Chapter 34 #2
She’d flirted with her limits too many times already; the shock of agony cut off her concentration. She folded with a stifled groan.
Valeria was fading fast, bleeding from a couple dozen cuts.
Fiona managed to catch Valeria’s left hand in a cube and crush it, the bones cracking, before the box vanished.
Fiona’s hand was still outstretched to control that spell when it disappeared.
She looked down on it in confusion. Valeria’s response was a muffled whimper.
Molly had a hand over her mouth in horror.
Selene had her face turned away, tears spilling down her cheeks.
Merlin had his hands laced behind his head, pulling at his own hair, watching wide-eyed.
None of them moved to do anything. There was nothing to do; no one could stop the magic of the duelers inside the circle.
Merlin’s lips were mouthing something, and Joan had to watch them for several long seconds to understand it.
Yield.
Yield, Valeria.
“You stubborn old goat,” he whispered.
Mik’s fingers left Joan’s ribs.
The blue haze around Fiona dimmed; Joan was probably the only one in the room who could even see it unassisted.
Fiona’s next spell was a bit wild, zinging around the circle, a shard of magic even hitting Fiona, though her pocket realm shield dissolved it.
She was breathing hard now, hair sweaty around her temples.
“Give in, damn you,” Fiona growled. “You can’t win.”
Valeria responded with another time spell, using up a turn by casting on herself, turning back the clock on her hand so the bones knit together. “What have you done to yourself, Ganon? You aren’t supposed to have this much magic.”
Fiona’s betraying glance was less than a second long, focused in on Joan.
“I am supposed to have anything I’d like,” she said, and summoned a massive lance of energy, drawing in what must have been all the immediate magic in the room to form it.
She launched it, but the trailing edge of the spell was unfinished, still attracting more energy.
Unable to draw from the air, it pulled from the barrier magic of the chalk circle, snuffing it out.
“Shield the crowd,” Joan ordered, hand coming down on Astoria’s shoulder.
Bless the woman’s quick reflexes, because she reached for magic, Joan could feel it, but she was as magic fatigued as Joan.
Astoria winced as she started channeling what thin magic was left, and in that hesitation, Fiona’s bomb exploded.
The force rushed past the barrier, slamming the crowd, pressing Valeria so hard into the ground, she cracked the floor. They all skidded back a few feet, but as Joan brought her hands up to protect her face, she found she was entirely intact.
There was only one person still standing in their original spot by the circle, fingers splayed wide, panting under the force of the yellow shield she’d thrown over everyone. Molly’s hands dropped, her breaths wheezing. She was looking at her sister.
“I didn’t tell them,” she gasped out, and then fell to her knees.
Joan slid to the ground next to her, propping her sister up. “How the hell did you do that in time?”
Molly slumped into Joan’s shoulder. “Luck,” she said, with a little smile, and one of the charms on her necklace dissolved. “I heard what you said to Astoria.”
Merlin roared, storming back up to the circle. “Ganon! Not another move until the magic barrier can be reestablished. You could have killed us.”
Fiona’s hands were shaking, but her magic channeling hadn’t faltered. Still it rushed into her, building up in her body until she released it in these huge bursts. “Not my fault,” she said. “Nothing against it in the rules.”
Valeria wasn’t moving. She lay in a pool of her own blood, skin a deathly blue, but the chalk remained even if the barrier spell was down, which meant she was still alive.
Her wife wasn’t even in the room. If Valeria died right now, they wouldn’t even get to say goodbye. Ronnie would have been somewhere outside this house, oblivious.
This couldn’t be how Valeria Greenwood died, on her back in her own home, felled by someone wielding an imitation of Joan’s own magic.
Fiona raised her hand for a last spell. “Who knew the answer was right in front of me, all these years,” she said, eyes shining at Joan.
“Cycle the magic, don’t channel it; holding it in speeds up the poisoning.
Use the pocket realms to reverse the laws of physics and protect your body from the aftereffects.
Amplify your ability to channel and cycle so much magic, you can use it to heal yourself faster than you kill yourself. ”
Legs blocked Joan’s view from the floor, Molly still limp in her hands. Astoria looked down at them. Her face was pained.
“You shouldn’t watch,” she said.
No. No way, this wasn’t how things ended. Molly let out a low cry.
Despite everything, Joan tried again, reaching for magic, grimacing past the aches that rippled to life in her body as she tried to sink desperate fingernails in. Pull it all to herself.
But Fiona’s grip on the room was stronger, smoother. Joan was scrabbling against a glass wall, fingers leaving nothing more than smudges.
“Move, Astoria,” Joan ground out. She wasn’t taking the coward’s way out.
Astoria hesitated.
“Move, Wardwell,” she screamed. Astoria stepped aside in time for Joan to see Fiona bring her hand down.
And then fall to her knees in a shatter of porcelain, spell aborted, hands clutching her head and coming away red.
Mik stood behind her, chest heaving, eyes crazed as they grabbed another vase and launched it at Fiona too. It shattered on the woman, stunning her further.
“You stupid bitch!” Mik was screaming. “You stupid fucking bitch, you can go to hell! You ruined my life!” They dashed for another vase. “You kidnapped my friend!” Fiona dodged this one. “I’m not letting you kill another person!”
Fiona had taken down the barrier spell and left herself open to outside interference.
Outside, nonmagical interference.
Mik was reaching for something new to throw, tears streaming from their eyes, when Fiona finally gathered her wits well enough to counterattack.
“You should have died,” Fiona growled, and magic swelled in her again.
Joan screamed, so high that it was nearly soundless, unashamedly leaving Molly so that she could scramble across the floor to Mik, who had just saved Valeria’s life.
Mik, who had never deserved this and had no magic to protect themself.
Mik, who really had to stop watching so much reality TV, and folded kitchen towels into squares, and laughed just to make everyone else laugh, and held the dreams of their parents in them.
A sizzle of magic streamed through the air.
Fiona’s hands froze. She looked down in shock at the fried hole in her chest.
Valeria’s eyes, already swelling, had cracked open. Her hand flopped to the floor.
Fiona’s body toppled sideways, lifeless, and the chalk circle dissolved completely.