Two Flames zipped under the ledge and did their little dance along our bodies, whizzing and burning their way through us and back out. "That hurts like heck, but it's better than being dead," Eli growled. "Ouch, quit that." The Flames obeyed and converged together, hovering before me, as if awaiting orders. It hurt my eyes to look at them.
"If I ask you questions, can you answer in English?" I asked them.
"Yessss," they said, their voices a strange sound, as if bells were being rung by a current of electricity.
"Who fights overhead, and who's winning?"
"Zzzadkiel and Holy Amethyssst battle the Dragon who wasss chained. Without her wheel, Darknessss winsss." As they spoke, the sky darkened. Clouds boiled, huge thunderclouds reaching for the heavens.
"The same Dragon I feel coming up from the deeps?" I asked. I looked up at the wheels, and gripped the sapphire owl. Taking a chance that the owl allowed increased communication to the wheels, I said, "Save the Mistress." And they were gone. The air concussed, rushing to fill the vacuum. A feeling like icicles bored into me. Eli tensed with shared pain. Careful not to look at the remaining Flames straight on, I said, "I don't guess you could find some more of you guys?" Flames popped away. The icicles in my blood shattered and I shivered hard. Once could be coincidence. Not twice.
"Crap in a bucket," Eli said into my ear, his voice hoarse with exhaustion and pain. "What the hell are you? Never mind. That can wait. This big evil sucker I can feel coming up from the pit - it can be in two places at once?"
Not knowing how to explain what I didn't understand, and still dealing with my reactions to having the wheels and the Flames do what I wanted - at least I assumed they were doing it - I said, "I think so. Yeah."
"Then let's you and me just sit tight here under this rock until the war is over." He pulled me closer to his body, jarring my side. I hissed with pain. "What?" he asked.
I eased his arm away from me and wriggled over, pulling up the edge of the dobok top and peering at my side. I expected to see scar tissue or a healing wound. Instead, I found a blackened puncture site, deep enough to bury my finger to the second knuckle. The edges around the cavity were raised and red, and pus trickled from a spot that had broken open.
"That's gotta hurt," Eli said. Master of understatement.
"Yeah. It does." Not far from us, Forcas and Raziel rolled on the ground. I didn't know what would happen if Forcas completed binding me to him. I looked at the miner, his face so close I was cross-eyed to focus. "Can you get his eyes with your flamethrower?"
Eli ducked his head to see under the ledge, watching the fight, considering. "And you'll be doing what?"
"Slitting his throat to keep him from completing a binding." That is, if I can find the energy. But I didn't say it.
"Binding? You?" He glanced at my wound and I nodded. "How close is it to making you his?"
You are mine. "Three words."
"Girl, is there any kind of trouble you can't find?" Sighing, Eli said, "Let's go then." I forced my body into motion and together we crawled out from under the ledge. I was so tired, so drained, I had to pull on the Trine for the energy to move, for the energy to breathe. I had to. But I felt the pollution of its power. The mountain was changing. Using it could change me, as using the amethyst power had changed me. Or it could simply kill me. But I couldn't make it on my own, and my seraph was too busy to help me right now.
Eli spun his flamethrower forward, checked the apparatus with a critical eye, cocked it, and made eye contact with me. "Come in behind me." In concert, we ran, me barely able to keep up with the human. Eli moved like the wind through trees, like the Gulf over the beach when the tide came in, like sunlight over stone. I pulled my blades and stumbled behind.
Yet, even tired, we fought together as if it were a dance - move forward, spray with flame, back away, move forward, strike, back away - ganging up on the Darkness. Raziel was locked in combat with it; we hit it from behind and the side as the two Powers wrestled on the ground. In two feints, Eli had blinded Forcas, the Darkness roaring his fury and pain, his claws scoring Raziel's sides, rocking back his head. I raced in mage-fast and slit the beast's throat, silencing his screams. I'm safe. Tears flooded my eyes, leaving me limp with relief.
