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Except for this one.
The tingle swept up my arm and through my head. “Weave it,” I murmured. Holding the brilliant purple and green leaf in my left hand, I spun out glowing strands of potency with my right, shaping them into an arcane macramé sculpture in the likeness of the aneurysm knot. “There,” I said to Rhyzkahl. “It looks like that.”
He paled. “It is the precursor to an anomaly, Kara Gillian.”
Dread snaked ice-cold tendrils through my gut. An anomaly was a destructive—potentially catastrophic—breach in the dimensional fabric. Not long ago I’d watched via dream link as a gigantic anomaly spawned in Rhyzkahl’s realm, spewing fire rain and triggering catastrophic degeneration that undermined the integrity of both the physical world and the arcane. It had taken the combined efforts of the demahnk and every available lord to bring it under control, and all had suffered injuries during the protracted battle.
We both looked up as the sky shimmered then settled into a darker shade of blue. Rhyzkahl stepped as close to the nexus as his prison would allow, his jaw set in determination. “You must release me, or you doom both our worlds.”
When was he going to get it through his thick skull that I couldn’t fucking let him go, and wouldn’t if I could? It was clear he didn’t think I could do what needed to be done, even if he decided to unbend enough to tell me. But who else was there? Xharbek? Sure, he might defuse the pre-anomaly . . . or he might rip it wide open and be done with the whole mess. Even if I had a way to reach him in time, I couldn’t risk it.
Flows from Beijing to Honolulu dimmed. It’s on me to fix this. “Can I bleed off the pressure behind it?”
“It cannot be bled into either realm,” he said, urgency in his stance and tone. “How can this be here?”
“What difference does it make? Focus on the problem! Tell me how to fix it!”
“It . . .” He cursed and clenched his right hand to control the shaking. “You . . . you must . . .”
“Can it be bled elsewhere? Maybe into the valve system?” I shot an uneasy look up at the sky, now a weird shade of indigo.
“No! To the—” He said a demon word that I knew referred to the interdimensional space. Even balled into a fist, his hand shook. “I can repair this, but I cannot tell you how to do so. Release me.”
The back door banged open. Pellini glanced up then over at me, startling at the sight of the gigantic tree. “Weird shit’s going on all over the place, Kara!” he called out. “But I’m thinking you already know that.”
“I sure do,” I shouted. “Trying to deal with it. Keep monitoring reports and let me know if anything’s about to hit here!” Can’t save the world if a tornado sucks me up. To my relief, Pellini simply nodded and returned inside. Either he had faith in me or he figured we were all going to die and there was no point getting worked up about it. I yanked my attention to Rhyzkahl. “Tell me what to do!”
A sheen of sweat glistened on his forehead. “You must . . .” He swallowed, gaze skittering around him as if seeking a lifeline. Panic filled his eyes, and his mouth worked soundlessly.
The leaf tingled warm in my hand, and realization struck home. Rhyzkahl wasn’t being defiant. He literally couldn’t tell me what to do, didn’t have the focus to break things down and explain them. He’d lived with the support and influence of Zakaar for three thousand years, and his brain wasn’t going to rewire itself to stand on its own overnight.
“Zakaar isn’t here, but I am. You know what to do. I have no doubt about that.” Behind me, the leaves of the grove tree rustled like a whispering voice. “Don’t think of everything that needs to be done. Step by step. Tell me the first thing I need to do. Nothing else.”
Some of the panic melted from Rhyzkahl’s expression. “Find . . . the strand with the least energy in it.”
Progress at last. “Right. I can do that.”
Except I couldn’t. It wasn’t a dozen tangled threads anymore. Hundreds, thousands of strands teamed like eels on meth. I’m going to fail. The thought sliced through my skull with blades of despair. What the he
ll was I thinking? Anomalies were battled by demahnk and lords—teams of them. Not one human quasi-summoner.
Chest tight, I tore my gaze from our impending doom. Below me, the silvery patterns glistened in the black stone of the nexus.
The despair vanished. I knew exactly what I needed.
With zero grace, I flopped onto my back atop the pattern of silvery sigils, then relaxed and allowed its potency to embrace me. In lord-sight, the Earth flows surrounded me as if I lay in the center of a spherical planetarium.
No. Too much input. Too much for my human mind to process even with the nexus boost. With deep, slow breaths, I calmed my racing pulse and refined my focus. Thousands upon thousands of meth-addled eels writhed and pulsed. Closer. Focus on the problem. I blocked out the rest of the flows, pulled in on the pre-anomaly until it occupied the entire sky above me, like zooming in on a touchscreen. Amongst the flailing eels, one strand twitched, curled and grey.
“I found the weak strand,” I said. “Now what?”
“If it is retroflexed, do not touch it.”
“Can’t you just say ‘bent backwards’? It’s curled. Is that what you mean?”
“English is inadequate.”
Despite our desperate situation, I grinned. “Then tell me in demon.”
