Chapter 23 #3
She goes down on her knees, her palms spread on the surface of the mattress. I can feel ripples of power, small quakes underneath me. ‘Give me the signal,’ she says.
‘I’m done here,’ Allen says.
‘Alright. Three, two, one. And go!’ I wrench my hands away from the sensors, and at the same time Xandra pushes her power. We begin taking off from the ground, mattress and all.
But it’s so slow, too slow. The holograms generate around us, and we’re sitting on a fucking mattress that’s partly ripped at the bottom from when Allen made room for me to touch the floor.
We’re trying hard not to lose our balance, so how are we even supposed to fight back when they start attacking us?
I lift my hands to raise a dome wide enough to protect the five of us, even if I’m already exhausted, when the mattress splits in two and we fall down to the floor.
I roll on my knees, the skin on my back burning as I roll clean through a hologram.
Luckily it didn’t cut me with its programmed weapon, but that outcome isn’t far off.
I spring in a crouching position and shield myself just as two holograms start to attack.
My arms shaking under the impact of their blows, I look around, checking where my teammates are.
They’ve gotten into a tight position, the four of them watching each other’s backs and their sides.
‘Ellie, get here, right now,’ Mace bellows.
‘I’m trying,’ I say, but every step feels like wading through hip-high mud. It’s nearly impossible to move, considering that I have to keep my dome up through the hologram attacks. Every blow of their weapons makes me shudder.
‘Ellie, get here, don’t make me come after you,’ Mace shouts. He sounds kind of frantic and that’s how I feel. He was right: it was easy to come in, but it will be tricky to come out.
My team is struggling to keep their attackers at bay. And the ceiling seems to be a long way off. ‘I. Hate. Holograms,’ I say, trying to push through.
‘Drop and roll,’ Mace says. ‘Go, go, go.’
Drop and roll. That’s a manoeuvre that Mace made me practise within my dome until my head was spinning, which made me roll not only on the ground, but within the shield, as well.
I contract my dome to a small sphere around me, and before the hologram can readjust, I’m dropping to the disgusting, dusty ground and rolling away.
The holograms aren’t reacting fast enough.
One manages to strike at my shield, but it’s not enough to slow me down.
When I gain my footing again, I’m sensibly closer to the rest of my team.
They’re fighting hard to keep in position. The holograms are obviously trying to push them with their back against the wall. They fight seamlessly together – one of them creates an opening while the other strikes – and still, they’re facing too many opponents.
‘Good, Ellie,’ Mace calls. ‘Again.’
I drop one more time and begin rolling, but the holograms are expecting this now. They crouch, trying to hit me while I’m on the ground, and I’m losing so much momentum that I barely make it a few steps before I rise to my feet.
‘Okay. That’s it,’ Mace says, and begins hacking his way through the holograms. His arms move with an otherworldly fluidity, swishing and parrying, left and right. I’m pretty much open-mouthed as I watch him.
He’s angry and slightly panicked and I’ve never seen him move so fast. He had to deviate to the right to find his way across the room to me, while the others stayed behind, and the incredible fool nearly reached me when I realise that he’s left his side exposed, and the only reason why I notice is because he taught me these things.
I don’t think.
I react.
I throw a pulse of power at the hologram about to take advantage of the opening he left, even if I don’t know if my power pulses can do anything against our opponents. Time seems to slow as that pulse crosses Mace’s blade, and it expands, taking that milky-lilac quality.
Mace is half-turned towards the point of contact, and his eyes widen when he notices the meld of our powers. ‘Duck! Everyone, duck,’ he calls.
I’m still staring in horror as that melded power expands more and more, severing clean through the holograms and wiping them from existence, when Mace wraps his arm around my shoulders and pulls me towards him.
My head is buried in his chest when a deafening boom reverberates, and the entire foundation of the underground chamber shakes.
Julian and Xandra are cursing, and I’m terrified of what I’ve done. Mace holds me tighter to him. Where I’m safe.
‘You brave fool,’ I say.
Mace squeezes my shoulder. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Better than ever.’ And I am. He’s warm and smells nice and he’s a huge wall that always seems to come in and protect me from harm.
I’ve never, ever had someone do that for me. No one who would jump up for me in the face of an incoming explosion. No one who would hold me tight through whatever might come.
‘Why do we keep ending up like this?’ I ask, though I don’t hate it. I just want to know that someone will be there for me, no matter what.
‘Maybe it has to do with the fact that things keep blowing up or imploding wherever you go, Ellie. I’m starting to believe that the two aren’t unrelated.’
