“It is difficult, but I can pull it off,” Kallie said confidently. “But it won’t last forever— only a couple of hours.”
“We’re slated to be down here for the next four hours. We have to be back by the time our shift is over, or we’re in big trouble,” Charlie said.
“We just need a diversion,” Kallie said, casting her head over her shoulder like she’d been looking for one.
Ezekiel came back with another empty cart. He’d been given the job of loading the noxite into the carts instead of working in the mines directly, as Charlie had promised me, but his face was still red with exhaustion. He began loading the noxite fragments into the cart wearily, a hand placed on one side of the cart like he feared he was going to tip over and needed it to stay upright.
I placed a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Ez, you okay?”
He gave a double-take. He hadn’t seen me board the bus, or come down here to work. “Ava, what are you doing here?” he hissed. “It’s not a place for you.”
“We’re here because of my prophecy,” I hushed, and he tilted his head. “There’s something we need down in the mines, but we have to get away to go find it. We can’t do that with the guards watching us like hawks.”
Ezekiel glanced back at the guards and hushed, “Leave it to me. Opal and I will cause a distraction. It’ll leave you guys time to go.”
“If we hurry, we might be able to find it and get back before the guards even realize we’re gone,” Marcus added, and Ez nodded.
I gave him a grateful smile. “Thanks, Ez. You’re a real lifesaver.”
“Don’t thank me. You’re the one trying to save the world. I just want to help,” he offered.
Ezekiel pushed the cart back out of the mine. After he’d been gone for ten minutes, Kallie whispered, “How do we know when he’s caused a—?”
There was the sound of a loud explosion, one that shook the mine and caused dirt to fall from the cave ceiling. It was so strong that it almost knocked me over, until Charlie caught me. Marcus, unfortunately, went face-first into the wall and smashed his nose. Kallie helped him up as he groaned, holding his face as blood trickled between his fingers. The rest of the prisoners were on the ground.
A radio attached to the guard’s hip buzzed with an urgent voice. “The office is on fire, and spreading to the warehouse! We need all staff available to put it out!”
The guard picked up his radio. “Be there straight away.”
He shoved the radio back onto the holster on his hip, and pointed at us. “You degenerates better not go anywhere, or I’ll make you pay for it once I find you,” he growled.
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Charlie replied sarcastically. The guard huffed, and hurried back with the rest of his cronies to the entrance of the mine.
The other prisoners working with us instantly took their chance to take off down different tunnels, but I knew they wouldn’t get far. They’d be arrested the minute they left the cave entrance, with how many guards were at the head of it trying to put the fire out. Idiots.
But we were different. We were going further in.
Kallie cast the illusion spell. I blinked as I saw copies of her, Marcus, Charlie and myself formulate before our very eyes. The duplicates were identical to us, not a piece of hair out of place. It was so weird, seeing a magical twin of yourself moving around in the real world. The duplicates knelt down to grab our pick-axes, and began chipping away at the noxite.
Kallie bent over her middle, in terrible pain. Her face twisted up, teeth clenched like casting the spell had been difficult. She let out a gasp, but her illusion didn’t waver.
Marcus immediately came to her side. “Kallie, are you okay?” he asked, placing a hand on her back.
“I’m fine,” she ground out. “We need to get moving. Those guards won’t be gone forever, and this spell won’t last more than a couple of hours.”
I watched the eerie sight of our clones hacking away at the noxite stone, before Charlie grabbed my arm. “Come on.”
He waved his hand, and his Earth magic began shifting the dirt and stone that made the tunnel’s end. We walked forward, and Charlie continued to move the dirt around us until we came to an entirely different tunnel. Charlie sealed up the dirt behind us, so the guards couldn’t follow our footprints or see where we’d gone.
“Very impressive,” I said as the four of us clicked our headlamps on. Oberi barked, and Rishi let out a low mew.
“I stole a noxite cuff from a guard and have been practicing magic with it on,” Charlie said. “It gets stronger the more I work at it.”
“How do you think your brother and Opal started the fire?” Kallie asked as we continued down the dark tunnel. Marcus rustled in his pocket, taking out a map of the noxite tunnels underneath Darke Island that we’d grabbed from the library before we left.
“Opal must’ve used her siren scream to explode the furnace in the office,” I said. “We owe her one.”
We wandered down the tunnel, until eventually, the noxite in the walls faded completely. I knew there was no more noxite around us once the buzzing in my ears had stopped. The fatigue from being around the poisonous compound drained away, leaving me energized again.
