The Wicked Will Rise
Page 62

Game on. I flung off a fireball as a warning shot, and was surprised that when it emerged from my hands, it burned not red but black as night. Dorothy watched it shoot toward her like it was moving in slow motion and, with her free hand, flicked it away as easily as a normal person would swat a mosquito. As it hit the ground, it exploded into a ring that surrounded us in a wall of black flames.
In the distance, I heard Nox howling in pain. I felt a wrench in my heart. I wanted desperately to help him, but I knew that he was now as much beyond my reach as I was beyond his. Dorothy wanted me alone, and so that was how we would fight.
And even as I felt my body pumping more power than I was sure I could handle, I also felt a spiraling sense of helplessness. All the training and fighting techniques and all the magic that I’d come to rely on felt suddenly like they were useless against her. I pushed my doubt out of my mind, but I knew that if I didn’t come up with a plan, fast, I was a goner.
Dorothy didn’t miss a beat as I teleported myself through the shadows to a place behind her. She just pivoted on her red heels to face me, her chain still whistling in the air as she twirled it faster and faster.
“Someone’s getting awfully familiar with the darkness, isn’t she?” Dorothy singsonged. She cracked the chain like a bullwhip, then swung it toward me.
I dodged, my magic pulsing in my veins like a drug, pushing me to move faster than she—or anyone—could ever possibly anticipate, so fast that it was hard to know if I was actually teleporting or not. I sliced my sword through the air in a graceful arc. I’d used it to hurt her once before; maybe it would work again.
In order for that plan to work though, I would have to actually make contact, and that was easier said than done.
As fast as I spun and dodged and blinked in and out of reality, she swung her chain faster. Whenever I thought I was close enough to slice the thing in two, it slithered out of my reach just in time.
Then it struck, shooting forth and grabbing me by the neck, where it coiled itself tightly around me.
Just like that, my sword disappeared from my hand, and I felt my windpipe closing up. I clawed at my neck, trying to break free, but the more I struggled, the tighter the chain pulled.
“What about tuna noodle hot dish?” Dorothy mused, caught up in some game she was playing with herself. “My aunt Em always made the most delicious hot dish. Tuna noodle hot dish and strawberry phosphate. Now there’s a meal I’d waste a few calories on! It’s not that I miss Kansas. It will be burned to the ground soon enough anyway. Just like this place. But, oh, there are a few things it will be a shame to lose for good.”
If I’d been just slightly stupider, I would have thought she’d forgotten I was even there. And if I’d had any breath to speak, I would have asked what she meant about Kansas being burned to the ground. But at that second, it was all I could do just to keep breathing.
Dorothy’s voice was filled with smug satisfaction and just a touch of wistfulness. “I’ll need a new slave now that I’ve lost my dear, cowardly companion the Lion,” she said. “And you, Amy Gumm, have more power in you that he had in one of his his teeny weeny pinkie-claws. You’ll make a perfect henchgirl.”
She curled a spindly finger toward me, beckoning, and, almost as an afterthought, gave a tug on my leash. As much as I wanted to stay where I stood, I couldn’t. There was some kind of power the chain gave her over me. I felt myself walking obediently toward her.
“That’s a good girl. I can already tell that you’ll make quite the little trained monster.”
I was so tempted to just give in. Nothing could have felt nicer, in that moment, than to stop fighting for good. To let it all go, and be under her power once and for all. To not have to worry about this crap anymore. I kept moving forward, halfway relieved to have it all be over.
And yet, another voice in the back of my head was urging me not to give in. The voice was no one’s but my own. I couldn’t give in. As much as I wanted to, as good as it would have felt, I knew that I couldn’t. Not after all this.
If anything separated me from Dorothy, it was that. We had been the same, once, except that she had given up. Had given in. To the magic, to her shoes, to Glinda, whispering in her ear.
I wouldn’t.
Now we were eye to eye, so close that the stench of her breath was overpowering as she spoke. It smelled like rancid strawberries.
“I’ll give you this,” she was saying. “You’ve developed a certain flair in the short time since I last saw you. A sense of magical style, I suppose. You’re really coming into your own. But, like I say, you’re leaning too much on the same old, same old. The shadow teleporting thing is getting to be old hat, don’t you suppose? A little predictable, hmm? Well, we’ll just need to teach you a few new tricks.”
New tricks. After I had made it to the Fog of Doubt, I’d thought for sure I had been sent there to fail. To lose myself; to give up. Now I realized that I had been wrong. I had been brought there by the Road of Yellow Bricks, and the Magril had been waiting for me for a reason. It was only because I had made it through the fog that I knew now what I had to do. It was simple. It was what the Magril had taught me. I just had to become myself.
I could. And I would. I didn’t need my blade to do it, either. The blade was a part of me.
“How’s this for tricks?” I croaked at Dorothy, tearing with my bare hands at the leash. From out of my fists, a swirling blackness enveloped the shackles that bound me, and the links in the chain began to crumble. There was a snapping sound as I freed myself, and the leash she held me by crumbled to pieces and fell to the ground, melting into shadow.