Collision: The Alliance Series Book Three (31 page)

I didn’t dare think it might already be too late.

Between us, Ada and I steadied the collapsing building, moved fragments of falling rock aside and onto safer ground. Just as abruptly as it had started, the tremor stopped.

Nothing remained of the base but a heap of rubble. The sky burned an angry red, clouds swirling low, and the ground felt unsteady under my feet.
They can’t be dead. They can’t be.

Then I saw the limp hand peeking out from under the rubble.

Fuck.
I ran over, and shoved the crumbling rock off… the body of the man who’d survived the attack on the summoners of Aktha. I didn’t need to check for a pulse. His skull was caved in. But there were no signs of the others. I climbed over rock, shoving boulder-sized pieces aside, until I came to the remains of the computer room. The computer itself was reduced to a tangle of lifeless wires and crushed metal. But Mathran and the others were nowhere to be found.

A coughing sounded, and I whirled around. Ada stood, eyes wide, next to a heap of rubble. A clawed foot protruded from underneath.

“He’s alive,” she said, pushing at the rock. “I can’t move this…”

I hurried over. The rock had crushed Avar’s leg, but his eyes were open. A whimper escaped him.

“I… am truly sorry,” whispered Avar. “They’re gone–they took them.”

“They?” I echoed.

Avar coughed, blood spattering the ground. “The summoners… I have to tell you something. Mathran told me, before he left. Veyak is a living shadow. Veyak is the shadow of magic gone horribly, horribly wrong. The worst. When someone uses magic past its limits, to kill.”

“Third level?” I asked, heart beating fast.

“Yes. Every use of what you call third level… it casts a shadow. If enough power can be gathered in one vessel, then it continually builds up, feeding on all magic used in its presence.”

“Because there’s no backlash,” I said. “But what do you mean by vessel? Not like a person, right?”

“Whatever animals the deities once were before magic enslaved them, I don’t think they were ever human.” Avar coughed again.

“Animals.” Had
people,
the previous inhabitants of this world,
stored the magic in living creatures, like in sources? Like–

Don’t think about that now.
No—he’d said the vessel continually fed on magic. So did that mean…?

“No backlash,” I said. “Goddammit, I should have realised. Veyak feeds on
all
the backlash, not just third level. Whenever anyone uses magic. But when someone uses third level, it raises the magic level everywhere.” Which meant every life sacrificed was more fuel for the angry deity.

“Holy shit,” Ada whispered. “It has thousands of years’ worth of power to feed on.”

“Damn,” I said. “But this happened recently. Right?”

Avar coughed uncontrollably, eyes glazed with pain. “They came here,” he said hoarsely. “The summoners. They gathered a small power and opened a doorway. They came to this base, they demanded to see the carvings. And they took the spheres. To use as energy.”

“To keep the doorway open.” I remembered how the Conners had done the same in Aglaia. “The spheres Mathran showed us were fakes.”

“Mathran told me he had no choice. I didn’t know.”

The lying old bastard could at least have given us a clue.
Or maybe he had.

“The spheres–too unstable. You have to close the door. I couldn’t…”

“Don’t talk,” said Ada. “We have to help him.”

“I’ll carry him through the doorway,” I said, cursing the Multiverse. “We have to find the others. If they were taken, I can follow the traces.”
The summoners opened a doorway
.
They must have.

“Shit!” I yelled, leaping aside as a heavy, feathery body dropped from the sky, three beaks snapping, claws slashing and tearing at the ground. I rolled over in the dust and pulled my dagger. One mad bird-head stabbed at Ada but she dodged and struck back with her own blade, sending a spray of blood over the rubble. The bird screeched and whirled around to meet the side of my dagger as I cut the tendon in one of its delicate wings, spinning to plunge the blade into the underside of its clawed foot.

Screams rent the air. The bird faltered back, landing on its non-injured foot in the ruins, and its sharp beak found the prone form of Avar. The magic level climbed, making my skin buzz so intensely I almost dropped the blade.

