“What is that?” I gasp, watching as the shadow weaver army fires its shadows toward the light, and the light repels it straight back at them.
“The academy’s ancient magic,” Fox says. “It’s protecting us.”
My heart soars with hope. Maybe we have a chance. With the academy on our side, helping us, maybe we can keep them at bay – at least long enough to weaken their powers considerably and give us the chance we need to beat them.
“Yeah,” Dray says from the other side, “but for how long?”
And as he says those words, I watch as a small figure in the distance, dressed all in silver that glints even in this gloomy, foggy light, sends a torrent of swirling dark shadow magic straight at the shield of light. I hear the light groan as if it’s a living being when this magic strikes it. And although it holds, it flickers for a moment.
And I know.
It won’t hold forever. Not nearly long enough.
“Who is that?” I say.
“The Empress,” Beaufort tells me.
Now I understand what they’ve all been telling me for so long. Her magic is powerful. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Far stronger than the Madame’s, or Beaufort’s, or even Thorne’s. There’s something about it. Truly dark. Truly violent. Truly strong.
Do we really have the ability to defeat her?
The rest of the army is no longer firing their magic. It’s just her now, firing more and more at the light shield. It groans. It flickers. It holds strong.
“Not even my mother is strong enough to break through,” Beaufort says with a little bit of a smirk.
“How about your mom and Veronica together?” Fox asks. His eyesight is far superior to ours but soon we understand what he means. Another figure has joined the Empress’s side, this one wearing a long black cloak that flutters in the breeze.
“The Madame!” I gasp. I assumed she was still out there somewhere in the demon wastelands, banished from the realm, but here she is standing right next to the Empress. Not in a million years would I have expected that.
She tosses her chaotic magic towards the light and this time the groan is much louder and the ground beneath our feet shudders.
“Shit,” Dray mumbles.
And yeah, shit because the light flickers, groans, splutters, and then it snuffs out altogether.
“I thought that would be more effective,” I say, severely disappointed. “I thought it would give us more time.”
“It would have worked against normal shadow weavers,” Fox says. “You saw how it deflected their magic easily. But the Empress is strong. And combined with Veronica …”
The army surges forward at once, yelling triumphantly, racing across the boggy marshland, mud splattering around them. It halts before the great barricade we’ve created. We’re only a few feet apart now. I can hear them chattering among themselves with excitement. I can hear their boots in the mud. I think I might even be able to smell them.
We watch as the Empress’s army fires shadow magic at our makeshift barricade. There’s explosion after explosion. The great vines and bracken that the botany professor has erected, fortified with equipment the Titan twins have moved from the obstacle course and gym, explode and shatter and burst into flame.
But it holds.
The five of us work together, along with the shadow weavers and teachers that remain at the academy, to deflect as much of their magic as we can, meeting their firepower with our own. But Fox advises us cautiously to preserve as much of our energy and our resources as we can.
“They’ll break through eventually,” he says, “and we want to be as powerful as we can be when we meet them.”
Other students come to watch us too, and some are even brave enough to venture forward and add tables, desks, and chairs to our makeshift barricade.
We’ve been fighting for forty-five minutes, at least, when Professor Cornelius comes hobbling over to join us, raising his hands as if he too is about to fire his magic.
“You don’t need to be here, Professor,” I tell him. “There’s enough of us for the time being, and our barricade is holding.”
“I may be old, Miss Storm,” he says, “but I can still fight, and you need all the fighters you can get.”
“We have enough,” I tell him. “There’s no need for you to put yourself in danger.”
