Page 82 of The Princess of Portals

Capricorn and I followed Scorpio down the hall.

“Here’s the thing I really don’t get. You’re spirits,” I said. “You have so much magic. Why would you need my help?”

“The agents fighting us are also spirits, and there are a lot more of them than there are of us. We need all the help we can get.”

“I don’t have many spells. And the ones I do have aren’t very powerful.”

“You underestimate yourself, Savannah. You have more power than you know. The Paragons of Magic have chosen you.”

“You think I’ve been chosen?” I couldn’t help but laugh. It sounded so unreal.

“I know you were,” Capricorn replied. “The Paragons of Magic have chosen you, Savannah. How else do you think you can read their spellbook? I wish I could read it.”

“You can’t?”

“No.”

“But you’re a spirit!”

“Only the Paragons of Magic and their chosen ones can read that spellbook. You can read it, so they must have chosen you. They must have seen something very special in you.”

Portia had told me that.

“Portia, the Princess of Portals, is very wise,” Scorpio declared.

“How did you…”

“He has a bad habit of accidentally reading people’s minds.” Capricorn frowned at her partner.

He shrugged, then moved forward, putting more distance between him and us. It made me feel a little better, even though I was pretty sure he could still read my mind. Somehow, not seeing his face while he read my mind was better. Somewhat.

“What about the other Paragons?” I asked Capricorn. “Who are they?”

“The Princess of Portals, the Emperor of Elves, the Duchess of Dragons, the Angel of Alchemy, the Countess of Chaos, and the Prince of Paladins. I’ve met the Princess of Portals and the Duchess of Dragons, but not the others. They are very secretive. They have to be. The other greater spirits do not approve of their methods.”

“Interfering in corporeal matters.” I frowned. “But the other spirits do that too. They created the Zodiac Order to police magic in the Many Realms. What is that if not interfering?”

Capricorn gave me a wry smile. “Yes, ironic, isn’t it?”

“The other spirits interfere. They just do it through their agents. But that still counts as interfering. The spirits are basically fighting over a technicality.”

“That’s how things always work, isn’t it? For humans and spirits alike.”

“Yes, I guess that’s true.”

Scorpio was far ahead of us, and he moved fast. We finally caught up with him at the end of the hall. He was standing on a raised circle with a small hole at its center. From its shape and material, it resembled a coin—if coins were over two meters in diameter and had a donut hole in the middle.

As soon as we were all standing on the metal donut, Scorpio gave his hand a smooth flick. Symbols appeared on the odd apparatus. A moment later, it detached from the floor. A perfectly-symmetrical hole appeared in the ceiling above us. We hovered in place for a few seconds, a buoy bobbing in the ocean, then we shot up through the opening. The floors flashed by at breakneck speed, but inside the circle I didn’t feel a thing.

A magic elevator. Imagine that.

In no time at all, the magic elevator reached the end of the line. It came to a smooth stop. The floor below us went opaque. We hovered for a moment, then set down on solid ground. The engravings went dark.

“We’ve reached the top,” Capricorn said. “That door is all that stands between us and the roof.”

Fog rolled down the hallway, and that’s when things got really weird. The ceiling and the floor switched places. I dropped. The chasm below had reopened, and I was falling toward it.

Two hands caught me. I looked up into Capricorn’s face. She was hanging from the ceiling like her feet were glued to it. Her hands gripped mine. An icy wind battered our bodies, trying to push us into the chasm. It howled and it pulled and it pounded.