Volinette's Song (24 page)

Whatever retort Adamon would have made was obliterated by the side of the Great Tower exploding into shards of deadly glass. Baris and Adamon threw themselves to the ground. Volinette grabbed Janessa around the waist and dragged her down. Ribbons of pain lanced through her arms and legs as the flying shards cut shallow furrows.

No time to recover. No time to think. The arch demon had burst through the wall and was coming down on them, fast.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Adamon’s hand cannon was a miniature dragon, roaring and spitting fire. Unfortunately for all of them, the projectiles did nothing to harm the huge demon closing
in on them. Puffs of oily residue blossomed where the bullets hit, but they didn’t penetrate the ink black demonflesh. Spells glanced off the thick hide. Nothing seemed capable of stopping the monstrosity intent on destroying them. Olin, who had recovered and was back in the fight, summoned massive vines from the earth. Thick green tendrils shot out from between the cobblestone pavers and wrapped themselves around the demon’s legs, arresting it mid-step and causing it to shriek in frustration.

It didn’t take very long for it to tear through the vines with the wicked claws that tipped each finger. Even so, that didn’t stop Olin from doing it again and again, effectively holding the demon off from reaching them. The other Masters in the courtyard had gathered behind Adamon and Olin. A few of them tried their hand at defeating the creature, but nothing they tried seemed to work. Even Maera had shown up, her ornate black cloak tattered and singed, her silver hair disheveled from combat in her own corner of the grounds.

“Well Adamon,” Olin said with a grunt as he twisted his hands to control the vines he’d summoned. “If you have any ideas, I’m sure we’d all love to hear them.”

“We need to draw it back to the portal,” Adamon declared. “If we can’t destroy it, we can at least push it back through to the other side.”

A series of pops and snaps echoed across the courtyard, and the demon was free once again. Olin began to cast his spell once more, but Volinette interrupted him.

“In the tower, it was drawn to the
Prism. If we take it back to the girls’ dorm…”

“Perhaps it will follow,” Adamon finished for her. “Clever, and worth a shot.”

As one, the Masters moved toward the swirling vortex of darkness that had almost entirely engulfed the building where the girls’ dormitory had been. Creeping tendrils of shadow snaked out, as if seeking for more life to devour and destroy. The closer they got to the building, the harder it was to think, to concentrate. There was a sort of psychic feedback, and it reminded Volinette of being in the dungeon under the tower. Unlike being surrounded by iron and steel, she found that if she tried to close out everything else, she was able to maintain her connection to the Quintessential Sphere.

The hair on Volinette’s neck stood on end. She hadn’t seen it until just now, but they’d managed to put themselves in a precarious position. While trying to lure the arch demon back to the portal, they’d put an opening to the Deep Void at their backs. The demon was still in front of them. It would be just as easy for the demon to drive them through the portal
, as it would be for them to try to push it back to its native realm.

“This was a bad idea,” Adamon said, glancing over his shoulder as they moved closer to the swirling blackness of the portal. Volinette took very little solace in the fact that the Grand Inquisitor had reached the same conclusion she had.

“Hold it off, Olin,” Adamon said. “I’m going to try to close the portal.”

Hoisting the Transcendental Prism over his head, Adamon invoked the Quintessential Sphere, speaking ancient words of power and imploring the forces of magic and nature to close the rift between the realms. A dim pulse in the crystal was echoed by the vortex. The edges of the portal blurred, then drew back toward the center of the portal. Though it had shrunk some, the portal was in no danger of being closed permanently.

Adamon stumbled, his reserves of will and strength overtaxed by the massive expenditure of magical energy trying to close the portal.

“I don’t have much left,” Olin groaned. His face was covered in a sheen of sweat as
he struggled to keep the demon at bay. Maera stepped up beside him and put her hand on his shoulder.

“Stand down, Olin. Allow me.”

The Head Master picked up Olin’s spellcraft where he’d left off, and Olin collapsed to the ground beside Adamon. Maera’s relatively fresh mind allowed her to extend the vines further up the beast, effectively locking it in place. As impressive as that was, however, it didn’t solve the problem of getting the demon through the portal and closing it so that nothing else could sneak into their world.

