Page 51 of Phoenix Chosen 2

“Let me see it,” says Kalistratos. “Maybe there’s something I can do. I’ve treated wounds before…”

“No,” Feather says firmly. “Don’t touch it.” He turns his shoulder away from us. “I don’t know what kind of curse may have been embedded in it.”

I want to help him. I feel like thereshouldbe something I can do; I just don’t know what.

Feather seems to sense what I’m thinking. He manages to smile at me for a moment before his face contorts in another clench of pain. “Don’t worry about me, Tyler,” he says. “My body is merely a vessel. I’m a flame that lives in eternity.”

Suddenly, the elevator jolts to a stop and the lights flicker and go out. Kalistratos and Feather illuminate the space with light from their hands. I grip the doors and pry with all of my strength. Kalistratos helps me, and they slide open. We’ve not quite made it to the floor. There’s a concrete wall with a dark narrow gap at the top, enough for us to squeeze through. Kalistratos boosts me up, and I haul myself through. I quickly offer my hand to Kalistratos.

God,I think.Please don’t let this elevator drop.

He jumps and grabs the edge, and I struggle to help pull him up and through. Then we both grab Feather’s hand and drag him through the gap.

We stand up, and Kalistratos raises his hand so we can see. It’s like we’ve come to a different building. There are bare concrete walls with exposed steel beams like the place is in the middle of construction. The Great Phoenix’s magic is slowly dissipating, floor by floor, revealing the bones of the structure beneath.

“There are stairs,” Feather says. “Hurry.”

All around us are huge concrete pillars that rise from the ceiling to the floor, and as we run through them, the light from Feather and Kalistratos sends shadows sweeping in everydirection. It feels like we’re fleeing through some monumental tomb. I squint into the darkness and see something moving with us, like a pack of wolves following its prey through the forest. Kalistratos sees them too.

“They’re here,” he says.

“This way,” says Feather, weaving through the columns. His light seems to be getting dimmer. The darkness is closing in.

With an arc of his hand like he’s slinging a baseball, Kalistratos hurls a fireball at the ceiling. The flame spreads through the bare metal grating and exposed wires, igniting the rotten insulation pads in a sudden burst of light that exposes the Vantablack masses moving towards us from all directions with their twisting and scurrying centipede-like appendages.

“Oh, shit, shit, shit!” I shout.

The fire is quickly consumed and snuffed out as the shadows overtake it. Kalistratos and I are running at full tilt, but Feather is lagging behind. He stumbles and nearly falls, but I catch him. It’s like his vitality is being drained away.

He pushes me forward. “Go,” he says to us. “Up the stairs to the top floor. Aethereos’s chambers are the last defense. They will not hold for long.”

I try to protest. “But we can’t leave?—”

“This is what I was created to do.”

Kalistratos grabs my hand, and we sprint for the stairwell door. I take a final look over my shoulder. Feather stands up tall and raises his palm in front of him. His silver hair shimmers and ripples as a stark white halo forms around his body, drowningeverything in a brilliant light. The shadows surge and tumble around him like boiling tar, and with a final flash, he disappears, leaving nothing but a bright silver feather that crumbles into glowing dust.

We crash through the door.

“Oh boy,” I say, craning my neck to peer up through the center of the seemingly endless stairs.

I knew I should never have skipped so many leg days.

Kalistratos and I wind upwards, back and forth, back and forth. He pauses only to hurl a fireball over the railing, and I look down and see the dark shapes trailing us by several floors, consuming the light like a sponge soaking up water. The moment I begin to slow, Kalistratos grabs my arm and pulls me alongside him.

“You can do this,” he tells me. “Donotstop!”

The figurine bounces against my chest beneath the chiton as I bound up the stairs. I pull myself along the railing like I’m dragging a thousand pounds behind me. Sweat pours down my face. My thighs are on fire. I glance back and see the shadowsright behind us, piling up the stairwell and crashing against the wall like a rising tsunami.

“GO, GO, GO!” I bellow.

I somehow shred through my limits, ignoring my screaming muscles, and make that final sprint with Kalistratos up the remaining floors. I smash the door with my shoulder and tumble into the ground. Kalistratos slams the door behind us, and then picks me up. We’re in the entrance hall to the Great Phoenix’schambers. To our left is the elevator, and in front are the rows of museum pedestals. We stagger forward just as the door behind and the elevator doors blow open. The shadows explode from both sides, plowing down the pedestals like bowling pins as we flee to the set of heavy, ancient doors that mark the entrance to Aethereos’s chamber. The two black tidal waves have smashed into one horrendous mass, and it fills the room with its darkness, consuming everything.

There’s no way to go but forward.

As we near the doors, they crack and swing open on their own, and a searing light shines through and cuts into the monster like a laser beam. It releases an awful sound, somewhere between a howl and the rumble of an earthquake, and the moment after Kalistratos and I throw ourselves through the doors, they pull shut behind us with a thunderous bang.

The ethereal light that’d filled the Great Phoenix’s chambers has gone dim. The braziers are empty and the silk white curtains hang in tattered shreds like ghosts in a graveyard. It feels like the place is crumbling apart, rapidly aging into decay.

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