Chapter 18 #2
I tilt my ART towards him and his smile vanishes. ‘This means we should get moving. Team Silver is somewhere in the general area.’
‘Great,’ I say.
Mace summons the flyboards, and I get up on one without a comment. It doesn’t feel fun and wonderful anymore.
Allen calls us through the bean while we’re on our way. He tells Mace that Stella sent them on a hunting mission.
That’s fine, because there wasn’t much I could have done to help with that, and I’m relieved. I didn’t want our team to lose points because we went off on a hunch. I want them to win – I see why that’s so important to them.
We stop in front of a derelict building that looks like an aeroplane hangar.
I know because I read about those while I was in the Historians’ Quarter.
The hangar is surrounded by trees, and the runways have not only been eaten up by the forest, but there are signs that someone has chipped away at the asphalt, and at the hangar, too.
The structure looks rusty and as if it’s barely holding up.
‘The Founders sourced materials from wherever they could get them,’ Mace says. ‘We aren’t far from The Citadel. The Warriors who founded our city plundered whatever they could.’
‘Yup, I know, resources are precious.’ Never enough to go around. ‘Do you think it’s safe to go in?’
Mace shrugs. ‘I don’t know. But worst-case scenario, you can throw up a shield, right? If the roof comes tumbling over our heads.’
‘I’ll lead the way, then,’ I say, thinking that I could shield us both, if a shitload of holograms spring up on us. We drop our backpacks at the entrance. They’ll be a burden, whatever’s waiting for us.
Mace stops me, his hand on my shoulder drifting lower to my back, slowly, sending soft shivers down my spine. I turn around, my cheeks heating slowly. ‘Mace?’
The look in his eyes – as if he’s drinking me in – makes all kinds of butterflies explode in my stomach. But then he pushes in front of me with a few long strides, leaving me to wonder again.
‘Let me go in first,’ he says.
Before I can see too much of the abandoned hangar, twenty holograms or so generate around us. Mace sweeps his sword up, already parrying a blow from a hologram with an axe. ‘Get looking for those sensors, Ellie.’
I don’t have to be told twice. I don’t know what we’ve been thinking, coming in here with just Mace and no backup from the rest of our team.
I bring my hands to the dusty floor and send a thread of questioning power.
The core of the sensors, the most powerful echo, comes from somewhere on the left and in front of us.
‘Ten o’clock,’ I shout at Mace. ‘That’s where we should be heading.’
Mace grunts, and I catch a glimpse of the way he tries to hold back four holograms at the same time. There are more waiting behind them. I curse through my teeth. ‘We won’t be able to fight our way through them, Mace. I’ll cover you with my shield.’
‘Just do it, Ellie, do it,’ he says.
I stumble into action – and lift a shield the moment I’m two steps away from him. It catches him mid-swing, and his sword zings against my dome, but there’s no trace of that repelling force, of that way in which my power shoves back other Warriors.
Instead, my shield turns from milky white to pale lilac, severing through two holograms, right in the middle. They shiver and stutter out of existence.
‘Did you see that?’ Mace says, putting away his sword. ‘You made them vanish.’
‘Yup,’ I say, my arms quaking with the effort of trying to move forward, while holding off the holograms that are throwing themselves at me with such anger, as if I’m the one responsible for The Fragmenting.
I try to push on, but it’s hard. The sheer energy they’re made of is holding me in place. Mace says, ‘What can I do? How can I help you? Do you want to drop the shield? Should I try to push my way through them?’
‘I don’t know.’ Sweat beads at my temples. The muscles in my arms are cramping with the effort of keeping them steady, and the magic in me is working up a storm, frothing so hard, that I’m afraid I won’t be able to contain it. That it will just spring out of me and pull me forward.
I grind my teeth. I have to hold back. I have to. I can’t leave Mace here.
‘Fuck, Ellie. You need to drop the shield right now, drop it,’ Mace shouts. He generates his sword.
I wish we had had more time for training, instead of this mad dash from one corner of the Disputed Lands to the other.
I wish we had had more time to find out if I can use my power the way that I used it when we confronted Team Silver and Team Bronze, when I threw back the Warriors with just a sliver of it.
I don’t know if I can work myself up to that state. I don’t know how to reach it.
‘Shield down, Ellie. Stay behind me, and not too close,’ Mace says, and I comply.
The moment my shield is gone, the holograms crowd us in.
But Mace is a storm. He cuts through a hologram’s shoulder, which makes it flicker shortly out of existence.
Using the momentum, he slashes another hologram’s ribs and parries another blow from the hologram next to it.
