“I can’t believe you guys found me,” Charlie rasped.
My lip wobbled as he spoke. He didn’t evensoundlike himself.
“You should be thanking Ava. She rescued us,” Ivy proudly informed him.
“Pidge, how’d you manage that by yourself?” Charlie’s head lolled. I shook him, to keep him awake.
“It doesn’t matter.” I slid out of my chair so I could be at his level. I tried to wipe the blood away from his lips, and failed. “I just have to get these inferichite bracelets off, so I can heal you!”
“We’re not getting them off, pidge. There’s no magic left.” Charlie pushed back his hair to hold his temple, and a fresh stripe of blood streaked across his forehead.
“We’ve done it before, we’ll do it again,” I said firmly. “We’ve gotten this far. Now our next step is to get our magic back.”
“How do we do that?” Charlie asked tiredly. Kallie sat beside us, with Marcus taking the other side. I knew they were too exhausted to stand.
“We use simultension, just like we did before,” I insisted. “Combine your powers with mine.”
“There’s no magic left in any of us. The Warden took it all,” Marcus objected.
“I don’t believe that. Ineverwill,” I swore. “We’re stronger than he could ever imagine.”
“Ava’s right. We just gotta dig deep, deeper than we ever have before,” Kallie said. “I believe that there’s still something there. Our demigod powers wouldn’t have the ability to regenerate if we didn’t havesomekind of access. Let’s use it to fuse our magic together and break inferichite’s hold on us for good.”
“Combining three different kinds of supernatural magic?” Marcus asked. “I guess we don’t know if it’s possible, but we should try anyway.”
“I know we can do anything, so long as we think we can. My mother taught me that,” Kallie said firmly. “Guys, we have totry.”
Kallie reached out to take Marcus’ hand, before she grasped Charlie’s. I reached out to hold Marcus’ other hand, then entwined my fingers with my husband. I ordered my magic to connect, and felt my intention entwining with the abilities of those who surrounded me. Kallie’s fae magic felt light, and full of endless possibilities as her illusion power opened doors for me to new worlds I had never envisioned before. Fae magic was full of mischief, adventure, and ideas that had never been conceived until the moment they were born by their creator.
By contrast, Marcus’ magic was dark, full of musing contemplation and quiet innovation. I marveled at its ability to take the smallest things and tamper with them to create outcomes of his own design. I felt different vibrations, some of them smooth, others chaotic, and I marveled at his ability to control all the different spells he cast.
Charlie’s magic was as familiar as my own, masculine, secure, and grounding. It was a simple power that was similar to taking in a breath, or running your fingers through grass. But that power also had the ability to create a maelstrom, or command a mountain to move, and it would do so just by him asking. His Elven magic resonated with a spirituality that I’d only found, and missed, in the Ancestral Lands, a conception that was able to ignite the desires of the gods themselves, and make dreams real.
My Water magic desired to soothe. My Fire magic needed to rage. But over both of them, my Spirit magic longed to heal. I felt the power of my feminine Spirit magic entwining the other abilities of my companions, bringing them in, sewing them into a thick cord that had thousands of strands and was just as endless as the beginning of time.
The inferichite binding our powers attempted to hold us back, but together, it was similar to the effect of a singular being attempting to withstand a tidal wave. We couldn’t break the inferichite crystals alone, but with each new ability that we added to the spell as demigods, I felt the dark crystals weaken. It wasn’t enough to have two or three— we neededallof us to render the inferichite’s power obsolete, and I felt our intentions combine into the thoughts of one being as we drove our complicated spell into the inferichite. At that moment in time, there weren’t four of us, but one, as if we were a united soul.
All of the inferichite crystals binding our powers shattered into pieces, and the bracelets completely broke in two, falling uselessly off our wrists. The tracking cuffs we’d been fitted with earlier this semester fell off, too. A surge of powerful energy came rushing back into me, and it felt like the kiss of life. Renewed power amplified through my body and echoed outward. I was born again as my demigod abilities came beaming back to life, and with it, my magic.
Each one of us took a simultaneous breath in unison. I watched as their expressions brightened, hope surging back into the features of my friends. I didn’t waste any time, and got to work. I healed Charlie first, surging my Anichi energy into his body to heal his cuts and bruises, leaving him completely well before I moved on to mend Marcus’ broken arm, then Kallie’s burns. I didn’t even think— I merely touched them, and all their injuries went away at my thoughts, melting away at my fingertips as if I’d commanded them to go away merely by my will, leaving them perfect. It took no time at all, unlike normal healing magic did, and left me feeling energized instead of spent. It waseffortless.
“I feel amazing,” Kallie said, and I watched her transform, shaking her wolfish pelt and giving a growl. Marcus conjured a battle orb to test out his magic, smiling as he tilted his hand to observe it.
“Pidge, you’re so wonderful.” Charlie bent down to hug me, then lifted me into my chair. “You never give up, do you?”
“I can’t believe we really pulled that off!” Marcus yelped. “Guess all we needed was to stick together, huh?”
I healed Chancey and Ivy, and used my Anichi powers to dissolve the noxite in their system. Chancey didn’t waste any time on moving forward.
“Awesome, the power of friendship saves the day. So can wefucking leave?!” Chancey asked.
I ignited a fireball in my hand, and it flared all the way up to the ceiling. “Oh,hell yeah.”
“Hold on,” Kallie said. She opened cabinet drawers and started rifling through them. “There are files here in Cellblock 9. We should take everything we can find.”
She yanked out stacks of files from every drawer in the room, then handed them to Marcus to subconjure. “We gotta find Rishi and Oberi,” Marcus said hastily.
“Ava and I can feel him,” Charlie noted. “They have to be nearby.”
