Page 187 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

“Curious,” the aberration says, his head jerking in an unnerving tilt.

“What?”

He blinks. “Quiet.”

For a moment I think it’s a command, so I go still. But then his brows twitch with... worry? Anger? Some mix of the two?

“How can you do that? I’ve all but stripped you of your magic. How has your mind quieted so?”

I... I don’t know? I’m still thinking; my mind is anything but quiet. And he’s right about my magic. It’s absence is still a raw and open wound on my soul. So, I don’t think it’s something I’m doing without intention.

A voice sounds against the tired recesses of my mind. Clear and close as my own thoughts. An unfamiliar voice.

“Weak...” it says, deep and masculine. “Too weak to hold me.”

I blink, doing my best to school my expression as my telepathic visitor sighs. The sound of its exhale cuts off abruptly, and for just a flash of a moment, a lush forest appears in my mind’s eye, so vivid I can smell the loam beneath my feet.

A majestic, fallow stag stills in my mind, the golden tines of his antlers stretching across the curve of his skull, forming a halo-like crown where they meet. He looks off to the distance, like he’s heard something.

That voice echoes as it fades. “A passable vessel approaches.”

When my eyes are mine again, the Aberrant creakily rises to his feet, staring at a door that, before his attention on it, had faded in the dusk of the room around us. A few more of those heavy breaths rush out of his nose and I look between him and the door, wondering what he’s seeing.

The door bursts open with a violent slam. It reveals Wren, standing on the other side of it. For a moment, my heart soars. I’m not alone here. I’m not. Alone.

Her eyes find mine, flitting over me and making a quick assessment of my state. I see the moment her anger flares. I’m floored by the raw power coming off her in white-hot waves as her fury focuses on The Aberrant. It’s like I’m standing next to the sun.

As if I put the idea in her head, she holds her hands out, fingers extended, and a ball of blinding light gathers there, spinning and popping like an actual star in her palms.

“Wren, NO!” Aemon cries, appearing from somewhere behind her in the darkness. But it’s too late. I can tell by looking at Wren’s beautiful, wrathful face.

“Back the fuck off from my best friend,” she snarls, loosing the ball of blistering heat.

The floor falls out from under all of us. I hear The Aberrant’s laughter as we all plummet through the endless void.

ㅤ

For a while I plummet through inky darkness. Beneath me, a small square grows larger and larger. As I careen toward it at fatal speed, the light ricochets off detritus from the vanished room.

One of the pieces of debris flails uncannily. After squinting, I realize the bits of debris are not debris at all. They’re my friends.

Aemon, Bastion, Wren—they’re all spearing through the darkness with me. I can’t make out their expressions, can’t hear if they’re screaming over the wind whipping past my ears. But then I see him—farthest from me, a tiny speck of black and grey and white. I know him the way I know the pattern of my own tattoos—know the contours of my home in the dark.

He’s going to die if he hits the ground at this speed.

I’m going to die if I hit the ground at this speed.

The square below us enlarges enough now that I can’t see the void past it. It looks like we’re being dropped into one of those hand-held labyrinth puzzles with the metal ball, oubliettes placed at challenging points in the structure.

I’m just about to squeeze my eyes shut and brace for impact when a flash of light surprises me. Wren acts as the light’s epicenter, a smoldering ember—a wick of a candle caught by the flash of a match. Her power radiates out to each of us.

A warm updraft catches me, cradling me with the gentle comfort of an invisible cloud. The wind slows us all down with just enough time for me to make mental note of everyone’s proximity to me as we drift to the marble floors in the maze.

Aemon is closest. Somewhere to the east. At least, what I think is east.

Wren landed closer to the center. Bastion vanished deeper toward the middle of the labyrinth. And Damien is the furthest from me. He still looks no larger than a pin prick against the backdrop of this horrible place. I think that’s by design.

Because the only way The Aberrant could strip my magic from me was through a subjugation spell. Bastion and Wren are safe, as long as none of his cronies can get their hands on them, and even then, it would take weeks before the working settles in.