* * *
Ryssa felt paralyzed at the sight of the approaching flames. This is it, the thought squeaked through her fear, and she felt a calm sense of detachment. She saw the lines of fear that bound the fireball, and she knew it was sent, not with the intent of breaking Team Phoenix, but with the intent of destroying them.
Time stood still, or rather, she stepped outside of it. Everything moved slowly. She watched the lines of fear wrap around the fireball and feed it, giving it strength. She traced the lines to the vicinity of Team Hedgehog, but not from the Team itself. Before she could identify the exact source, the lines snapped, setting loose the Fire magic. It was out of control.
“:Ryss! Give some to Loo!:”
Ryssa looked around. Some of the lines fed strength into Storm and Whisper who were fighting off the whirlwind attack. Another led to Meek, who was working to heal Jet. Ryssa frowned. There weren’t enough.
Abruptly, she remembered the magical lighting under the tree from the night before. Looking to the ground at her feet, she saw the magic, glowing just beneath the surface. Without thought, she touched that magic, pulling it up to blend its flow with the Team Phoenix link.
Ryssa gasped as the warmth of the magic flooded through her body and into the rest of the Team. Letting the flow build, she allowed Reggie to help her feed a line to Loo. The Seacalm boy worked frantically with her twin, but Ryssa could see that they needed an extra set of hands.
“:Hammie,:” she said through the link. The boy stiffened. “:Help them!:”
Hammie jumped and immediately turned his concentration to work with Reggie and Loo. Reggie was so intent on getting the water shield in place that he didn’t have time to watch what was happening around him. Ryssa picked up the slack. And just in time.
Another earth wave erupted, compliments of Team Lizard. Ryssa tapped into Gervais and Glinda, and fed strength to Jade. Jade stiffened at the jolt, but quickly fought back with an earth tremor of her own.
The opposing concentrations of Earth magic struck each other midpoint between the two Teams, causing an eruption of earth that showered the competition field. In that same instant, the fireball struck the water shield and was deflected, but not doused. It snapped the weaves of Water magic, to leave them thrashing about Team Phoenix.
The fireball was sent spiraling in another direction, heading for Team Lizard. Ryssa watched, waiting for them to do something, but the members of Team Lizard seemed frozen in place.
“:Regg, they can’t deflect—they’re locked up.:”
“:Can you pull it back?:”
“:What?:”
“:Pull it back—and get ready, Phoenix!:”
For the first time in her life, Ryssa doubted her brother. But when she saw the terror on Team Lizard’s faces she knew there was no time for hesitation. She had been prepared, in that small place inside of her, to die today. They weren’t. And she would never be able to live with herself if her life was bought at the cost of others.
Ryssa plunged all of her being into the magic already flowing to them from the Earth. She gasped—not realizing how deep that well of power reached. Whoever had created the magical light at the base of the tree had only tapped into the stronger flows running beneath the Earth and brought a minuscule portion to the surface. It was all interconnected, and she the power surged through her, unlike anything she had ever felt before. She urged the power upward, redirecting it into the Team Phoenix link.
“:Take it, Regg.:” The sound echoed through the link. She saw her twin hesitate. “:Net it, and let’s pull it in.:”
She fed a line to Pyro, Jr., and together he and Reggie worked to build the net, imitating the one Team Hedgehog had used on the first day of the competition, but using Fire magic instead. Fighting Fire with Fire, and just in time, they cast it over the fireball, stopping it from striking Team Lizard. They scattered to the ground like bowling pins.
The fireball tried to advance, but couldn’t. The net held it secure. Stopped from forward movement, it started inching upward, above the field, straining against the net of magic holding it. As it moved, Ryssa felt the lines of magic stretch. The ball of flames sucked the magic in, adding to its own size and strength.
“:Sheesh, Ryss.:” Reggie and Pyro struggled to keep the woven net under control. “:Do you see what it’s doing?:”
“:Pull it in now, Regg.:”
“:I can’t—it’s too strong.:”
“:Then we need more power.:” Ryssa looked around again.
Her teammates were besieged with the forces of the elements around them. She could see the lines of Healing, Water, Fire, Air, Earth, all in various stages of attack and defense—and the wellspring of raw, primal energy beneath their feet. In the split fraction of a single second she saw it all and in another split fraction, she took it all in.
Ryssa did one thing she hadn’t done before. She didn’t take control of the magic from the others—she pulled the magic together and let their control feed her own. All of the power was pulled to a single point—to the members of Team Phoenix—and through them, back to her. They were all linked as a single entity of pure magic.
The whirlwinds created by Team Phoenix disappeared, allowing the one that could only have been sent by Team Firefly to move toward them. The Water lines returned, as well as the Earth lines. The Healing lines wrapped into the weave and held. The fireball stopped gaining strength and let go its forward momentum. The Fire net that held it, pulled back by Ryssa, snapped like a rubber band, hurling the ball of flames toward them with increasing speed.
Lines of fear from her teammates lashed at her, but Ryssa reacted with calm. She let that tranquility turn to warmth, and she sent a pattern of soothing Celestial magic to the Team, calming them as Kyellin had done to her.
