As she watched and waited, Sara was tense.
They all were, though they showed it in different ways.
Tomas began pacing as the others watched Arcnus gather the power of the constructs by linking them to his own. Sara could feel him like a hand in her heart digging around for tools as he molded the metaphysical power into something he could use.
She didn’t stop him, although it felt like being groped in places she wasn’t even aware of. She did understand then why Tomas paced. There was nothing more to do. That was until the constructs began to shine like the sun. All of them, not just Isabelle’s floating powers.
They grew brighter and brighter until Sara had to squint and shield her eyes while she watched the outlined forms of the constructs waver until they weren’t rigid outlines anymore. Instead, the power became shapeless forms that smoothed out into one golden glow. The glow melded into a single unit that surrounded Arcnus in a solitary ring. It matched his power, beat for beat.
He looked over at Sara and she looked back, heart beating fast.
He had all of their power in his hands. He could do anything with it. Wiping them from existence here meant the same thing as attacking them in the mortal realm. She knew that much, and she knew that it was right to fear death in the Aether Realm. But she wanted to trust him. Besides, what else was she going to do? Throw a sword at the man who held all of their wills linked to his own?
No.
But the line mage didn’t let her down. He raised his left hand in a fist, and the glow of the ring around them pulsed. Once. Twice. On the third time, the power he had amassed began to swirl up from the ring, leaving it depleted, and went straight up until it floated above his fist in a pulsating hand-sized ball. It was getting bigger by the second.
Over the loud throb of the pulse, Arcnus shouted, “Ready?”
Sara was sure he wouldn’t hear the answer over the loud throbs that the pulses were giving off. It didn’t matter. She was ready. Squinting as best she could in the bright light that was practically blinding, she hoped they all were.
Then there were no pulses. Instead, the magical orb he’d formed shot off into the distance like an arrow released from a bow, and they followed it, held close to it by the fact that it was a single metaphysical projectile composed of their joint magic.
As she was drawn close into the projectile’s wake, Sara was aware that the others were all mirroring her position in a loop. Like fish on a lure, as it sped up, so did they. As it dipped, so did they. Minutes passed into moments. Time was immaterial. They followed their metaphysical projectile, unable to break away, unable to slow down, just drawn farther and farther away from their origination point, with Arcnus in their center pointing at the target that drew nearer.
Sara looked forward, but all she could see was the projectile, so she looked toward her compatriots, and all she saw was emptiness. Her heart beat fast as she thought about her part in this attack. She and Arcnus had discussed it at length, but it was different now. She had to be prepared to launch an attack she’d never done before. One that only worked in theory. But there was no time and no way to do a test run. It was do it now, or not at all.
So she concentrated as the line mage gave her the signal.
He had done his part. It was time to do hers.
“Here!” she heard Arcnus shout over the roar of the projectile.
She opened the eyes she had squeezed shut and extended her hand toward him.
He stretched to reach her, straining to keep to his target. She leaned over to grab what he was giving her.
The reins.
The lead that would enable her to take over the projectile once his guidance was done. As she looked down at the badge in her hand, no bigger than an apple, she was bemused at how small it was. Though Sara guessed it didn’t matter—they were in the Aether Realm after all, and this was just a symbolic lead that would allow her to direct and, when necessary, initiate their combined attack.
She swallowed and closed her fist around the little badge in her hand.
Their ride in the wake of the projectile suddenly got bumpier, as if they were hitting turbulence.
Trying to discern the problem, Sara shouted at Arcnus, “What’s wrong?”
“The mages of the Kades—they’re putting up blockages to keep us from attacking them,” he shouted while trying not to waver from his steady path. “Hold on!”
Sara gritted her teeth and ducked her head as he increased the speed of their projectile to the target. It yanked harder on the connection they all had, and she felt like her guts were going to spill out of her body.
She guessed that was what he was referring to when he’d said to hold on.
Sara tried to catch a glimpse of their target, because as Arcnus had sped up, their view of the Aether Realm had changed. She saw visions of the countryside in the mortal realm appear below them in jagged cracks in the countryside. Then she saw bodies, thousands of them, alongside war machines and tents and enveloped by magic—lots of it.
It almost looked like the imperial encampment, but even from far up above, she knew it wasn’t.
Then Arcnus shouted, “Here we go!”
She didn’t have much more time to think. He dove toward one of those jagged cracks in the Aether Realm emptiness, and all of a sudden they were back in the mortal realm. Still immaterial and following a metaphysical projectile, but at least they were home.
Arcnus sped over the camp, and suddenly Sara saw their target. The Kade mage was standing amidst a group of dozens of other mages. Each one was glowing red. They were all still, all casting magic, and as she followed their group casting, she saw the tangential threads leading off from their bodies in humongous arcs across the land directly to the western region…where the imperial armies were camped.
Sara sucked in a breath. “That’s how they’re doing it?”
She wasn’t sure if anybody heard her, but then Isabelle responded, “Yes, those red lines are direct ties to the individual shield domes in our camp.”
For the first time, Sara felt joy—the damned line mage had actually done it. He’d led them straight to the enemy’s camp and to the mages who were making their life hell.
Time to return the favor, Sara thought triumphantly.
Then she looked down and pointed as they got within half a mile of their chosen mage.
“There’s only one mage whose magical red aura is outlined in our gold,” she shouted. “That’s him.”
“Yes,” said Arcnus in a suspiciously weak voice.
Sara’s gaze jumped over to him. To her surprise, she saw him wavering a bit.
“What’s wrong?” she shouted. “We’re almost there. The projectile’s almost made it.”
