Her voice faded out as her eyes grew wide. “You two. You have wielded the daggers before. You have this special blend of magic.” She jumped to her feet and set a hand on each of our shoulders, shaking us desperately. “You must help us. How many daggers do you possess?”
“Two,” I told her.
Hope died in her eyes. “Two. We have three. Together that makes five, which just isn’t enough.”
“Don’t be so sure,” I said.
“We need six.”
“That’s only a guess.”
“A very educated guess.”
“But a guess nonetheless,” I pointed out. “Five might do it.”
She shook her head. “It’s not enough.”
“One thing you’ve got to understand about angels is, we are not in thrall to the earthly whims of mathematics.” I looked at Damiel as I said it.
He arched a single brow at me. Obviously, he highly appreciated being treated to an encore of his own words.
“Where are your three daggers?” he asked Naida.
“In the Depository, just down those stairs.” She pointed at a staircase that led down.
“Take us there,” I said to her.
Cautious hope flickered in her eyes. “Ok.”
We followed her down the stairs—to a pair of completely gold doors, etched with magical beasts and forest trees. Naida set her hands on the shiny surface. A white light slid over the doors, encasing her hands. The doors groaned open.
The Hive’s Depository was hardly large enough to fit the three of us inside. Directly opposite the doors, down-lights shone on a wall painted bright teal. There were sixteen dagger-shaped slots in the wall, arranged into two circles of eight slots each. A simple illustration was painted beside every slot. I recognized many of the illustrations as our own symbols for magical abilities.
Three of the dagger slots were occupied.
“The Ruby Tear,” Naida said, indicating one dagger in the active magic circle. The symbol of a blood drop was painted on the wall beside it. “It embodies the power of vampires.”
She pointed at another dagger in the active magic circle. It was beside the eye picture, the symbol for telepathy. “The Amethyst Tear, which has the power of telepathy, of sight.”
The third dagger lay inside the passive magic circle. “And the Emerald Tear, which represents the power of the genie. Wish fulfillment.” The symbol representing this ability was a distinct genie-style lamp, the symbol most commonly associated with the genie.
Damiel and I pulled the three daggers down from the wall. The guardian spirits must have already accepted us. This time they didn’t even put us through the motions of proving ourselves worthy.
I set all five daggers that we had on a small nearby table, looking them over. “I think they can be combined.” Suddenly, the weapons felt malleable in my hands. I could turn and twist and fold them into shape. By the time I was finished, the five daggers had become one sword.
“Why did you build them up that way?” Damiel asked me.
“I don’t know. I just felt it was right.”
“The daggers could have been combined into many other configurations.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do.” He pointed at the sword. “You have the Emerald Tear below, using its hilt for the sword’s handle. The Emerald Tear is the dominant power in that configuration. The other daggers are reenforcing that magic, boosting it. Focusing it.”
“The power of the wish,” I said.
And then it dawned on me. My mind had finally caught up to the instinct which had compelled me to build the daggers together in this way.
“The power of the wish is a passive magic ability,” I said. “It draws on people’s hopes and dreams to create the magic to make the wish come true.” I turned to Naida. “All the magic users on this world are putting everything they have—magic and mind—into making your world right again. We’ll just have to hope that all of their wishes together are enough to make this work.”
Damiel and I set our hands over the hilt, wielding the sword more by instinct than experience. I felt like the five immortal daggers were guiding us, telling us just what to do.
Magic flashed out from the sword, like a sun pulsing bright. And then there was total silence, except for the faint ringing in my ears. For a few moments, time seemed to stop.
And then, just like that, everything returned to normal.
“It’s done,” I said, feeling drained but satisfied. It was a nice feeling to fix something for a change, not just cut and slash and destroy anything and everything that stood in my way.
Naida glanced down at the tablet in her hands. Her eyes grew wide when she read the screen.
“You’ve done it. You’ve repaired our world’s magnetic field.” Her eyes trembled. “Our atmosphere is saved. We are saved.” She gaped at the sword I’d made from the five immortal daggers. “They are very powerful artifacts indeed.”
“You collected them, but you have never used them, have you?” I asked her.
“No. We’ve been searching for years, but haven’t found anyone with the right magic to wield the daggers.”
“How long have you and the Magic Eaters been fighting over the daggers?”
“For much longer than I’ve been alive,” she replied. “The people of Nightingale call us raiders, but they are the real thieves. We are only taking back what they stole from us.”
“When did they come to this world?”
“Many times over many years.”
The Magic Eaters hadn’t told me and Damiel about that. Illias had claimed his people had neither the training nor the resources to complete such an operation, that they weren’t capable of going on the offensive to reclaim the immortal daggers from the Hive.
They’d just used me and Damiel, used the potential threat to Earth to get us to do their dirty work for them. To destroy their enemy, the Hive.
“The Magic Eaters are intent on collecting all the daggers,” Naida said. “They believe themselves entitled to the daggers and the power they hold. But the daggers are ours. Those relics belong to us, not to the people of Nightingale. We are the children of the Undying.”
“The Undying?” I asked.
“Powerful deities who lived long ago and wielded great magic.”
“You mean the powerful deities who ruled over most known worlds?”
“Yes. The Undying left behind these daggers for their descendants. For us. It is our duty to bring them together, to realize the message of the Undying.”
“What kind of message?” I asked.
“No one knows.”
“Those beings you call the Undying are known to the Magic Eaters and to us by another name,” Damiel told her. “We call them the Immortals.”
22
Angel Fury
“What do you know of the Undying?” Naida asked us with pleading eyes. She obviously hoped we had all the answers that she lacked.
“Very little,” said Damiel.
“And yet you can wield their relics. You must have Undying blood in you.”
“So we’ve been told,” I said.