We all heard the click that followed. Herakles was offline. Whether that was deliberate or not, I wasn’t sure. I could only hope. I closed my eyes for a moment, praying to all the gods and all the stars for all this to work out in our favor. We’d done nothing but good. Whatever we’d done wrong, it was never with malicious intent.
We didn’t have much left to do. Araquiel was going to tell us once he and Nathaniel succeeded in planting all the explosive devices. Amal and Amane were going to do the same, once they completed their mass memory wiper. They had their own secret escape route, ready to be used at a moment’s notice. Our people in the diamond dome, however, had no choice but to wait for Kailani to wake up. They couldn’t leave without the bilocation spell, because there were too many Perfect eyes on them, too many for them to handle, even with their collars off.
I looked at Caspian once more, seeking some sort of comfort. Our souls were bonded forever. His presence alone was enough to soothe me, but his warm smile did even more. He took my hand in his and held it tight for a moment, then pressed his lips against my knuckles.
“She’ll pull through,” he whispered. “Nothing’s going to stop her from doing her duty. Not even the Word. You know that.”
I gave him a brief nod. Caspian had a point.
Kailani had a way of beating the odds whenever it got rough. She’d snapped out of these seizures before. She was one of the truest fighters I’d ever come across. With her family and her loved ones at stake, she wasn’t going to let anyone or anything get in the way.
There was more fire in Kailani than in all the Perfects and Arch-Perfects put together.
Kailani
My blackout had taken me to the strangest dream state.
I was faced with versions of some of the people I was supposed to love, yet I felt nothing. They were like distant memories forged solely to catch my eye. Everything was surreal, and I’d found myself entranced by the littlest of details.
But at least I was finally facing the Word.
Appearing to me as a dark silhouette, the Word’s presence weighed heavily in my subconscious. The film theater around us was huge, and yet it seemed tiny with the two of us in it, as if the walls were shrinking and closing in.
I’d waited a long time for this, and I had so many questions that I didn’t even know where to start. But the Word wasn’t going to let me take the lead on this conversation. With a low male voice, it spoke directly to my soul.
“What took you so long?” the Word asked.
I cocked my head to the side, slightly confused. “I’m sorry, there wasn’t an instruction manual for any of this,” I replied. “You have no idea how many times I’ve tried to reach out, to talk to you.”
“Clearly, you didn’t try hard enough.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I did everything that Lumi asked. I listened to every message you sent me, but, for some reason, I can’t remember a single word. I don’t really understand how all this is supposed to work.” I sighed. “Believe me, if I knew how to get to you like this, I would’ve done it sooner.”
The silhouette moved across the narrow stage in front of the cinema screen. My eyes were fixed on the shadow, completely ignoring the snippets of my life, so colorfully displayed across the canvas. I knew everything that had happened already, anyway. I was more interested in what lay ahead, and only the Word could tell me what that was.
“But here you are, Kailani,” the Word said.
“Here I am,” I muttered, stretching my arms to my sides. “What now?”
“You tell me.”
I felt my blood simmer.
“I’m pretty sure you’re the one with the answers, Kailani.”
“How so?”
“All you need to do is tell me what you want,” the Word said.
This felt like a test of some sort. That meant coming up with good and honest answers. Seems easy enough.
“I want to become a swamp witch,” I replied. “It’s why I took the apprenticeship, after all.”
The figure was quiet for a while, and, once again, I could feel it looking at me.
“What do you want, Kailani?” the Word asked again.
All I could think of was waking up. I knew this was a dream. My feelings were missing. My people were gone. Hunter wasn’t here. My body was back in the diamond dome, on… Strava. With that memory, everything else flooded my consciousness so hard and fast that I nearly lost my breath. The truth came back to haunt me. The four Draenir on my conscience. The bilocation spell. My family, my friends, billions of innocent people were relying on me to pull through.
But how could I, if I was stuck in this movie theater with a shadow of the Word?
“I answered your question, didn’t I?” I shot back.
“This isn’t a job interview. I’m not here for you to impress me. I need you to look deep inside yourself and tell me what it is you want to do. Unless there is crystalline clarity in your mind and in your soul, I cannot grant you the authority to ascend, Kailani.”
The urgency of my situation back in the real world made me snap.
“You’re still messing with me!” I shouted, letting the anger take over. “Dammit, you are playing games, even now, as the entire world is about to burn! My parents need me! Hunter needs me! I’m stuck here, indulging in your… whatever weird fantasy this is, and you’re toying with me!”
The Word chuckled, and the sound of that was like nothing I’d heard before. It resembled a low growl, like that of a wolf about to tear its prey apart. I was compelled to take a step back, fearing that the shadow might jump off the stage and lunge at me. But the Word didn’t move an inch.
“What have you seen so far in this dream, Kailani?”
I took a deep breath, trying to get a grip on my emotions before they jeopardized everything. I couldn’t let my smart mouth or short temper destroy this connection with the Word. Sure, I was frustrated that it had taken so many incidents to get here, but… Eyes on the ball, Kale.
“I walked through the redwood forest with my parents, back in The Shade,” I said. “Then I was having dinner with Hunter. Then I got here. We’re in Hawaii, right?”
“We’re right where you wanted to be.”
