Battle Royale #2
Liam is the one who figures it out first. He slows, cocks his head, then extends both hands, palms up. “We will not find something to thwart this here. It’s got to be something within us.”
The pedestal is made of… I’m not sure what.
It looks like concrete and bone, fused together and shot through with veins of cold, liquid mercury.
The stone is a rock the size of a soccer ball, glowing from within with its own storm: lightning snakes under the surface, blue and gold, and at the core is a point of darkness so dense it eats the surrounding light.
“Are you sure, Li?” I ask as I study the thing. “It could bounce back and hit us. There’s zero cover in this fucking place.”
Liam’s eyes have gone stormy, the irises flicking from pale blue to deep sea green. I can see his magic spinning up in the glow coming from his body. Even his hair is lifting off his forehead as he charges his power.
I turn to Morgana. “Step back, Morgana.”
She nods, doing as I ask, but her brow is furrowed. “What is he doing?”
“He’s going to try to break the damn thing with magic. I don’t know if that will stop this or piss someone off, but…”
Morgana flexes her hands, and I see her claws come out. She means business. “There's only one way to find out.”
Liam grins. “That’s the spirit, maschula .”
She flips him off, then moves further away from the blast zone. I follow, keeping my body halfway between her and the stone, just in case it’s booby-trapped. Liam would kill me if I didn’t anticipate something like that and she got injured.
“Wait.” A thought occurs to me and I leave Morgana to step close to the pedestal, reaching out to touch the stone.
The feedback nearly drops me, and that’s not an easy feat.
It’s like touching a live wire while standing in a puddle.
My vision whites out; I smell the same burning ozone and, somewhere under that, the sickly sweet scent of something rotting.
I pull back, sucking in a breath. “Careful, Liam,” I warn. “It fights back.”
“Of course it does,” Morgana mutters, but she’s watching my face now. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” I say. “But if you’re gonna hit it, do it hard.”
Liam raises his hands and lets loose a burst of magic strong enough to rock the buildings around the quad off their foundations. The lightning inside the rock flickers faster, but it doesn’t stop the tornado or close the portal it’s located in.
Damn it. Liam is one of the strongest magic weavers in the Daybreak Court.
“Should we try now?” I ask as I look over at the Prince as he pants. “It won’t feel good, but maybe we need brute strength, too.”
“Let’s do it,” says Morgana, and lunges before I can answer.
She swipes at the rock, claws raking across its surface, but instead of gouging stone, her claws spark off like she hit a power transformer.
A blast of force slams her backward; she catches herself on a stray office chair, but her hands are smoking.
I don’t even think; I just react. I shift my face, then breathe raw electrically charged fire from my dragon at the base of the pedestal, hoping to crack it from underneath. The rock absorbs the hit and glows brighter, but doesn’t move.
“Cute,” a voice says, from everywhere and nowhere.
The last thing we need is a sarcastic coward taunting us.
Liam’s head snaps up. “Did you hear?—?”
“Yeah,” I say, but my ears are ringing so badly it comes out slurred.
Morgana shakes her hands, wincing. “Asshole,” she mutters, then glances at me. “Round two?”
“No!” Liam says, waving at us to stop the next wave of assault. He lifts both hands, fingers splayed, and for a moment everything goes silent. Even the tornado’s hum cuts out and the only sound is his breathing. Then he brings his hands together with a clap.
A bolt of raw fae power—more than I’ve ever seen him use—leaps from his body to the stone.
The blast is so bright it scorches the air, and the pedestal cracks.
My jaw drops, but the stone knits itself back together before we can claim victory.
The walls of wind outside shudder, then slow.
A few pieces of debris even drop out of the sky.
That wasn’t it, but it was much closer than we’ve been so far.
Liam is breathing hard, sweat beading on his brow. “Now try again,” he says.
Morgana and I don’t need to be told twice. We attack in sync, but the stone fights back again. However, this time, it’s showing signs of wear—hairline fractures, flickers in the internal lightning, a stutter in the voice that taunts us from everywhere.
Something lashes out from the stone—a whip of shadow, fast as a bullet—and wraps around my throat. I claw at it, but it burns, sapping my strength. Morgana howls, drops her assault, and dives for me, snapping the shadow with her bare hands.
“Kaspar!” she yells, shaking me. “Talk to me, you jackass!”
