Chapter 23 #2
“Alanna! Oh my god, what’s happening?” she cries, muffled against my shoulder. “Is he . . . is he . . .?” She pulls back, blue eyes wide with the question she can’t bring herself to ask.
I look down at our father, seizing with dread.
I can’t lose him. Not now. Not after what he just did.
If he doesn’t wake up, we’ll never get to talk.
How can we ever heal what’s broken between us if he’s gone before we even get the chance to try?
My hand hovers over his chest, terrified of what I’ll find.
Then, I see it. The shallow rise and fall of his chest. A low groan escapes his lips as his eyes flutter.
He’s alive.
I exhale in a gust, my lungs remembering how to work. But there’s no time to linger—a shrill hissing sound slices through my attention. I jerk my head to see a thick tendril uncoil from the mass of shadows in the plaza and start snaking toward us. Toward my family.
Protective fury surges inside me. Standing, I step forward, in front of where Em crouches over Dad on the ground, placing myself between them and the approaching leviathan.
“Stay back!” I yell.
“Alanna, what—” Em gasps, clutching at the back of my shirt, her fingers shaking violently as she tries to drag me back.
In a commanding tone I didn’t know I possessed, I hear myself saying, “Take Dad. Get him out of here.”
My sister stares at me with uncomprehending eyes as if she’s looking at a stranger, her face contorted with turmoil. “Go where?! I’m not leaving you! What are you doing?!”
The tendril is close now. There’s no time.
“Just trust me,” I say, my eyes locked on the beast. “I can stop it. But you need to get to safety. Now!”
I don’t wait for her answer. I turn my back on two of the people I love most in the world and start running toward the center of the plaza. The echo-beast is not interested in my family—it’s after me. So I’ll give it a target.
“Alanna!” Em screeches, her voice cracking with fear. “ALANNA, NO!”
I force myself not to look back, channeling the sound of my sister’s terror into the fire of my resolve as I activate my magic in a concentrated burst. Iridescent light streams out around me, throwing up a shield just as the pitch-dark tendril crashes into it.
The tendril dissipates on contact.
There’s a loud outraged buzzing like a million staticky old TVs with the volume maxed out.
That’s right, I think. I’m stronger now. Bet you weren’t expecting that.
To my left, a shout rings out. The Wardens.
While I was distracted, they’ve formed a semi-circle perimeter to protect the most populated part of the plaza, with a barrier of silver light holding against the beast’s oppressive energy.
But I can tell it won’t last long—it’s flickering, getting dimmer by the second.
Behind them I see a horde of cowering civilians, some injured, some too dazed to flee.
They’re doing their part. Now I have to do mine.
My theory is sound. My harmonizing magic will compel its chaotic energy into a stable, physical form. A form that can be contained. A form that can be fought. This will work. It has to.
Planting my feet on the pavement, I ignore the pandemonium still raging beyond the Wardens’ barrier.
The world narrows to the pulsing cyclone of darkness in front of me.
It feels like a wound in the fabric of reality, a screaming void of incoherence.
I raise my hands, letting everything melt away until only a single note of clarity remains in my mind.
Then, with everything I’ve got, I project it.
A concentrated stream of resonant order. Purer and stronger than what I was able to conjure at the railyard.
The air in front of me shimmers, like heat haze rising on a summer day, but the feeling is cool and clean.
As my aura expands, the deafening buzz begins to quiet, the chaotic noise replaced by a ringing silence.
The beast’s violent thrashing ceases. It hesitates, its shadowy shape wavering as if confused by this energy it has never encountered.
In the periphery, I see Seb lower his hands slightly, his mouth agape in stunned disbelief. It’s working. My research, my instincts, all of it—I was right.
I push the aura forward, pouring my will into the core of the beast. The viscous darkness reacts instantly.
It begins to constrict, edges sharpening as the shape condenses, coalescing from wispy shadow into something hard and real, like cooling obsidian.
As it shrinks, the Wardens press the advantage, moving forward to tighten the protective barrier.
It lets out a high-pitched hiss—a sound of immense pressure—and I feel a surge of triumphant hope. I’m caging its chaos in a prison of its own energy. Once it’s solid, the Wardens can contain it. We can win.
But the hope shatters in an instant. The hiss deepens, twisting into a shriek of undiluted rage.
A tsunami of chaos rushes through our connection, and before I can pull my magic back, the sensation unleashes throughout my entire body.
I’m thrown backward, only able to watch as the enraged beast lashes out indiscriminately, its violence amplified.
The shriek booms through the plaza, erupting from a maw that tears open in the center of its chest. It has solidified into a fusion of nightmares—the hulking frame of a great bear married to the coiled grace of a panther.
Its hide is a shell of living obsidian, cracked with veins of violent purple energy.
From its back, thick tentacles writhe like serpents, each tipped with a razor-sharp claw.
It lunges with terrifying speed, a streak of obsidian and violet light.
Plowing into the Wardens’ defensive line, it sweeps them aside like dolls.
Bodies fly backward, smashing against a building with sickening thuds.
I scramble to my feet as it leaps into the air, landing before me with a force that pulverizes the pavement.
Concrete shrapnel showers the unprotected crowd, and the ensuing cascade of screams condemns me.
I stare at the carnage, the injured Wardens, the terror on the festivalgoers’ faces. My brilliant plan, my one hope, has made everything a thousand times worse. Everyone here might die, and it’s all my fault.
What have I done?