Damn.
Clouds of magic roiled above and the presence of the deity pushed at me, insistent. I shook it aside and climbed over the rocks towards the bird, which tore at Avar’s limp body.

“You stay away from him!” yelled Ada, running forwards before I could shout out a warning. The bird dropped Avar and stabbed at Ada with its bloodied beak, driving her back, towards the ledge.

Oh no, you don’t.
I drew my second dagger and hurled it at the bird, getting it in the eye. As the head slumped, Ada used the opportunity to gain the upper hand, driving the creature back with quick slashing motions. I climbed onto a heap of rubble, relying on Ada to keep both remaining heads busy while I sneaked up behind it. Balancing on a rock, I took aim, and threw my second weapon.

The dagger pierced it right through the spine.

The bird didn’t die right away, but its legs gave out with a spasm. All three heads screamed deafeningly. I jumped down from the rock and retrieved the dagger as Ada stabbed one bird-head, then the other, putting it out of its misery. She pulled my dagger out of the third one’s eye with a shaking hand. Blood soaked her face and hands, but her eyes were shining.

“I thought…” She swallowed. “I could feel him. Veyak. I didn’t dare use magic.”

“Me neither,” I said. “Avar…”

The bird had torn one of his arms off, and he lay cold. Dead.

No time to waste. I searched below the surface for traces of magic and found more than one, tangled together around a spot not ten metres away. This must be where they opened the doorway. And I wasn’t stupid enough to do the same. But the door to the Passages was open.

“Can–can you trace them?” She took my hand, after wiping the blood on her jacket. “God. That’s…”

“Come on,” I said. “”Might as well close the door here. There’s nothing left now.”

Lightning crackled overhead. A warning, or a sign.

Back in the Passages, I picked up the trace, and held onto it as I opened another doorway.

“You did a better job resisting the deity than I did,” I said, sketching the last symbol. “If I get possessed, or whatever it was, like last time…”

“I won’t let it happen again. Never.”

I shook my head. She sounded so certain. How could she have faith in me, knowing what I’d done already? But self-delusion was all we had left at this point. Raj and Iriel might already be dead. And sacrificing magic-wielders… the whole Balance would feel the consequences.

“They’re not dead,” said Ada. “We’d have felt a power surge, I’m sure of it.”

It had only been minutes, but I didn’t dare hope. Hope was too easily dashed to pieces. And this world’s time was running out. If we didn’t close that doorway, we’d die along with everyone else on Vey-Xanetha.

“Right.” I let the door open slowly, despite the screaming urgency of the situation, to make sure we weren’t going to run ourselves into a trap.

The plains. The encampment remained beside the abyss–no, the doorway. Clouds cloaked the world on the other side, but from here, I saw the slanted angle, and the gleaming ribbon of light around the edge. The source must be somewhere under there.

We had to get it out.

I froze. Three summoners passed b, dragging two people between them. Raj and Iriel. Mathran walked behind them.

“The traitorous bastard,” I whispered.

One of the summoners stopped, shouted a warning—he’d spotted the doorway I’d opened. I swore and jumped over the threshold, releasing a bolt of magic right at the summoner. He dropped, convulsing. I’d hit him with second level. I didn’t dare risk third.

As the other two approached, I grabbed for my dagger. Ada moved to my side, and I spun and pressed the world-key to the door, sealing it before any of this wild magic reached the Passages.

Climbing over their fallen brother, the two summoners said, in unison, “
Veyak.”

Lightning speared the sky, and Ada and I moved to avoid it. Good job I’d closed the door, because a bolt of magic struck the ground on that exact spot. Who knew what effect it would have on a doorway?

Third level magic would kill either of us as surely as anyone else. We were magic-wielders, true, but also outnumbered, and it was pretty clear that deity was on no one’s side. Like magic itself, amplified a hundredfold.

Better hope the Multiverse is on my side this time,
I thought, as the summoners took one step forward in unison, then another. Completely under the control of the raging deity.

