Chapter 41: Huzzah

  “Timing is everything,” Donn said as though he’d stumbled onto a winning lottery ticket.

  “Go away!” Bori roared, sending all of her shadow monsters to attack in unison. “Give me a minute, Daddy. I’ll deal with him.”

  I had to trust her. Even though I wanted to come to her defense, my duty was to secure the heart. Clutching the slippery heart with both hands, I pushed as much mana as I could into the swirl. Just like the previous times, a green coil emerged from my hand.

  The coil came to life when it came into contact with the relic, wrapping around it like a snake restricting its prey.

  Tha-thump, tha…

  The beating…stopped. Everything around me froze as both Bori and Donn paused to see what had just occurred. With a piercing howl, the wraith sunk into the ground, reappearing before me. Shadowy tendrils wrapped around my throat before I could react and held me off the ground.

  “Daddy!” Bori screamed as she lashed at the wraith from all sides.

  Unfortunately, like an angry child throwing a tantrum, her attacks had no discernable effect on the Primordial.

  “Where’s…Pi…” I coughed with all the breath I could muster. “He’d…”

  My vision blurred, and I felt my grip on the relic slipping. Suddenly, I found myself discarded and falling to the floor. I landed hard, knocking what wind I had left in my lungs.

  “This?” Donn said, holding the encased heart up to the light. “What did you do to it? No matter. It should still work.”

  He then sunk into the ground with the heart and was gone. Bori’s shadows scrambled around for a second before returning to check on me.

  “Daddy, he’s…gone.”

  “I know,” I sighed, worried I’d just lost, and condemned the universe to end.

  “He’s up there,” Bori pointed to the ringed planet in the sky.

  “Kronkey!” I cursed. “I can’t follow him up there.”

  “I can, Daddy,” one of Bori’s shadows whispered in my ear.

  I turned to stare at the thing. It felt like I was looking into the void. “What do you mean, sweetie?”

  The shadow’s mouth opened up in a toothless grin. “It went through the shadows. I can do that too. Want me to take you?”

  I swallowed hard. There was no way I wanted to go, and the last thing I’d ever do was take my daughter with me into danger. Yet here she was taking me. Even if I managed to save the universe, Aura was going to kill me.

  “Just do it,” I groaned.

  “One second, Daddy,” Bori replied as the ground opened up and a pitch black crystal floated in front of me. “Put my core back in your arm.”

  I gasped when I saw it. The first time I was joking, but Aura really was going to kill me. No sooner had I put her back in my arm than the world went dark and for a moment I thought maybe Donn had pulled it off and devoured the universe. Then we appeared in the control room next to a very confused Isa and Primith who were guarding the still entangled Puppetmaster.

  “Alex!” Isa cried out, throwing herself at me. “Why did you leave like that?”

  Primith folded her arms, ignoring Isa. “Did you manage to get rid of the heart? And what did you do to Bori?”

  I looked down at the black light pulsing in my stone arm like a quasar. “That’s a long story. Where’s Donn? We followed him back here. He has the heart.”

  “Wait, if he has the heart, doesn’t that mean he won?”

  Melvin was in a dilemma. Sure, he’d saved his sister, Kiki, from the machine, but she’d just been the bait. The moment he got her out of the room, the machine latched onto his power and sucked him back in. Skills that normally made him godlike betrayed him.

  He tried to delete the hatch that had closed, but nothing happened. Even his elemental magic got sucked up by the machine the moment he released it. There was only one thing that still worked: his connection with Kalli.

  I’m going to get you out of there. Kaliphae said through mate chat, sending feelings of reassurance.

  Kalli’s magic actually worked outside of the machine. Green flames radiated from her and lashed the hatch repeatedly, though it wasn’t having any effect. The ancient machine was one of the most formidable devices the pair had ever encountered.

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  Try using my skill. Melvin sent through the connection. Use DELETE on the hatch.

  Kalli scrunched up her face and focused on the hatch, willing the skill to activate and the door to be gone.

  Error. The relic, INFERNAL MACHINE, predates the system. Unable to DELETE.

  Mel, I can’t… she started the thought, but he cut her off.

  It’s okay, Kalli, Melvin replied. I saw the message too.

  Kalli banged on the hatch. So what do we do?

  Melvin placed a hand on the other side of the hatch. Don’t worry. I have an idea.

  The hunt for Donn ended in the throne room. We found him locked in combat with Optimus. It looked like a scene from a painting where a glowing figure draped in angelic robes lashed out at a demonic shadow creature with glowing red eyes.

  I’d never seen a god fight before. Optimus radiated mana that orbited him in blinding golden waves. Even a glancing hit dispersed the wraiths. That didn’t seem to discourage Donn. The wraiths reformed and attacked again, looking good as new.

  “I don’t see the heart,” I yelled while moving from one wraith to the next in a desperate attempt to find the stolen relic.

  A puppy made entirely of shadows appeared and jumped at the wraith. Bori replied while she fought. “He sucked it inside. I can do it too. You have to beat all of his shadows to get it back.”

  “Okay,” I said, drawing Excalibur and preparing to fight.

