Our magics collided. The bond reignited in a blinding burst of power. The patina of corruption that permeated the inn, sliding over its branches and smothering its roots, burned away in an instant, opening a clear bath between me and the core.
Magnolia Green was mine.
The corrupted innkeeper screamed. His polluted currents slammed into me, battering the inn, hammering at my defenses, each blow sending an agonizing jolt through us both.
I held my hand out, and my broom landed in it.
“It won’t help you!” he snarled.
My power wound through the broom in a tight spiral, ready to be unleashed. My body buckled, struggling to channel all that power, and I had to force the words out.
“This inn cradled me as I took my first breath. No matter how hard you try, it will never be yours.”
I planted the broom into the floor.
Magic tore out of me like a magic hurricane and smashed into the corrupted innkeeper.
The corruption flailed around me, burning and raging. It was pure hate. Hate and anger, a torrent of it streaming from him. There was so much of it, more than any being could contain, and I could not understand how it didn’t tear him apart. Every lash of it frayed my soul. There was blood in my mouth. My chest hurt, every breath a conscious fight against the anvil sitting on my ribs.
I gripped him with my magic and squeezed.
We tore at each other, he with his corruption and I with my innkeeper magic. The dome quaked. I felt the rotting walls collapsing behind me. The substance of the inn disintegrated, as it sacrificed more and more of its power to feed my attack.
He’d drowned Magnolia Green in his corruption. It fed like a leech on the inn’s magic for nobody knew how long. The inn had fought against it, trying to survive, trying to preserve some small part of itself. But now I had asked for its help.
Magnolia Green loved me from the moment I was born. It gave everything to me. All of its power. All of its magic. Every last drop.
Its branches withered. Its roots turned to dust. It kept nothing for itself.
Magnolia Green was killing itself to protect me.
I pushed against the current, trying to hold it back. The magic swept my resistance aside and poured out of me. The inn had made up its mind. It would defend me. I was powerless to stop it.
We were bound, the three of us, caught in a terrible circle of power—me channeling my innkeeper magic, him whipping currents of corruption that seared agony into me, and Magnolia Green, tied to us both, split in the moment of death between coercion and love, devoured by one and freely sacrificing itself for the other.
The horror of it was too much to take. I heard a sound and realized I was screaming, crying like a child from pain and grief. I would be the end of my parents’ inn. Magnolia Green knew it and still it fed me. Its desperation coursed through me. It knew that its death throes would take me with it. I would not survive the death of the inn where I was born. Our bond was too strong.
We would die together here. But we had to kill him first, so no other inn would be violated and left to rot.
We pushed against him as one. The magic pouring out of me had color. It glowed like a blade of grass with sunlight shining through. I had merged with Magnolia Green.
The corrupted innkeeper howled, hammering at me with pulses of his fetid magic. I turned my magic into a pale green dome around me, trying to shield myself enough to stay conscious. Orange lightning sparked within the corrupted currents and smashed against my defenses. The explosion of pain nearly dropped me to my knees.
He flailed harder, whipping the lightning back and forth across my shield. The corruption bit at me, and its teeth were freezing like the space between stars. It was not human. It was a part of him now, but it wasn’t born from him. He had found it and made it his own.
If only I could separate the corruption from him. If I could isolate it, I could crush it out of existence.
It was pouring out of the center of his chest, from behind his breastbone. He’d hidden it before, but he’d gone into a frenzy and forgot to guard himself.
I could either attack or defend. Not both. This would be it. Magnolia Green was at its very last limit. There was nothing left except its core and one last root, too weak to break through the floor and reach me.
I dropped the dome, shaping my magic into a needle-thin beam of brilliant green and stabbed at his chest with it.
The corruption slapped me and tore right into my soul.
There was no word for that kind of pain…
My magic struck him. He screamed and yanked his power back, whipping the corruption about him in a tight spiral, forming his own shield. My green beam bore at it but couldn’t penetrate. I couldn’t get through it.
There wasn’t enough power. I didn’t have enough.
I failed…
Sean burst through the wall, a huge, enraged beast, covered in slime and blood.
A single whip of fetid darkness snapped from the corrupted innkeeper’s dome and lashed Sean, cutting a bloody gash in his shoulder.
He ignored it and cleared the distance between me and him in a single leap. He landed in a crouch, gripped my broom with one clawed hand, and drove the other into the floor. I felt his magic stream from his fingers into the floor. It was just like my own, the power of an innkeeper accumulated and nurtured over months of taking care of the inn.
The floor under our feet split. The last remaining root of Magnolia Green broke through and wound around us. Power punched me, nearly taking me off my feet.
I fed it all into my beam. The corrupted shield popped like a dirty soap bubble. The green beam struck the corrupted innkeeper in his chest, right into the source of his power. His robe tore. For fraction of a second I saw the smudge of the innkeeper’s true face and his eyes brimming with fear.
He screamed and hurled something behind him. White lightning tore from the cube as something drained the zero-point energy generator’s power in a flash. The fabric of space split, and through the ragged tear I saw trees the color of blood.
No! No, damn it, no!
He dove through the dimensional rift, the tatters of his robe spinning around him as he vanished. The tear snapped shut.
He got away. He escaped. Aaaaaa, he escaped!
The generator’s cube turned dull. The pearlescent light dissolved into nothing. The dome around us creaked as Karron took the mining facility into its mouth and bit down.
My arms were red. My face felt wet, my neck, my body inside my suit… All of me was covered in blood. It had slipped out of my pores. It didn’t matter. Magnolia Green was dying, and I would go with it. Every pulse of its core resonated through me, and they were so weak and slow. I would hold the inn to the very end, so it wouldn’t perish alone. I owed it that.
The stasis light around Wilmos died, and the old werewolf collapsed onto the floor. The dome quaked, groaning.
Sean sprinted across the room, slung Wilmos over his shoulder, and hurried back to me.
The core of Magnolia Green had grown so dim. It wouldn’t be long now.
“We have to go!” Sean snarled.
“It’s okay,” I told him. “Leave me.”
He grabbed me. “Dina, you can’t be here when it dies!”
Something crunched. Cracks formed on the dome. Karron’s ocean was coming in.
Sean grabbed me by my waist and jerked me off my feet, away from my connection with the inn.
“I can’t let it die alone! Leave me, Sean!”
“Never.”
The last root of Magnolia Green snapped, caught the three of us, and dragged us through the dust, through the sterile hallways, through the hole in the ceiling… Behind us thunder pealed.
The portal loomed in front of us.