Kane let his powers unfold, stretching out like great wings, and the full discord of the reveries bombarded him. It was easy to locate Poesy; the reveries were imploding toward her, like some great wound around which flesh bubbled and bone sagged.
Also, she was cackling. Because of course she was cackling.
Breathing deep, Kane let himself fall, etherea streaming after him. He found Poesy upon the pale stage, now strewn with shattered pillars, strutting through the aftermath of battle. Elliot and Ursula were still standing, but barely. Adeline, gray dust plastering her bloodied tutu, lay collapsed over Sophia in her ragged red dress. Poesy sipped from her teacup, savoring the implosion of Sophia’s world.
Kane snapped his fingers, sending ethereal blazes into Poesy’s billowing cape. The teacup spun from her grip and shattered on a pillar, and she turned to him with the first authentic fear he had ever seen on her beautiful face. Then it was gone, replaced by rage. She reached for her charms without a word.
Seeing him, Ursula let out a weak cheer before falling into Elliot.
“Go!” Kane called to them as readied another attack. The power of the crown was immense, so hard to control that Kane knew with certainty that even a stray thought could destroy, transform, or create. This was the power he needed to defeat Poesy, but he needed his friends as far away as possible. “Run!” he screamed, the flares from his hands amplified to glaring beams of rainbow that cut the air itself.
Poesy twirled between them like a darting fish, her cape undulating behind her. Her charms flashed open into fragments of reveries that crashed over Kane in tidal waves of texture, sound, and sight. Kane was overtaken by a misty forest, its humidity clingy in his throat, its babbling streams tickling under his ears. Kane tore it apart with a clap of his hands and entered another reverie: a colonial battlefield mobbed with zombies. Rotting teeth sunk into his shoulder, his wrist, but the power of the crown told him this world was immaterial and his to destroy. He let his glow burn bright, eating through the hordes of zombies, and punching him into the next reverie. And the one after that. And after that. Kane flashed through them, as brief as an angel falling through the film of every new world, until finally he surfaced back into the collapsing void.
Poesy was waiting to face Kane upon the stage. She wrenched a glowing palm down, dropping a deluge of acid rain out of the cracked sky. Kane let his own consciousness rise to meet the rain, unfolding each drop into a cloud of butterflies.
“Your precious Others have fled, and your tricks are catastrophically clichéd.” Poesy sneered, and the butterflies turned to scorpions. Kane blinked and the scorpions burst into confetti.
“Look at us!” Poesy’s laugh rang like a siren as she slit reality into a cloud of snakes. They ribboned toward Kane, but he turned them into arrows and fired them back. “Look at our power! We do not belong to this world. We belong to something better. Something with integrity that only we can create for ourselves! That has always been our way. That is our only fate!” The arrows splintered into lightning, which Poesy gathered along her painted nails and whipped at Kane. He returned it with a rainbow blast, and the two were locked into a dual for life and death, for the fate of not only Kane’s world, but every world hiding in every person. For the fantastic realities people lovingly created for themselves, in danger of being subjugated by the whims of a madwoman and her teacup.
“Why do you fight for a world that does not fight for you?” Poesy spoke through the maelstrom, right into Kane’s mind. “Why do you fight to save a reality that fails so many, so often?”
Their dual collapsed into a sucking silence. Lightning and etherea threaded the vacuum between them as they landed back on the stage.
“I’m not fighting to save reality,” Kane said. “I’m learning to change it.”
“The loom is an instrument,” Poesy said. “It cannot learn. Your righteousness is pretty poetry and nothing more. It’s time to end this.”
“That’s right,” Kane sneered. “Dean, now!”
The Dreadmare formed around Poesy, its bladed body shearing together like scissors and slicing her white cape into strips. Kane felt the thrill of success as the first spray of blood met the wind, but then the grinding halted. There was a great ripping noise, and suddenly Poesy was back. She had Dean in a headlock with one arm while the other hand clutched the Dreadmare’s flailing body. She had torn the armor right off him.
“Kane,” Dean whimpered through clamped teeth. Poesy squeezed, and his jaw cracked.
Kane’s powers failed. Sick gravity brought him to his knees, and his backpack slid from his shoulders. He fought for the exquisite control he’d had a second ago, but it was gone.
“You know, I was wrong about this, too.” Poesy smiled wickedly in Dean’s ear. “I figured conscripting the brooding love interest assured me unregulated access to the loom’s every desire, but you were never the agent I needed. Ms. Bishop, however, does possess the rigor I require. Would you like to live, my dear?”
Poesy flicked her hand, and like a flock of sparrows, golden magic fluttered apart to reveal a huddle group sneaking into the battle. Elliot at the lead, stumbling as Poesy easily dispersed his illusion, with Ursula at his side. Behind them, Adeline slouched with Sophia, and then suddenly Adeline was alone as another blast from Poesy’s hand threw everyone else away, into the whirling unraveling.
“No!” Kane cried.
Adeline swayed as Poesy pulsed power into her. Like leaves rustled up from the ground, her wounds peeled from her body. She choked and twitched, resisting the warm glow that spread beneath the deep color of his skin, reviving her. She had freed herself of those awful pointe shoes and cradled one blade in her arms. She looked alive and powerful; she still looked ready to fall apart.
“Ms. Adeline Bishop,” Poesy purred. “The smartest. The most cunning. I was careful when I curated my pantheon to only invest power in those wronged by this reality. But even so, all the others refuse to see this reality for what it is: a failure. But you can. You know. There is a position of power for someone of your caliber in the reality I envision. At my side, you would be everything.”
“Why would I help you?” Adeline asked, but her voice was a faint and blue echo of her usual searing wit.
“Sophia Montgomery will die if you don’t. But I can save her, like I’ve saved you. I can save your friends, too. I can salvage any soul you value, but only if you purge every last thought from Mr. Montgomery’s head. Our world will never be safe so long as he possesses the will to undo it.”
Adeline wouldn’t look at Kane at first. When she did, it was with open wonder. She was thinking about this. He wanted to reach out to her, but he felt like his hand would pass through her like a ghost. They existed in two different planes. More than distance separated them now.
Poesy’s voice swelled upon cicada song. “Every life you value for a life Mr. Montgomery has thrown away twice. Finish what you started. Wipe every memory from his head.”