“We’re still short,” he confirms after several tense minutes. “By approximately thirty per cent.”
Harlen leans back in his chair, running his hands through his dark hair. “Could we reduce the scope? Target fewer anchor points initially?”
“No.” Eerie’s musical response needs no translation. Arin’s interpretation confirms what his tone already conveyed. “It has to be all seventy simultaneously. Otherwise, the remaining portals will destabilise and tear reality apart.”
Okay, let’s not do that. Tearing reality apart does not sound good. At all. Luckily, everyone seems to agree with me.
The silence that follows is heavy with implications. I may not understand the magical theory, but I can read the expressions around the table. This isn’t a matter of the spell being difficult. It’s mathematically impossible with the resources they have.
Cai stares at the glowing numbers as if willing them to change through sheer force of determination. “What if I pushed harder? Drew more power from the dragons?”
“You’ll kill them,” Silas says bluntly. “And yourself. The human nervous system isn’t designed to channel that much raw magic. You’d burn out like an overloaded circuit and your insides would melt.”
The image his words paint is vivid and horrible. I can see Cai imagining it too, the way his hands clench into fists on the table.
“There has to be something,” Harlen mutters, but even his eternal optimism sounds strained.
They continue running calculations, adjusting variables, looking for some combination that might work. I watch Kirby’s crystal calculator project scenario after scenario, each glowing result more disheartening than the last. Every path leads to the same conclusion. There is not enough power.
The mathematical reality is inescapable. They don’t have enough power, and there’s no way to get more.
Silas slumps angrily in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. “We’re fucked.”
The crude declaration cuts through hours of careful discussion. Everyone falls silent and looks glum, the weight of failure settling over the warehouse like fog.
My heart sinks as I look around the table. These brilliant, powerful people have spent months planning,gathering resources, coordinating the most complex magical working in history. And it’s not enough. We’re going to fail, and Earth is going to remain under fey occupation forever.
Dyfri sighs, a sound that carries a lifetime of exhaustion. “No, we are not.”
Something in his voice makes the hair on my arms stand up. There’s a quality to it I’ve never heard before, a resonance that seems to vibrate in my bones like a tuning fork struck against stone. Goosebumps race across my skin as the air around us begins to hum with energy that tastes of copper and starlight.
But the effect on everyone else is far more dramatic.
Eyes widen. Chairs scrape against concrete as people instinctively step back. Ninian makes a small sound of shock. Eerie’s musical voice rises in what sounds like recognition mixed with awe.
The air itself seems to thicken, charged with power that makes my teeth ache. It’s like standing too close to a lightning strike, all potential energy and barely contained force.
“What the fuck?” Silas breathes.
Ninian stares at Dyfri with something approaching reverence. “You’ve been hiding your power?”
Everyone is staring now. Cai looks stunned. Kirby’s mouth hangs open. Even Harlen, usually so quick with a joke or casual comment, seems struck speechless.
The silence stretches taut as a bowstring. I can feel something radiating from Dyfri in waves. The air around him seems to shimmer, like heat rising from a summer pavement.
How much has he been hiding? How much of himself has he kept locked away?
Eventually, Kirby rouses himself, blinking as if coming out of a trance. His voice is slightly hoarse when he speaks. “This is... this is great. It’s exactly what we need.”
He’s already turning back to his crystal calculator, fingers flying over the symbols with renewed energy. The numbers that appear this time, glow brighter, shifting into configurations that make everyone lean forward with interest.
“Yes,” Ninian breathes. “Yes, this changes everything.”
Within minutes, the atmosphere in the warehouse has completely transformed. Where before there was despair, now there’s hope. Urgent voices overlap as they begin recalculating, redistributing magical loads, redesigning the spell matrix to account for this new source of power.
But I’m not looking at the calculations. I’m looking at Dyfri.
He meets my gaze across the table, and I see guilt written plainly across his features. Anxiety too, and something that might be fear. Another secret. Another part of himself he’s kept hidden.
