Chapter Thirty Seven
The Heart of Primaris

 

“You know,” Cunning said, “there’s a lot I wanted to say to both of you.” He looked at Mangrove and Lalonde. “I had a whole speech prepared. But I don’t think I’m going to waste my time with you.” He looked at the battlefield. Spirits were on the back foot. “It won’t matter anymore, anyway.” 

Lord Mangrove threw up a shield. It shattered instantly under a barrage of strikes visible only to Emily. The follow-up knocked the Headmaster off his feet, though he didn’t fall to the ground. Cunning didn’t let him, holding him up like a ragdoll the way he had Lalonde. 

“All I need now is the capstone.”

“Over my dead body,” Mangrove said, and drew a series of sigils in the air. Immediately he fell down, landing on his knees. “That knowledge isn’t for people. We sealed it away for a reason!”

Cunning’s rage came down on him like an avalanche. The aloof mask fell away. Mangrove’s shield was barely up in time to save his own life as a boulder of pressure crashed down on him, and it was gone again in a flash. “COWARDICE!” Cunning bellowed. “You had the chance to change the world! To save the world! And you hoard it! For what?! For— For tradition? To play magician’s apprentice in your little village in the woods? You would withhold magic, power itself, from the world, just so you could cosplay?!”

“To protect… everyone!” Mangrove responded as he pushed himself to his feet. A single strike to his jaw, too fast to respond to, threw him back on the ground. Emily heard something crack. “The Spirits—”

“Are a distraction! Alastair, I used to think you were just good at playing pretend but you… you really believe in all this, don’t you?” He waved at the ruined school around him. “You really think you’re making the world a better place.” He looked over at the still shape of Lady Lalonde, being cared for by Leah and Sarah. “Bet you she knows. I’m disappointed, Mangrove.” Another crack across the jaw threw Lord Mangrove back, and he was dragged across the ground towards Cunning, strung up like laundry in front of him.

“Who are you?!” Mangrove hissed.

“I’m nobody, Alastair,” Cunning said. “Just another child that died too soon.”

“You… You’re a familiar?” the Headmaster asked, his eyes wide in disbelief. Cunning just smiled, then struck him. It wasn’t a full-bodied punch. It wasn’t a solid right hook or a powerful blow. It was a slap, and it echoed across the ruins. 

“Too late to care now,” Cunning said. “Now, give me the last piece of the Heart, or I’ll tear it out of you. I’m not asking again.” Already, Emily saw Lord Mangrove’s limbs twisting as he resisted Cunning’s telekinetic pushing and pulling. 

“I’ve locked it behind more barriers than you can break, Cunning.”

“I’ve broken more barriers than you can lock, Mangrove.” 

Sigils and symbols began to light up all over Lord Mangrove, glowing amber glyphs that Emily saw being shattered one by one. He wasn’t going to last much longer. If she was going to do something, it was going to be now. She reached out to Jenna, speaking as quickly as she could. “Jenna, you remember our plan?” 

“I do. Emily… we can’t do this. I don’t think we can win this.”

“There is… I have an idea, and I think something really bad is going to happen if he gets what he wants. I’m not sure we really have a choice, Jenna. We have to fight.”

“I know. Ready when you are.” Jenna gave Emily a glance that might have been reassuring if she didn’t look so scared, if her face wasn’t caked with dirt. They wouldn’t get a second shot at their plan, after all, and it hinged on one thing going well.

“You’re sure you saw what he did?” When the piece of the spell, the Heart of Primaris, had moved from Lady Lalonde, Emily had seen it, after all. But that was only half of the spell. The seals Lord Mangrove had put around himself were breaking, faster and faster. And if Emily understood correctly, he wasn’t going to survive what came next.

“I’m sure. I can probably do it.” Well, that was as reassuring as it was going to get.

“Probably is going to have to be good enough,” Emily said. “Professor Mangrove!” Cunning and Lord Mangrove’s heads snapped to look at her as she ran towards them. “Let go! NOW!” She saw the wheels turning in between seconds. He knew he had no choice but to trust them. In a flash, all the seals fell away, and whatever Cunning was doing to extract the last piece of the Heart happened all at once.

