Zach Brenner's Arc

Chapter 55 of 86

Malachar smiled and dropped the crystal into the flames. The fire roared black. A shape rose from it, tall and burning, and Zach felt his sword scream in his hand. "Too late," Malachar said. Then the black fire swelled and burst, and the whole chamber cracked apart around them. Zach threw the sword flat and pulled his friends behind the light. "Circle me!" The six of them pressed hands to the blade. White light wrapped them like a shell. Stone rained down. The floor split. The pillar of flame swallowed everything, and the ground fell away beneath their feet. Zach woke on cool grass. Sunlight touched his face. He sat up fast. Around him lay Raven, Talon, Lyra, Ayla, and Garrok, all breathing, all whole. No fire. No mountain. They had landed in a forest. Tall trees ringed a still lake. The air smelled of pine and water. "The sword," Lyra said. She pushed herself up, her white hair full of leaves. "It didn't just shield us. It moved us. I felt it choose. It took us somewhere else." Her purple eyes searched the trees, then went cold. She pointed across the lake. "There." A dark tower stood on the far shore. It rose black against the blue sky, thin and wrong among the green. Raven came to Zach's side, her cat ears flat. "That's not our kingdom," she said. "I've never seen this place." Garrok hefted his axe and turned in a slow circle. "No blood. No ash. We're alive. I'll take it." But Talon crouched by the water, one katana drawn, reading the ground the way he read every trail. "No boot prints. No roads. Nobody hunts here." He looked up at the tower. "Yet." Ayla knelt and pressed her staff to the earth. The silver crystal glowed. "Everyone's hurt, but nothing broke. I can mend you here." She moved from friend to friend, her healing light closing cuts. As she worked on Zach's shoulder she met his eyes. "Malachar and Darkthorne. Did we kill them?" Zach looked at the black tower and felt his sword pull toward it, humming. He knew the answer before Lyra spoke it. "They're not dead," she said quietly. "I can't feel Malachar's heart anywhere near. But that tower." She swallowed. "Something old lives in it. The slow heart. It followed us through." Zach stood. His shoulder was whole. His friends were alive. But the fire's blast had thrown them from the world's center to a shore he did not know, and the thing they came to kill had crossed with them. He sheathed the blade against his back. "We rest first," he said. "There's a spring feeding the lake. We drink, we heal, we breathe." He fixed his eyes on the tower. "Then we find out where this place is, and what walks in that tower. Wherever we are, the fight didn't end. It just moved here with us."