Connection - Part Eight
This episode is part of a larger story, Soft Touch. If you haven’t yet, you can go back and read it from the beginning right here.
It’s extremely difficult to follow my own advice. To just sit back, and wait to see what happens.
Aiden and I manage it by keeping ourselves busy. So a few blustery days pass by, the autumn wind sending great sweeping rushes of gold and amber leaves down the streets. Only the evergreens can boast full branches now, with the nights growing frosty. Half of my garden is beginning to get drowsy, falling into the first callings of a long hibernation until spring.
The ruby tree, on the other hand, is still sitting quietly on those unopened buds. A mystery I’m keeping track of in my notebook, adding a tally mark for each day that passes with no sign of them opening. The cold doesn’t bother this tree, which is becoming more and more obvious as autumn deepens around us.
“I’m really starting to feel like this is my season,” Kasey tells me brightly, walking with me from the flower shop to my car. “Will is feeling the same way. Nice to be appreciated.”
She’s presumably referring to the ghosts appearing in the shop windows, along with the pumpkins appearing on people’s doorsteps.
They serve as a reminder to me that I’m behind on something. We celebrated Aiden’s birthday very quietly this year. He told me he’d rather not do a big party, being generally kind of tired out from all the Ghost Office work we’ve been doing in the Port Sitka forest.
“Don’t look so worried, Keane, there’s not a problem. I’d just rather take my birthday to relax this year. Get some rest, recharge.”
“A while ago you said you wanted to do another soccer game, like last year.”
“Yeah, but I think it’s already too cold for that, anyways.”
I had to admit he was right. He promised to let me plan one if we get another bright, beautiful day of warm sunshine before winter falls. In the meantime, I privately decided, I’d pick a later day and give Aiden the fullest experience of that relaxation he wanted. As soon as we had time.
This seems like the perfect time. We could both use a distraction, anyways.
So I hit the grocery store for all of our favorite snacks, and ingredients for a birthday cake. When morning comes I wait for him to leave for the gym, then spring out of bed and get to work. Weaving him a fresh bouquet with dew-sprinkled flowers from my garden, getting the cake into the warmth of the oven, making a little display of the gift I have for him. I get all of our favorite movies lined up, and the games he likes to watch me play.
I also tie a ribbon into a decorative birthday bow around the necks of both Luna and the orc, which turns out to be a mistake. When Aiden gets back from the gym, he opens the door to find me chasing down a streak of panicked red rushing around in circles, and Luna standing there wailing imperatively for help.
And somehow, regardless -
“Wow,” Aiden rumbles softly, a long while later. “This was an incredible birthday.”
I let out a relieved laugh from beneath his naked body, giving him a loving squeeze with my arms and thighs. “I’m glad to hear the initial chaos didn’t spoil it. No bows on the cats. I know that now.”
“It was perfect,” he murmurs, his deep voice still all rough and husky. “Even though it was completely different from what we did last year, which was perfect, too. Weird. Guess the common denominator must be you, Linden.”
I had been starting to laugh, but at this I stop, smiling, and bury my nose into his shoulder.
With a sigh of residual bliss, he eases himself back onto his knees, then stares down at me. Blushing vividly beneath his flaming blue gaze, I prop myself up on my elbows. Watching the firelight play all over his powerful body, which is still heaving with deep, ragged breaths.
I sit up, take his hips in my hands, and begin placing slow kisses on the flat of his lower stomach, the tip of my nose trailing over his soft, dark body hair. He sighs and subtly rolls himself towards me, letting me melt my mouth against him. I push the pads of my thumbs along his hip bones. He slowly works his fingers into my hair, breathing deeper, and deeper. The heat of the fireplace dances against my cheek, the heat of him against my lips.
Jamie, he whispers, through our open connection. I love you.
I lift my face to him, my glowing Heliomancer. Without breaking my gaze away from his, I turn my head to kiss the inside of his wrist.
I love you, too. I wanted to write a poem for you for your birthday, but the way I feel about you… it’s impossible to get it all into one poem. I can’t even fit the smallest pieces of it into just one poem.
He drags a thumb softly over my lips, his ocean eyes smiling, gazing deep into mine. You already did write a poem for me. I’ve got it in my wallet.
