Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Riley
“Riley… my whole body is broken,” Mickey whines as he stands there looking rather disheveled. His hair is a mess. His clothes don’t match in the slightest and I notice the buttons are off by one.
“Fucking hell, you look awful,” Vero says when he comes out of his room and steps into the hallway where we’re gathering.
“I’m assuming you’re talking to Riley,” Mickey says.
I stare at my supposed best friend in disbelief. “What’s wrong with me?”
“You have that ‘I’m in love’ glow that annoys me. You just look too happy. It’s disgusting.”
Vero nods. “It is disgusting.”
“Such lovely friendships,” I grumble, uncertain what I did to deserve any of this.
Then here comes Torin, who’d gone off to retrieve Conquest’s bow, practically floating his way over to us as if confirming the “I’m in love” glow Mickey was bitching about. Mickey shields his eyes as he cries out, making Torin stop his happy strut.
“It hurts,” Mickey complains.
“What hurts?” Torin asks, immediately concerned. “Your side?”
“No, how happy you both are.”
That stuns Torin into silence.
“Ignore him. He’s still unable to call out his undead, so he’s being… spicy,” I say.
Torin pats Mickey’s head, and Mickey takes that as an excuse to hug him. Torin cheerfully hugs him back while Vero is now the one looking disgusted.
“I feel empty inside. Like someone cut me open and gutted out my insides,” Mickey says. “And then I cried myself to sleep questioning what I’d do if they never came back. Ha. So stupid, let’s go.”
I hesitate as I look at Mickey. “Hey, they’ll be back,” I assure him.
I can’t fathom how terrifying it would be to suddenly lose all of the people closest to you.
I know that his undead aren’t seen as true people to many, but they mean the world to Mickey.
He never talks about his childhood, but I have the feeling that they were the only people he had growing up.
Mickey nods and gives me a tight-lipped smile. “Of course.”
“They really will,” I promise. “And then you can boss them all around.”
He nods again but he doesn’t look overly hopeful… or well. I hug him to me while Vero stares at us like we’ve lost our minds.
“I told you it only lasts a few days,” Vero says. “You’re so dramatic.”
“Thank you,” Mickey replies. “I would feel better if you told me I was your friend.”
Vero looks disgruntled as he hurries toward the Door, like he’s trying his best to get away from Mickey’s friendship. He quickly disappears through it while I laugh.
“I think you were denied,” I say.
Mickey grins. “I’ll break him down.”
“I’ll break him if you’d like,” Torin says as he cracks his knuckles.
“That’s not how you make friends,” I remind him.
“You’ve never tried it, so how do you know?
” he asks before passing through the Door, and Mickey and I follow.
I realize that maybe I could have put Mickey in a better state of dress before we headed through the Door that leads into his house.
Or maybe we should have made a different Door because the moment he sees his desolate living room, his face turns pale.
“I bet everything will be back to normal by tomorrow,” I tell him. He nods, but he truly doesn’t look the best. He almost looks faint as he hangs on me. I really don’t think it’s Mickey’s normal dramatics, so I usher him over to the couch before he passes out on me.
“Hey, why don’t you sit down? Or do you want to go back and lie down in bed?”
“I’m fine,” Mickey says as he sinks down on the couch while we wait for Imani, who is bringing someone who might be able to help me reach Conquest.
I kneel in front of Mickey, concerned that whatever they shot him with is affecting him more than we thought.
He actually seems worse than yesterday when he was shot.
I push up his shirt and check the wound to make sure he doesn’t have some raging infection or something that’s making him feel like this, but everything looks clean and healthy. “Mickey, what’s going on?”
“Nothing. I just… feel weird.”
“His magic is quite significant. It might be his body adjusting to the lack of magic,” Vero explains. “I’ve seen people become anxious or sick, but not to this extreme.”
I set to work buttoning his shirt right before there’s a knock on the door. Torin lets Imani in, who immediately looks over at Vero and takes note that he is scowling at the two newcomers as though they’ve come to take his life.
“Why don’t you go lie down in bed?” I urge Mickey.
