He clutched his half of the Codex to his chest and let the shrinking dimension carry him back toward the tear through which he’d entered.
Light blazed. Sound roared.
And then he was falling.
Evander crashed onto cold stone, the impact driving the breath from his lungs. The half-Codex tumbled from his weak grip and landed beside him with a thud. He could only lie there, gasping, as his exhausted body and drained mind struggled to process what had just happened.
“Evander!”
Viggo’s voice cut through the ringing in his ears. Then strong hands were lifting him, cradling him against a broad chest. Viggo’s face swam into view, pale with fear, his dark eyes wild with relief.
“You’re alive,” the Brute breathed. “Thank God, you’re alive!”
He hugged Evander tightly.
Evander could feel the Brute’s heart drumming rapidly against his own chest. He managed a weak smile.
“It will take more than a collapsing dimensional space to kill me.”
Fairbridge appeared at Viggo’s shoulder, his usually composed features wracked with concern. Evander looked around slowly.
The chamber beneath the chapel was in ruins. A pale light filtered down from a breach in the ceiling. The ritual circle had been destroyed, its carefully drawn symbols scrubbed out and scorched. The bodies of the dark mages Viggo and Fairbridge had defeated littered the ground.
“What happened in there?” Viggo asked in a strained voice.
Evander looked at the half-Codex lying beside him. Even incomplete, he could feel its power thrumming against his senses. Old, dangerous, and now partially in their possession.
“Winchester escaped. He took half the main body of the Codex with him.”
Viggo’s expression darkened. “Half?”
“The book split when we fought over it.” Evander pushed himself up to sitting, shocked by the unnatural weakness in his limbs and wincing at the protest of bruised muscles.
He felt like he’d gone ten rounds with a Brute in a fighting ring.
A rumble shook the chamber. Dust rained down from the ceiling. Another tremor, stronger this time, followed by the sound of an explosion. Cracks spiderwebbed across the walls.
Alarm twisted Evander’s chest.
“The monastery!” Fairbridge barked. “It’s collapsing!”
“We need to move,” Viggo said grimly. “Now.”
He hauled Evander to his feet. Evander scooped up the half-Codex and tucked it securely inside his shirt with trembling fingers. Whatever secrets it contained, whatever power it held, he would not let it fall into enemy hands.
They ran.
The monastery groaned with a sound that seemed to herald the end of the world as they emerged inside the chapel. Walls buckled and cracked. Floors tilted at impossible angles.
The ancient structure that had stood for centuries was tearing itself apart, stone by stone.
As they fled through the crumbling corridors, the uncanny sensation Evander had experienced inside the convergence lingered deep inside him. A quiet presence that hadn’t been there before. He didn’t know what it meant, didn’t understand what had awakened inside the dimensional space created by the First Archmage.
But whatever it was, it had saved him.
CHAPTER 42
The monastery was dyingaround them.
