Alaric clasped my hand, and I squeezed his fingers back.
“…Their need to feed, to devour, to destroy, will never be sated. If we allow them to continue, they will consume all that is left of the shadows of Overworld. They will destroy themselves, but they will take us with them. Two glorious civilizations, which should never have been rent, will forever be lost…”
I glanced at Alaric, but he stared only at the masked figure over the clock.
“We cannot allow that to happen,” the voice cajoled. “We must rise to the moment we were given. We must savebothworlds from the corruption that seeps through the cracks. We must save all creatures that creep and fly and crawl and swim. Glorious, wondrous creatures, now gasping their last breaths in smoke-filled skies, drowning in poisoned waters––”
Images swam behind my eyes.
Polluted, oil-slicked oceans, dying birds and fish, whales crying as they sang through the cold water only to receive no answer, all their brethren dead. I saw smokestacks belch black smoke into brown skies, fields rotting, floods covering cities and towns and washing away buildings, fires raging, riots, both in Magical cities and human.
I knew some of these images in a way Alaric didn’t.
I’d seen them in Overworld, the whole time I was growing up.
Biting my tongue, I shook my head to clear it.
Despite the kernels of truth he used, the Priest’s words came wrapped in thick layers of clouds, drowning in suffocating magic. Unlike Alaric, I could actuallyseethe strings he pulled, which allowed me to resist the worst of the chimaeric spell.I could watch the threads of magic as they tried to twist my emotions into grief, outrage, anger, horror, fear, despair.
But I couldn’t looking too deeply into any of that right now.
It was my job to trace the signal back.
Within the first few broadcasts we listened to, Alaric had been forced to admit I was better positioned to do the tracking part than he was, mostly because of that reality-distortion chimaera. Alaric couldn’t get past it, so he held the protective spells on our end. He monitored the shields to make sure nothing got through.
That left me to attempt to follow the Priest back to the source.
I whispered a dense line of spells through my monocerus primal.
I’d been refining those spells over time, just like Alaric refined his magic around the receiver. I’d read every book I could find on tracking spells, no matter how obscure, and attempted every technique I thought might help us. Alaric and I practiced together, using various people and objects. Alaric also taught me everything he knew about how magical traces worked, and everything he knew about resonance.
The small sun that glowed over my head ignited, and the chimaera over the room reconfigured subtly. I felt it already absorbing every word coming from the Priest’s mask as he spoke in his oddly melodic, somehow maddeninglyfamiliarvoice. The chimaera recorded all of it: the half-body sticking up out of my table, the motionless gold mask, the bottomless black eyes, the hum of magic from the receiver, the black uniform, the ghostly white flesh, the coils of smoke emitted by the sound of his lulling words.
“…Some of you feel the blood already,” the Priest intoned. “Some of you recognize us in our work. Keep your ears to the ground, children, for we are already on the move. What seemsrandom, truly is not. Our sacrifices are carefully chosen. So let us sharpen our knives on the traitors and their dogs. The blood will water the seeds of the next coming, just as Ra rises in the heavens, and we raise our hands with Him, knowing He looks upon us with love…”
Alaric muttered under his breath. “I think he’s talking about those murders they wrote about in theTwilightlast night,” he said, referring to one of London’s Magical newspapers. “If I’m hearing this right, they’re taking credit…”
I swallowed, but didn’t answer.
I didn’t let my own magic get too close, but used the tracking spell to feel around the edges of those plumes of light. I tentatively changed my aura’s own magical frequency, trying to establish a resonance between mine and his. But the magic coming from the Priest was unnervingly strong; it brought up a visceral, irrational fear whenever I got close. I tried to push past that fear, to blank my mind, but my hands shook, my throat closed.
I couldn’t process the fear rationally.
The mesmerizing, distorting quality of his magic strengthened.
Alaric told me that these missives, and that voice, both drew him in and sickened him to the point of nearly passing out if he listened too closely. Even when he made an effort to hold his mind apart, the Priest’s magic contaminated his entire magical aura. After the first time we’d stumbled on a broadcast, he hadn’t felt free of it for days. Even after he meditated, cast cleansing spells, and drunk down potions meant to clear one’s magical aura, it lingered around him like a bad smell. He said it felt like being dosed with deeply unpleasant drugs.
Alaric believed the Priesthadto be an incredibly powerful sorcerer.
The Priest’s magic was so strong, he could alter reality for hundreds, possibly even thousands of listeners scattered all over Magical England, and even from other countries. Alaric told me how rare and unusual that was, no matter what ritual they used to transmit; he wouldn’t have thought such a thing could be possible at all, not without seeing it for himself.
He also wondered why it didn’t affect me.
I laid a hand on his arm. “Are you all right? Is it pulling you in again?”
He nodded briefly, jaw clenched, then studied my eyes.
“But not you,” he observed, cocking an eyebrow. “Never you, sweetness.”
