Page 193 of Jinxes and Drumsticks

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When we finally make it to Bastion, he’s backed against a dead end. The smell of stale blood and bile permeates the air in the compact space. I can only see half of his face past the creature that towers in front of him. It bobs and snaps its jaws toward Bastion, but falls short of actually attacking him.

Golden light flickers in front of Bash, guttering and sputtering over the palm of his hand. It looks like the light is the only thing keeping the creature from eating him alive.

“Oi!” Aemon shouts. “Remember me, you sack of shit?”

The creature lets out an unnerving chitter and turns to face us. I balk at Aemon. What the hell is he thinking? Neither of us has any magic. And it looks like Bastion’s is flagging in this weird non-place-dimension-thing.

I look back at the creature, and it lets out an excited trill before skittering toward us on amphibious-looking legs that move too fast to be normal. I yelp and leap closer to Aemon, who wraps his arms around me and gives the monster his back.

“Fuck!” Bash cries. “I don’t—it’s not working!”

“Aemon!” I cry.

But Aemon isn’t looking at me, he’s looking past me. He nods once and ducks low, holding me against him and kneeling just before a blast of glittering power bursts overhead.

The monster screams before crackling out of existence, smoldering like flying wish paper before fading out of existence.

When I drop my head back to find the source, Wren stands there. Her eyes like a wild horse’s, her skin covered in the same slime that made up the creature she just eviscerated.

“Good, you found us,” Aemon says, as he stands back up and rights the shoulder of my dress. “Sorry for being handsy,” he adds to me as an aside.

“Is Damien with you?” I ask, desperate.

She frowns and shakes her head. Her face is wan and sickly, even under her usual golden complexion. “I was... looking for him. I could feel him. Following your little sliver of magic you gave him.”

My stomach drops. “Was?” I ask. “Why did you stop?”

“It vanished,” she says. “It’s... It got weak for a few seconds, Lilipad. And then it was gone. Then I felt Bastion’s magic flagging, so I came this way and...”

It doesn’t make sense. Not at first. These words all strung together in this order. Why would my magic suddenly vanish? How could The Aberrant hide it with his magic flagging?

Bastion approaches my side, taking my hand in his and squeezing. I look up at him and see it then. The pity. The... hesitant tenderness. As if I’m something fragile.

“I’m so sorry, Lilipad.”

They think... they think he’s dead?

No.

He can’t be dead.

“I would have felt it,” I say, but my voice sounds far away. “He—we just have to head the direction you felt—”

“We will, Lilipad but... you might need to mentally prepare for—”

“I would have felt it. He isn’t—he didn’t—”

“You don’t have any of your magic left, Lillith,” Aemon says gently. “So, you wouldn’t have felt the severing of your connection like you did when he got in the accident.”

“Damien is not. Dead.”

Silence. Then the dread settles in. My skin tingles with the hot-cold sensation. That terrible wrongness of tragedy. I shake my head. “No.” I say, only distantly aware of the tears choking my words. “No. Fuck you. No.”

Then, I run. And run and run and run.

I hear my friends calling after me—or at least my brain takes in the auditory sensation of their calls—but I have only one place to be, and it’s next to Damien.