Overhead, the wheels reappeared with the same concussive force, the boom throwing Eli and me to the ground. For the first time in long hours, I felt a spark of hope, instantly shattered. Forcas threw off Raziel and rolled at me, demon-fast. Blind, he still knew where I was.
From the side, a hand gripped my leg, bowling me to safety. I landed hard against the sloped rock ground. Before me, my silver-hilted sword glittering in a two-handed grip, his wings partially healed, was Barak. Behind him, in the mouth of the hellhole, stood Joseph Barefoot, breathing hard, Tomas slung over his shoulder fireman-fashion. He eased his friend to the earth and joined the Allied One in hacking at Forcas. Raziel swept back into the fray from overhead, wings buffeting dust into abrading spirals, his blood sprinkling the ground.
Eli pulled me back to safety and left, to reappear pulling Durbarge by both arms. The assey was still breathing, fast and shallow. Blood trickled from his mouth to the ground.
Over the clearing, the wheels rocked gently, humming, its many eyes on me. In the center, the ship secured around her, sat the cherub, her four faces blazing with anger. She pointed at me with one demi-wing. "You have stolen my wheels. Return them to me!"
"You stole something from that big purple mama?" Eli asked.
I dragged myself to my knees, my blades clinking on the cold stone. An icy wind was blowing from the thunder-clouds, turbulent with battle and seraph wings. "I think I bound her wheels to me. And I don't know how to unbind them."
"Bound a cherub's wheels?" he said incredulously. When I didn't answer, Eli gripped my shoulders and shook me. "You know what that makes you?"
I met his amber eyes, too tired to read what I saw there. "It makes me dead, if I don't figure out how to unbind them."
Eli laughed, the sound coarse and disbelieving. "The EIH has been looking for a mage like you for decades. You're an omega mage."
"I'm not." Not that I knew what an omega mage was.
"Tell the wheels to kill Forcas," he said. "Tell them!"
I looked at the eyes overhead and said, "Kill Forcas." When nothing happened, I pinched the owl, repeating the command. Again nothing. I looked at the owl, to find it totally drained, an inert, poor-quality semiprecious stone. Despair stole over me. "I don't know what I'm doing," I whispered. I was a half-trained neomage with pretty baubles.
"The Flames did what you wanted."
I shrugged. That was different. Wasn't it? Fatigue caught up with me in a single moment and I collapsed to the ground in a boneless sprawl. Even with the Trine to draw on, I was worn out. On my waist, the amulets shone weakly, nearly depleted, wasting their last energies keeping me alive. From my side, pain radiated, Dark tendrils caressing my heart. Nearby, Forcas hid behind a small shield, its limbs exposed to the blades of attackers, but its throat healing. It met my eyes and... pulled... at me. My energies flagged again.
Suddenly I knew; if Forcas died, I would die too. He was draining my energies through the wound in my side, using my life force to fight Raziel. I chuckled softly at the irony. After all this, my life was forfeit to a Darkness. Knowing I had no choice, knowing I was about to die, I touched the citrine and the sapphire to the visa and my prime amulet, transferring power between the amulets.
Once again, I fell into the otherness. The world slid sidewise sickeningly. I rolled to the side and retched, throwing up the water I had drunk. In the otherness vision, the wheels overhead pulsed with life. I looked up at them, seeing Amethyst in the center, her lion face staring at me, her mouth wide with shock and fury. "Give me back my wheels," she roared.
In the place of the otherness, the river of lava flowed beneath me, so close I could feel its heat. In the otherness, I saw the stream of energy flowing from me to the beast, draining me. I reached up with my finger and twisted. "Oh wheels," I sang softly. "Kill Forcas," I told them. "And seal the hellhole."
"Yes," the wheels sang. "We will drain him to nothingness until the Last Day."
"No!" Amethyst shouted.
A shaft of rainbow light shot from the wheels. Only as it fired did I understand the cherub's cry. She too was linked to the beast through a torrent of stolen energy. She too would be drained, following Forcas into nothingness unto the Last Day. "Stop!" I shouted to the wheels as purple light speared down. But the eyes were turned away and didn't respond.
From the mouth of the lair came a bloodthirsty roar.