“I’m fine here,” he says as he hugs a cat-shaped pillow to his chest.
I nod uncertainly before turning to Imani and the woman she brought.
“Okay. I don’t know if this will work, but it’s the best I could come up with,” Imani says. “This is Raya, and she’s a seer of sorts. Her magic lets her connect to a person if there’s a reflection in the room. So hopefully he’s somewhere with a window or something similar.”
“Sometimes even a glass of water will work,” Raya says. “So we only have to touch for your magic to work?”
“Yes,” I confirm as I hold my hand out to her and feel that familiar spike of magic rushing up my arm.
Raya says, “I brought my divination bowl. I don’t know if it’ll work as well for you, but it often works best for me.”
“I thought if you couldn’t do it alone, maybe you could join magic to amplify the spell,” Imani suggests. “Or maybe it’s better to start off working together with it so it’ll be stronger right from the beginning.”
“That’s a good idea,” I say. “We don’t want to waste time or the god could realize that we’re tinkering.”
Torin retrieves water while I drag a coffee table over as well as another chair so we can sit across from each other. I try to familiarize myself with her magic as I lean over the filled bowl, never having done this kind of magic before.
Raya asks, “You brought something of his?”
“Yes, his bow,” I say as Torin slings it off his shoulder. We lay it on the table so we can both touch it. Then she reaches across and takes my hand, interlocking our fingers.
“My sister is a different kind of seer and can amplify things, so I’ve worked with others before,” she explains while she holds our hands over the water.
“When our hands touch the edge of the bowl, keep it there and don’t pull away or you’ll lose contact.
And then just… think of who you want to speak to. ”
“Understood,” I say, and our hands touch the very middle of the water before she guides them over to the edge of the bowl where they settle.
My left hand squeezes the bowl when I feel the magic from it connecting with mine.
It’s like a rush of magic is amplified inside of me as the water in the bowl begins to tremble.
Ripples start from the middle and move out while I feel her magic and mine mesh together.
The bowl begins to vibrate, and I try my best to focus as things gradually escalate.
“I’m… not sure it’s going to work. I’ve never had it do this before,” she warns.
“I can feel something,” I say as the hourglass heats up until it’s almost burning my skin. There’s such a strong temptation to reach for it, but I keep my hands firmly where she asked me to.
And then the rippling water stills. I look up at her, uncertain if the whole thing failed before I hear Conquest’s voice.
“You’re playing a dangerous game, Brother.”
I look into the water and see his face slowly flicker into existence. Whatever we’re reflecting from must be facing him since I can see him sitting on the floor, leaning against a wall. He looks exhausted and dirty and anytime he moves, the shackles on his arms and legs clang against their chains.
“It looks like you need more help than I do,” I say.
He laughs as he shakes his head. “You think you can help me? If you could, we wouldn’t be in this hell.”
“We don’t have much time. Will you talk to me? Will you tell me what’s going on or spin me riddles like the rest of them?”
“Do you ever think we’re trying to protect you from him? The less you know, the better.”
I have seen no sign of any of them trying to protect me, but I don’t want to fight with him when he could give me answers. “You think I have a choice? Being without my horse is killing me.”
“No, using your magic without your horse is killing you. Forsake your magic, just live your life, grow old, be happy—”
“For how long? Because once the god has acquired this power, who knows what he’s going to do.” What I don’t say is that we’re already aware that wouldn’t work anyway.
Conquest just stares at me before closing his eyes.
“He can’t complete it until I play my role.
If he kills me, he will have to wait for me to be reborn, wait for me to be strong enough to complete it.
So just kill me again and again before I reach power.
It might be the only way to accomplish this. ”
“So you want me to just wander the realms and find ten-year-old you and kill you again and again?” I ask in disbelief.
“I never said this life was an easy one.”
“No, we’re going to stop him,” I say.
Conquest laughs. “How? You knew more than me before you died. You knew what he was planning on accomplishing and ran off on your own. All I know is that he suckered War over without hesitation. Ever since they drove him to the brink, War has despised the people who roam these worlds. And Famine… she will do anything to bring back the person she loves. Aemon, the god, promises things that lure them in. He shows them the disgusting parts of the world and convinces them to be selfish—to take what they want—all while taking it for himself.”
