YA, LGBT, Fantasy
A gift from the gods that lets music control a special type of magic.
A relic of untold ancient magical power that must be found before a murderous clan of mercenaries can steal it for themselves.
A clan leader with a blasphemous story about the true cause of the Cataclysm that challenges everything they thought they knew about how the world ended two centuries ago.
Oh, and on top of all of that, Rex has to deal with this frankly confusing attraction to Finn, the cute boy who is always a jerk to him for some reason. It’s honestly been a bit of wild week of new discoveries for Rex, but he’s doing just fine, thank you, this is hardly the time to analyze all of that, honestly, there’s a giant magical rock monster attacking, maybe that should be the focus right now.
Sample Chapters
Chapter 1 – Rex
Dangling halfway down a crumbling ancient shaft deep in the collapsed ruins of what was once the Great Pyramid of Giza, beads of sweat on his dark brow glistening in the faint neon-green glow of the magical rope cinched at his waist, Rex Kiyazad was struck by a sudden realization: “Damn, I bet my butt looks phenomenal at this angle and there’s no one down here to appreciate it.”
The small stone in his ear buzzed to life as a voice chimed in. “You know you said that out loud, right?” His fellow Reclaimer, Damon Kormides, was some fifty meters above him in the antechamber at the top of the shaft. And judging him apparently.
Rude.
Rex hesitated for a moment. “I hadn’t realized that, actually,” he finally replied through gritted teeth as he fumbled with the clasp of the satchel slung across his shoulder. The stupid thing was twisted away from him, hanging past his waist so he couldn’t see what he was doing. He shrugged and jostled the bag around and towards his chest to get a better angle.
Damon huffed a small laugh, a tinny sound that crackled through the ancient tech of the stone. “Weirdo. I had my pick of partners, you know, and somehow I ended up with you.”
“Oh whatever,” Rex replied. “I’m your best friend and you know it. In our seventeen brief years on this planet, you’ve chosen little ol’ me to-“
Damon laughed. “I think I’m your only friend. You are maybe, maybe, Top Five for me.”
“Mmm, agree to disagree. Also,” Rex dragged out the word as he stretched his arm around at an odd angle to get to the clasp, “let’s see? Which one of us has a girlfriend? So, you know. That’s at least two friends in my column.”
“You guys just broke up. Again. I don’t think that’s the winning argument you think it is.”
“We- no, actually, excuse you, we decided to talk about whether we were better just as friends when I get back from this mission. And even so, Seph still counts as a friend in that scenario. Checkma- Crows take you!” Rex swore as he fumbled the satchel clasp again in the dark, the neon glow from his harness insufficient for the task.
“Gods. Fine,” he groaned, and let go of the satchel flap.
He placed the tip of his thumb against the middle of his ring finger and flicked it several times. The small ridges that ran along the thin bronze plates that covered the pads of his fingers and the tip of his thumb vibrated and several musical notes rang out in the cramped space. The crystal in the palm of that hand, a Shard nestled in an oval bronze enclosure, lit up from within as each note rang out. A shining ball of magical white light emerged from his palm to float in the air beside him.
“So much for stealth,” Rex grumbled as the entire shaft was bathed in the warm glow of the gently bobbing orb. It was already sweltering in here, and this little thing was a furnace. Surely there was some version of that charm that was only light without the heat? He’d have to ask Magus Cirillo when he got back.
“I would think the ‘ooh look at my butt’ commentary would have alerted anyone to your presence,” Damon replied dryly. “Besides, the Valkyrie haven’t crossed the Mediterranean in, what, five years? They’re not stupid enough to challenge the Dominus again. And the Kynagós hasn’t attacked us in three years. There’s no one down here with us.”
“Sure, I guess,” Rex agreed. “But it certainly doesn’t feel as cool and dangerous now that it’s lit up like a cozy sleeper pod.”
“Can you two lover boys quit wasting time already?” The high creaky voice of Cyril Pantazis crackled in his ear. “Check the map and get on with it already, it’s so dreadfully hot in here, we don’t have time for this,” he whined. Along with his twin sister Gretta, Cyril was a year older than Rex and Damon and the twins were technically in charge of this mission for the Reclamation Bureau.
“He can’t do anything right,” Gretta grumbled, not bothering to go off mic for her comment.
Lovely.
Rex tugged at the satchel again, nimbly flipped the clasp now that he could see it clearly and dug around until he found what he was looking for. He pulled a cracked sheet of glass from the bag, barely larger than his hand, and swiped at the screen. A dim light flickered in the center of the glass as the slate woke up.
