Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Ben had seen Sidney exhausted before. He’d watched her push through electromagnetic overload during the shadow stalker crisis and had caught her when she’d nearly collapsed after merging with corrupted magic. But he’d never seen her this drained, as if something was slowly stealing her life force.
She lay on her side near the spring, wrapped in the emergency blanket he’d pulled from the SUV’s kit, and even in sleep, her hands trembled.
Blood had crusted under her nose once again, and also at the corners of her mouth.
Her skin had taken on a gray cast that made her look like a photograph left too long in the sun.
The unicorn had settled near her, its body providing some much-needed warmth in the cold night air. Ben had initially worried that the creature might leave once Sidney was safe, but it seemed content to stay, its presence creating a bubble of calm in the ancient grove.
Ben checked his watch. Two-thirty in the morning. They’d been here for three hours, and Sidney had been unconscious for all of them.
He pressed two fingers to her wrist and counted her pulse. Still elevated, still thready. Not good, but stable. That was something, he supposed.
The phoenix appeared at the edge of the clearing, moving slowly through the trees.
Agent Morse had wrapped it in that electromagnetic shielding fabric — which it wore like an odd cloak — before evacuating the facility, but the creature had found them anyway.
Ben suspected it had followed the connection between itself and Sidney, tracking her consciousness across miles of forest.
It settled on the other side of Sidney, its corrupted fire casting orange-black shadows across the grove.
Up close, the contamination looked worse than Ben had realized.
Maybe approaching eighty percent now, although he had to admit that was just an educated guess.
The shadow veins had spread through most of its feathers, and the clean gold fire only flickered in small patches near its chest.
The creature looked at Ben with ancient, knowing eyes, and he felt something brush against his consciousness. Not words, or even images, just a profound sense of urgency mixed with gratitude.
“I’m doing everything I can,” Ben said quietly. “But I don’t know if it’ll be enough.”
Despite that lackluster promise, the phoenix lowered its head and tucked its beak against its chest. Within moments, it had fallen into a fitful sleep, its corrupted fire dimming to embers.
Ben pulled out the files Lewis had given him, along with his laptop.
The battery was limping along — the EMP must have damaged the charging circuits — but he had maybe two hours of power left.
Enough to go through the digitized journal entries from Emily Thompson that Sidney had shared with him weeks ago.
He’d read them before, of course. But he’d been looking for general information about the portal and the dimensional creatures that used it to travel between worlds. Now he needed something much more specific.
He needed to know about the phoenix’s rebirth cycle.
The journals were meticulously organized, decades of careful observation recorded in Emily Thompson’s precise handwriting. Ben scrolled through entries about griffin migrations and shadow stalker behavior and unicorn sightings, looking for the sections on phoenixes.
He found the first mention in an entry from 1978.
I observed the phoenix beginning its rebirth cycle near the portal site.
The creature’s fire burned clean and bright, consuming its physical form over the course of approximately eight hours.
I attempted to maintain electromagnetic contact throughout the process, as Grandmother’s journals suggested this would anchor the phoenix to our dimension and prevent it from becoming lost between worlds.
The strain was terrible. By hour four, I was bleeding from the nose and ears. By hour six, I’d lost consciousness twice. But I held the pattern and kept the image of what the phoenix should be fixed in my mind, even as its physical form dissolved into pure energy.
The rebirth was completed successfully. The phoenix emerged renewed, its fire stronger than before. But the cost —
The entry cut off there. Ben flipped to the next page and found it dated three days later.
I woke this morning for the first time since the anchoring. Mother says I’d been unconscious for sixty-three hours, occasionally crying out or convulsing, but never fully waking. The doctors she brought in were baffled. All my vitals were stable, but I simply wouldn’t wake.
I feel different now. My electromagnetic sensitivity has increased significantly — I can sense the portal’s fluctuations from miles away, can feel dimensional barriers thinning before any creatures cross through.
It’s as if anchoring the phoenix left some of its fire inside me, expanding my abilities beyond what they once were.
I don’t know if this change is permanent. Mother’s journals contain no mention of similar effects, but then, she never attempted to anchor a phoenix through full rebirth. I may be the first in our family to do so.
