Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Across Worlds with You, Part 8
Kit Campbell
Destia’s foot was a shriveled husk, the skin gray and dead. Like the life had been sucked out it.
The life had been sucked out of it.
Will buried his head in his hands.
Theo had sent them straight back to Helstena before leaving Will and Destia to talk to the Council. The Historian had arrived shortly after, helping Destia to a safe place for her to sit.
Destia hadn’t said a single word since the gate had closed.
He was really messing this up. Other people were getting hurt because of him, and despite them retrieving the amulets—well, most of them—he still couldn’t actually do anything. Why would the prophecy have named him?
The world was doomed.
The Historian sighed and stood, coming over to join Will where he sat on the edge of the terrace, staring out at the world he was soon to destroy.
“Good job,” she said, not sarcastically.
It took a moment for Will to parse the words. “Good job?” he echoed. “Destia could have died because the Darkness can somehow figure out where I’m going.”
“She could have,” the Historian agreed, “but she didn’t, because you pulled her to safety in time.”
“She wouldn’t have even been in danger if it wasn’t for me.”
“Oh, well, now that’s not true.” The Historian groaned as she lowered herself onto the ground beside him. Closing her eyes, she took a few deep breaths before once again breathing out a cloud. Will blinked at it. He really probably should be more surprised by the magic of this world, but there was something about it that felt…familiar. And safe.
On the cloud, the valley in which they sat appeared. After a moment, the view began to zoom out, showing the surrounding landscape. It kept going until the entire continent came into view.
A full half of it was black and dead, and dark eddies swirled on all sides, ruining the otherwise beautiful blue of the oceans.
“No one is truly safe,” the Historian said, hidden behind the images on the cloud. “Do you think if Destia and Theo were not helping you, they would just be sitting somewhere, twiddling their thumbs? No, they would still be out there, doing what they could to protect against the Darkness. You being here has given them, if anything, new hope.”
Will took a long, deep breath. “I tried to use the amulet. It didn’t work.”
The cloud dissipated just in time for Will to see the Historian shrug.
For goodness sake. She didn’t have to hold his hand, but some encouragement wouldn’t hurt.
Theo climbed up the last of the steps, puffing and red in the face. He took a moment to catch his breath, bending over and resting his hands on his thighs. Then he crossed over to Destia and bent down to talk to her.
Will swallowed. He couldn’t avoid talking to her forever. She was probably pissed. He’d be pissed.
He pushed to his feet and offered the Historian a hand, but she waved him off. Leaving her looking out over the valley, or perhaps peering at the bit of black fog just barely visible behind the mountains, Will forced himself across the terrace.
Destia glanced up at him first. To Will’s surprise, she smiled. “Not bad.”
Will’s voice caught in his throat. He coughed. “What are you talking about?”
“You saved my life. Fast reflexes. Didn’t even see that coming.” She sighed.
Everyone was crazy. Didn’t they see how much he was costing them? “If I hadn’t gone, the Darkness wouldn’t have tracked us.”
“If you hadn’t gone, we wouldn’t have found the amulet.” Theo straightened, brushing a stray lock of hair out of his eyes. “I needed you near me for the finding spell to work. You are the catalyst, after all.”
Oh. Will stared down at his shoes.
Theo placed a hand on Will’s shoulder. Will glanced up to find Theo watching him, a smile on his face.
Will’s heart skipped a beat.
“Hey,” Theo said. “Don’t focus on the negative. You’re doing great.”
He…was, wasn’t he? He’d been so focused on what was going wrong—on the Darkness and the amulets—but he’d made friends, he was adapting well to a lot of new information without panicking, and they were making progress on the prophecy. Destia could have been killed and then turned into a Deathcrawler, but she hadn’t been. Theo was right.
“There’s no time to waste,” Theo was saying. “I don’t know what the Darkness is up to, but I don’t like how it’s accessing the waystations. If it has full control over the worldslips, it could come in here from a direction we don’t expect. We’re running out of time.”
He held his hands out. Will once again placed his into Theo’s, reveling in their warmth. He could do this. They could do this.
Theo’s eyes went blue and the now-familiar wind swirled around them. But, this time, Theo frowned. He stared through Will, his eyes roaming, his frown deepening. After a moment, he dropped the spell.
“What’s wrong?” Will asked.
Theo licked his lips. “The amulet is…gone.”
“Gone?” Destia echoed.
“It’s not where it’s supposed to be. I can see where it was, but it’s not there anymore.” Theo ran his hands through his hair.
No, no—not when they were so close. “How can that be?”
“I don’t know.” Theo sat down heavily next to Destia. “Maybe our luck’s ran out. I mean, we did find two of the amulets, and no one’s ever found any before.”