But that one wasn’t for you.
Yes, it was. He leans down and kisses me, his words falling through me like splashes of rich sunshine through the connection. I don’t care what you say. Yes it was.
I laugh softly, silently, only through our connection. Aiden begins to glow even brighter when he feels it.
He must be somewhat restored, given how much light and energy he’s accidentally pouring off. I’m certain that the time we spent together on the rug by the fire caused some explosions we were too busy to notice.
This is confirmed on the following night, when I open one of our kitchen cabinets to discover several little heaps of broken ceramic where there were bowls before.
“I’m not even sorry,” Aiden says flatly, when I go into the living room to tell him. “Worth it. Make that trade happily, a thousand times a day.”
I let out a helpless laugh, stopping in front of the couch. “I’m not sorry, either. It was your birthday. I’m glad to see you like your present, by the way.”
“This thing is amazing.” Aiden leans his head back on the couch, slowly working the massage gun I gave him into his chest. “Watch out, or I’ll fall in love with you all over again just for buying me this.”
I’m too busy watching him work the massage gun into his bronze slopes of muscle, listening to the satisfied sighs it draws from him.
“Wow. I didn’t realize before, but this is a gift for me, too. It’s fun to watch you use it. They didn’t even mention that perk on the gym bro forums where I found this gift idea.”
Flashing me an affectionate grin, Aiden sets the massage gun aside and picks his laptop back up.
“Are you working right now?” I come around behind him, then rest my chin in his hair. “In your free time?”
He tilts his head back until it’s leaning against me. “You know that old display case I found in the storage closet at work? Gabby said I can put it out in City Hall, set up another place to do a rotating selection from the Archives. She was really excited about it, because we can log it as a new initiative in the year-end report, and the only budget I requested was for some lights. Almost nothing.”
“Nice,” I laugh, folding my arms around his neck. “Making your boss look good.”
“Just like you do for Kent, with your arrangements.” He tickles my arm by brushing a quick little kiss onto it. “I’m just trying to choose what I want to display this month.”
I watch over his shoulder as he flips through scans of the options he’s considering. There’s an aged gig poster for a jazz performance on Halloween, with an illustration of a snazzy zombie wailing on a trumpet. A fifteen-year-old advertisement for a harvest fair, with pictures of kids carving pumpkins. An old newspaper article about a haunted house the school put on.
I shake my head, smiling into his hair. “Alright, fine. You can work on this because I can tell you’re having fun. But after that we’re just relaxing, okay? You said you want some rest.”
“And I got some. You have a gift for giving me my energy back, Linden.” He pauses, then adds guiltily - “Which is good, because I know we have to get back to work on the illusions…”
“Yeah, but – give yourself time, babe.” I lean down to kiss his forehead, then pick up the empty popcorn bowl. “You need time to recover, and Noah might need us, and we do have to actually work. Like, at our jobs.”
“I know, I know.” He watches me with warm eyes as I collect our empty cups. “I just don’t want the illusions thinking we left them on their own.”
“I’m sure they’ll understand that we also need time to tend to ourselves,” I answer firmly, turning back towards the kitchen. “If you’re worried, we can have one of the ghosts take a message to Daisy-”
I break off, caught by surprise. My Vision just quietly adjusted as I turned towards the kitchen, brightening up the darkness of the coffee room off to the left.
“Did you charge my Vision last night, Sugar Maple?”
Aiden blinks in surprise, then blushes a little. “Maybe by accident? It’s possible we slept with the connection open and didn’t realize it.”
I look at him with wondering eyes. “That’s been happening more and more lately.”
“Think I just – know it’s you, touching me,” Aiden explains sheepishly. “So the connection just opens.”
He’s blushing deeper as he says it, twisting his wrist in his fingers. Maybe he’s telling me something more revealing than I realize. Maybe you’d have to have magic to understand.
I’ve got the rough idea, though. I lovingly push my palm up the line of his stubbled jaw. He turns his blushing face against my fingers, presses his lips into my palm, then glances up to say something.
Instead his brow furrows, his blue eyes blinking hard. Suddenly distracted, he sets his laptop aside and puts his face towards the windows, listening.