It was one of six remaining slates in all of Alexandria, and Præfect Andino had spent an insufferable amount of time berating Rex and warning him what would happen if he lost or damaged it. He’d heard it several times before on previous Reclamations, thanks. It was a great honor that the Dominus had even allowed him to be a Reclaimer, blah blah blah. But Rex had plastered on his humble and devout face and nodded along before Andino had finally handed over the precious piece of pre-Cataclysm tech. Honestly, Rex deserved a gold medal in the Resisting The Overwhelming Urge To Roll His Eyes event.
He snapped another quick stanza – the staccato notes of music once again echoing down the shaft – and held the Shard in his palm over the slate. A thin tendril of neon-blue light slithered from the small crystal in his palm and wound its way across the glass, splitting into hundreds of tiny writhing lines of light as he recharged the device. After a few seconds, the slate’s screen lit up and Rex swiped at it a few times, searching for the map that the Reclamation Bureau had reconstructed of this ancient monument.
There was supposed to be a secondary shaft that branched off after forty meters, and that would take them to a chamber, and from there they could cross to a long hallway that would take him to his prize, one of the lost relics of the Ancients. If it was even here. But the second shaft wasn’t within the small sphere of light he had produced. And he had conjured sixty meters of magical rope exactly for this contingency.
And yet here he was, with no place to go but down.
The map was very wrong.
Awesome. Wow.
“Okay, Damon, can you conjure an extension to the rope, the flippin’ map is wrong,” he asked, holding a finger to the stone in his ear.
“Again? Son of Hades, of course it is, can they ever get those right? Just for once? One sec-” Damon began to reply before static broke in. “Wait, what are you doing? No don-“
“Damon? What’s going on up there?”
Rex cried out as the rope around his waist suddenly dissolved into fluttering green flakes and he fell into the inky darkness below.
Chapter 19 – Finn
Above the scattered clouds, soaring through the azure sky, the scorched earth slowly passing beneath them as they flew south across the desert, Finn marveled once again at the variety of this ruined nearly-dead world they inhabited. From what Luca had told them, this had all been barren land long before the Cataclysm, populated by people who knew how to tap the hidden waters beneath the sands and somehow thrive.
“Finn,” Petra said, taking a seat next to him at the long window Seph had conjured into today’s version of the magical extension of their transport pod. “Stop pondering the mysteries of the world and go hang out with the kids your own age up there.” She nudged Finn’s shoulder towards the front of the pod.
“Oh, no, I’m-” Finn spluttered. He did not want to deal with Rex any more than he had to. Even if Kali had abandoned him to go up there and flirt with Seph some more. “I’m good back here. Thanks though.”
“Nope,” Petra said, standing. “I can’t stand by and let you become some mopey teenager who doesn’t know how to socialize properly. I won’t have it.” She tugged at Finn’s arm until he stood as well and then pulled him towards the front. “Now go on, just be yourself, get to know them.” Petra pushed at his arm and stood there looking stern. Ugh. No one would have dared treat him like this back home. It was both something he loved about this clan and sometimes hated.
Finn ducked through the small passageway between the original pod and the magical extension, Kali’s bright laughter greeting him as he entered.
“Oh, perfect timing!” she exclaimed at his appearance. “Tell them! Actual cannibals!”
“Do we have to talk about Zurichum?” Finn sighed. He scrunched his nose at the choice of topic.
“See!” Kali shouted.
“I’d rather forget about that, if it’s all the same,” he added, looking around the pod. Seph was in the front left seat with a swirling orb of green electricity in one hand and was glancing back out the front window every few seconds to keep them on course. Damon was next to her in the other seat, a slightly horrified look on his face (the only correct reaction as far as Finn was concerned), while Rex’s eyes were wide from the seat behind Damon as he listened to Kali’s every word, a huge grin spread across his face.
“That is so insane,” Rex said breathlessly with a small glance at Finn. “Got any cool stories for us, Frosty?” He looked skeptical.
Finn bit back a retort. That damned nickname. But he needed to stick to his strategy of making it seem like it didn’t annoy him and hope the brat would tire of it eventually.
“Most of my stories are Kali’s stories,” he said with a small shake of his head.
“Oh, what about that…the cave of lights?” Kali said, waving her hand vaguely.
Sure, where it all started to fall apart. That’s ‘cool’ to share.