I held out my hand, Ada took it, and in unison, we raised our other palms to the sky.

CHAPTER TWENTY

ADA

I didn’t even have a plan. I was half-terrified out of my mind, but we had to do our best for the others. T
he sight of Mathran on the enemy’s side lit a fire in me. I wouldn’t let anyone else die.

I let magic flow into the palm of my left hand, grasping Kay’s with my right. Now we were both caught in an adamantine shield, and neither of us could be harmed by magic. As long as it held, maybe we could stand against the mad deity.

Lightning flashed above the summoners, meeting my own attack in a flare that lit up the sky. The two lights extinguished one another, but the summoners staggered back, rubbing their eyes. When they looked up, their eyes were blanked out and red. Like the others’.

“Veyak serves us,” they hissed in terrifying unison, nothing human in their voices.

The deity possessed both of them. I was sure of it.

One summoner shouted in Vey-Xanethan to the others at the encampment, where some of them walked towards the chasm–or doorway. But more importantly, Raj and Iriel both lay unconscious on the ground, near Mathran.

The bastard. I gathered magic into my palm again, letting the level build higher.
Kill the traitor,
a voice whispered in my ear—a voice that didn’t sound like me at all.

“Ada.” Kay tugged my hand, jolting me back to the more present threat. The two magic-wielders staggered towards us, heads lolling, eyes vacant. Like puppets. Were they
dead?
Was the deity using them even now?

I redirected the magic at a spot in front of the summoners as Kay fired a shot of his own. The summoners walked right into it, and once again, the sky came alive in rays of violet and blood-red. This time, they fell, crumpling as if a hand had reached from the sky and struck them down.

Kay swore and stepped forward. Mathran had dragged Raj upright and held a knife to his throat. Raj’s eyes fluttered, and he groaned.

“I cannot let you fight them,” said Mathran, gripping the back of Raj’s jacket. “I am truly sorry, but my loyalty always belongs to the trio. Even Veyak, whatever He has done.”

“Even if your world is destroyed?” asked Kay, watching him steadily. I could tell by his stance that he was ready to fight, but didn’t dare risk Raj’s life. “You must know it’s your own deity which is doing it. Veyak is absorbing the power of the other two, as well as the sacrifices of the summoners.”

Mathran shook his head, the blade at Raj’s neck trembling. “You have it wrong,” he whispered. “Veyak would never seek to harm us.”

“What about the evidence?” Kay indicated the fallen magic-wielders. “They were possessed by the deity themselves. They took your sources and opened the doorway. Avar told us. You can’t hide from the truth, Mathran.”

“Give it up.” I pulled my hand free of Kay’s and took another step towards Mathran. “You’ve lost this fight. You’re in the wrong. Let them go.”

Mathran shook his head. “I will not.” Blood beaded on Raj’s neck. I stopped walking.

“We’re both magic-wielders,” I said desperately. “We can outclass you, Mathran.”

“And you would risk your friend’s life?”

“What do you want us to do? Leave?”
We can bring backup. We have the world-key.
But we’d have to move fast enough to outrun the possessed summoners and their crazy god, and the last thing we needed was that kind of power having free run of the Passages. That’s what the Alliance guard part of me thought anyway—the other was more concerned with Raj and Iriel. Unless I got that knife away from him, we’d never make it out before he killed them.

Mathran’s mouth twisted. “I can’t have you telling our secrets to the Alliance. I am sorry, but you will serve Veyak.”

Lightning crackled above. A warning.
Shit. Is he a vessel for Veyak, too?
Maybe everyone on this world was, seeing as Veyak was magic itself personified. Veyak was the wild craziness of magic in the Passages, tugging at my veins, demanding to be released, multiplied by a thousand. I shook my head, more certain than ever the voice whispering in my ear wasn’t me. But out of the corner of my eye, Iriel moved, dragging herself to her feet behind Mathran.