“What?” I murmur.
Aiden gets up and crosses to the biggest of the windows, where the black and navy blue night beyond stands in sharp contrast to the cozy orange hues of our living room. He puts his hands on the sill and leans out towards the garden, his head tipped to one side.
“Might be a good thing that I charged up your Vision, Jamie,” he rumbles softly. “I’m pretty sure the spirit has been around our house again.”
“What-? Really?” I drop everything back onto the coffee table and rush over to the window, staring hopefully out into the garden. “The little one that was talking to us with our voices? It’s back?”
“Pretty sure.”
“How do you know?”
“I sensed something in the garden, and I can tell that it’s eaten something that I cooked. More than once. It’s hard to explain how magic bridges things, but there’s a connection between us now, because of that…” He stops, searching for the right words, then gives up on trying to explain. “I can just sense that this spirit has eaten my food. So it must be the spirit drinking the buttermilk we put out in the kitchen at night.”
“Oh! Then shouldn’t we go out and see if we can get it to talk to us again?”
Aiden takes a silent moment to listen, then shakes his head. “It’s just a trace. It already left.”
“Still, that’s exciting!” I turn to face him with a bright smile, gesturing to the garden. “The buttermilk is working, then! Maybe we’ll catch it one of these nights.”
“Yeah, keep an eye out.” Aiden ruffles my hair, drawing away from the window. “Let me know if that special Vision of yours sees anything.”
“I will.” I pick everything back up from the coffee table, then shoot him a warning look. “And you, once you’re done with that, no more work tonight. Only relaxation. We need to put on some horror movies, and put up some Halloween decorations. No arguments. I won’t hear them anyways, because I’ll be making more popcorn.”
He breathes out a deep rumble of laughter, smiling across the living room at me. “No arguments at all. Why waste time arguing, when you could make out with me instead?”
“When I get back,” I promise, laughing as I slip back into the kitchen.
Back in the half-lit kitchen my eyes pass over the joint that Noah left for me, and I let out a soft laugh. He rolled it – to my immense surprise and delight – in rolling paper with a print of little ghosts and jack-o’-lanterns.
“Being married to an event planner causes things like this to happen,” he said gravely, when he handed it over to me. “All of a sudden a man finds himself being festive.”
I’ve only seen him once since the workshop. His texts have varied a lot in mood, although there’s a distinct pattern. He’s in excellent spirits when he was just with Noelle or Gage, and blazingly exasperated if he just came from anything that involved Logan.
We’re all trying to be supportive while he gets through this, but I think the best point came from Ralph.
“Any time Logan is a dick to you or Gage, that’s another chance for Noelle to catch him doing it. Another chance for her to see him as he is.”
That really helped Noah, because it’s true. I’m sure it was easy for Logan to put up a show of charming warmth for Noelle before they came to Ketterbridge, when they mostly saw each other just on the weekends, either at celebratory gatherings or without other people around. But things are different here.
Noah is holding onto that thought to keep him steady, and I’m proud of him for hanging in there. Maybe Halloween will pick his spirits back up. It always picks up mine.
It certainly looks like Halloween season, when I glance outside. The half-bare tree branches are shivering, adding strange shadows to the moonlight falling into the kitchen. The wind is creating a constant, low wail, which rises to more of a shriek when big gusts whip through. I’m glad I thought to take down the rain chain, and close Blue up safely in his weather-tight coop on the early side of the evening. The leaves are being helplessly tossed around in this wind.
Our home feels like a warm little lighthouse in the stormy, dark blue sea of the cold landscape. The chaotic dancing of the tree boughs beyond the windows is mesmerizing, in a spooky sort of way. Luna hops up on the counter to watch it with me.
A sharp pop! breaks the quiet. I let out a gasp and whip around, then blush in embarrassment. Oh, my god. It was the popcorn I put in the microwave, getting started. I’m glad no one was here to see that overreaction. Except the saucepan, which for some reason is shifting around uneasily on its hook. It hops down and anxiously comes towards me. I rest a reassuring hand on it, then glance over my shoulder as Aiden calls out to me from the living room.
“Hey, Linden! I’m going upstairs to close the windows. Weather’s getting weird.”