“Uh, I don’t know,” Finn said, kicking his foot absently at her chair.
“C’mon Frosty, a cave of lights definitely sounds like it qualifies,” Rex prodded.
Finn sighed and rubbed at his forehead. Fine.
“Fine. I used to go playing and exploring in some caves on the old Clan Norstoga land a little ways outside Oslo. We weren’t supposed to be out there because there was a smjúgalitt– a, uh, what you saw the other day, that chasm? A magical scar, a smaller one than the other day, was left over from the Cataclysm and we had been warned to stay out of its weird light.”
Rex glanced quickly back at Seph and Damon with a worried look for some reason, and Damon’s eyebrows crinkled for a moment. What was that about?
“Anyway, so one day I was exploring and jumped out of an old tree and the ground I landed on collapsed beneath me and I fell into a new cave. And when I was little, I would, well, uh,” Finn stammered, a bit embarrassed to tell this next part. But everyone’s eyes were on him and for some reason he felt like he could share with this group. Even Rex’s face looked interested and open.
“I would sing to myself when I got scared, something my mother told me would keep me safe from bad spirits.”
“And you sang your little heart out, down there in a scary new cave?” Rex asked, genuinely it seemed.
A small smile curved at the corner of Finn’s mouth. “Yeah. I mean, once I’d caught my breath from crashing down on my back.”
Damon winced in sympathy.
“The cave was dimly lit from the odd silvery light of the smjúgalitt at the far end, but when I sang, something happened. Little flecks of light in the walls began to glow different colors and flashed in time as I sang. The whole chamber lit up like a starry night.”
“Cooooool,” Rex exhaled, his eyes wide.
“I didn’t think it was cool at first, I kinda freaked out, actually,” Finn said, ducking his head.
“Well, sure,” Seph said with a sympathetic shrug.
“In my panic, I ran towards the light of that magical scar. It tingled and the air felt thicker somehow, and I got really nauseous and dizzy, and that really made me panic, but after a few moments of running I seemed to pass through to the other side. I wound up in a huge vast cavern that had dozens of these stone pillar things going from floor to ceiling spread throughout. And at the center was, what I learned much later, was a Console of the Ancients.”
“No way!” Rex and Seph said simultaneously.
Finn nodded. Okay, maybe this story was kind of cool.
“Yeah, so, I’m eight and properly freaked out and every time I try to sing to calm myself down, everything in this huge room flashes neon lights at me in time to my voice. Runes carved into the stone pillars and on the Console are glowing at me, a few archways illuminate revealing other chambers, there’s a huge stone doorway that flashes bright green from top to bottom, it’s all way too much, so I bolt.”
“Aww c’mon!” Rex said with a huge smile. “Tell me you went back.”
“I did,” Finn said with a small nod.
Rex beamed at him. “Nice.”
“A few weeks later I finally worked up the nerve to go back after I realized I could sort of read some of those glowing runes. They were a weird version of our Old Norse runes, though at least half of them were unintelligible, more like your Egyptian hieroglyphs, but I could piece together a lot of it.”
Seph spun around in her chair to fully face him, the entire transport pod wobbling as she did. “Wait, sorry, hold on, you could read the Ancients’ writing?”
Finn shrugged. “Some of it?”
“I’ve seen the Ancient texts in some of gr- in some of the archives,” she said, stopping herself for a moment for some reason. “I don’t remember seeing Norse runes in there though?”
“Maybe the Ancients each had their own original languages like we do today?” Damon suggested.
“Maybe…” she said, trailing off lost in a thought. “So you, what, taught yourself Shard-less magic from half-deciphered Ancient runes?” She looked impressed, her eyes narrowing at him in consideration.
“Pretty much,” Finn agreed. “It wasn’t until later, until…after, when I met up with Clan A- with this Clan,” he quickly corrected. Kali’s nose scrunched slightly but he hoped no one noticed. “Luca and Petra and Tatjana and the others all began to teach me the real stuff, so I could try and control it better.”
“That’s really impressive,” Rex said with a hint of awe in his voice.
Finn shrugged again. “It’s just what happened. I never really learned to do it properly back then. I still can’t really control it…” he trailed off.
Rex shook his head. “Nonsense, you were pretty good back in the grove, y’know, before the end.”
“What did you mean by ‘until after’ just now?” Damon asked, an eyebrow cocked up.
He really didn’t want to talk about that right now. Or ever.
Kali shot forward in her seat. “Wait, what about that glowing woman?” Bless her.