He bucked up a bit, though he was still pale. “Taking six mages along for the ride isn’t something I’m cut out for. But we’ll make it. Just be ready to do your part.”
Sara pressed her lips together as they kept descending toward their target. They were a quarter mile away now but were slowing down. She could see it. She could feel it.
She shook her head. She had no more residual power to give him. He’d taken what they had, and as the line mage wavered, she could see their plan faltering. If they couldn’t get to the Kade mage, they couldn’t target him.
Then Tomas whooped and pushed himself closer to Arcnus in the center. How, Sara didn’t know. They were all running on fumes at the moment. But he did, getting closer and closer. Then he managed to grab Arcnus around the waist.
“Take what you need,” the weather warden said as lightning began to flash all around them. As rain poured all across the enemy encampment and through their immaterial bodies, Sara gasped. It took great magic to affect the weather so far from your corporeal form, and the line mage had already drained them pretty much dry.
Arcnus looked up with an approving grin on his face. “Just what I need—power.”
Tomas kept holding Arcnus as he sucked the lightning down toward them. The raw power began to strike the two locked forms like they were metal rods, though it left the three other mages alone. Frazzled, but alone.
As the power struck them, Arcnus was able to increase his speed in bursts, and they were back on track toward their target. With seconds left before they hit, Sara tore her gaze away from them and went to do her own duties, the little badge clasped tightly in her hand.
She took a deep breath, even though she figured that she didn’t actually need to breathe in this scenario, and held up the badge that would give her control. As soon as she activated it with a short burst of her power, the projectile recognized her dominance. Sara was dragged from her place in the ring around the wake to the head of the projectile, and if she thought they’d been going fast before, sitting on top of it as it headed for its target was like riding lightning.
But she didn’t concentrate on that.
Instead, she concentrated on the mage outlined in red and the small, almost ethereal lines radiating off him, connecting him to his fellow shield mages.
As she studied them, she smiled. It hadn’t taken her long to confirm it, but it was true—the connections were surprisingly weak, but just strong enough for her to do what she needed to get done.
As Arcnus guided the projectile with the power boost from Tomas’s unnatural storms, Sara unsheathed her swords.
“Five hundred feet down to go,” Sara said joyfully.
Then she crowed, “Three hundred feet.”
They were almost here.
Some of the Kade mages began to look up. Sara didn’t know if her team was visible in the sky, but at the moment they were practically on top of the Kades, and it was clear as day that the mages could see that something was coming for them.
But there was nothing to be done.
“One hundred feet!” Sara screamed. Several of the Kade mages began shaking their colleagues to gather their attention. Their fellow mages rounded on the rabble rousers in irritation before they realized they were looking up.
By the time all of them were, all they saw was a blast of power heading straight for them and a woman riding on top of it with sword raised.
As the projectile hit the mage they’d been aiming for, the physical blast threw every single person within a kilometer off their feet. And Sara got to work.
She couldn’t see the domes these individual mages were attached to in the distance, but she could still see the lines feeding their magic via construct to the field. The field where her compatriots were alone—isolated and dying. So she did what she had come here to do. Sara raised her second sword until it danced in the air alongside the first like the wings of an avenging angel, and she cut.
As she twisted off the back of the mage projectile and landed with ease on the ground, her right arm automatically rose to cut the nearest strand of magic that was powering a shield, any shield, that she could see. Her heart stopped for a second as her sword hovered a centimeter above that first string. As she brought the blade down, she had to wonder if this would work.
She wasn’t physically here, after all. Nor were her swords. Nor was the magic, not in a tangible sense. So it was a risk. But as she remembered the feel of the projectile hitting their target mage, and not only destroying his connection to their shield wall but all his mental awareness as well, she thought it was worth a try.
So she brought that blade down with all the force she could.
And the string snapped with a twa-ang.
When that string snapped, it didn’t just prove that Arcnus’s theory had been right all along. It also proved that their enemy was vulnerable. Because she watched the magic that had been pulsing through that string, like blood in a vein, recoil into its original mage, and that mage died the moment it did. It was instantaneous, and she already knew the ramifications were far-reaching. They had already killed the shield mage in the initial strike, but this meant that far more would die before she was done.
Sara could have screamed in delight. Instead, she saved her voice for more important matters and swung with abandon. All of the shield mages were still dazed and vulnerable on the ground from the residual effect of the blast. Others were even unconscious, which meant none challenged her.
She danced across the field, cutting each shield string with awesome force before jumping to the next and the next and the next.
It had always been their goal to bring down the Kades wherever they could, to give their forces some advantage, and failing that—reinforcements where necessary. This would do that.
As she finished her task and her sword hovered over the last blood-red string, Sara looked back for her team. Two stood watching her, and they nodded in encouragement.
She raised a brow, wondering where Arcnus had gone off to, but she thought maybe there was just one more thing he needed to get done. Thinking nothing more on it, she whirled in a pirouette that would have done her mother the dancer proud and sliced her sword through that final string.
As it snapped, it was as if its power snapped through Sara and flung her back to her comrades.
Isabelle caught Sara before she fell, careful not to touch the swords as she did. Then she said, as they all watched angry Kades pour from tents on the mountainside and start running toward them, “Let’s go.”
Sara didn’t want to go—she wanted to face them.
But her job was done, and now was neither the time nor the place. They couldn’t face an avenging army alone, just the four of them, and magically summon up the strength to wipe them out. Not to mention the mechanics of fighting in a metaphysical state against all-too-physical fighters who had more mages on their side.
So she watched as Isabelle released the spell that snapped them all back into their bodies in their own camp. When Sara opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was that the shield wall was gone.
The second was that Arcnus was dead.