Page 55 of Family Found

I did my best to help, pouring out sacrificial energy for Kinnek and holding up the spell here and there when I sensed he couldn’t. It was easier for me to see what was Earth and what was Aër, what was the beasts’ place in a lot of the cases, and Kinnek let me point that out to him, swooping in with his sophisticated surgical magic once I had.

Opening by opening, we closed the beasts’ place off, repairing the tears in the fabric between worlds. I couldn’t believe how feasible this seemed once we got into a rhythm.

That was when I heard another shot.

Kinnek’s hold on me tightened. “Concentrate. They will guard us.”

I fell back into doing, but the sounds… I couldn’t completely shut out the sounds.

Guard them, protect them, help them, I told the land.

It nodded and jumped right into action for Fellisse. I wasn’t sure what the wound was exactly, but Fellisse’s leg was bleeding. The land healed it, fast, using me to pour out the magic to do so.

That was more magic than I was already dispensing. I winced. I was getting woozy, but this had to be done.

I decided then, in that moment. I would give everything here today, at the Stone. All my power.

The land had told me before that using that much magic could hurt me. I had no idea what might happen, whether I would fall unconscious and never wake up again, but it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t. The Lagasar had to be closed, and none of the protectors would die doing it. I couldn’t let Charles get hurt, or Kinnek. I had power, and I would use it to protect all of them.

Tonight, here on the Hill of Tara, I would be a magical twink badass, and damn the consequences. I’d be a dispensomancer to reckon with.

The land agreed. It forced me outside of myself again, letting me see what was happening around me.

That hurt, but I could see why the land was doing it. It was whack-a-mole, closing the veil and helping the Raikengana all at the same time. The land had an easier time helping when it had my attention.

At the same time, Kinnek and I kept up our rhythm of closing off the beasts. Progress was steady, but not fast. His focus was iron strong, and if he made any mistakes in his workings at all, I didn’t know enough to see them.

Outside, Vergis was shooting down humans, and Charles was covering his son’s back. The two of them were deadly together.

They—the humans—were coming at us from the direction of the church, but some had also circled around us, and with my power needed elsewhere, the fog that hid us had almost dissipated.

Nokim got hit—the chest. How did he keep getting hit in the chest?—and I healed him. Lissir had chosen stealth and used the fog as best he could, and was now close to the Mound of Hostages, where he plunged his daggers into a burly human, killing him instantly.

It was a fight, but we were winning. I could see it, Vergis alone easily cutting down a dozen of the human mages.

The magic was taking too much out of me to feel relieved, but I could see where this was going.

Right until everything changed, right until the tides turned on us.

The veils parted just outside the church. The only good thing was that I didn’t have any room in my head to be shocked, all I could do was keep going.

“Koa Esher,” I said.

Inkiri heard. He’d stayed close, his gun out. So far, he hadn’t fired a single shot.

Kinnek stumbled and struggled when a bullet hit him in the back. He hissed. Inkiri spun and aimed at the shooter, at a minimum wounding him with two bullets.

I immediately healed Kinnek—it was difficult, painfully difficult. My guys were so much easier to heal.

“F-fine,” he said, halfway through me pushing the bullet out, but he was bleeding still, and the bullet was in there, so I went on. It took more magic. It stung like bees pricking my skin.

Kinnek picked up the magic and kept stitching the veils back together, but he wasn’t as steady as he had been.

I helped. I healed him, finally getting the bullet out of him, then mending the flesh. The land had a better sense of when I’d done enough, and I stopped as soon as I was sure he was no longer in danger.

The stitching of the veils needed to be done. We closed another opening, and a slicing migraine pain hit me. I gritted my teeth together but kept going.

Kinnek and I managed three more openings in the veil before the Koa Esher got to the Hill. With them came several of the purple beasts, the very same kind that had been about to eat me when Inkiri had found me, when he’d saved me and changed my life for the better.