“Okay,” I call back, inexplicably relieved to hear his voice. “Summon the ghosts, too, please! They may want to stay with us tonight! It’s all good fun living in haunted ruins until there’s a hard wind, you know!”
Aiden laughs, shouts back that he will. I turn back to the worried saucepan, then freeze as the power flickers off, then right back on again.
It happened so fast that I might have missed it, if it didn’t turn off the microwave. It’s an old one, and it doesn’t restart itself like everything else, so it’s gone dark and silent. The whole house went silent, actually. The football game that was playing in the living room also got switched off by that seconds-long power outage.
I stare at the microwave for a second, turn to call out to Aiden, and freeze halfway.
I’m not quite sure why, but… I slowly draw closer to the window above the kitchen sink, then peer out through it into the darkness of the night sky beyond our garden wall. The barren, moonlit crowns of the trees that nearly overwhelmed us with peaches this summer are outlined against the skyline. They’re shuddering in the wind, silvered by the light of the moon.
I stare and stare at the distant treetops, still without knowing why. Until it hits me like a lightning strike. Suddenly I know what’s going on, why my attention has been caught.
My charged-up Vision is trying to adjust to something.
Which means there’s something out there.
Right as the realization breaks over my head, Luna drops down from the counter and bolts for the living room. Fleeing the kitchen like the saucepan is chasing her, which it isn’t. It’s frozen on the counter beside me, trembling with fear.
My Vision still hasn’t managed to let me See what’s out there, but an instant, icy chill rolls down my spine. I stare harder, forcing my eyes to focus, and -
Like something hurtling forward out of a fog, it rushes into my Vision all at once.
I take a sharp, shuddering breath, stumbling back a step. The popcorn bowl slips from my hands and shatters on the floor. Shattering with it the quiet of our house, which is then immediately shattered again, this time by Aiden’s voice.
He’s shouting for me from upstairs.
Gasping for breath, I tear my frightened eyes away from the sight beyond the window and rush for the kitchen door. At the last second I realize my mistake, rush back, and slam the kitchen window closed, my trembling fingers jamming the lock into place.
“Come on!” I call frantically to the saucepan, fleeing for the door again.
It leaps up into my arms. I hug it to my chest as I go sprinting back into the living room, shouting for Aiden.
He appears on the stairs, rushes down them two at a time, and sweeps me into his arms. His blue eyes are wide with alarm, searching mine.
“Are you okay?” he asks breathlessly. “What the fuck is going on? I heard your note go crazy like you were terrified-”
“Aiden,” I gasp, shoving the saucepan into his hands and rushing to the windows. “Close that window! Something is coming for us, coming right for the house!”
“What-?” Aiden races to the window by the front door, his eyes even wider than they were a second ago. “What are you talking about?”
“Where’s the orc?”
“Last I saw him, taking a nap in his basket in our closet?”
“Where are the ghosts?”
“I summoned them, did they not come? I’m not wearing the glasses.” Aiden pauses, then repeats, with growing alarm, “Did they not come?”
I freeze, staring at Aiden with my heart hammering against my ribs, then force myself to pull it together.
“Aiden, something is flying right for us right now, and it’s definitely something magical!” I pull another window shut, stumbling over my urgent words. “You’re going to sense it any second, I promise-”
I break off with a gasp as his eyes light up like kerosene-soaked bonfires, shining with the ice-blue glitter of magic.
He gasps, too, the instant he senses it. The energy of whatever’s coming for us must not feel good. He makes a face like someone slapped him, flinching hard and tossing his head.
“Holy shit, that is – it’s corrupted,” he stammers, wincing over every word.
I flash him a meaningful look over my shoulder, wrenching another window shut, then let out a gasp of relief as Kasey materializes in front of me.
She’s out of breath, and she looks as frightened as I do.
“Oh my god, thank god, Kase-face! Where were you? Where’s Will?”
“He had to give me all his energy so I could leave Ketterbridge, because Daisy summoned me!” Kasey tries to grab my wrist, her dark eyes full of urgency. “She sent me to warn you! She thinks that Nyx is going to-”
“Oh, no,” I stammer, staring through the windows.
