The inside of the citadel looked the same as ever, dominated by a long spiralling staircase leading to the upper floor. Liches gathered at all levels of the stairs, waiting for us. Easy pickings. Raising a hand, I shot a fireball and incinerated several liches in one go. Ryan’s air magic took care of another, while Miles and his fellow Spirit Agents duelled with the ones on ground level. Cal and Felicity took up positions outside the doors, no doubt to stop anyone else from getting in. Or possibly to stop the liches from getting out.
A lich barred my path to the stairs, but Miles’s hand shot straight through it and it crumpled into nothingness on the spot. Liv ran past and hopped onto the lowest stair, calling over her shoulder, “The transporter links up to wherever they’re keeping the sprites. Not sure which citadel it is, but it definitely isn’t Elysium.”
Then where? I’d never been anywhere outside of Elysium and Arcadia. That meant treading on unfamiliar territory, but it was too late to turn back now.
Liv reached the top of the stairs first, opening the door and disappearing into the room above, while Ryan followed on her heels. Dex flew overhead, showering sparks onto the remaining liches. I sent a fireball at another, then I ran for the stairs with Miles on my heels.
Part of me expected to find the Family waiting on the other side of the door, but by the time we reached the top, Liv and the others had taken care of the liches and left the path to the transporter clear. The bank of machinery covering the back wall looked as pristine as ever, though it was Elysium’s transporter that I’d blown to pieces a few weeks ago.
Liv hopped onto the platform, while Miles and I moved in to join her. The surface looked silvery in the light, but up close, it was pale gold. The image of the huge chunk of golden metal at the Family’s mine appeared in my head, sending a shiver through my bones. Then light flared up, carrying us away to another near-identical room.
More liches met us on the other side, and I gladly unleashed my flames on them. Why hadn’t anyone stronger come here to block our path? It seemed suspicious to me, but I wasn’t one to let a stroke of luck go by without taking advantage. I shot a ball of fire across the room and turned two of the liches to ashes at once. Dex and his fellow sprites from the castle surrounded another, Ryan’s air magic pushing the flames into the liches like a wildfire fanned by a breeze.
Despite the fire ripping through the room, the machinery remained untouched, pristine. Only an inferno cantrip could destroy them, but I’d have to wait until the path was clear to use mine.
The light of the transporter spun across the gleaming grey walls as Liv cut a path through to a door at the back, the only part of the room which differentiated it from the other citadels. She kicked the door open, revealing a smaller room dominated by a large cage. Wires passed through a series of holes in the wall, connecting the cage to the machine on the other side… and inside the cage were countless sprites.
The sprites’ transparent bodies were pressed against one another, their eyes looking piteously up at us. Fire and water, earth and air, trapped in a cage barred from the outside. One look at the complex mechanism told me no unlocking spell would work on it.
I pulled an inferno cantrip out, at the ready. “Okay. I’m gonna blow the doors off that thing. Stand back!”
“Hang on!” Liv backed through the door into the main room, and I heard the transporter light up again. I waited to make sure the others were out of range, then I took aim and hit the switch on the inferno cantrip.
Miles grabbed my arm and we ran out of the back room, an instant before the inferno cantrip exploded. We slammed the door on the roar of noise, and its metal surface trembled under the impact of the blast. As we reached the transporter’s light, the door shuddered open, revealing orange flames filling the room and the lights of a thousand triumphant sprites as they flew away to freedom.
That was when I realised my mistake. In destroying the cage, I’d wiped out the transporter in the process. The machinery resembled a pile of lifeless metal, its lights extinguished. Smoke poured out from the platform in the room’s centre.
“Oops. Might’ve overdone it.”
“You think?” said Miles, with an eye-roll.
“Dammit,” Liv said, glaring at me.
Only five of us had been left behind: Miles, Shelley, Ryan, Liv… and me. Even the Death King had been left on the other side.
“The Death King’s going to kill me for this, isn’t he?” I murmured to Miles.
“Probably,” he said. “On the plus side, the sprites might come to your defence.”
The sprites themselves had almost dispersed by now, a flood of bright colour fleeing the back room. I walked to the doorway and saw the cage was in ruins, without a single sprite left inside it. Wires hung loose, sending sparks dancing across the floor. How on earth had Hawker and his allies captured so many sprites?
That was a question for another day, because if the Family found us here, we’d left most of our army behind. Though from the expression on Liv’s face, she was more likely to kill me than the alternative. I still had my own transporter spell concealed in my pendant, but if a node lay at the heart of the citadel, I couldn’t sense it now.
I’d blown up our only way out.
15
I half expected Liv to punch me