“Oh, right,” Finn said with a relieved sigh. “Yeah, so a year or so ago, my brother Gunnar and I were in the chamber and playing around with the moving runes on the Console when we somehow accessed something we’d never seen before. A giant orb of green light was floating over the console, and five smaller balls were circling around it in lazy orbits. Four of them were glowing bright neon blue, but one was a dim red. Gunnar poked at the red one and it exploded into a giant swirling mass of light that formed into the rough shape of a person, a woman from the looks of it.”
Rex leaned forward, his mouth open slightly. “No way, I triggered one of those in the pyramid!”
“What?” Kali asked, shifting in her seat.
“Yeah, she was some kind of-“
“Security system?” Finn interjected.
“Yes! And also demolition crew,” Rex added, scratching at the nape of his neck, his cheeks flushing a deeper brown.
Kali glanced at Rex, confused. “What does that mean?”
“It means Rex pissed the thing off and she blew up the Great Pyramid of Giza while we were still stuck inside,” Damon said dryly from the front seat.
A short bark of a laugh erupted from Finn before he could control himself. He clapped a hand over his mouth.
“Look, I- no, wait, how was I supposed to know that would be her reaction?” Rex huffed and crossed his arms.
Finn tilted his head to the side, confused. “I thought you said the River Stone destroyed the pyramid?”
“Well she was powered by the River Stone, wasn’t she?” Rex said, indignant.
“Ooh, wait, does that mean there’s a second River Stone in your console?” Seph asked, looking at Finn.
“No idea. She gave us a warning to stay out of Loki’s Library and a few other threats about powers beyond our control, and then she demanded we never return and flickered out. We were properly freaked out by that and ran away, and I didn’t have a chance to go back before…” Finn trailed off. He didn’t want to go into that. “Before I ended up joining this clan.”
Seph hummed in consideration.
“Loki’s Library?” Kali asked. “Isn’t that one of your gods? What was that cave, some kind of temple to this god Loki?”
“You know about as much as I do at this point,” Finn said.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Rex said, leaning forward again. “What about your Valkyrie? Surely they would have been interested in a Console and any magic hidden within?”
The transport wobbled again as Seph turned back around, clearly interested in the answer.
Finn felt his cheeks flush a little at the memory. “I, uh, well, I didn’t tell anyone, actually.” He rubbed at his arm absently. “I mean, Gunnar, my brother, he had found out a few months earlier, but I made him swear to keep it a secret. I couldn’t explain how I could make the magic work without a Shard and I didn’t want the Valkyrie to take me away and study me like they had done the other relics in Oslo.”
“Other relics?” Damon asked, his forehead scrunched. He kept glancing at Seph and Rex for some reason.
Finn frowned, not sure what wasn’t clear. “Yeah, the Valkyrie used magic to help a small group of survivors in Oslo after the Cataclysm and they have a whole trove of artifacts and texts of the Ancients.”
“But,” Damon started, then stopped. “I don’t- how did they- we know someone eventually defected from Alexandria and shared Vinius’ secrets with the Norsemen, but it couldn’t have been so soon after the Cataclysm, surely?”
Both Rex and Seph shared a quick glance and Rex’s eyes darted around, his mouth opening and closing like he was trying to think of something to say; his face looked worried for some reason.
“I don’t know anything about that,” Finn said, holding his hands apart. “I just know we’ve had magic at court for generations, keeping us going while the rest of the world struggles or dies.”
Kali groaned. “Ugh, can we not? We were having a good time making the best out of our scary adventures, let’s not get morose here.”
“Right, sorry,” Finn said with a small apologetic smile. “I’ll just stop being me, I guess.”
Rex considered him for a moment. “Being a little sad and morose is okay, you just need to pull the stick out of your ass more often, like right now. Right now you’re great,” he added with a wide grin.
Finn huffed a small laugh. “Solid life tip, thanks.” The brat wasn’t wrong, Petra hadn’t been wrong, hanging out like this was actually fun, and somehow that little jab hadn’t felt too mean this time.
“I’m always here to share my wisdom with anyone who needs it,” Rex said with a shrug.
“Uh-huh,” Finn snorted another laugh. “Next time I need to know how to destroy one of the ancient wonders of the world, I’ll drop you a note.”
“We’ve been over that, it was barely my fault.”
“Seems pretty much entirely your fault.”
“There was literally a psycho security system lady!”
“You were literally found holding the murder weapon.”