There it is. The thing I saw. A huge swarm, a seething cloud of indiscernible nightmarish darkness coming straight for us. It swallows up the moonlight as it moves, which it does so unnaturally. Like Violet in her corrupted form, too fast. I don’t even see it move forward. It just violently convulses and twitches, and suddenly it’s come closer, and closer…
Kasey draws in a sharp breath, catching sight of it.
Aiden seizes my wrist and wrenches me away. He puts me behind him, backs us both away from the windows, and shakes out his hand. A burst of golden magic snaps into existence around his fingers, leaping like fire. Waiting impatiently.
Shrieking and snarling like a storm of demons, darkness hits the windows of our house. The combined sound rises to a screaming roar.
I gasp and hide my face against Aiden’s back, clinging to his henley. But I feel the pulse of magic that bursts off of him.
I open my eyes to find a barrier of golden fire shining and flowing across our living room walls. Broken pieces of darkness are shattering against it as they try to get past, then falling back in showers of gold sparks, but the onslaught continues undeterred.
Aiden has one arm flung forward, his outstretched hand feeding more magic to the barrier. His other arm is protectively thrown out in front of me, where it stays as I peek out from around his shoulder.
Panting hard, his eyes swimming with ice-blue stardust, Aiden lifts his face to stare at whatever it is trying to force its way into our house.
A voice speaks over the roar.
Guardian, it hisses, icy and incensed. I tire of your interference.
I know that voice. We’ve heard it before. It came out of Violet’s mouth, but it wasn’t hers. It belonged to the one controlling her. I heard also it in a ghost memory, when Daisy was torn apart. It belonged to the illusion who did that to her…
Nyx. The Sorcerer.
“Oh, my god,” Kasey stammers. “We’re under attack!”
~~~~
I really know now what people mean, when they say battle weary.
When was the last time I felt this exhausted and beaten down? I don’t even know, and I’m too tired to try and remember. I’m literally clinging to the kitchen counter to keep myself on my feet, dragging myself along. My fumbling, searching hands find something that feels like a bag of bread, thank god. I take it, crash into the kitchen island, then push off from it and go staggering for the living room.
I stumble through the door and nearly trip over Ripley, who’s crumpled up on the floor like a tossed-aside doll, sprawled out on his side. He’s not even the only obstacle in my path. The entire living room is strewn with motionless bodies.
Aiden is on his back, on the rug near the couch. I set out for him and collapse halfway there. Sinking down to my knees, almost grateful for the floor rushing up to greet me.
Raj kindly – if unwittingly – cushions my fall with his stomach.
“I brought… food,” I manage, having to drag every word up to the surface. “We should eat it… we need… more energy…”
Ralph slowly lifts his face from the rug and reaches a hand out to me. “Give it here… we need to… move fast. Next wave could be any minute…”
“When… will it stop?” Aiden rasps, his deep voice raw with exhaustion. “And what… are we gonna do if… I run out of energy?”
Noah is leaning back against the couch with his eyes closed, but he clumsily manages to take the piece of bread Ralph shoves into his hand. “Just keep taking more energy from us, Aiden.”
“I would, but everyone… in this room… is nearly dry.”
Makes sense. We’ve all given everything we have. Even the ghosts, who have temporarily gone incorporeal in order to cost Aiden as little energy as possible. We needed every scrap we can get.
I don’t even know anymore how long it’s been since our house was put under siege. It feels like it’s been forever. The rushing onslaught of twitchy, fiendish swarms strike at the house until they’ve all broken themselves against Aiden’s barrier, then fall back. Sometimes for a while, just long enough that we all start hoping that was it.
Then they’re back again, viciously trying to smash through the barrier that Aiden hastily puts back up. Leaping from window to window, trying to trick Aiden, scouring the outside for open entry points. We’ve all been rushing around sealing those up wherever we find them, taking turns keeping watch at the windows for another rush.
Aiden has spent an enormous amount of energy holding the swarms back. All of his own, all of mine, and now everything he took from the reserve troops we snuck into the house between attacks.
Raj, Noah, Mel, Ripley, Ralph, even Tycho – all of them gave up their energy. And I’m afraid that now we’re in serious trouble, because… no one has any left.
