17 Loop 0, Part 17

At first, I thought it was aimed somewhere else, because I didn’t die. Instead, a body hit me from behind, hard and low. My shoulders struck the marble, and my teeth clicked shut.

It was Finn. He must have seen the dragon’s head track toward me—though how he got from the side of the arena to me so fast, I didn’t understand. Finn had terrible survival instincts whenever someone else was in danger. Whenever I was in danger.

The dragon hit him. The breath attack opened over him and took him apart quietly. The green light around his hands vanished. Finn folded at the knees and hit the marble on his side.

I got up and rushed over to him.

“Finn?”

My voice didn’t sound like mine.

His robes weren’t burned or singed. There was no blood or wound or anything I could point at and fix. But his skin had pulled too tight across his face, and his eyes were open and empty, staring at nothing.

I knew that look. I was eight again, standing in a hallway in pajamas, watching my mother carried down on a stretcher.

Finn was dead. Because of me.

Somewhere behind me, a [Fireball] hit the dragon. It wasn’t Sara’s. The fireball that hit the dragon was twice the size of anything Sara had managed to throw at it. It struck the dragon in the side of the head and detonated in a blast of gold and white light. It was so bright my vision blinked out for a full second. When it came back, the dragon had staggered sideways, and standing in the wreckage of the Crucible was my uncle.

Finn had done it. His last act had saved us all. And now, Corwen was on his feet, his clock talisman blazing with mana. His robes torn and bloody, his face set with determination.

But I couldn’t do anything to help him. I couldn’t move. Finn was in front of me. Dead.

My knees hit the marble. I wanted to curl up into a ball and cry. But [Wideview] wouldn’t let me look away. It shows you everything, whether you want it or not. And right then, “everything” included Finn’s hand, still curled around his wand, still faintly glowing with the residue of the last spell he’d ever cast. And then the mana faded.

I heard my uncle shout.

“[Light Ward]. [Expand]. [Jump].”

And I watched, broken, as spell after spell came out of the talisman. The first wrapped him in a shimmering suit of golden armor. It swallowed his torn robes and made him look like something out of a war painting. The second expanded the ward until it blazed like a second sun. The third launched him forward so fast and so high that I almost lost sight of him.

Three spells in under two seconds. His first, [Light Ward], cost north of 200 mana. [Expand] at that level was another 150 minimum. And while [Jump] depended on the distance and the range he was going, it meant my uncle had just burned through more mana in a heartbeat than I had in my entire pool. I didn’t want to do the math. I didn’t want to think about what that meant for his mana channels. So I didn’t.

He grabbed the dragon’s wing with his bare hands—well, armored hands—and dug into the shadow and held. The dragon twisted, trying to shake him, but my uncle held on like the dragon owed him money.

He cast again. [Light Blade]. A sword of light materialized in his free hand, and he sheared through the wing at the joint. The dragon reeled back, roaring, shadow spraying like blood from the wound. The severed wing dissolved before it hit the ground.

I had never seen my uncle fight. Not like this. I had heard stories of what he was capable of. Everyone had heard the stories. But this wasn’t a story. This was my uncle, with his hands buried deep in a monster, pulling out its heart.

My uncle landed in a warrior pose, one fist on the ground, the sword held high in the other.

[Subtitle] caught something from the stands. Scattered voices from scattered people, overlapping each other as they screamed. “Headmaster!”

“Hero!”

“We’re saved!”

“Is that the headmaster?”

“Is that light magic?”

Yeah, it was light magic. Congratulations, everyone, for noticing.

But then billowing plumes of smoke flowed from the collapsed dragon and surrounded my uncle. The two forces clashed, black smoke and gold light, churning together until he couldn’t be seen. Every impact sounded like it should have been the last. Each one was heavier, each one dumping more mana, each one faster and faster and faster. I didn’t want to think about what that meant.

“Uncle, no!”

I was on my feet before I knew I was moving. I couldn’t let him die, too. I knew it was probably futile. I couldn’t really help my uncle. I couldn’t help Finn. I couldn’t help anyone.

But I could do something, right? I pulled up my mana. 47. I’d started the day at 320. I was down to 47, like a bank account after payday. [Gust] cost 22. That would leave me at 25, which was enough for practically nothing. Especially if the dragon decided to come back from the dead and kill me. Which, given my track record, was practically guaranteed. I cast [Gust] anyway.

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22 mana I couldn’t afford, aimed at a fight I couldn’t influence, for a man who probably didn’t even know I was there. A thin ribbon of wind streaked across the arena floor. It vanished into the smoke like a seductive whisper against a screaming hurricane. The story of my life, honestly.

It didn’t matter. My spell was completely outclassed as a literal bomb of wind and light exploded off my uncle. The smoke dispersed in an instant, blown outward in a shockwave that knocked me back on my ass. The sphere of white light expanded farther and farther until it reached the stands and pushed the dragon back. The light caused searing pain to the dragon as it practically screamed. Red little blisters appeared all along its shadowy body, each one hissing and smoking where the radiance had punched through. But even as I watched, each blister sealed, the shadow floating back into place. The wounds closed as if they had never been there.

Sara was beside me, tugging me away. Though she, too, was having trouble moving. Like me she was staring at the dragon, at my uncle, and the impossible scale of what was happening in front of us. She pulled me to the safety of the stairs near the exit, but I wouldn’t leave.

My uncle resummoned his sword. He must have put twice as much mana as before, because the sword was bigger. It blazed white-gold in his hands, humming with enough power that the air shimmered like a mirage around it.

The dragon’s severed wing was already growing back. Shadows knitting together in long, dark threads. The dragon flexed, and the wing snapped open, fully reformed, as if my uncle had never cut it. What the fuck was this thing?

I was expecting a look of shock on my uncle’s face, or maybe even grim determination. I knew I’d be upset at having to expend more effort on this fucking thing. But [Wideview] let me see something I wasn’t sure anyone else was supposed to see. My uncle was smiling. A big, wild grin, like he was about to devour a large dessert. The sword in his hands grew even larger, stretching and stretching until the blade was taller than the dragon. And then he levitated off the ground. His feet left the marble. He rose quickly, until he was level with the dragon’s head.