“Son of a bitch!” Baris swore, and Volinette whirled to see what could have caused such an outburst.
What she saw made her take an involuntary step back. She nearly tripped over Olin, who looked over at Baris and said his own oath.

At the edge of the vortex, just coming into view, were the forms of three looming demons. Two-thirds as tall as the arch demon, they flew forward on stunted wings of black leather. Arms and legs were curled, like a predatory bird, each hand and foot tipped with a
four-inch talon that was slick with blood. As horrifying as they were to behold, the faces were the worst. Volinette turned her head, determined not to be sick. Janessa gave an inarticulate cry.

The demons had twisted mockeries of the faces of Nixi, Halsie, and Syble. Their features were elongated and swollen, their eyes replaced by burning orange coals that smoldered with hatred. Shrill screams escaped them as they raced toward the gathered Masters.

“They’re no longer human,” Adamon said firmly, answering a question that Volinette hadn’t wanted to ask. “Putting them down will be a mercy. Make it as quick and painless as you can.”

What happened next was nothing less than chaos. The three demons dipped and spun in the air, swooping down to attack with
deadly claws. Volinette watched a woman in Master’s robes plucked from the earth. The Nixi-demon flew her up as high as the shield would allow and then ripped her in half, raining blood and entrails onto those below.

Magic missiles, balls of flame, bolts of lighting, and shards of ice flew through the air. Sometimes colliding with each other, sometimes connecting with one of the demons flitting here and there. More often
than not, they missed altogether, glancing harmlessly off the dome that protected the city from the demons running rampant within the Academy grounds.

Adamon reloaded his cannon and got unsteadily to his feet. Syble’s demon swooped down on him, screeching so loudly that Volinette clapped her hands over her ears to drown out the sound. The
Inquisitor didn’t move. Ever closer the demon flew, throwing its feet forward, claws extended, intending to impale the impertinent Inquisitor. The cannon roared. The shell hit Syble between the eyes, splitting the head in half and spraying ichor and gore out behind it. The demon dropped like a stone, collapsing to the ground in a crumpled heap.

The two remaining demons continued to harry the Masters, dodging in and out of their lines of fire, trying to draw the Masters into hitting each other rather than their intended targets.
Instead of evoking a missile of some sort, one of the older Masters summoned a jet of thick webbing and shot it from his hands, entangling Nixi and dropping her to the earth. Another fighter, a stout older woman with a pink, pig-like face, swung her staff over her head with two hands, bringing it down on the demon’s head with a sickening crack. Nixi was still.

“I’m nearly spent,” Maera gasped. She
, too, had taken on the sickened look of a Quintessentialist pushing herself far past the limit of her endurance. “This isn’t working. We need to do something else.”

A gentle breeze caressed Volinette’s cheek
, and she thought she heard the faint sound of a wind chime. She shook her head, trying to clear the fog of fatigue and battle that dulled her senses. Something nagged at her, something that she should understand. Something that could help them, but she couldn’t coax it out into the open. No matter how she tried to focus, the pandemonium around her seemed to drag her back into its turbulent seas.

Focus, she thought to herself savagely. Focus, focus, focus! Focus! That was it! Volinette slapped herself in the forehead with the palm of her hand. How could she be so blind? She dashed over to Adamon. The Transcendental Prism lay discarded at his feet. Snatching it up, she rounded on the Grand Inquisitor.

“I can close the portal,” she said, ducking as Halsie made another pass through the assembled Masters, her wings barely clearing their heads. “I know I can.”

“You don’t know the proper rituals,” Adamon snapped back. “This isn’t a game
. You can’t just wing it and hope for the best.”

“I’m not,” she insisted. “I’m a conduit for the Quintessential Sphere.”

“You’re insane,” Adamon said. “You’re going to get us all killed.”

“I believe in her,” Olin said slowly. “Let her try.”