  The ancients cowered behind furniture, not wanting to get involved in what they surely saw as a fight among gods. I didn’t blame them. The old me wouldn’t have known the first thing about fighting primordial shadows.

  The battle turned into a sort of wack-a-mole, with wraiths appearing everywhere and us dispatching them. I wasn’t sure if they were all Donn or if he’d somehow recruited the Puppetmaster’s army.

  “We need some help,” I called to the king of the elves. “Go to the control room and get Primith. Or better yet, have someone find Melvin and Kaliphae. Tell them the universe depends on it.”

  Donn, and the wraiths, never attacked me. They focused all of their attacks on the beleaguered Optimus. He defended himself surprisingly well, considering all he had was the swirling gold light.

  I tried everything in my arsenal. Pew, Crunch, and even Kronch. Donn was immune to all my spells. Even encasing the wraiths in stone didn’t work because they just oozed right through it.

  We were barely making any headway when I heard footsteps in the distance. I turned to find Isa running full tilt into the throne room.

  She stopped behind me and placed a hand on my back. “Are you hurt? They said you needed help.”

  “We need to destroy the shadows,” I said, pointing Excalibur to where Optimus continued to ward off Donn’s attacks. “Any ideas?”

  Isa clutched her hammer as if considering whether to attack. She must have thought best of it. “Doesn’t light hurt them?”

  While she was right, I didn’t have any light magic. The only light attack I had was Excalibur. At least I was pretty sure it was, and that was the only weapon I had that could hurt them.

  The wraiths also didn’t bother to defend against Bori’s shadow attacks. It summoned more wraiths each time she chewed her way through one.

  We were essentially at a stalemate. Nothing Donn did got through the god’s perfect defense, and no matter how many we slew, more spawned in their place.

  “Isa,” I called over my shoulder. “Go find Melvin and Kaliphae. Tell them we need help in the throne room.”

  “On it!” she replied, making a dash for the door.

  “Ah hah!” Donn exclaimed, sending a wraith after the fleeing girl. “An opening.”

  I stopped mid-swing and charged after three wraiths that had peeled off Optimus to chase after Isa. I slashed through the first of them, and the other two vanished in a swirl of smoke.

  “Got you!” Donn laughed maniacally. “It was only a matter of time until you let your guard down.”

  I turned to see one wraith had snuck up behind Donn and gripped his shoulder in its clawed hands. Optimus grunted and the gold light returned, obliterating the wraith.

  When the wraith didn’t respawn, I allowed myself to believe we’d won for a second. Then Optimus winced and reached back to touch his shoulder where the wraith had grabbed him. His hand came back wet with a strange golden substance I could only assume was his blood.

  “Kronkey!” I shouted, taking out the cookbook. “What comes next?”

  Page 666

  Mutually Assured Apocalyptic Destruction (MAAD)

  Want to wipe out society and start over? Look no further! Use this ritual to blot out universes you don’t like in five easy steps.

  Required ingredients:

  1 Heart of Umbral Damnation (THUD)

  5 Drops of Divine Blood

  1 Sacrifice from the Ruler’s line

  1 Fully Charged Infernal Machine

  Take the heart of darkness, infuse it with the blood of a god, and insert it into the body of one chosen by The System?. Bake on high in a fully powered infernal machine for one hour, or until the universe comes to a screeching halt, whichever comes first.

  Chant Huzzah when complete.

  He’d just gotten the Divine Blood. Now he had the heart, the blood, and what I could only assume was a Fully Charged Infernal Machine. All he needed now was the sacrifice. Did the ruler mean me? If so, why did he leave?

  “We need to find Donn,” I said, heading for the door with Excalibur in hand. “He needs to put me in the machine.”

  “Where are you going?” Isa jogged to keep up. “If he needs to put you in the machine, why are we heading there?”

  “Cuz that’s where he is,” I replied. It made perfect sense to me. “I’m the only one that can stop him.”

  “Says who?” she asked.

  I pointed at my chest. “Says her book. I just need to get my hands on the heart.”

  And find Pi, but I didn’t say that part aloud. We headed downstairs to the actual machine, rather than the control room where Primith held the Puppetmaster at bay.

  The room with all the pods was empty. I was trying to figure out where Donn could have gone when a scream in the distance caught my attention.

  “Is that…Kaliphae?” I asked, sprinting toward the source of the sound.

  An explosion greeted us as green flames erupted everywhere in a small room containing a single pod. Shadows bled out of the room as the flame snuffed them out. Behind Kalli, air hissed from the sealed door to the pod.

  “I’m…almost…out,” Melvin’s labored voice sounded strained. “Just hold him off for a few more seconds.”

  The flames were too hot for me or Isa to enter, so I was forced to leave it up to her to keep Donn away. I only needed a few seconds with him. I was positive I could reclaim the heart.

  “That won’t work,” Donn’s voice echoed in the pod room.

  I watched helplessly as shadows sunk through the floor and raced along the ground.

  “Look out!” I called out, hoping Kaliphae noticed too. “He’s coming through the floor!”

  She shrieked, and then the world went dark like someone had turned out the lights.

  Donn spoke in a monotone voice with just a touch of glee. “Huzzah!”