Time's Tragedies- The Books Of Beginning [2]

87. Like A Phoenix From The Ashes

Kate's body trembled as she arrived on the hillside, just outside of the ruins, but she didn't let herself fall. Jake and Abby stood beside her, stunned, both at what lay down the hill: scorched earth and corpses and the remnants of a battle far bloodier than they had imagined, and at what lay before them - magic, terrible magic creating a heaviness to the air like that of storm season. Gold and green and black sparks trailed through that heavy air like embers, like stars on the verge of burning out.

The magic was so potent and unhinged that Kate knew getting through it, getting to Lili and Eternity - because who else could be at the center of this than them - would be difficult. So she turned to her children and said, "I want you two to go down the hill and find your dad, make sure that our friends are okay, all of that. I'm going to go get Lili and Eternity. Got it?"

"Are you sure?" Abby asked.

Kate nodded, "I'll have a much easier time getting through such a heavy cloud of magic than you two would. I'm older and I've been around people with strong magic, people still learning, hell, I had one of the books of beginning inside me. I know strong magic and its limits."

"What if Jake made a portal into the center?" Abby pressed, "Wouldn't that be easier?"

Jake wanted to say that yes, it would be easier. But that would be a lie, and he wouldn't lie, not to the people who were counting on him (better to admit defeat than to fail them, right?).

"No, I don't think I could make a portal into all of that, there's just too much magic. I hate to say it, Abby, but I think mom's right. I think we're needed elsewhere," Jake said resignedly.

Abby frowned but didn't protest further. Instead, she squeezed her mom's hand and said, "alright. Be safe, then."

"You too," Kate said. She nodded to Jake, and then turned her back on her younger children and the battlefield they were going to survey, and stepped into the proverbial eye of the hurricane. 

It was as if she were in the ocean, being hit by a twenty foot wave. The magic came crashing down around her, stormy and tempestuous, thick as shadow and reactive as uranium. All it would take was a single spark and that magic would combust and do great and terrible things. Yet Kate refused to think about that, refused to let that stop her. Her girls were on the other side of the energy and that meant there was nothing in the world that could keep Kate from them. That was the power of a mother's love.

Her legs shook and weight settled on her shoulders, her back, along the length of her spine. It was as if the magic itself was taking on a heaviness, like a weighted blanket trying to pull her down onto the cold stone and warm sand that lay beneath her feet. Still, Kate pushed on, even as her weakened body burned with the effort it too.

She had told her younger self that it would be okay, so long as she made it so. Now Kate had to do the same thing she had asked of that fourteen year old in the orphanage basement - she had to make it okay, for those she loved, and for herself. 

It felt like forever, but had really only been mere minutes, when, through the haze of sparks and magic that had grown thicker in the air, Kate spotted, low to the ground, a familiar hot pink head of curls. Eternity was like a beacon in the light, and yet, Kate could hardly take another step without kneeling over, her legs unable to hold her up. She knew she had to keep going - she could hear sobbing, screaming. Eternity was on the ground (injured, perhaps?) and Lili was nowhere to be seen. Kate knew that they needed her, that she had to push on, but the closer she got to Eternity, the more her daughter's magic pushed back against the entire world.

It was with a hoarse, raw voice that Kate cried out, hoping that her girls would hear her, that they would help her, because she couldn't fix things, she couldn't save them from this merciless destiny on her own. While Kate had once been solitary, a pillar alone, this was not just her fight, it was her family's, and above all, it was Lili and Eternity's.