It fell instantly, ketamine turning its aura into a muted and compliant glow.
They had two seconds to catch their breath. Two seconds before they heard baying and yips snaking through the tunnels beyond.
“Shit.” Darien’s Sight picked up on them, crawling on the walls and ceiling, hurtling along on the floor toward them, like spiders scuttling for prey.
There were dozens of them.
Darien flicked on his headset. “Tanner.” He blinked against the darkness, willing his Sight not to fail him. He had no salts on him—nothing that could open the floodgates of his sixth sense, should his mind tire. It was sheer power of will alone that would keep him from falling blind. “Tanner, do you copy?”
The line crackled. “I’m here.”
“You need to get the power back on.” He and the others began moving backward, rifles at the ready, toward the Well he could feel vibrating just around the corner.
If Tanner hurried, he might be able to get the backup power system on, the one that would give the magic system of the Control Tower a kick in the ass hard enough to light the city back up—and hopefully allow the antidote to rain upon the streets from the forcefield projection.
An awful screech deafened him, rifle nearly slipping through the fingers that suddenly wouldn’t work for him—
“Tanner,”he gritted out.
“I’m here,” Atlas repeated. “Did you not hear what I said?”
The screeching grew. It was so loud his eardrums were bleeding. “I can hardly hear a fucking thing. Get the power back on! We can’t use our Sight forever.”
Tanner said something else, but Darien hadn’t a clue what.
They reached the Arcanum Well at last. And he understood exactly where that sound was coming from as he beheld the monstrosity looming before them.
The Well had fused with the earth. Currents of magic were running directly from the energy grid and into the chamber—from the anima mundi itself.
They couldn’t move it. They wouldn’t be able to move it—it was rooted in place.
They would have to dismantle the reactor chamber.
Darien felt like his skin was peeling off his bones. The waves of magic were so loud, soawful, he had to grit his teeth against the sound. Beside him, Arthur seemed unfazed, though his white hair blew like cotton in the ripples of magic.
“We need to find the reactor chamber,” Arthur shouted as he unrolled the tube of blueprints. He turned to look over his shoulder, watery eyes peering into the shadows at their backs. “We’ve got another problem.”
“Yeah, fucking dozens of them!” Darien readied the rifle. “Get moving, I’ll cover you.” Darien tried to hide it—tried to hide how badly the screeching and pealing and rumbling of that god-awful Well was affecting him.
He gritted his teeth against it, blood dribbling from his ears and nose. It ran over his lip and spread across his tongue.
And he fired. And fired and fired.
There was a crackle in his ear. A muffled voice uttering words he couldn’t quite decipher, as the last demon hit the floor with a thud.
Darien shoved the earpiece further in, holding it there as hard as he could with his index finger as he listened.
“Someone lose a headset?” he gritted out.
Bloody and panting all around him, bodysuits gouged with claws and streaked with ash, everyone shook their heads.
Darien tipped his head down as he listened, concentrating on that muffled voice.
It was Loren’s headmaster. He was down here—in the tunnels. Darien could hear the rushing of some distant waterfall in the background. Darien wasn’t sure how he was hearing him; maybe it was the Well. Maybe it was bending the world as they knew it.
Conrad said, “What’re they saying?”
“It’s Loren’s headmaster,” Darien whispered.