“Aiden,” Ralph gasps, forcing himself up onto his elbow. He catches Aiden’s exhausted eyes with his sage ones, which are only half open. “The barriers… can only keep us safe for so long. You can’t just… defend indefinitely. You need to… attack. While there’s still… any energy… left… for you to use.”
Aiden bites his lip, then slowly shakes his head.
“There’s… already… not enough for that. I’ve been skirmishing with a wave of these things like every half hour… for what feels like a fuckin’ eternity…”
“What if we call… your aunt?” Melanie’s voice comes out muffled, since she’s too tired to lift her face from the rug. “Get energy… from her. She doesn’t live too far away… she could get here fast.”
“We left Nik with her,” Raj reminds Mel, unable to open his eyes.
Ralph tries to drag himself up onto the unoccupied couch, then gives up and sinks back down to the floor. “I don’t think it’s a good idea for anyone to be out in the open, anyways.”
“What’s actually going to happen if one of those things touches us?” Melanie asks, making a pillow out of her braid on the floor. “Do we have any clue?”
Aiden shakes his head again. “No, no idea, but it’s… never good to be affected by corrupted magic… as a general rule…”
Ripley lets out a rasping sound almost like a laugh. “Good to know, but I wish we knew more.”
“I can’t even tell what those things are,” Aiden admits.
No, me neither. They’re like a half-remembered nightmare, formless and yet bone-chilling.
“The bright side,” I point out weakly, “Is that Nyx isn’t here himself. He just sent his… these things.”
With an enormous effort, Ralph lifts his head, then reaches out to grip Aiden’s arm.
“I know you’re not… gonna let him win… with his… his fucking pawns,” he pants, his blazing eyes glaring into Aiden’s. “Come on, A… make him… meet you… face to face.”
Aiden stares back at him. A twin fire of determination sparks up in his eyes, to answer and match the fire in Ralph’s.
He thinks for a second, then sits up and drags himself across the floor to me. Catches my wrist in his hand, lets the connection melt open.
I resist the urge to let out a blissful sigh. Even right now, in these circumstances, it feels so good.
Jamie… I need energy to fight. I’m afraid to take any more from these guys. But maybe… I could take some from you. You also have so little left, but with our connection I can be really careful when I draw from you…
Take whatever you need, I answer, touching my forehead to his, too exhausted to open my eyes. I trust you.
I feel his rush of answering love, the wave of sparkling heat through our connection.
Very, very slowly, Aiden begins to draw on me. But he stops abruptly, only a second later.
Nevermind, he says softly. You don’t have enough. Nevermind.
What…? Aiden, it’s okay, just take what you -
No, he cuts in forcefully. I’m not risking anything happening to you. There has to be another way, something, I’ll think of something -
We all gasp and startle at a sudden sound from the door. But it’s not the approaching roar of the swarm, it’s – someone knocking?
“Hello?” calls a tired voice from outside. “Is anyone home?”
There’s a frozen, thunderstruck silence. We all stare at each other with very wide eyes.
“Noelle?” Noah calls back, numb with disbelief. “Is that you?”
“Yeah, I just needed a break from Lo- from the creaky hotel, and you said you were coming over here, so I thought I’d-”
“Get in the house!” Noah shouts, struggling to try and pull himself upright. “Noey, get inside right now!”
She lets herself in through the unlocked door, bewildered and slightly offended. There are dark circles around her eyes, and her face is pale. She closes the door after herself with an exasperated sigh.
“Don’t yell at me, Noah.” She pulls off her boots, then tosses her jacket and backpack down on the table by the door, shooting him a reproachful frown. “God, I’ve had enough of men for one night! I need a break from them.”
Ralph spreads his hands at her. “So you… came over here to hang with us? That’s not a break from men.”
“I just – needed a break!” Noelle repeats heatedly, distracted and frustrated. “And I’m – I’m really tired from it all.”
She grips the side of the couch, swaying slightly, her jaw tensing up.
Noah is still struggling to try to get to his feet, but his body is just too exhausted to do it.
“Noey,” he says desperately, in a voice choked with worry, “You didn’t see anything weird outside, did you? Nothing, um – snuck up on you, or flew at you-?”
