Page 78 of The Alchemists

He hurled Birth of Kagutsuchi⁠* at her this time and it exploded next to her, spitting vicious heat and splattering liquid fire. It splashed over her back like acid rain. So, this is how it will be. He was all force, no finesse. If she could keep dodging, she could get close enough to do some damage. Lily grinned as she ducked another strike, as it broke open a barrel above her head and sent wine cascading behind her, splashing her back. She iced the ground behind Hawleyhurst, forcing him forward. She could hit him now; he was close enough that an Ætheric attack couldn’t miss, she could⁠—

“Lily.”

The voice was everywhere. Low, sinuous. It echoed off the walls and rattled her teeth, squeezed around her brain. As she cut a glance sideways, she froze. Around her the barrels doubled, tripled. Her vision reflected and bounced like she was trapped inside a funhouse mirror. Lights shimmered hazily around everything.

She’d forgotten about Gemma. Forgotten that for all her annoyances, she was a Magician and a very good one at that, particularly when it came to mental magic—illusions, metapsychosis, vicariance.⁠*

“Lily.”

She turned, blinking.

Gemma punched her in the face.

Getting punched in the face was nothing like it looked in movies. She staggered to her knees, automatically clutching at her nose, dropping the knife. Her vision burst red behind her closed eyelids, pain throbbing with the beat of her blood.

“Fuck!” Gemma swore. “That fucking hurt!”

Lily gasped in a breath. Get a grip. She opened her eyes even though everything in her screamed to keep them closed, to curl into a fetal ball with her hands over her face and wait for Seb to deal with it. But Seb wasn’t coming. Lily desperately hoped that he was clawing his way out of his fear.

She rolled, throwing up an inelegant shield as barrels crashed down on top of her, breaking against her protection. Her vision was still fucked—at least three Hawleyhursts charged down the multiplied row toward her. She scrabbled for the knife, clutching at several illusory versions before landing on the real thing. Then he fell upon her.

Blindly, she lashed out with the knife and with raw magic. The blade caught him in the leg as she flinched, her magic striking him in the chest. He flew backward, and Lily didn’t wait. She sprang down the row, staggering as her vision warped, and threw herself into the passageway. She didn’t know where Gemma was, and she didn’t care.

Desperately, drawing on her own magic, her Words, she cast the only thing she could think of to keep them from following—Living Earth. It wasn’t a cantrip, should have taken hours of preparation, but she threw all her power behind it. She felt it pull out of the air around her, sucking against her skin and her lungs and her veins, and then it exploded from her hands with a concussive crack.

The ground hummed, then shuddered, throwing the scent of petrichor and grave rot into the air, the racks of barrels swaying crazily. The stone floor bucked, nearly liquid, rolling and unstable. The barrels began to fall. Gemma’s scream echoed and echoed. Lily didn’t stop to watch; she plunged down the passage, and then⁠—

Dammit.

“Seb!” She shoved against him in the darkness. “Move!”

Miraculously, he shuddered to life, scurrying down the tunnel. Once they were into the next tower, she took the lead, dragging him by the hand, desperately racing through half-remembered hallways until they burst into the tasting room, and then they were out into the twilight.

Desperately, she pulled Seb’s keys from his coat and flung herself into the front seat, sending up a frantic prayer of thanks to her mother for insisting she learn how to drive on a stick shift, even though it had nearly destroyed their relationship. She jerked the seat forward, sparing only a single glance for Seb, half-catatonic but safe in the passenger seat.

She thrust the key into the ignition and the car rumbled into life. Nearly sobbing with relief, she throttled the engine and whipped the car in a circle, spitting gravel, then shot down the drive into the gathering dark.

* Kagu-tsuchi is the deity of fire in classical Japanese mythology. His birth was so violent that it burned his mother, Izanami, to death.

* Vicariance: The discipline and practice of experiencing an event remotely through an empathic link with another. From the Latin vicarius, taking the place of another.

SEB

They were sitting in his car under a streetlight in the parking lot behind a coffee chain. Around them, the world was a heavy misted indigo, and the car was flooded with orange. There was a coffee cup nestled between his knees. Lily hunched over the wheel, staring at him.

She was crying.

“Thank god,” she exhaled hoarsely when he turned to look at her.

He looked down at the cup, picked it up, sipped. Hot chocolate. The whipped cream had melted. Two realities shoved up against each other in his recent memory. Both held equal weight.

“What happened?” He was wrung out and threadbare.

“You had a panic attack.”

“No, I mean…it was him, wasn’t it?” He could barely bring himself to muster the word. “Conrad.”

The quiet fury on her face could have split an atom. The muscles in her jaw strained so tight that she couldn’t speak, couldn’t nod. She just looked at him in an unfathomable way. It was hard to tell in the sulfurous half-light, but it seemed like there were too many shadows on her face. Conrad had been there again, and she’d faced him alone. Again. She’d faced his past while he’d been out of his mind, completely useless.