Epilogue
Fourteen Months Later

 

“Emily—

“I know.”

“They’re going to—

“I know!”

“We don’t have long!”

“I know!!”

“Where are you?!”

Emily ran through the rubble of what had once upon a time been some fancy old building. It was easier to navigate rubble as a cat, at least, but easier didn’t have to mean easy. She dodged falling debris as best as she could, and threw the bits aside she couldn’t. 

She had to conserve energy. As it turned out, telekinesis did use her magical reserves, and with everything going on, she needed to be more conservative with her use of it. The distant crackle of magical lightning — not to mention the rumbling and roaring behind her — reminded her exactly of how dire the situation was, and she doubled her efforts. 

Jenna and the others were on the other side of the block, and they needed all the reinforcements they could get. Emily just hoped it would be enough, or that she wouldn’t be too late. It had all gone sideways so fast. Magic had made the world a very noisy place, and the attempts of certain governments to shut it all down, to control it, had… not gone over well. On the upside, Emily had never been to mainland Europe. It looked like it was probably very nice when it wasn’t on fire or actively being turned into weaponry. 

She rounded a corner and found her path blocked by a collapsed doorway. Well, no time for caution. Turning herself into a feline bullet, she fired herself at it, and shielding her body at only the last second, she broke through. The roaring behind her was getting closer. 

Emily landed on a pile of brick and rubble, overlooking the square. Well, there would (hopefully) be time to appreciate rural France later. For now, she saw her friends hidden behind a shield of rubble and makeshift walls, in the middle of what seemed to be a four-way all-out brawl, but things weren’t looking good. Shadowy figures moved between the burned-out buildings across the plaza, firing off magic where they could. 

One thing nobody had been able to predict was that magic had actually gradually increased over the centuries since Primaris had cast his first spell. Every person, it seemed, was born with a little bit, and the Heart had kept them from accessing it. This had made sense to “ration” magic when there were only a few hundred million people in the world. 

But the world’s population had multiplied by a factor of forty. Eight billion people, all releasing magic. It was chaos. Emily saw it all, pure energy, the whole world swimming in it. A bolt of fire and lightning struck close to where she was standing, and brought her back to reality. 

“Jenna!” she shouted. “Up here!” Her Witch spun around from behind Jacob and Benjamin’s barrier, and flashed her a wide and happy smile, then said something to her friends, pointing at Emily. 

“Did you get them?” Jenna asked. Yeah. Yeah, Emily got them. 

“I did! Do you have it?”

“I do! Come here!”

“Just throw it, I’ll make my way down to you!” 

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“You’re so dramatic.”

Emily smiled to herself. Jenna wasn’t wrong, Emily did have a tendency to show off a little bit. But then again, she was one of a very, very exclusive club, and it took effort sometimes not to let that get to her head a little bit. 

But more importantly, it let her help people and protect her friends better than anyone, and that was far more important. She ran down the mountain of rubble towards Jenna, just as her Witch threw something towards her, flickering and shimmering in the air. Emily caught it with her telekinesis and pulled it towards her. They didn’t have long now, the rumbling behind her was making the bricks around her shake and rattle. 

The figures across the square had also noticed her and started firing off more and more spells at her. Another leap, pushing off with both her dainty little paws and her far from dainty telekinesis, and she met the object in mid-air. 

In a flash, her perspective changed. The world got a little smaller, and her hand closed around the comfortable cast-iron, palming it, then turning her leap into a controlled fall, rolling down the hill until she was next to Jenna and the others. 

“Hey,” she said as she wiped some hair out of her face. Despite how affirming longer hair had been, the shorter hairdo did make things easier. 

“Showoff,” Simon squeaked from the collar of Ben’s jacket. Emily scratched him between the ears, and reduced him to a little huff. “Are they almost here?”

“Yup,” Emily said. “Any second now.”

“About time,” Sarah said, gently nudging Emily’s leg and earning herself some affection as well. Leah was leaned against a particularly large chunk of rubble and firing beams of ludicrously explosive power around the corner. “They’re closing in, and they’ve got something big with them.”

“Something new?” 

“We don’t know yet,” Jacob said. Dennis growled between his legs at nothing in particular. The boy had grown a bit in the past year, but he was still the cutest and fluffiest thing Emily had seen in her life. Just the size of a larger beach ball now. “But I don’t want to find out what they might have figured out how to do. We’ve seen weirder and weirder things come out of the woodwork.” Jenna nodded and put a hand on his shoulder.

“We need the reinforcements.”

“Well,” Emily said as she looked at the object in her hand. It was strange, seeing these again. But by some miracle, they fit, and they really did help. The rumbling was close now, and coming from both in front and behind them. 

Stepping out from behind the corner, Emily slipped on the knuckle dusters. Across the plaza, the remains of an old church exploded in a shower of mortar, brick and historical artefacts. What came through was… well, to call it a dragon wasn’t entirely correct. It was the idea of a dragon. If someone had been told what a dragon was without ever having seen a picture of an animal before. And it was angry. 

Not letting herself panic, Emily took a deep breath, just as the wall behind her came down. The roaring of spirits was deafening. She looked over her shoulder as she brought her fists to bear, glowing with magic. 

“Ready?” she asked. 

The closest of the Spirits crashed its massive forelegs on the ground next to her.

“Ready,” it said.