“You know what’s weird? Thinking it’s better to stay in the world’s windiest hotel in autumn, instead of my nice cozy room at mom’s house!” Noelle rubs her eyes, her cheeks flushed in high comparison to her overall paleness. “I think I’m going to tell Logan we should move to the house… that must be the problem, it’s – it’s the hotel.”
Noah looks at Aiden with wild grey eyes, then lets out a heavy breath of relief when Aiden shakes his head. No corrupted magic has touched Noelle, thank god.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s alright. She looks more unwell right now than I’ve ever seen her.
“I need to – to lay down,” she stammers, then glances up and realizes we’re all doing that already. “Oh, good… are we resting? I could use a rest…”
She sinks down onto the couch, stretches out on her back, and lets out a long, deep breath. Another brief silence falls.
“Noey?” Noah asks tentatively.
No answer. She’s already asleep.
Aiden looks at her, then looks at Noah.
He understands right away. He hesitates, nibbling his pierced lip, then gives Aiden a nervous nod.
“You… sure?” Aiden begins crawling towards her, glancing over his shoulder at Noah. “I feel bad… she has so little already…”
“So she’ll get some good sleep,” Noah answers, fighting hard to get each slurred word out. “It’s either that, or… we’ll all fall asleep and… those things will get all of us…”
Aiden hesitates, then gently puts his hand on Noelle’s wrist. His eyes flare with white-blue light as he draws her energy into himself. Noelle slumps deeper into the couch, sunk now in a deep slumber. Aiden sits up some more, then manages to stagger to his feet.
“Aw, no,” he pants, leaning heavily against the back of the couch. “She had so little. Poor Noelle… must be hard… this is really… all she has to operate with, when she’s feeling like this?”
Ripley blows his green curls out of his eyes so he can see. “Is it enough?”
Everyone grimaces when Aiden’s only response is an anxious frown. He starts to open his mouth, then freezes at the sound of yet another unexpected knock on our door.
“Hey, anybody here?” a new voice calls. “Jamie Keane, or the buff archivist?”
“Gage?” Aiden calls back in amazement, clinging tightly to the couch.
Gage pushes the door open and steps inside, spreading his long fingers in a wave. His hair is tumbled by the wind, his eyes bright with more energy than the rest of us combined.
“Hey, Aiden – oh, I mean everyone.” He pauses, taking in the sight before him. All of us sprawled across the floor, looking wrecked, barely able to lift our heads to look at him. “Whoa, what’s going on here? Looks like an opium den. Not that I know what those are really like, I’ve just been on a set that was supposed to look like one.”
“Long story,” Aiden manages, dragging the back of his hand over his forehead.
“Sorry to just show up like this, but I was starting to get a little worried.” Gage darts a puzzled look at Raj, Noah, and Mel. “You guys were gone for kind of a long – a long time…”
He trails off, having noticed Noelle flat on her back on the couch. One of her arms has fallen to hang over the side of the couch, and her head has fallen to one side, so that her cheek is resting in a pool of her inky hair.
Gage’s eyes fill with deep warmth. He toes off his boots and comes over to her, the start of a smile forming on his face.
“Did she pass out?” he asks, then stops, noticing how pale and still she is. His brow furrows, his eyes blinking fast. “Is she okay? How long has she been…?” He fades off, then gently pinches her arm. “Bug. Hey.”
She doesn’t make any kind of response. Gage freezes, then gives her a shake. Then a harder one, which she also doesn’t respond to. She has no energy to wake up with right now. Her head lolls, her hair falling over her eyes.
“What – what’s wrong with her?” Gage takes her face in his hands, then goes very pale himself when we all hesitate nervously instead of answering. “What happened?”
For the first time ever, his unshakably calm voice is trembling. So are his hands, which suddenly let go of her face so he can sweep her unmoving body up into her arms.
“What’s wrong with her?” he repeats, in a terrified, fractured voice. He hugs Noelle to his chest, looking wildly around at us with perfectly round eyes. “Why won’t she wake up, what-?”
“Sorry about this, Gage,” Aiden murmurs from behind him, too quietly for him to hear.
He rests a hand on Gage’s back, his eyes shimmering with icy blue light.