I’m half in and half out of my body, but I can see the stone now, and it’s bleeding light. “We need more,” I croak. “We can’t do it alone.”
Liam staggers up to us, voice raw. “Shall I call the others?”
I nod. The shadow’s gone, but I feel its mark on my neck. If this shithead is powerful enough to do that to me from afar, we definitely need more fire-power.
My friend pulls out his phone, but the screen is flickering—no surprise this place is a dead zone. He curses, then closes his eyes, concentrating. A ripple goes through the air, like the echo of a scream, and I know he’s used fae magic to send the message.
Morgana helps me up. My legs are rubbery, but I can stand. The fleeting thought that I’m not flinching at her touch skates through my brain, but I don’t have time to examine it.
“Are sure you’re okay?” she asks.
“Never better,” I lie, grinning. “But when our backup gets here, remind me to let them go first.”
She snorts, but her eyes are sharp as she stares at the stone. It’s pulsing now, the lightning inside frantic, desperate. Maybe it knows that it will fall after another round of hits?
Fuck if I know.
Suddenly, I feel the air in the portal get thinner and the atmosphere changes.
The stone’s defenses seem to be mutating in response as it throws up a shield of wind, then shoots electric arcs that scorch the floor.
Twice, I see faces in the lightning screaming with laughter.
I don’t mention it to Liam or Morgana, but I know that this set-up hasn’t been created by one single person.
By the time our ‘back-up’ arrives, my throat is raw from shouting at one another over the howling winds. Morgana’s claws are blackened at the tips, and Liam’s breathing is so shallow I worry he’ll pass out before the cavalry arrives.
Lucas explodes through the barrier as a ten-foot-tall, four-hundred-pound polar bear with his claws out and fur bristling.
I recognize him instantly—even in beast form, Lucas has the same pissed-off squint and loping gait as his human self.
He surveys the chaos, locks eyes with me, and lets out a roar so loud it physically pushes the air.
The wind-wall stutters, and I smile to myself.
Liam might have been right.
Hot on his heels is Briarton, wrapped in a cocoon of mage fire as he enters.
His face is set in concentration, and his hands are glowing, tiny runes drifting off his fingertips like falling petals.
He gives me a little chin lift, as if this is just another Tuesday.
That dude is so fucking weird, but I see how he fits into our new family now.
Slade is last and I’m curious to see what happens when he truly unleashes.
He enters on a wave of scent—saltwater, crushed violets, ancient song—half siren, half human with blue-green hair streaming behind him.
There’s a bubble of sound around his body, and it warps the air, causing every loose object within twenty feet to tremble in time with his heartbeat.
Well, I’ll be damned, look at the kid go.
“Circle up,” I shout. “Hit it all at once—I think the only way to stop it is to take it down together.”
Lucas rumbles something affirmative and positions himself at the north point, bracing his bulk like he’s about to tackle a bus.
Iggy takes the east, crackling with mage-light.
Slade drifts to the south, voice low, starting a melody that makes my blood go cold and hot simultaneously.
Liam stays in the west, next to me, already gathering magic for the final push.
I do a quick calculation. If we do this right, it might be enough to destabilize the stone, maybe even destroy the pocket. If we screw up, we could all be vaporized, or worse.
No pressure.
I signal to Morgana, who moves in behind me, claws flexing. She nods once—ready.
“On my mark!” I yell.
The stone is screaming now, the voices in the lightning ratcheted to max volume. I bare my fangs, let the dragon take over for one second, and savor the taste of oncoming violence.
“One… two… three!”
On three, we all let loose. Liam blasts the stone with a lance of golden daybreak magic so bright it leaves after-images on my retina.
The bear charges, slamming into the pedestal with enough force to crack concrete and snap rebar.
Iggy unfurls a lattice of spells, netting the stone in a matrix of geometric perfection.
Slade opens his mouth and a note so deep the glass in the room liquefies and reforms as icicles hanging from the ceiling.
Holy fuck, we’re powerful together; I see it now.
Morgana and I bring up the rear. She hits the stone with the stare of her gorgon, the snakes hissing as they pop free. A layer of her stone encases the focal gem, and I take a deep breath and exhale lightning full force.
The impact of our attacks combines, forming a chain reaction. For a split second, the stone absorbs it all, but then, with a sound like the birth of a black hole, it shatters.
The world goes white all around us as magic and might collide.