From the middle of Mangrove’s forehead appeared the Heart. It wasn’t a silvery white cloud. It wasn’t a little ball of condensed magic. It was words. Not letters, spelled out in the air, or an image of what the spell would do, but words. What words feel like when you read them. It was understanding. 

Just like she’d seen, ever so briefly, with Lady Lalonde. And they moved between Lord Mangrove and Cunning, far too fast. But Jenna had seen it too — or she’d seen something, at least. And she had been paying attention to the spells Lord Mangrove had been weaving. She was a damn good Witch, Emily realised as a little protective ball wrapped itself around the capstone spell, and held it in mid-air.

“What—” was all Cunning managed to say before Emily smacked him across the face with a telekinetic blast. He had his guard up, and she doubted she was going to actually hurt him, but that wasn’t the point. The point was to distract him. Distract him long enough for her to launch herself at the little balled up spell like a bullet. 

She saw a tendril of his telekinesis reach out, and worried she wasn’t going to be fast enough. A moment stretched out into infinity. Emily tried her own telekinesis, but wasn’t fast enough. She saw Cunning’s magic wrap around the spell. She wasn’t going to be fast enough. Well. Not with magic. Instead of reaching ahead she reached back and pushed. Emily clamped her teeth down on the piece of the Heart, and then the whole world went white. 

“What did you do?”

Emily looked around. The first thing she noticed was that she was high off the ground. Well, relatively speaking. She wasn’t, she realised, a cat. Standing up, she faced the battlefield. The whole world seemed greyed out. There was Lord Mangrove, hanging in mid-air, an expression of determination and hope on his face. A little ways away, Jenna, gritting her teeth. Frozen in place. In time. 

“I think I stopped you,” Emily said as she turned to him. She felt something burning in her head. It was uncomfortably like heartburn, an unpleasant presence, and she knew what it was. Cunning scowled.

“You didn’t stop a thing,” he said. “I still have most of the Heart. All I have to do is take it from you.” Emily looked at him. He didn’t look all that confident. 

“I don’t think you will,” she said. “I don’t think you can.”

He took a step closer. Emily didn’t budge, but she tried to move her telekinetic tendrils. They weren’t budging. Whatever existence they were in, everything but them was frozen. “You willing to bet your life on that?” Cunning said.

“I don’t think I have to.” She raised a hand. Normally always in motion, she saw the magic swirl around her hand, disturbed but still. “You can see it too, can’t you?”

“Yes,” Cunning said.

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“But you can also do magic.”

“I can.”

Emily looked at him. Now that she studied him, he didn’t look like all that much. When he was gloating or drenched in the rain, raising a gun or casting spells, he looked so threatening. But like this, standing still in between the ticking of the clock, he didn’t look like all that much. Just a man, maybe forty, with bags under his eyes and a coat that looked maybe a little too big for him. “I don’t really care how that started,” Emily said. “But I think I understand.”

“No,” Cunning said, narrowing his eyes. “You can’t.”

“I think Professor Mangrove wasn’t able to,” Emily said, frowning. She could feel the spell bouncing around her head, coiling around her brain. It wasn’t the whole spell. Could she even contain the whole thing? It wasn’t even worth thinking about. “But I understand this bit. The last bit. The important bit.”

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Cunning said, and took another step closer. Emily saw him tense up, but noticed he didn’t have any of his powers or magic up either. 

“I’m stopping you,” Emily said. “That’s all.” She frowned again. She wished she could talk to Jenna. Jenna understood magic, on a fundamental level. To her, it was vague concepts, and she felt like a child holding the key to a kingdom of power, a child that didn’t even know how keys worked.

“No,” Cunning said. “No. You don’t understand!”

“What don’t I understand?!” Emily shouted back. “I understand that you’re killing people! I understand that you’re killing people I care about! People I love! What fantastic plan for absolute power do you have that… that justifies all of that?!”

“I’m doing what’s necessary! I’m pragma—”

“You’re cruel!” Emily interrupted him. “Whatever you’re planning, you could have done it without being cruel but you didn’t care! And you know what? I don’t care either!” She bent down and picked up a rock and threw it at him. He flinched, but as soon as the rock left her hand it froze in mid-air. “I don’t care why you’re cruel! I don’t care what happened!”