“Oh I murdered the pyramid now?”
“I mean,” Finn said, dragging out the word and spreading his hands.
“Mmm agree to disagree,” Rex said with a dismissive waive of his hand. “Anyways, there’s no reason to be morose. We’ve all done pretty well so far, all things considered,” Rex said cheerfully. “We can get through anything at this point.”
Kali sat up straight in her seat and began to look around, her eyes scanning over everything in the pod. She finally noticed Seph’s staff and reached awkwardly over the seat to tap on it three times with her knuckles. She let out an exaggerated sigh and shot an angry look at Rex.
“Oh not you too,” Rex sighed in return, rolling his eyes.
“Don’t get me started,” Finn agreed.
“What? What did I miss?” Seph asked from the front seat.
Kali crouched back into her seat and crossed her arms. “I needed to find some silver to knock on before Short Stack over here jinxed us.”
“Okay, well first of all, name-calling is uncalled for,” Rex said with a wave of his hand. “And you and Seph can’t really think knocking on silver is going to…what? Ward off bad vibes? Please.”
“Exactly,” Finn said, rolling his own eyes at Kali and making a face. She stuck her tongue out at him. “I don’t think the Nornir respond to anyone, much less tapping at some metal. But she does it every time someone says anything.”
Rex nodded exaggeratedly and beamed at him before pointing at Seph. “Same with this one! I don’t know what the Norneer are, but if they’re like her Fates, those old crones are gonna snip your thread whenever they feel like it, so what are you even doing?”
“Oh whatever,” Kali said with a wave of her hand.
“I wonder how big the piece of silver would have needed to be to avoid the Cataclysm,” Finn added as an afterthought.
Rex snorted and his eyes went wide, his mouth hanging open in surprise at the comment.
“Wow,” Kali said as she crossed her arms.
Finn winced. “Sorry, I wasn’t thinking,” he began.
“No, that was amazing,” Rex said with a huge smile. He held Finn’s gaze for a moment, his dark eyes shining with something like appreciation, maybe? Finn felt his cheeks flush and thought desperately for a new topic to switch to.
“What is that!” Damon shouted, pointing out the front window at something.
Everyone scrambled forward to get a look at the billowing cloud of smoke on the horizon. Small jags of red and indigo lightning were swirling through the massive column of smoke that was still dozens of kilometers away.
“That’s not a normal thunderstorm,” Kali said. “Those lightning bolts must be enormous if we can see them from here.”
“I’m going to guess that’s a bad sign,” Rex added.
A small tap at his shoulder made Finn turn to see Luca had crawled into the now cramped forward part of the pod. Her eyes narrowed as she looked over Seph and Damon to the horizon. “Persephone, please keep your distance but fly us in a circle around the source of that storm.”
The terrain had shifted at some point in the last few hours from endless desert to gray and brown canyons and rough crags, the late afternoon sun casting deep shadows across the landscape. In the distance, the land sloped gradually up to the wide crater of Emi Koussi, the supposedly extinct volcano belching gouts of thick crimson-orange lava into the sky. But the volcano’s natural light show was nothing compared to the column of smoke that filled half of their view. They spent the next few minutes in silence as they watched the churning tempest of smoke and magical energy slowly fill the entire window and begin to loom over them as they flew closer.
Finally, they could see the source of the smoke, a billowing raging fireball that burned from the edge of a particularly deep canyon that wove its way down the side of the volcano. What Finn had originally assumed were knobbly rock formations turned out to be the wreckage of a clearly ancient city, crumbling walls and buildings made of stone only a shade darker than the surrounding gray rocks.
A small city clung to the walls of the canyon and spilled over the top to spread along its edge and onto the slope of the volcano, somehow impossibly etched into the very stone, parts of it defying gravity and lit from below by the gently pulsing glow of a lava flow that skated down the canyon floor.
From the distance Seph was keeping, they could only make out a few small figures moving around near the huge blaze, though the distinctive spark of neon light from several of the figures indicated they were using magic.
“Take us in a bit closer,” Luca called from the larger space at the back of the transport. She looked out the long window along the side with evident concern. “I think they are fighting the local villagers?”
Finn crawled through the gap to the rear to get a better look out the same window. It did look like there was a cluster of people huddled at the side of a small building that sat on the side of the volcano, while several others were retreating under the attack of the figures who were flashing magical light randomly. The enormous fire appeared to have consumed most of the village and was rapidly spreading down into the canyon and devouring the ancient city as it went.