On the back swing, he generates a dagger in his other hand, and while parrying a longsword, like his, he sticks the smaller blade in the hologram’s throat.
He is power and he is fury and I’ve never seen anything like it.
There’s a tactic to his movements, too, because as he forces one hologram or the other to flicker briefly out of existence – through blows that would have killed a human Warrior – we move a few steps forward.
I’m in awe at his brilliance.
‘Are you watching your back, Ellie?’ he shouts.
Shit.
I turn around, and of course the sneaky holograms are catching on that they might not get through him, but I might be the easier opponent. Just as two of them step towards me, I raise my shield. I feel the slide of his sword across my dome of power, a trickle of magic running down my spine.
‘You destroyed one this time,’ he says. ‘Catch them with the middle of your shield! That seems to be the only thing that deactivates them.’
I grunt, already shaking with the intensity of trying to keep my dome up, while the holograms lunge at me.
But I’m finally able to take in the room around us. It’s a huge, deserted space, covered in dust and rust. Light filters through the broken metal panels of the side walls. There are so many holograms, and we’re still so far away from our goal.
‘We need a new tactic,’ Mace says.
‘No shit.’
‘We’ll exhaust ourselves if we keep going like this.’
‘I agree.’ For one, we’re barely making any progress.
‘You’ll need to teleport where the sensors are and leave me behind.’
‘Fuck, no,’ I say. ‘I won’t do that.’ But I’m shivering with my whole body from the effort of keeping the holograms at bay. And the power roars inside of me, aching to transport me somewhere safe.
I can control that, though. Right?
‘You need to leave me here,’ Mace says. ‘Look at you. How long can you go on like this? Just teleport and block the sensors, like you did in the cave. We’ll be just fine.’
I want to believe him. But I’m too afraid of what might happen.
Mace generates his sword. ‘I won’t stand another second and watch you push yourself to the limit, Ellie. Just do what I say and stop arguing.’ He gives me the I-will-not-be-fucked-with Team Captain glare and I think that maybe, just maybe, I should trust him on this.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘I’m off.’
My gaze on the point where I should get to, I drop my shield.
The second I do that, my power whirls me forwards so quickly that I feel like I have to throw up.
But I’m where I should be, and I don’t waste time before I lay my hands on the disgusting ground and send a thread of power.
I feel the ominous echo of sensors being blocked, but when I look back, I realise nothing has changed. Mace is still battling the holograms.
‘Shit.’
‘Ellie, talk to me,’ Mace calls.
‘It isn’t working,’ I say.
I can see the whirl of Mace’s longsword, before it disappears into the mass of holograms. He shouts in pain.
I need to focus. I lift my hands and do whatever I usually do when I block the sensors, but nothing happens.
‘Hold on,’ I say, trying to think.
I send a thread of inquisitive power, this time, and locate more sensors along the opposite wall of the hangar. Maybe I haven’t gotten the right sensors to block the holograms, and maybe I have the ones that belong to the cut-off information block.
‘I need to try again,’ I call to Mace.
‘Go ahead.’ He grunts with the effort of keeping the holograms at bay.
I don’t have all the time in the world.
It gets worse. Three holograms break off and rush towards me. I teleport to where I felt the other sensors and try again to block them. But I’m too far from them, so I run along the wall, until I’m closer to my goal area.
I block.
Nothing happens. Even worse, Mace shouts in pain and four holograms are coming towards me. ‘What’s wrong, Mace? Tell me what’s wrong,’ I shout.
‘I’m fine,’ he says through gritted teeth. I can hear how hard he’s fighting, how much of a toll it takes on him.
‘I’m coming,’ I shout.
‘Stay where you are. Keep looking,’ he says, but I’m not having it.
I teleport to where he is and lift the shield above us.
His sword meets my shield, and when he slides his blade down my dome, our merged power flows in a whirling stream of pale lilac.
My magic purrs inside of me. I want to ask Mace if he’s feeling it, but then I’m stopped in my tracks by the sight of him.
He’s panting with exertion. His thick, mission jacket has been reduced to rags on his right side, and blood is flowing profusely from more than one injury.
‘Mace! You’re hurt!’
‘Tell me something I don’t know.’ He gives me a small smile, though, as if he could convince me that he’s alright, when he isn’t.
‘I need to— The Pocket Healer. It’s outside. In the backpack.’
‘No, Ellie, no time. We need to get this shit done.’
Stubborn arse. He’s hurt. He’s in pain. Knowing this makes me want to shatter something to pieces.