“I’m trying to save kids like you, you immature little… idiot!” Cunning was shaking in frustration. “Do you even know what the Heart is supposed to do?!”

“I don’t care!” Emily yelled back. The politics, the grand plans, it didn’t matter, did it? If it was all used as an excuse to hurt more people, Cunning and Mangrove and Lalonde could all disappear for all she cared. “Just go away!”

“I will! Just give me the heart!!”

“Why?!”

“Because I’m going to stop this whole cycle!” Cunning responded with exasperation, throwing his hands up. “No more magic society! No more magic school! No more child… soldiers! No more kids growing up and knowing only some… invisible war they didn’t even choose!”

Emily stopped and looked at him. He seemed sincere. “What?”

“For the love of… Now you listen?” Cunning shook his head. “I’m going to use the Heart. Reverse the flow of magic. Take it all. I think… No, I believe Primaris made the Heart as a weapon against…” He waved at the Spirits. “He was terrified of them. He needed an army, and noticed children were stronger. But not strong enough.” He looked Emily in the eyes. “Magic was never for the few. Once, everyone had access to it.”

“But—” 

“And then he came, and shackled it. Bound it to his rules and his plans. Gave magic to the few to protect the many,” Cunning growled. “And I think he was a bastard for doing so. Maybe… maybe it was necessary back then. But I look at those things and I think… ‘maybe this is something people with guns and tanks can take care of instead of teenagers’.” He looked at Emily. “So I’m going to take the choice away. Magic caused too much harm.”

“You’re…” Emily started, and then hesitated. Either he was a really good liar, or he really believed all of that. And the piece of the spell, the last piece, the part that was supposed to tie it all together? It seemed to agree with him. It coiled and uncoiled like a snake. “You’re telling the truth, aren’t you?”

“No reason to lie,” Cunning said. “The truth is that you and your friends have been drafted into a war. And I’m the only one willing to stop it.”

“And you think seizing all power is the way to do that?”

“It’s the only thing the Heart was ever meant to do. It didn’t ‘create’ magic. It just… arranged things. Picks a few thousand kids all over the world. Keeps everything cycling. It’s an automated spreadsheet manager,” Cunning said with a grimace. “I hate it, but I can use it to stop… all this.”

Emily looked around, at the Spirits and Mages, locked in a frozen battle. Spells, lightning, fire, hanging in the air like cheap special effects. “Didn’t do a great job, did you?”

“Do you want to see it?” Cunning said. “Do you want to know what it’s like having all the pieces in your head?” Before Emily could answer the question — she absolutely didn’t, she had some idea — Cunning pulled the spell out of his own head like he pulled off a mask. The same thing she’d seen before. Understanding, a core mastery of reality itself, in the palm of his hand. And it looked alive. Curling around his hand, like glass centipedes. Angry snakes visible only by how they disturbed the air around them. 

And then Emily had one final idea. It was a really, really bad idea. She reached to her own forehead, and willed the piece forward. It was remarkably like using her telekinesis. It went willingly. It fell into her hand, and wrapped itself around her fingers. Seeing it like that, she shared Cunning’s revulsion. 

“Give it to me,” Cunning said. “I’ll end this. I’ll destroy the Spirits, and you’ll never see me again.” Emily looked at him.

“No,” she said, and squeezed. Squeezed with her heart and her mind and all the magic she had briefly touched when the spell was in her head. And she felt cracks in the invisible glass. There was a light, and then a dark. When Emily opened her eyes, she found out the hard way that cats do not, in fact, always land on their feet. 

She crashed into the dirt. Behind her, Cunning screamed and time resumed with all the cacophony of a train crash. When she scrambled to get up, she saw him stand there, his hand outstretched, a look of horror and confusion plastered on his face. Slivers of invisible magic sizzled away into nothing around him.

“Wh—” Cunning said, and looked at her. “WHAT DID YOU DO?!”

“I destroyed it,” Emily meowed with a smirk. “All of it.”