I hope I’m the last.
Ben sat back, frowning. Emily had succeeded in anchoring a phoenix, but it had fundamentally altered her, had left her unconscious for days and permanently changed her abilities.
And that had been with a clean rebirth, a phoenix that wasn’t corrupted.
Sidney stirred, and a small sound of distress escaped her throat. Ben moved to her side immediately, one hand finding hers.
“I’m here,” he said in what he hoped was a gentle, comforting murmur. “You’re safe.”
Her eyes opened slowly, unfocused at first, then gradually clearing. When she saw him, something in her expression softened.
“Ben.”
Her voice was hoarse, but she sounded mostly like herself.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Like someone replaced my nervous system with live wires.” She tried to sit up, and he helped her, keeping one arm around her shoulders for support. “How long was I out?”
“Three hours. The unicorn brought the phoenix here — it’s sleeping on your other side.”
Sidney turned carefully, her movements stiff, and looked at the dying creature. Even in the dim light, Ben could see tears gathering in her eyes.
“It’s worse,” she whispered.
“Eighty percent corrupted, maybe more. But stable for now.” He squeezed her hand gently. “Sidney, I’ve been reading your grandmother’s journals. The entry about anchoring a phoenix.”
She tilted her head to one side. “The one Lewis told us about, when she spent three days unconscious afterward.”
Ben nodded. “It changed her permanently. Her electromagnetic sensitivity increased significantly after the anchoring. She said it felt like the phoenix had left some of its fire inside her.”
Sidney was quiet for a long moment after hearing those words. When she spoke, though, she sounded more thoughtful than worried. “You’re saying if I anchor the phoenix through rebirth, I might not be the same person afterward.”
As much as he hated the idea, he made himself reply calmly, “I’m saying it’s a possibility we need to consider.
Your grandmother anchored a clean rebirth and still spent days unconscious.
You’re going to be anchoring a corrupted one while already severely depleted.
” Ben took her hands so she could face toward him.
“This might kill you. At the very least, it could change you so fundamentally that who you are now — ”
“Doesn’t exist anymore,” she cut in gently.
Her voice was steady enough, but Ben could feel the way her slender body shivered.
“I know. I’ve been feeling it through the connection with the phoenix, the way our consciousnesses are entangling.
If I anchor it through rebirth, we’re going to merge on a level that might not be reversible. ”
Ben wanted to tell her that wasn’t an acceptable outcome, that they needed to find another solution, another way forward that didn’t involve Sidney sacrificing herself or her identity. But they’d been over this ground already, and the math hadn’t changed.
No anchor meant the phoenix died. A dead phoenix meant the portal would destabilize. And a destabilized portal meant Sidney’s mother and grandmother were cut off forever, and Silver Hollow’s entire supernatural ecosystem collapsed.
It was an impossible situation, no matter how they looked at it.
“There has to be another way,” he said, more out of stubbornness than because he thought they had a viable solution.
“If there is, we haven’t found it.” Sidney leaned against him, her weight settling into his side. She felt so light, so fragile, as if some necessary part of her life force had already been stripped from her. “And we’re running out of time to look.”
The unicorn lifted its head and stared at them with those ancient eyes. Through his growing electromagnetic sensitivity, now amplified by the grove’s clean energy, Ben could sense the creature’s purpose clearly.
It was here to help and to protect, to ensure that Sidney survived what came next.
But even the unicorn’s presence couldn’t guarantee success.
“Tell me what you found in the journals,” Sidney said then. “All of it. I need to know what I’m facing.”
Ben pulled his laptop closer and walked her through Emily’s entries — the anchoring process, the physical toll, the permanent changes. Sidney listened without interrupting, her expression growing more serious with each detail.
“So I’ll probably be unconscious for days afterward,” she said when he was done. “Assuming I survive at all.”
Forcing himself to sound dispassionate, to look at the problem with scientific eyes, he replied, “That’s what your grandmother’s journals suggest.”
Not even a blink. “And my abilities might change. Expand, maybe, or become something different.”
“Yes.”
Sidney glanced over at the phoenix, then at the unicorn, and finally back at Ben. “I can live with that. As long as I live.”