“Volinette is special,” Baris chimed in from behind Adamon.

“Everyone deserves a chance,” Janessa added, flashing Volinette a small smile.

“Let her try,” Maera grunted, driven to her knees by fatigue. Even so, she maintained the spell holding the demon away from the group.

“Masters!” Volinette shouted, holding up the
Prism. “Masters! Summon forth memories of light and love and life, all the things that drive the darkness out of your heart. Call on the power of the Quintessential Sphere and focus all your energies on the Prism. Concentrate!”

One by one, the Masters began to bow their heads, their mouths moving silently with the words they were using to invoke the power of the Ethereal Realm and draw it into their world. The Transcendal Prism began to hum in her hands, a subliminal sound that seemed to crawl out of the crystal and down her arms, into her body, and up her spine. It was like taking a warm bath from the inside out. The gentle, pulsing glow that enveloped her grew and grew, shrouding her in a cocoon of light that expanded steadily outward, fed by the will of the mages. Adamon, Olin, Baris, and Janessa took hands, forming a circle around Volinette as she felt the crystal’s power grow.

The other Masters followed suit, moving inward, still chanting, locking hands with one another and forming an outer circle around the inner circle. Still, the light and humming grew from the Prism. It was getting harder to hold now, and Volinette crushed it to her chest, protecting it, nurturing it, encouraging it to take the memories it had received and use them for protection.

Seeing an opportunity for attack, Halsie screeched from high
above, diving toward Volinette and the crystal. As she crossed over Volinette’s head, a tendril of white whipped out from inside the Prism, a lash of pure light. It struck the demon on the top of her head, slicing down effortlessly through the body, bisecting it as if it had been cut with a blade. There was a brilliant flash, and it was gone. No body. No ash. No indication that it had ever existed at all.

Volinette barely noticed. The
Prism was singing to her. She clutched it to her breast, cradling it like a child. She was vibrating with the harnessed power of the crystal now, every part of her alive with the light. Closing her eyes, she listened to the siren’s song of the Prism, a hundred thousand voices from a hundred thousand memories of life and love and happiness, of the brightest things in life that chase away the monsters in the dark.

She
sucked a breath, and the Quintessential Sphere whispered in her ear, complex words she would never understand, but didn’t need to. The sweet melody burst from her lips as if it had been dammed up inside her for eons. She felt each breath, each fresh inhalation, and the air that carried the sound out from her lungs, entwining her song with the power of the Ethereal Realm. The words came unbidden to her mind, and she sang them dutifully, echoing the voice in her head that wasn’t quite a voice.

The song was endless, eternal, touching every corner of time and space, of memory and thought. It flowed through her like a flood, infusing her with the power of the
Sphere and the power that had permeated the Prism. For a bright, shining moment, she was the Quintessential Sphere, and it was her. She was all things. She felt. She knew. She mourned. The blight on the surface of Solendrea was a disease that threatened all. It must be excised and destroyed.

Volinette held the last note of the song for what seemed like forever. She knew it had to end but didn’t want to let it go. As soon as she
released it, it would be gone forever. It wasn’t something she could keep. It was hers in this moment, but never again. She struggled to hold the note, to draw it out until she had nothing left. Until she had become part of the song that was moving through her with the accord of the Eternals.

Blinding light exploded from the
Prism, setting them awash in its conflagration. There was a screaming howl. The arch demon was set ablaze from the inside out. Cracks, massive fissures, in the black demonflesh opened, showing rays of light that sought escape from inside. The cracks ran along every surface of its body until it could no longer hold. It exploded in a shower of silver sparks.

The light fought back the writhing blackness of the portal. It snaked forward, darting toward the black tendrils that crept out from the edges of the doorway to the Deep Void. Where the light and the darkness met, there was a hissing sound, like ice thrown on a hot stove, and the darkness evaporated,
as if it were steam. Wailing screams went off from every corner of the Academy grounds as the light pressed ever inward, toward the center of the portal. Demons streamed from almost every building, racing toward the portal as if they could stop the assault on the link to their native realm.