“What have you done?!” she demanded, her big, blue eyes trembling. “What have you done?!”
The building creaked.
She looked up at the ceiling in alarm. “You broke the bonds of our magic. You severed us from one another.”
“You’ll live,” Damiel replied coolly.
“Don’t you see? We won’t live. We won’t survive this,” the witch said, her voice trembling with the onset of hysteria. “When you broke the magic bonds between everyone in this building, you disrupted the Plume.”
That must have been what they called that magic pillar shooting into the sky.
“That Plume is critical,” she said. “Without us, the other temples cannot handle the load. Without us, we are all doomed.”
“What does the Plume do?” I asked her.
“You destroyed it, and you don’t even know what it does?” She collapsed against the wall, weighed down by despair.
“It is what keeps you in power.”
“No, the Plumes aren’t about power. They are about the survival of this world and everyone on it,” she whimpered. “The Plumes that shoot up from our temples are all that’s keeping everyone on this world alive. And without this temple, without the unified magic of everyone in it, every person on our world will die in a matter of hours.”
21
Children of the Undying
“You are Naida,” I said to the young witch.
Surprise flashed in her eyes. “How do you know that?”
“We’ve met your brother.”
Remorse marred her perfect complexion.
“What exactly do the Plumes do?” I asked her.
“It’s too complicated for most people to understand.”
“I’m actually kind of clever myself. Try me.” I showed her the Magitech devices I’d modified to work together with the Sapphire Tear.
Her eyes swept across the array of interconnected parts. “You did that?”
I nodded.
“You are clever,” she agreed. “All right. Here it is. Many years ago, long before I or anyone else now living was born, something happened to our world. We don’t know how it happened, but we were left with the terrible consequence. Our world’s magnetic field is gone.”
“And your atmosphere?” I asked.
“Swept away.”
“The Plumes…they are counteracting that,” I realized.
“Yes, the Collective’s fire, the magic pooled from every supernatural we have, has burned nonstop for decades. It is that spell that shoots out of every temple. The spell that keeps our world’s atmosphere intact. It keeps us all alive.”
“That’s why only humans live in your cities.”
Naida nodded. “Yes. Anyone who shows any signs of magic is immediately brought to the nearest temple. We are trained as Keepers of the Plumes, put to work keeping the fires alive—and our world inhabitable.”
“So you aren’t using all that magic, those spells, those pillars of light, to launch an attack on Earth?” I asked her. “You aren’t brewing some revenge plot on us?”
“We have more than enough problems keeping our own world in one piece to devote any resources to destroying other worlds.”
We’d been so wrong about the Hive. We’d assumed they were violent, power-hungry aggressors, but it was out of necessity, the need to survive, that they’d come together and figured out how to use their magic collectively. That was how their magic had evolved, how it had been shaped to ensure their survival.
“We have to stop this,” I told Damiel. “We can’t allow this world and all the people in it to die.”
“You trust too easily.” He leveled an assessing stare at Naida. “She might be lying.”
True. I had trusted Colonel Spellstorm, and it had almost cost us the Earth. I couldn’t shake that doubt, the doubt that I could be wrong again.
“Then read her mind,” I told Damiel.
Damiel continued to stare at the young woman, his eyes narrowing. “Her magic lies firmly in the art of witchcraft.”
Naida was completely still. Damiel’s magic had trapped her. He stared into her eyes, eyes that trembled with fear.
“She knows nothing of Earth or us,” he finally declared. “There is no plan to attack our world. She is telling the truth.”
He released his magic hold on Naida. She collapsed against the wall, heaving in deep breaths.
“We must repair the spell keeping this world alive,” I said to Damiel. “We put them in danger, and so we must fix it.”
“Agreed.”
“How can we fix it?” I asked Naida.
“You can’t. It’s too late.” Tears splashed her cheeks. “We don’t have enough magic. By the time our temple’s Collective has regained our connection to the larger Collective, the spell will have degraded beyond repair. The spell requires all of us to maintain it, every temple in the world, all at once. Our world will die. And because we can no longer flee it, we will die right along with it.”
“Surely there’s something we can do,” I said. “Our magic can help until your people rebuild their connections to one another.”
“You two are undeniably very powerful, but you are not equal to hundreds of us. No, it’s too late.” She slouched against the wall, sliding down to the floor in despair. She buried her face in her knees.
“Why did you steal the magic daggers from the Magic Eaters?” Damiel asked her.
“We stole them?” she said, indignant. “No, they are the thieves. They stole the daggers from us. We merely took back what is rightfully ours.”
“It’s irrelevant whether you stole them first or just stole them back,” he told her. “What is relevant is why you did it.”
“The daggers are very powerful. Powerful enough, we hoped, to solve our problem.”
“To keep the spell on your world running?” I asked.
“No, the actual problem. The daggers work collectively, each one building on the others’ powers. We believe that if we collect enough of the daggers, we could completely repair our world’s magnetic field. We could rebuild our natural atmosphere so we didn’t need the magic one anymore. We wouldn’t need to maintain the Plumes at all.”
“Magic users could go home again,” I said. “They would be free of this burden. They wouldn’t need to carry the weight of the world on their shoulders.”
Tears streamed down Naida’s cheeks. “Yes. And then we could all go home. We could be with our families again.”
“You could be with your brother again.”
She nodded. “Yes.” She quickly brushed her tears away. “But that will never happen. We weren’t strong enough, quick enough, worthy enough. And so our world will perish—and us along with it.”
“How many of the daggers do you need to repair your world’s magnetic field?” Damiel asked her.
“We witches have studied the problem and believe six daggers should be sufficient to complete the task. But it wouldn’t matter if we had all sixteen daggers, since there is no one here who can wield them. That requires someone with a very special blend of magic…”