller Nico into the ground face first, then his fists were wrapped in orange flames as they began to pummel my old friend.

A black spike shot up from the ground and punched through Chul’s forearm, but he only ripped it free, turned it point down, and raised it over his head as he prepared to slam it into Nico’s prone form.

A bright light swallowed the battleground before the blow could fall.

Sylvie! I shouted in my mind as I felt her mana being dragged from her.

“You should have known you couldn’t hold out against me for long.” Cecilia’s voice resounded through the battlefield as the light dimmed to reveal streams of mana pouring from Sylvie and into Cecilia.

My heart missed several beats as desperation overtook me. The aetheric paths called to me, and I stepped into them.

I appeared between them, mana pouring past me on all sides, but I didn’t release my concentration on the God Step godrune. The lightning-bolt paths opened in every direction in front of me.

Between Cecilia and me was a nearly impenetrable shell of overlapping layers of mana. So intense was her concentration of mana that it warped even the aetheric pathways, deflecting them so that they bulged out, blurred, and grew difficult to trace.

I listened. Past the hum of mana, the shouts from Nico and Chul, the angry his of Cecilia’s breath. Through the crackle of flames and the clatter of stones. I listened, as Three Steps had taught me, to the aether’s beckoning call.

And I drove the sword forward.

The blade slipped into the pathways, disappearing just above my hand and appearing again inside the shield to slide up into and between her ribs.

Her body was moving almost before the blade appeared, and the strike missed her heart.

I pulled my sword back, prepared to thrust again, but something else came with it. I hesitated for an instant, uncertain of what I was seeing. The blade of my sword was wrapped in lavender-tinged mana. Suddenly something else was in control of the blade, and it was twisting around in my wrist to slash across my own ribs. As the mana-wrapped aether struck my armor, Cecilia’s mana exploded out of her, hammering my own weapon into me.

I rocked backward, and the blade’s edge drove through both my aetheric barrier and the relic armor, carving into the flesh and bone beneath before striking my core.

Nausea ripped the strength from my limbs, so extreme and ever-present that I fell to my knees. The sword vanished, my aetheric barrier dissolved, Realmheart faded, and even my sense of the atmospheric motes of aether around the battlefield flickered in and out.

I pressed one hand against my side; hot blood gushed between my fingers. There was no sudden rush of aether to the wound, no itching warmth as the flesh knitted back together.

I reached for God Step, but there was no glow of response from the godrune on my spine.

‘Arthur!’ Sylvie screamed in my head at the same time as she unleashed a fearful roar.

Cecilia’s eyes had gone wide, blood leaking from the corners of her mouth as it fell open in disbelief. Her hands were pressed to the gory wound in her side where my blade had ripped out from between her ribs.

A blazing creature of fire and light swept past her. I saw only the outline of wings, blindingly bright against the black sky, before a hot claw curled around me and lifted me up, then bitterly warm wind, and we sped away from the palace, the city of Nirmala rapidly diminishing behind us as we gained altitude.

Sylvie! I thought desperately, panic writhing in my intestines.

‘I’m here!’ she practically screamed in my mind, her nerves fried, so weak from the amount of mana that had been taken from her that she was struggling to maintain the draconic form. ‘But they’re coming, Arthur.’

I stared through the darkness at the distant palace, smoldering with tiny flames and sending up little plumes of black smoke that gathered in the sky above it. There was a spark in the night, like a shooting star chasing us across the sky. Slower, listing through the air as he struggled to keep up, was Nico.

Chul let out a screeching caw that split the night sky like thunder. “Couldn’t finish the slimy…little…”

A beam of white hot light split the sky, narrowly missing Chul’s wing. “Can’t…keep…this…up…” he moaned, his voice husky and full of fire.

I reached for the extradimensional storage rune and the tempus warp within, but it didn’t respond.

I fought to calm the rapid beating of my heart so I could focus and turned my senses inward, inspecting my core. The wound was deep and bleeding extensively. My sense for aether was rapidly fading in and out, and I could intermittently sense the particles themselves.

All of the aether struggling to heal my body was focused on my core. A bright line had been scratched into the surface by the strike, and my healing aether was slowly filling it in, neglecting the rest of my body as it did so.

“Arthur—can’t…”

My heart flew up into my throat as I plunged downward, Chul—once again humanoid—flipping end over end in the air next to me as my blood rained upward past us both.

A black on black shadow closed in on us, and Sylvie scooped us each up in her talons just as another beam of mana lanced past.

‘We’re not going to make it far—Arthur, you’re hurt. Really hurt.’

Lacking the time or energy to explain, I simply let her into my mind as I reached for the aether around my core. I willed it to flow down to my arm, where the spellform for the dimensional storage was. A trickle responded. I pushed again, harder, pleading as I impressed my intent upon the aether. A little more broke away.

The spellform tingled in my flesh.

Cursing, I dragged my forearm across the point of Sylvie’s talon, leaving behind a deep cut.

Another pocket of aether traveled down my arm.

My mind linked with the dimensional space where my equipment was kept, and I withdrew the tempus warp. Sylvie shifted her claw to pin it next to me.

Shit, I can’t activate it, I thought.

Sensing Sylvie’s intention, I watched as she shook Chul in her other claw, then pinched him hard even as she dipped beneath a third beam from Cecilia.

Chul gritted his teeth as he snapped back to consciousness. “Gah, what…?”

“The tempus warp!” Sylvie boomed.

His eyes struggled to focus on me, then the device pinned next to me.

“You need to…activate the device…” I choked out, blood filling my mouth as I spoke.

Sylvie moved her claws together, and Chul rested his hand on top of the tempus warp. His mana flowed weakly.

Sylvie gasped as a beam struck her, and we dipped in the air. Her claws loosened, and the tempus warp shifted. I wrapped my arms around it, my head swimming as my wound exploded with pain at the motion and effort.

‘She’s catching up!’

Chul pushed out more mana, and I programmed the device.

Sylv, transform, I thought, waiting.

Her own thoughts came back to me not in words but in pure disbelief, tinged with the suspicion that I had lost my faculties due to blood loss.

Just do it!

Her head curled around to look down at me, meeting my eye. Resignation leaked through our connection, and she was suddenly wreathed in mana. The claws around me, Chul, and the tempus warp receded, and Sylvie shrank back into the form of a teenage girl. We fell.

I activated the tempus warp.

A portal appeared in the air below us, and we all plunged through.

On the other side, we spilled across the ground like rolled bones, the tempus warp bouncing before crashing into the middle of a rose bush.

Untwisting myself, I stared through the portal into Cecilia’s enraged face as the shining oval flickered out.