‘Did you just make a joke?’ I huff. ‘Where is Mace and what have you done to him?’
‘In case you were wondering, the holograms are gone,’ Allen calls. ‘You two must have blown up the sensors that were generating them.’
‘We need to go,’ Xandra says. ‘This structure doesn’t seem very stable anymore.’
We make our way to where the others are standing, underneath the gap in the floor of the hut. ‘How do we do this?’ Mace says, looking at Xandra.
She studies the distance we have to cross to get back up. ‘I can’t lift us without a hard surface underneath,’ she says.
‘Could we use one of the metal sheets in the wall?’ Mace suggests, once again in full Team Captain mode. ‘Does your levitation magic permeate through copper?’
‘It doesn’t work that way,’ Xandra says. ‘I push my magic into the ground, and a force field pushes upwards. So, the surface doesn’t matter. The only thing that I need is to be able to lean over the side.’
‘I wouldn’t advise you to use metal from the walls,’ says Allen. ‘The structural stability of the place is compromised.’
Julian curses through his teeth. ‘We could have used some ropes to climb, but they’re in our backpacks. Which are outside.’
‘If it’s any comfort, I don’t think the edges of the floor would hold,’ Allen says.
I think about my shield, and how it isn’t dangerous to anyone who is standing within it. How it’s nearly solid. I’ve never tried to float in it, but I’ve also never trained with someone who can levitate, have I?
‘How about we use my shield?’
I’m met by stunned silence. Mace says, ‘Can you shape it like a boat? Half a sphere? I’m intrigued.’
‘I haven’t tried yet.’
‘Then go for it.’ He steps aside, letting me stand right underneath the opening in the ceiling. ‘You have all the time you want, Ellie. No holograms are blowing down our necks. So go on.’
Allen looks like he’s about to protest, but a glare from Mace silences him. I’m perfectly aware of the fact that our sort-of-Engineer said that the walls aren’t very stable. I lift my hand and raise a dome of my magic. It’s a sphere, like usual. I take a deep breath. And then I try again.
I’m completely surrounded by a shield. I don’t need a shield, though, but something like a boat. I throw it down in frustration and lift it again.
‘Close your eyes, Ellie.’ Mace’s voice is soft and I trust him. Because he’s always guided me to safety. Because he’s my safe place.
I do as he says.
‘Now feel the flow of your power. Feel how it pours out of you, how it creates a shape around you.’
I try. How I try. But I can’t. My magic seems to come out of me in a whoosh, into a shape that’s more like an empty vessel that I fill with a constant stream of power.
‘This is how I feed my power into weapons of different shapes,’ Mace says. His tone is even and close and seems to wrap itself around my heart. ‘I feel the flow of magic, and mould it into whatever shape I need it to take.’
‘It doesn’t work like that for me,’ I say, opening my eyes. I could almost cry in frustration. I feel everyone watching: Allen – and Xandra who wants me to fail – Julian, who will probably dismiss me because I can’t get one thing right.
Mace moves so that he occupies my entire field of vision, building a wall, again, between me and the others. He stands before me, steady and patient, and ready to help me do whatever I need to fly.
Because this isn’t just about feeling protected. It’s about a safe space, where I can spread my wings. And that’s what he’s been offering me, again and again, for weeks. Since he came into Allen’s tent and asked me to train with him.
‘Let’s try something else, then,’ Mace says. ‘We’ll work with what we have. Your dome can’t be a perfect sphere, right? You don’t create craters in the ground wherever you go, do you?’
This thought sparks something in me. I close my eyes and try to feel the shape, the edges of the shield I’m creating.
‘Can you flip it up?’ Mace says, just as I start turning my hand to do the same. I feel my magic tilting, turning, the rush of air. And then, it feels as if there was cotton wool underneath my feet.
When I open my eyes, I’m standing inside the shield of white light, its edges coming up to my hips.
‘Perfect, Ellie. That’s just perfect.’
I smile. I could scale a mountain if Mace were by my side. I’m not saying that I would like to scale a mountain, but I could, if the circumstances forced me to.
‘Can you make it just a bit wider?’ Allen sounds shy. ‘So that we’ll all fit in.’
I do as he says, and the rest of my team hop into the boat-shield. Mace stands behind me, his hands on my hips. ‘I’ll hold you.’ And I know he will. Always.
Or until The Citadel tries to part us.
I make my mind run away from that thought as fast as possible.