The Sky People’s cries, however, grew louder.
With more determination than I’d ever had to employ, I homed in on their voices.
They were indiscernible squeaks, like a bunch of excitable chickadees.
My head rolled backward, only an inch before Skullcrusher clamped down on it with his bruising hold.
My energy whooshed into him with renewed vigor.
The Sky People’s voices faded.
No.
No!
My eyes shutting out what was directly in front of me, I pursued the Sky People, chasing them farther inside myself.
Their birdlike squeaks became louder.
And then … oh fuck … oh fuck, yes … then they coalesced into familiar vowels and consonants, if drawn out slowly, spoken at a tenth of average speed.
As if they’d studied humanity from afar, learning all languages and accents at once, they communicated to me in an English that was part, well, everything.
In a hodgepodge of cultures and inflections, they spoke in a single voice. Despite its garbled slow distortion, its tone managed to be both urgent and commanding while also somehow compassionate and encouraging—a peppy cheerleader with a whip in hand, its end capped in feathers instead of flaying barbs, though a whip nonetheless.
Their voice was at once ethereal and homogenous, diverse yet unified. It pronounceddrashto rhyme with “trash”—I approved—their own name for Magnum’s kind, apparently.
pronounced loo-sheh.
Surely some prime details were being lost in translation. Like, how—precisely—did one go about takinglusheand ending adrash?
Even if thelushinawere able to eventually give me more instruction, I didn’t have time to wait for it. More connected to thelushinathan my own body right then, I could still sense that my physical form was moments away from a point of no return.
Immortality or not, whether or not that power remained to me and my crew, I doubted there’d be any coming back once my essence—that which made me alushina—was gone. After that I’d become merely human.
And humans weren’t exactly known to resurrect.
A terrible choice was foisted upon me: wait for further details in that long-drawn-out voice and risk my end and, consequently, that of my friends, or fight now with all I had.
When Skullcrusher’s giddy, triumphant giggles reached me, garbled as if from beneath water, my decision was made for me.
If he believed he’d already won, that I was at the very end, then there was no more time to wait. Not even a second to spare.
It seemed I was truly alushinain human form, and as such, some part of me, somewhere, must know how to combat this terrible enemy. Beyond my rational mind and its reign of logic, I clutched my intuition…
Instead of resisting the final tugs of mylusheas it traveled into him, I dove after it.
My knees remained planted on the floor of Magnum’s fancy office but I felt worlds away as I projected my consciousness into his.
Just as far away, I heard thelushina’s encouraging cheers. I was on the right track. I leaned harder into my instincts.
Inside Skullcrusher’s mindspace, it was dark and cold, both all-encompassing, as if the light never shone there and never would. I could see nothing through the proverbial eyes of my awareness. I could, however, sense plenty.
The one Magnum’s mindspace contained all the others. There were a total of one hundred forty-three Magnums still alive in the office. Within them lay the seeds for an infinite amount of our enemy. Thisdrashcould reproduce without ceasing. So long as one lived, he could multiply into two more, and then each of those into two more, and onward.
It was the quality that made Magnum special among thedrash.
