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As soon as Arthur was seated, the group filled him in on everything Tamika had taught them, Jack staying quiet after being told a third time to button his lips.
And then Arthur leaned forward, unrolled a map of Angelthene, and spread it out across the coffee table. Ivy got up off the couch to help, setting coasters on the corners of the map to keep them from curling up.
"It’s funny,” Arthur began, “that you would say Spirit Terra is blending with our world, because this here—” He pointed at a line he’d drawn diagonally across the city with a red pen. “—is where I’ve determined our city lines up with Spirit.”
The others moved closer to see the map better, while being careful to leave Darien and Loren’s view unobstructed.
Arthur explained, “I believe Angelthene is situated almost directly on top of the border between the Aether and the Void.”
Loren’s blood cooled at the mentioning of the Void—and the recent memory of the curtain she’d weakened. A wall protecting their world from the creatures living in there. The Shucca—and who knew what else.
“Hold on,” Darien said. Arthur met his stare. “The Aether and the Void are two of the names Blue gave to the types of magic in those glass cylinders. They’re places, too?”
Loren’s brow furrowed. Exactly how much had she missed?
Arthur nodded. “Correct. Spirit Terra is divided into realms, and in these realms are magical wellsprings known as Astral Magic.”
“Astral Magic?” Max and Travis murmured, voices tangling together.
“Let’s use the Aether as an example, shall we?” Arthur said. He sat forward and cleared his throat, fingers interlocking between his knees. “It is a realm in Spirit Terra that houses the Astral Magic of the Aether—wind, thunder, lightning, and the such. Maybe more—who knows?”
“What about the Void?” Max asked.
“The Void is the worst of the worst.”
Jack snickered. “Great.”
Arthur continued, “It is the place of Blood Magic; Shadow Magic; Death Magic. And some things we have yet to understand, and might never understand.” He paused, watery eyes drifting across the many faces in the room, lingering the longest on Darien. “Let’s hope the Void never manages to merge with our world.”
Tanner rubbed his chin in thought. “The fact that Angelthene is right on top of the Aether makes so much sense with all this rain we’ve been getting.”
Doctor Atlas added, “And the cooler temperatures.”
Loren tried to speak, tried to offer up the information bubbling inside her, but the spell stilled her tongue, her lungs shrivelling up from a lack of air.
She was getting really tired of this.
Arthur reached for another rolled-up paper that lay on the carpet near his feet. Cinder, Lace’s Familiar, had found the paper and claimed it as her own, sharp teeth biting the corners, fluffy tail twitching. She meowed in protest as Arthur extracted it from her claws.
“My apologies, Cinder,” the man said. “I need to borrow this.” He flattened it out and held it up for everyone to see.
“A color wheel?” Loren blurted.
“Right you are, Loren.” He leaned forward and spread the wheel—printed on transparent paper—overtop the map of Angelthene. It was much bigger than Angelthene’s map, only slivers of the violet and black sections falling over the city. “For those of you with minds that work better with visuals, I thought this would help.”
“There’s a section in Spirit Terra for every color?” Dallas asked. They were the first words Loren had heard the witch voice since they got here.
Dal’s question had Max glancing his girlfriend’s way.
There was definitely something going on between them.
“Spirit Terra is a mirror of our own world,” Arthur explained. “For every place in our Terra, there exists one just like it in Spirit, though different and fuelled by Astral Magic.” He jabbed the purple section with a wrinkled finger. “Aether.” He moved onto the black. “Void.” Purple-blue. “Aether,” he said again. Next was royal blue. “Mist.” One by one, he pointed at the colors, paper crackling as his index finger jabbed into it. The next one was green. “Terra Firma.” Another jab of his finger on the red and orange sections. “Inferno.” Then came yellow. “More Aether.” Finally, he pointed at the white circle in the very centre of the color wheel. “The Eye.”
“What’s the Eye?” Darien asked.
“Illusion, mind control, animation,” Arthur replied. “And a whole host of magics no one has ever come close to understanding.”
Loren found herself unable to look away from it—the Eye.