“Ainara, Masato, Callum,” Luca shouted as she dissolved a section of the side of the transport, letting the wind whip in and drown her out. “Get their attention! Let the villagers get away!”
A cacophony of sound filled the area as the three Arcmages stood at the open side of the craft and began strumming various charms, a kaleidoscope of colors flashing around them as they hurled bolts of energy and cast defensive barriers from the tips of their staffs.
“Kurosh, with me,” Petra called, gesturing for him to stand with her in the center of the pod. They both began to strum long complex pezzos, the Shards hanging around their necks glowing green and orange and indigo as their dueling melodies randomly harmonized. Bubbling spheres of pulsating energy began to expand from each of their Shards and quickly spread around them until the spheres passed through the floor and ceiling and walls of the transport. They were casting defensive charms around the pod to keep everyone safe in case the attackers down there retaliated.
And right in time as Callum cried “Look out!” and the whole craft shook as a splash of neon blue washed against the side of the transport. Several more bursts of color shook the pod, but the defensive charm seemed to be holdi-
A massive boom ricocheted around the transport and flung Finn off his feet, hurtling him towards Callum and the open side of the craft. He shouted in surprise and terror at the prospect of colliding with him and both of them plummeting to the ground below.
An odd sensation ran up his leg and around his waist and he seemed to bob in mid-air before flying back away from Callum and the open sky to the other side of the transport. He collided with a solid whumph and looked up to see Rex pressed into the wall and right up against Finn’s chest.
He took a few deep breaths to calm his racing heart.
“Th-thanks?” he said, puzzled. “How did you…” he trailed off, unsure of how Rex had done that.
“Oh, you know, just a quick Binding chord,” Rex said with a small tilt of his head. “It’s supposed to be used for holding the shapes of other charms together, but instead I simply bound you to me and it worked!” He beamed a toothy grin. “You bounced right back to me.”
“Oh,” Finn exhaled. “That’s really impressive. Good thinking. Thanks.” He was suddenly very aware that he was still pressed against Rex and the wall but couldn’t bring himself to pull away.
“Did you just compliment me?” Rex asked, a smug smile quickly spreading across his face. His eyes darted from Finn’s mouth to his eyes.
Why were they standing so close, still?
Finn scoffed, a small derisive huff. “No, I was- it was quick thinking, is all.”
“No, I think I know a compliment when I hear one.”
“Do you need constant praise and validation or something?” Finn said, rolling his eyes.
“Don’t try and take it back now, you said something genuinely nice about me,” Rex said, poking at Finn’s ribs.
“Well, don’t let it go to your head.”
“You liiiiike me.”
“You are insufferable.”
Rex tilted his head from side to side. “Agree to disagree.”
“Ugh. You can turn off the binding charm now.”
“What?”
“The binding charm, let me go.”
“It’s been off since you crashed into me.”
“Oh.” Finn blushed and pushed against the wall to back away. “Brat.”
“Frosty,” Rex said with a smirk and shrug of one shoulder. He jogged over to the open side of the transport next to the Arcmages.
“Persephone! Land between that long building and the blaze!” Luca called out once again.
Finn took a shaky step towards the other side of the craft and looked out at the scene. They had driven several of the magical attackers back towards the ancient city hanging into the canyon, though a few had circled back to the outskirts of the village up top.
Seph brought the transport down with a soft thud in the sand and grasses.
“Around the survivors!” Luca shouted as she jumped out of the side of the craft. “Create a perimeter! Keep them safe! Panta rhei!”
Clan Azari poured out through the open side of the transport and rushed into the swirling sand and flashing lights, a simultaneously harmonious and discordant clash of sounds echoing back from the musical magical battle.
Vaani stopped and turned back at the commotion behind them, noticing Kali and Seph and Damon all emerging from the front of the pod and following Rex as he charged forward.
They held out their hand and called out, “Whoa, not so fast, kids.”
Rex came to a skidding halt right before them. “What? Not this again! We can help!”
“You don’t have the experience to take this on, let the rest of us handle it,” Vaani said, not unkindly. “Stay here and keep a defensive charm around the pod.” Their eyes flashed across all five of the kids standing there, seeking confirmation that everyone understood. Then they strummed a quick stanza and pulled a blinding white pair of daggers from their clenched fist.
They glanced back at the kids once more with a huge grin. “This is where the fun begins!”
And in a blur of whirling cloak and fluttering beard ribbons, Vaani rushed in.