Almost.
:What will you do?:
:Hold them off until you all escape.:
:Yeah, no. That’s not happening.:
It hadn’t taken Cym long in Marshall’s company to figure out his MO—protect everyone, even at the cost of his own life—and Cym wasn’t going to put up with it. It would be no different than letting Sterling or Fourteen throw themselves away for his sake.
They’d just have to come up with another option.
Cym hesitated. What if there was no other option? Whatever kind of special snowflake Cym might be, he was completely untrained. Everything he’d done up to now had been due to extreme luck or intuition.
What if the best option was for Cym to run and save as many people as he could on the way out? As long as Cym stayed, Fourteen would never leave. If Cym couldn’t figure out a way to help Marshall quickly, he would be condemning Fourteen to death right along with him.
But abandoning Marshall to save Fourteen wasn’t something Cym could live with any more than he could deal with the idea of losing Fourteen. His mind ran in circles, and he began to feel a familiar void open inside his chest.
During Cym’s years of isolation, he’d fallen into a stupor of despair many times. It rendered him insensate to the rest of the world around him until his mind was ready to come back to reality. Right now was the worst possible time for this to happen. He would be worse than useless if he went catatonic. He had to fight it.
:Don’t resist.:
Chapter 25Cym
The soft but strong voice, which was decidedly not Marshall’s, came from the same place Cym felt his magic reside.
Out of ideas, out of time, and very soon to be out of resources, Cym complied. The void opened wide and swallowed him whole.
:Very good. Now follow me, and I will show you what you need to know.:
A tug at Cym’s center gave him something to latch on to.
Time meant nothing to Cym as he followed the voice through the terrible void. As he went, he felt his sense of self being stripped away. All the mental illusions he’d built in order to protect himself were falling to the side as he continued on.
Cym watched them as they fell away, and he could see how tightly he’d clung to being a victim and the toxic energy that had attached to the concept. Once it was released from him, it became a glimmering cluster of light that drifted off and vanished into the nothingness of the void.
As each illusion left Cym—his need for independence, his insistence that he was useless, his newly found fear that the only thing that made him special was how Fourteen looked at him—he felt more and more himself, like he was waking up and becoming the person he always was but had forgotten.
Finally, he was left with his truest self in this timeless place, and he realized the tug on his magic had stopped. He found himself in the middle of an endless sea of his own magic, and it was the coolest thing he’d ever experienced. Coming from someone who had firsthand knowledge of the firmness of Fourteen’s pecs, that was saying something.
:Remember this place, Stillbringer. You will have to find it on your own next time.:
Cym wanted to tell the mysterious, bossy voice to eat a butt, but he felt so chill that he couldn’t be bothered.
He could have sat and reveled in the stillness of simply existing for eternity, but he knew he had a job to finish, so with intention, rather than panic, he willed himself back to Marshall and the shrinking puddle. Up he rose through layer upon layer of nothing until it gave way to form and thought. Behind him, trailing like a cloak, was the infinite stillness of his magic.
As Cym rose, he came up underneath the small puddle of purple, now only large enough to take one monster at a time into itself. He reached out a hand to the bottom of the pond and felt the stillness flow through him and into the pond, doubling, then tripling it in size. Stillness continued to pass through him into the pond until they both seemed to be infinite.
:Cym? What did you do?:
Smiling, Cym accessed Marshall’s eyes, wanting to see the results of their handiwork.
Marshall had slowed time back to a crawl, probably to give their friends time to escape, but Cym willed it to resume its usual steady march. They had all the resources they were going to get. Win or lose, it was time to see if it would be enough.
The purple barrier was flickering and had contracted down to a tiny dome that barely covered them. Cym’s and Marshall’s bodies were only inches away from the hordes assembled against them and it was only a matter of seconds before they were overrun.
A shudder went through the air and the world did a sort of hiccup, and Cym watched as their barrier brightened and hummed.
Demons were packed around them in a tight wall, but anywhere there was a gap, Cym could make out the colors of Jack’s and Adelle’s magic as they desperately tried to carve their way into the crowd. Cym couldn’t see him, but he knew Fourteen was with them. He could feel his presence—a velvety wall of protection pressing against his mind. Warmth rippled through Cym’s stillness.
Fourteen would never leave him behind.
Front and center of the entire clusterfuck was Sekt, his eyes glowing with the zeal of his self-assured victory.
:Fuck that guy.: Cym sent to Marshall.
:No. Fucking is too good for him.:
:You’re right. Let’s find something else to do with him.: Like shove a shitload of magic up his ass.
Cym had meant to keep that last part to himself, but Marshall chuckled and said, :I vote for this idea.:
Cym relaxed his will and allowed Marshall full control over their gestalt. Cym didn’t have a clue what he was doing and had been flying by the seat of his pants the whole evening, so he was more than happy to hand everything over to Marshall.
Cym wanted Sekt to fucking feel it when he went down, and he just knew Marshall had an amazing banana kablam-style finishing move. Maybe he’d even give a rousing speech…
Marshall flexed his will and sent out their shield as far as it would go.
