But the rest of me is mute with horror, that this will be not just our fate but the galaxy’s. More are coming, always more, not just humanoid now but other shapes—multi-armed behemoths from Manaria IV, stone-fisted hulks from the Tartallus Drift, moss-ridden and twisted and One.
I can see a glow pulsing through the crystal around us, warm and soothing. The cracks seem to be closing, and my heart surges as I think Aurora may be succeeding, but something is holding it back, stifling it, I …
I look to the tunnel behind us, the pulses of light from the throne room.
“Fall back!” Tyler shouts again.
My father grits his teeth, snarling, “Hold your ground, Terran!”
“We can bottleneck them!” Lae screams. “Buy a few more minutes!”
They appear out of the smoke, soaring through the Neridaa’s halls on wings encrusted in dull blue green. They were almost extinguished when my father destroyed Syldra. But still they come, three of them landing like thunder among the Ra’haam’s rotten legion. The impact sends Lae to her knees, Tyler and me stumbling as the cavern around us echoes with roars.
“Maker, not again,” Tyler growls.
“Drakkan,” Lae whispers.
The mighty creatures move swift as silver, big as houses. But the first of them still falls, split in half as my father’s fingers slice the air. The second staggers as I hurl the last of my pulse bombs into its mouth, and my father raises his hand and splinters its neck. But the third lunges with sinuous speed, striking at Lae, still on her knees.
Its claws are enough to cut steel, its teeth sharper than swords, and though she twists upright, she is not swift enough. The claws descend, eyes gleam like flowers.
But with a roar of denial, a figure leaps between drakkan and prey, power armor whining as those terrible claws strike home and send the pair sailing across the gore-washed floor.
“TYLER!”
Aurora
—a crack reopens in the sky above, and I feel the song of the wind change through the trees growing around me
—there’s a Syldrathi boy on his knees, a girl watching as his father kicks him in the ribs, and the boy silently, stubbornly refuses to fight back, and I start forward with his name on my lips.
“Kal!”
—the crystal city on the horizon is crumbling, and I am frantically, stubbornly drawing it back onto the map of my mind in all its glory, but I feel that shadow between them, and
—a Syldrathi boy and girl stand together as their parents scream at each other. And neither understands but each of them is watching and learning and my stomach sinks as I see a shadow take root in their hearts and I feel the tangle of pain and love from all four of them.
“Caersan, you have to fix it!” I cry.
He turns in my vision to gaze at me, unreadable.
“It is not broken,” he snarls, because he doesn’t even know how to see what’s wrong, and roaring “Weakling girl!” he throws me out of his mind, and
—I scream at him because I feel it now, the massive, cloying warmth of the Ra’haam, so close, so big, and I know I can’t stop it without all of them, without him I can’t fix this, and he won’t listen, he won’t help me, and I can feel it inside them, that shadow, like a cancer, blocking me, stopping me, and
—If I can’t stop it now
—Can’t stop it now
—I know I can’t stop it then.
—I’m with Tyler, and he’s standing on the bridge of a ship with Saedii in the time before she was taken away, before he even really knew he loved her. And he’s still young and still bright and he reminds me of that time we danced back on Sempiternity, me in my beautiful red dress, and him in those ridiculous pants, so full of hope and daring, and I look up at his handsome face, and he doesn’t know what’s coming, and I think …
—you still have a chance of fixing this, Tyler Jones. You told me when it happens where it happens
—how it happens and
—in this place where time means nothing and a minute can last a lifetime, and I can do anything if I can imagine it, I pour myself into one moment, leaving everything behind, and I reach out across the gulf to scream a warning back in time to the boy he once was because I don’t know if we can make it here, but maybe he can fix it there, because if he doesn’t, there might be nothing, and
—There might be nothing
—There is nothing I—
“TYLER!”
Kal
“TYLER!”
I skid to my brother’s side as another pulse of bloodred power flares around us. Lae is still cradled in his arms, bruised and bewildered. But my heart twists as I see blood spilling from his mouth, his ruptured armor, his neck. My father lashes out again, a spherical flare of power smashing the last drakkan to pulp. But the damage is done… .