“Is Shaarune the only world that has been destroyed?” I ask.
“So far.”
“And he needs a total of four to complete the cycle?”
“Yes.”
“How do I get my horse out of the hourglass?”
Conquest huffs out a cold laugh. “If I knew, my horse wouldn’t be in the same position.”
“Why were you determined to destroy my world?” I ask. “You act like they’re the bad ones, yet you’ve done the same.”
“Aemon’s good at promising things… at making things feel ideal. He excels at tearing you apart and making you promises that I’m not sure he can even keep.”
“What did he promise you?”
“That he could bring you back… and here you already are. Perfectly fine and working against me,” he says then smirks at me.
I hesitate when I hear his words and wonder if they’re true. Is he simply telling me shit just to drag me along, to get me on his side? But if he is, he hasn’t quite clarified what he wants out of me.
“How do we convince Famine to stop?” I ask.
“I think it’s too late for Famine.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s already setting things into motion; you likely just don’t know it yet.”
“But if we can stop her…” I trail off.
“I was not at my full strength when we fought, Brother. It’s why Aemon could manipulate me the way he did into believing his lies. Famine is. I don’t want you to die again. But this time, if you do, I’ll find you.”
I stare at him, unsure what to say. “What did I want? Why did I join him?”
“I don’t know what your plan was; only you knew that.
You have always been rational. You were kindhearted.
But it was almost like he’d done something to you.
You were determined to destroy him but in doing so, you destroyed yourself.
There was so much darkness in you, it was like I no longer recognized you.
But you told me again and again that you risked it all to stop him.
Yet the world fell and he gained his first sacrifice. ”
“Why did Aemon then wait nearly two hundred years before starting again?”
“He was just… gone. The instant that world collapsed, he disappeared. I thought he was gone for good… I thought that you’d accomplished what you’d set out to do until he returned a few years ago.
I’ve since wondered if you did something to him that he had to recover from, but I don’t suppose you remember. ”
“If I did something to him?” I ask uncertainly.
“‘The collapse of a world can bring about the end of another,’” Mickey mumbles.
“I assumed it spoke of the collapse of the second world… What if…” He stops speaking, and it’s so abrupt that Kit loses concentration on the bowl and looks at him as he grabs his chest with a gasp.
He pushes off the couch and falls to the ground where he begins to convulse.
Without thought, I jerk away from the bowl, destroying my connection. I rush toward Mickey while Vero rolls him so he’s not lying on his face and is on his side instead.
“Mickey!” I call, but it looks like he’s having a seizure. Something is obviously very wrong, and I knew that this morning, but I thought it was just a reaction to missing his magic. I press my hand against him and discover that he’s burning up.
“What the fuck is going on?” I ask.
“Famine has already sunk her claws into him,” Conquest says through the bowl since Raya is maintaining the connection. “Aemon, the god behind this, is coming. You’d better withdraw—”
“I need to stop him but to do that, I need more information!”
“You know more than I do! You told me you were going to stop him,” Conquest barks.
“Instead, I destroyed Torin’s world and died for it,” I say before the connection snaps closed. “Fuck.”
Mickey’s seizure seems to have stopped, but he’s not coherent as I kneel next to him, my mind racing.
“Torin, what should I do? Should I take him to a hospital here? Or do you think they’ll know how to fix it over in Obsian?”
“I don’t know. Onyx might have answers on how to reverse what the bullet did to him, and we need to see what Famine is doing and stop her,” Torin says as he scoops Mickey up and hurries for the Door.
“Thank you for your help, Raya. I will likely need it again,” I admit while I grab the bow and sling it over my shoulder.
“Of course,” Raya says before we rush Mickey through the Door. Since the Door at Special Agent Kim’s department is constantly monitored, we decide to go there. That way if someone comes through from Obsian, there will be people to deal with them, unlike creating a Door in Shaarune.