But they needed all three. Maybe, once he had all of them, they’d actually work, like they hadn’t before. And they needed three according to the stupid prophecy.
Will stared down at his hands. He was the one called out in the prophecy, so there had to be something he could do that others couldn’t, right? That’s how they’d found the first two. And it sounded like Theo had found where the third one had been, but someone had moved it.
Who would move it? The others were literally hidden inside things. They weren’t just out in the open. So whoever had moved it had to have been looking for it. Had to have known what it was.
The amulets had been made here, in Helstena. Other worlds wouldn’t know about them. It had to be someone on the Council or perhaps even one of the sorcerers who had created them—or it had to be the Darkness, knowing they were they only thing that had ever driven it back.
The Historian had warned them, hadn’t she? Will glanced over to where she still sat. Implied that if the Darkness had been able to find Will on Earth, it might be able to find the amulets as well.
Maybe it hadn’t been tracking Will at all. Maybe they had just both been in the same place at the same time, except the Darkness had gotten to the third amulet first.
Despite everything, he felt a little better. It hadn’t been his fault the Darkness had been in those other worlds, or the waystations. Maybe. Probably.
“What happened to the sorcerers that made the amulets?” Will asked.
“Same thing that happens to anyone who gets too close to the Darkness,” Destia said, then drew her hand across her neck.
Will turned to Theo. “And we know for sure that no one here has every retrieved any of the amulets?”
Theo blinked, then shook his head.
How to find where the Darkness had put them? Will sat down too, since everyone else had, and leaned his head on his hands. He was connected to the amulets through the prophecy; perhaps the amulets were connected to each other as well?
Back home on Earth—well, apparently not home—he’d taken a forestry class in middle school because his mother had said that he needed to “get off the computer and spend some time in nature.” It had actually been great, though he’d never admitted as much, and he’d learned a lot of skills that he liked to trot out to impress people at parties. One thing they’d gone over during the class, in between learning how to identify different trees and which mushrooms would definitely kill you, was the concept of triangulation.
Three landmarks would give you the location of something located in the middle. And he had three landmarks, in theory—two amulets, and himself.
“Where are the amulets right now?” he asked.
Theo glanced over at the bag at his side. “Here. The Council was also concerned about the Darkness’s movements, and thought it was best that we put them into use as soon as we had the third one.”
“Give them to me, please.”
Theo was right—they were running out of time. Maybe the Darkness would be content with a single amulet, knowing that the prophecy, if it even knew about the prophecy, wouldn’t be able to come to bear. But Will would bet not; that it would act to destroy the amulet if it could, and it would come after the rest, and maybe Will too, to finish the job in just the way Theo feared.
Theo despondently tipped the two amulets into Will’s hands. They glimmered faintly as Will gathered them into his chest, holding them like sparkly and potentially dangerous babies. Okay. He could do this. He had to do this.
As he closed his eyes, the amulets began to thrum in his grasp. Not much, not even enough that he would have noticed had he not been so focused on them. Right, he thought. Let’s find your friend.
Will cleared his mind. And he waited.
Nothing happened.
He waited.
Slowly, so slow at first he thought his mind was just playing tricks on him, an image began to form in his mind. A dingy landscape, full of nothing but ash and blackened plants, the sky coated with haze. In the middle of this landscape there was, well, not a castle, but a deliberate piling of stone, where the air was darker than its surroundings.
And, within this stone, a faint light.
Will’s vision zoomed in on that light, revealing the final amulet, copper in color with a golden stone set in the middle. No one seemed to be guarding it, though perhaps that was a limitation of whatever Will was doing, or perhaps because it was not needed in a world that the Darkness had permeated so thoroughly, where any living thing would instantly shrivel the way Destia’s foot had.
“It’s on the Darkness’s world,” he heard himself say. “In its stronghold.”
He let the vision dissolve. Opening his eyes, he met Theo’s. Theo was pale, again.
“Of course that’s where it is,” Theo murmured.
“Well, that’s that, isn’t it?” Destia shook her head. “We’ve lost.”
“No,” Theo said, and then again, louder, “No. I…I know a spell. I hoped I’d never had to use it.”
Destia stared at Theo, new respect in her eyes. “Aren’t you full of surprises, sorcerer.”
“Am I?” Theo said, but there was a weird undercurrent to his voice and, if anything, he got even paler. Probably from the amount of magic he’d been using. Will didn’t know how magic worked, but between finding spells, shields, and opening gates between worlds, Theo had to be exhausting…whatever.
Will set the amulets down in his lap before hesitatingly reaching out to take Theo’s hand. Theo let him. “I think you’re right,” Will said. “I think we’re running out of time. Will you be okay if we go now?”
Theo gave him an inscrutable look. “Yes. Just give me a minute.”
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