Marci grinned, placing her hands on either side of the spellwork that surrounded his name.Wanna bet?
She didn’t realize he could hear her voice in his mind same as his spirit’s until she felt his panic flooding down the thread that connected him to the DFZ. By that point, though, Marci was in too deep to care. She squeezed with everything she had, crushing the spellwork he’d modified to hold the spirit captive. It was a brute-force solution to an incredibly elegant puzzle, and it never would have worked save for one factor: the DFZ was on her side.
The city was pushing along with Marci, biting and clawing and fighting with all her might against the binding Marci was ripping apart. Alone, neither was enough. Together, though, their combined force was more than any spellwork could hold, and Myron’s was no exception. Seconds after they began, the silver binding snapped like thread, and the DFZ poured out with a scream, leaving Marci alone in a city that suddenly was no longer there.
With nothing left to hold her up, she plummeted through the dark, but not Ghost’s dark this time. She’d been kicked out of a different spirit, which meant she was now falling through the swirling dark chaos of the Sea of Magic itself. Fallingalone, with no protection and nothing to grab on to.
The moment she realized what was happening, Marci began to panic. Without the Empty Wind to shield her, the raw magic that had burned her arms was now burning everything, eating through what little was left of her soul at a terrifying pace. She couldn’t see anything but swirling, oily dark, couldn’t even scream for help. Whenever she opened her mouth, burning magic rushed in. But then, just when Marci was sure she’d finally reached the end of her train of miracles, a wall of wind slammed into her, knocking her to the ground she’d only just realized was there.
“Marci!”
She’d never been so happy to hear a voice in her life. Ghost must have broken a record to get to her, because he seemed as frantic as she was when he snatched her up off the stone, pushing her magic back together as fast as he could.
“Are you okay? Do you hurt?”
She hurt everywhere, but she was too excited to care. “We did it!” she cried, laughing in delight at the sound of her voice speaking out loud again. “I broke the binding. I set her free!”
“I know,” the Empty Wind said. “I felt her leave. She’s on her way to the other side, and she’smad.” He shuddered. “I wouldn’t want to be Algonquin right now.”
The way he said that made Marci shudder, too. “Did I just kick something I shouldn’t have?”
“Probably,” he said. “But we ran out of good options a while ago. All we can do is work now with what we have. But I have to get you back to the Merlin Gate.”
“Why?” she asked, suddenly terrified. “Did Myron break it? Is it ruined?”
It was impossible to tell with his empty face, but Marci would have sworn her spirit was smiling. “No, it opened.”
He pointed down, and Marci turned to see that she hadn’t been lost in the dark Sea of Magic after all. Or, at least, not as lost as she’d thought. They weren’t off in some forgotten corner of the magical plane. They were right beside the pillar of the Merlin Gate, barely twenty feet away from where Myron had been working. The only reason she hadn’t been able to see that before was because the swirling chaos had blocked her vision.
Now that she was back inside Ghost’s calming winds, though, she could see everything again. Including Amelia, who was curled in a little ball on the ground, surrounded by a bubble of fire. A bubble that popped as soon as she spotted Marci.
“Never do that again!” the dragon cried, launching herself at them like a fiery arrow. She slammed into Marci like one, too, knocking her back down on the ground.
“Sorry,” Marci grunted.
“Don’t ‘sorry’ me!” Amelia snapped, her voice shriller than Marci had ever heard it. “Being alone here is the most terrifying thing I’ve ever been through, and I know terrifying! I was part of Bethesda’s learning clutch, remember? You’re just lucky I’m awesome enough to protect myself, but look what it did to my fire.” She spread her wings, which were indeed burning much less brightly than they had been before. “It’s not like I can get more of this stuff!”
“I’m sorry,” Marci said again, pushing herself up. “I didn’t plan for this to happen. If it makes you feel better, it was terrifying for me, too, but I think it worked.”
“Oh, it worked, all right,” Amelia said, scrambling onto Marci’s shoulder. “Look.”
She nodded at the Merlin Gate, and Marci’s eyes went wide. Just as she’d seen through the DFZ, Myron’s incomplete maze of a spell was still glowing on the wooden door. That didn’t seem to matter, though, because just as the Empty Wind had said, the door was now standing open on its own, shedding its golden light into the dark like an invitation. Unlike every other time it had opened, though, there was no smug shikigami standing in the way. Just the open doorway and a clear shot into whatever lay beyond, and on his knees in front of it was Myron.
If it wasn’t for his trademark suit, Marci wouldn’t have recognized him. He’d come in like a conqueror, throwing spells around and treating the Sea of Magic as if it were just another UN war zone. Now, though, his hunched body was even more transparent than Marci’s, and it was getting fainter by the second as he curled into a ball. A position Marci understood all too well, because she’d just been there herself.
“He’s being eaten by the magic.”
“Of course he is,” Ghost said coldly. “Without his spirit to shield him, he’s nothing here.”
“He’s nothing anywhere,” Amelia said, turning up her nose. “Let him dissolve. He deserves it after the mess he made.”
The Empty Wind nodded and started walking toward the open door, but Marci didn’t follow. When he looked back to see why, she sighed. “We can’t just leave him like this.”
“Of course we can,” Amelia said. “Just don’t do anything. Easy-peasy.”
“I agree with the dragon,” her spirit said. “He deserves no compassion.”
“I know,” Marci said tiredly. “He’s a terrible man who’s done terrible things, but…” She trailed off with a long breath. “He’s still human, and he’s notallbad. He gave me several chances to retreat earlier, if you’ll recall. And anyway, I can’t let him just die in front of me.”
