“It’s done,” said Koran. “We have to keep going.”
Tyson jerked his head away from it and stood back up. He and Koran journeyed through the burning city, twice narrowly avoiding being turned into dust themselves.
If he could, Tyson wanted to avenge those who just died at Nayara’s hand.
They reached the river and hid behind a few rather large and disproportionate boulders. Queen Nayara was in sight. She and the Chancellor were fighting. Nayara relentlessly attacked Chancellor Levi, sending a cloud of gray and jets of fire towards him. Levi blocked it with invisible shields of air while sending out attacks of his own.
Nayara kept dodging the strong gusts of wind and whips of water that attacked from the river while her attacks could never quite reach the Chancellor. Mountains of stone rose from the ground, but Nayara crushed them with a blue whip of glowing energy.
She flung and flicked Levi’s bolts of lightning away and redirected them towards the city. Anger flooded through Levi and he summoned a thick blast of lightning from the sky. It hit Nayara, and she cried out in those few seconds the electricity engulfed her.
For a moment, it looked as if the Chancellor had overpowered her.
The Queen screamed again. The lightning petered out, then exploded in a wave that electrified the air. She sent the lightning into the ground, which then rose up in waves and headed towards the city. Levi’s eyes widened in shock before he was lifted off his feet and tumbled onto the broken ground.
Nayara’s eyes were drawn with hate. She yelled again and sent out a whip of fire from her hand. Before the Chancellor had time to react, it wrapped around his wrist. She created another whip, and it wrapped around his other wrist. It burned his skin as fire would but didn’t physically destroy it. His hands just turned dark gray.
Levi tried to move his hands but couldn’t. The fire had destroyed the nerves in his hands, yet still left them intact and they continued to burn, roasting them.
The Chancellor looked up. Nayara was ambling towards him, the two jets of fire at her command like whips. She lifted Levi into the air. He didn’t move this time, knowing he couldn’t, and that there was no escape. He glared down at her while she walked towards him with a smirk on her face.
“You’re not going to win the war,” Levi said. Blood spilled out from one of his nostrils. His skin looked wrinkled and old. The Chancellor was dying rapidly.
Nayara ignored him and exhaled a silver cloud. Steadily, it approached the Chancellor, and he was soon amid it. His body hardened and cracked until he looked made up of old stone. Though frozen, the Chancellor’s power could be felt radiating from him. Nayara did not worry; she knew she already won.
Nayara released her whips of fire. Like a scene in slow motion, Chancellor Levi fell thirty feet to the ground, his body hard as rock and dark as night. He hit the stone streets like a boulder in a rockslide. Though his body didn’t shatter into pieces, the Chancellor moved no more.
Katie screamed as her necklace burned cold against her chest. At that moment it felt like fire. The pain shocked her. She whipped her hand up to feel it, but the sensation was gone. She knew what happened. She didn’t need to see the once gray star now black to know that the Chancellor was dead.
Without wanting to, Katie looked anyway. The sight of it made the loss more real, and emptiness flooded through her.
23
The Banishment
Katie screamed as Sabrina lunged at her, but before she could react, Artemus jumped in the way and deflected Sabrina’s attack with a dark wooden staff. Artemus spun the staff around and hit Sabrina in her chin.
As Sabrina’s head whipped back, Artemus was punched in his side. Katie yelled as the new attacker hit Artemus in the head, knocking him to the ground. The attacker had come out of nowhere and taken them by surprise.
Katie’s eyes widened when the man turned his attention to her. Before he rushed at her, Sabrina recovered and made to lunge at Katie herself.
Katie threw her hands in front of her to protect herself, but Sabrina was smarter than that and hit Katie in the chest. Katie cried out in pain.
Artemus picked himself up and put himself between Katie and Sabrina. The soldier stood next to Sabrina, waiting for an order.
“Run,” said Artemus.
“Where?” asked Katie, disoriented.
Sabrina didn’t give Artemus a chance to answer and leaped at him. Artemus shouted for Katie to run again while blocking another blow from Sabrina.
Katie ran towards the gate. At first, she wasn’t sure if she was headed the right way, but she didn’t recognize where she was and so figured she chose correctly. She didn’t look back while she ran, a lesson she felt she had well learned.
She could hear pounding footsteps chasing her. Katie ran faster.
Katie was headed towards the main part of the city. Her eyes widened in shock when she saw the fires and chaos that had erupted. Nearly half the city had already been destroyed.
Something hit Katie in the head and she toppled over. She somersaulted into a grass bed and hastily tried to get up.
Before she could make it onto both feet, Katie was kicked in her side. She was tossed around and fell back into the grass, doubling over in pain.
“Get up, Katie,” taunted Sabrina. “You’re it.”
Katie managed to look up at Sabrina. Her blonde hair was muddy with sweat and her face was hard set in loathing. Anger seared through her and Katie aimed a kick at Sabrina’s ankles. Though it was slow and poorly executed, Sabrina was
