It’s not iron, I thought wildly to myself.It’s nothing but a bed of flowers.
That was ridiculous; of course it was iron. I could feel how much it drained my magic and the blistering pain of the hard walls pressing in on me.
But words were intention, and if I truly believed that, I had to show that now. The answer came to me… a fae’s power wasn’t in their illusion magic, it was in theirintention.I had to persist in my belief, and once I did, the magic would come. I closed my eyes to aid in the distraction.
It’s not iron. I can feel the petals of the flowers and smell their scent. It’s like lying in a bed of long grass on a warm summer’s day.
It wasso hardto convince myself. The box was starting to suffocate me, squeezing the air from my lungs. But I refused to listen to what my body was telling me, and ignored reality as I dove into my imagination.
The iron box is not my reality. I feel the velvet of the petals and the sun on my face. I hear the bees as they gather nectar from the flowers around me. I’m in a garden. I’m safe. All is well.
Just before my bones were about to crack under the pressure, the iron box exploded around me into a fluttering array of white rose petals. I gasped for breath, and nearly doubled over, holding my side where my ribs had been broken during the siege of Dolinska. The burns and blisters still etched up my skin, but they weren’t as bad as I’d thought them to be. I’d gotten out just in time.
Gabby’s mouth gaped as she took me in, unable to believe that I’d foiled her plot, and managed to escape the iron.
“It’s not possible,” she rasped, her face going pale.
“Anything’s possible,” I told her with a sick chuckle. “You just have to be delusional enough to believe the fantasy.”
Gabby let out a scream so loud, it hurt my ears. She made a sweeping motion with her hands, and as she did so, the ground beneath me began to rumble. I fell to my knees as a building made of black obsidian, much like the towers in Eiragrad, began to rise from the earth. The tower rose higher and higher, lifting Gabby and me into the air and creating a skyscraper of monumental proportions. I looked down, and realized we had to be a hundred stories up.
The evil queen bared her teeth as she lifted a hand. “Goodbye, Emma.”
She blasted me backward with a shield she’d forced out of her palm. The shield hit me, and knocked me out for a few seconds as it threw me off the tower’s edge. When I came back around, I realized I was still hurtling through the air, and dangerously close to the ground. Wooden stakes began rising from the earth, waiting for me to fall upon them.
She meant to impale me, like she was famous for doing to her enemies. My wings didn’t have time to slow me up, so I cast a portal at the last moment, and fell through it. I shut my eyes, just in case I hadn't cast the spell in time.
I tumbled into something soft. When I opened my eyes, I saw that I’d ended up in some sort of cloud-like world, one with a soft-pink sky.
I didn’t have time to marvel, because my portal shut once someone else fell through it. Gabby had seen what I’d done, and pitched herself off the tower to come after me. My sword was still attached to my side, and I wrenched it out of its sheath as Gabby swung her weapon at me. Our swords danced for a minute or two before Gabby summoned another portal.
She stepped on through it, and I followed her, though I had no idea where it might lead. My only thought was to chase her. I jumped through the portal and found myself in Edinmyre, at the top of a mountain. The snow whipped into my eyes and blinded me as Gabby spunLodburzanin an arc at my stomach. I repelled the blow, and the force of my hit was so strong it knocked her off the mountain side. She plummeted several feet before Gabby opened up another portal to fall through as she tumbled off the mountain. I jumped off the mountain’s edge and followed her through the portal, landing in a fiery desert; another part of Edinmyre.
The immense heat burned my skin, and the blinding light got in my eyes as Gabby jabbed two short strikes in my direction. She knocked me backward, but this time I opened up a portal of my own, and transported myself to a rainforest. I attempted to close the portal on Gabby as she followed me through, to cut her in half, but she sustained the portal with her magic and tumbled out. The portal exploded with the force of the warring energies, the effect similiar to a bomb going off. We both threw up shields as the imploding portal leveled the area around the rainforest up to a quarter of a mile, creating nothing but a huge crater. Gabby ran at me, but I cast another portal and slipped through again, this time landing in a coniferous forest. The ring of our blades rang out as swords rattled each other, even through the portal’s tunnel.
We went through portal after portal, entering multiple different lands, some on Earth, some on Edinmyre, our swords clashing for just a moment in each realm before I followed her into another. At some points, we didn’t even have time to attempt a strike at one another before we fell into a different portal. We were both casting them so quickly, popping up at different parts of the universe at multiple moments of time, and there just seemed no end to it.
Finally, both of us fell through a portal that took us back to the battlefield, at the base of the skyscraper she’d created. We were flat on our faces, panting for breath. I doubled over and heaved, bile spewing from my throat. Gabby trembled, but kept her bearings.
After a few moments, both of us staggered to our feet at the same time. Gabby clutchedLodburzan, looking more pissed-off than ever. She sent an intense gaze at my sword, and it became liquid in my hands, forming into a puddle of silver goo.
I was weaponless, but my magic wouldn’t fail me. I called to the nearby woods, looking to latch on to the first monster’s mind I could find.
Trees toppled over as a strange chimera came bursting out of the forest. It had the back half of a horse and the front half of a warg, with piercing red eyes and fangs that protruded from its upper lip, claws that were bigger than my entire body. Apsoglav— they were related to wargs, and were native to the woods around the university.
This was a wild being, one that hadn’t been claimed by Droga’s brainwashing yet. I grabbed onto the monster’s mane and hauled myself onto its back.
Gabby had the same idea I did— she’d called and overpowered the mind of a hideous, spider-like creature with long, venomous fangs that was just as large as thepsoglav.
Her mount moved in a blur, and had a human skull for a face. I’d studied these creatures, and knew they came directly from the depths of the Underworld. Gabby had summoned akikimore.The two animals locked gazes and hissed, like they were mortal enemies.
My monster let out a braying noise before it charged. Gabby rode her mount toward me at full-speed, and the two monsters clashed head-on.
My arms felt like they were about to be ripped out of my sockets as I struggled to hold on. My monster screeched, digging in its claws to the side of Gabby’s mount, while Gabby’s monster bit into my mount’s neck. Both of us were tossed around on the backs of our respective monsters, holding on for dear life as the creatures circled each other, then dove again.
My monster was victorious, and tore out the other creature’s throat. The monster sank to the ground with a low moan, but Gabby wasn’t about to be bested. Before she leapt off thekikimore, she sent a killing spell ricocheting at my monster, which made a giant hole in his skull. My mount slumped to the ground, dead, and I had to roll off its back in an effort not to be crushed.
We stood beside the bodies of our fallen mounts and stared one another down. Gabby and I faced off once again, each of us looking for a new opportunity.