Gage gasps, making a choked little sound as his energy leaves him all in one rush. He seems to realize he’s about to pass out, if not how or why.
With his last few seconds of consciousness, he hugs Noelle closer into his arms, folding one hand around the back of her head, trying to shelter her from whatever hit him.
Then he collapses with her onto the couch, twisting around as he falls. Noelle lands sprawled on top of him, wrapped tight in his protective embrace.
“This is… gonna be… hard to… explain,” Noah groans.
“I don’t think he’ll remember,” Aiden answers, in a remarkably steady voice.
This extremely noticeable change makes the rest of us open our exhausted eyes. We all stare at our Guardian, who’s suddenly standing to his full height.
He experimentally holds out his hands and looks down at them. Glittering blue light swirls in his eyes, and golden light begins to shine around his fingers.
He looks up, resplendent with Gage and Noelle’s combined energy. Hearing what we all just heard: the flutter of movement. The distant roar of another swarm rushing towards the house.
With an enormous force of effort, I drag together enough energy to reach out and touch my fingertips to Aiden’s ankle. Just enough to let the connection fall open. I can’t find any words, so I just flood him with my love, my faith in him -
Aiden puts up no barrier. The nightmare swarm rushes through the windows unchecked, coming straight for him.
There’s a flash of radiant gold. Aiden just pulled one of his paper-thin, impossibly strong shields of pure light into existence. This time it actually is about the size of a shield, and he’s holding it like one. The swarm hits it at full force, setting off a shockwave, sending him sliding back halfway across the room. He ducks down behind the light shield, then suddenly slams his foot down, coming to a sharp stop. My hazy eyes see the muscle in his jaw working, the light spilling from his magic-filled eyes.
The shield glows brightly, then grows to double the size it originally was. It happens in a split second. For the briefest moment, the huge shield just hangs there. Then it folds silently over the shadows writhing against it, swallowing them whole.
Aiden lets go of the shield. It floats in midair, melting closed around the swarm, which frantically rushes around inside of it. But there’s no escape, and the golden Heliomancer light unwaveringly folds around them until they vanish within.
Aiden, slumped against the wall, his chest heaving, begins to close the fingers of his outstretched hand. It looks incredibly difficult to do, like he’s trying to crush an invisible rock with sheer brute strength. But he keeps going, and the mass of golden light begins to get smaller and smaller, crushing down the magic trapped inside until there’s just no room.
There’s a sharp, stuttering sound like firecrackers going off, then a huge boom like a firework going off.
I gasp and bury my head in my arms, feeling some explosive force sweep through the living room, a rush of power and raw magic scattering off in every direction.
Silence falls, during which I dimly notice that the oppressive, poisonous atmosphere of corrupted magic is gone. A sensation of relief like a fever breaking descends over me.
I slowly open my eyes. Aiden is sitting on the floor, slumped against the living room wall. Spent.
But his eyes are open, and full of silent victory.
My heart floods with pride. Trust my Heliomancer to do something like successfully purify the corrupted magic of a spell on the fly, in the middle of a literal storm of chaos. Nyx certainly can’t use this magic anymore, which means he can’t draw it away to restore it and send it to attack again. Aiden took it all away from him.
I look up at the ceiling, overwhelmed with love for my Guardian, and find my Vision gently adjusting itself. It wants to show me that there are sparkles rippling through the air, subtly but in large quantities.
“Aiden,” I call out, pointing to them with my last scrap of energy. “Loose… magic…”
He looks up, and sees it without the assistance of any special vision. I suppose Guardian eyes don’t need help for this.
Ragged with exhaustion, he slowly lifts a hand into the air and reaches out for the magic he purified, which now has nowhere else to be. It flows gracefully to his outstretched hand, forming a single stream, answering his silent summons.
He takes a deep breath as energy comes flooding back into him, then lets out a sigh of relief.
The next thing I’m aware of is a hand gently cupping my cheek, letting off a soft, slow waterfall of energy. Restoring me, at least enough to realize I’m awake.
Jamie. Hey.
I open my worried eyes, and find a pair of tired blue ones smiling down into mine.
We’re okay, Linden, Aiden murmurs softly, reassuringly. Everything’s okay.
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