Knowledge is power. Kyellin’s words floated through her. But Ryssa had knowledge of only one thing right now—that she didn’t want to die. She closed her eyes, and opened herself to the attacks that headed straight for them.
“:Ryss, what—?:”
“:Change, Regg,:” she said simply, as though that explained it all. “:We can’t fight the future—we have to change it.:”
The fireball hit Team Phoenix at the same time as the whirlwind. A vibration sang through her body and her spirit soared, carrying the sound of her True Name into the silence of her heart. Danu. She didn’t fight the magic—she absorbed it.
Pulling the whirlwind to the center, Ryssa let the eye create a void around the Team. The fireball was still wrapped in the net of Fire, but instead of bursting upon impact with the wall of wind, it was caught up in its flows, sending the flames spiraling around them. The Earth was their base, and she pulled from that base to secure the Water lines and bring them upward from the foot of the whirlwind, dousing the flames as they went.
Ryssa fed the lines of Celestial magic that calmed her Team into the circling wall of wind, turning it bright silver and spinning it outward from the tree. She pulled on the Healing lines and funneled their energy with those from the magical reservoir beneath their feet, spiraling it upward into the sky. The calming force of the dark Celestial magic took hold and the winds began to slow.
Amazed at the power and the beauty of the magic surrounding them, Ryssa detached even further and stepped outside of it all. She wanted to make sure there were no further threats. The people around the competition field stood in front of their seats, staring in shock. From their positions, Ryssa could tell it may have seemed like an eternity since Team Phoenix had been caught up in the magic, but only moments had passed outside of their awareness.
Although it was a long way off, she could see the bands of the storm on the horizon intensifying, as though answering an echo of the call of magic that created it. Without thinking, she pulled a burst of raw, primal energy from the earth and sent it skimming across the sky, pushing the storm from the islands south of Florida and directing its path further into the Gulf, away from New Faery and the west coast mainland.
&nbs
p; The maelstrom of magic was settling below, and she slipped back into her body. Touching the link, she felt the surge of pleasure that coming from her teammates. Win or lose, the competition no longer mattered. They were alive.
The thought of the elimination loomed over her, she found herself saddened. This time tomorrow, she might be in the hands of the Slaugh. Before, she had unknowingly used dark magic. This time she had used it with full knowledge of what she was doing. If they were eliminated—Ryssa shuddered inwardly.
Blocking her emotions from her twin and her teammates, she called to Glinda through the link, letting the girl see what she had in mind. “:Do your stuff, bird-girl. Let’s end this in style.:”
She felt the pride of Team Phoenix through the link. Glinda reached out and called to the birds, adding the lines of Animal magic to the rest of the mix surrounding them. As before, it didn’t take long for the birds to arrive. The flock of sparrows flew out of the forest as though they had been waiting in queue for their entrance.
They flew directly at the spiraling wall of water, forming a line as they swooped in toward the ground. The sparrows called out their birdsong as they soared, climbing the outer wall of the funnel upward, following the path of the spiral. As the last of the birds flew the circular path from the bottom toward the top, Ryssa let go of the magic, letting it dissipate behind the flight path of the birds, slowly revealing Team Phoenix like a curtain being drawn to the sky.
The final lines of magic were let loose, and the birds disappeared into the forest. Ryssa waited for a reaction from the crowd, but was disappointed. She glanced around at the sea of stunned faces, and her heart leaped into her throat. A trickle of fear ran through her as she searched the field for the presence of the Black Knight. Surely that was what held the crowd in their current state of paralysis. But she saw no sign of it.
All eyes were turned their way, the faces behind them staring and silent. Ryssa frowned with annoyance.
The elders who had been closest to Team Phoenix stepped even closer, but slowly, as though uncertain. It took a moment for Ryssa to realize they weren’t staring at the Team. They were staring at the tree. She tried to twist around and look up, but she was too close to the trunk, and her teammates had her penned in.
“:Break, guys,:” she tried calling into the link, but then realized the link was gone.
“Break, guys,” she said softly, out loud. Only those closest to her dropped their hands—Glinda and Jade.
Soon it followed around the circle and Team Phoenix stepped away from the tree, slightly disoriented. Disorientation turned to confusion, then amazement, as they looked up at what held the rest of the Fey enthralled.
The Wilt was gone. The twisted branches were covered in a full canopy of new growth, creating a dome of vibrant green over the heads of Team Phoenix. The elders nearest them seemed to come to their senses first. They rushed forward to the members of the Team to make sure everyone was all right.
Ryssa recalled mumbling some vague response to an elder’s question. A movement to the side caught her eye, and she saw Team Firefly sit down as one, removing themselves from the competition by their actions. She continued to stare at the tree, not really comprehending what she saw, but unable to tear her eyes away. Eventually, she felt a hand slip into hers, and she looked, distracted, into the pride held in her twin’s eyes.
“We did it, Ryss.”
“We all did it,” she replied.
One by one the members of Team Phoenix moved in closer, various states of joy and relief showing in their faces.
“:I told you I’d get you through everything,:” Darkwind’s voice whispered across her mind.
Ryssa didn’t bother to respond. She felt the numbness evaporate and the emotions overwhelm her. She was alive—they were all alive. The tears started running down her cheeks and didn’t stop for a long, long time.