Page 62 of Torn Ivy
“Bram!” I shout. “We need to contain this!”
His shadows strain against the onslaught of chaos, barely holding it back. “I’m trying!” Bram grits out. “But it’s too much!”
Torin’s eyes are wide with panic. “We need to stop her!”
I try to reach Ivy through our connection, but it’s like trying to grasp smoke. Her consciousness is lost in the swirling vortex of chaos magick.
“Ivy!” I yell again, desperation clawing at my throat. “Come back to us!”
For a heartbeat, I see recognition flicker in her eyes. Then she screams. A sound of pure agony that chills me to my core. Purple energy explodes outward, shattering Bram’s shadow barrier.
The perfect beings dissolve completely, their ordered perfection torn apart by raw chaos. But the vortex doesn’t stop. It keeps growing, reality fracturing further with each passing second.
“No!” Cathy shouts. She aims her weapon at Ivy, her finger on the trigger.
I move without thinking, tackling her to the ground. “Are you insane?” I snarl. “You could kill her!”
“She is dead anyway if we don’t do something!”
She’s right. The chaos is spreading, consuming everything in its path. Trees warp and twist into impossible shapes. The ground beneath our feet ruptures, sending clumps of dirt high into the air, but Ivy is my main focus. Ivy is suspended in the heart of the chaos vortex, her body arching in agony as reality fractures around her. Purple energy courses through her veins, visible beneath her skin like lightning. She’s being torn apart at a molecular level, just as Cathy warned.
“Hold on!” I scream, fighting against the turbulence to reach her. My anchor magick strains against the pure havoc, trying to ground her, to give her something to hold onto.
Bram’s shadows dance wildly, attempting to contain the destruction even as they’re shredded by the raw power. “We’re losing her!” he shouts over the roar of reality coming apart.
Torin grips her by her shoulders roughly, shaking her. “Her life force is fragmenting!” he calls out. “The chaos is unmaking her!”
I watch in horror as Ivy’s form blurs at the edges, coming apart like a photograph dissolving in acid. Purple light blazes from her eyes and mouth as she screams again. It’s a sound that tears at the fabric of existence itself.
“Ivy!” I push forward, fighting against the maelstrom with everything I have. My magick wraps around her like dark chains of pure order, trying to hold her together. But it’s not enough. The chaos is too strong, too primal.
Through our connection, I feel her consciousness fragmenting.
“Fight it!” I bellow, pouring more power into our link. “Remember who you are! Remember us!”
But the chaos is winning. I watch in despair as pieces of Ivy literally tear away. Fragments of her being scatter across dimensions we were never meant to see. Her body flickers like a bad transmission, existing in multiple states at once.
Cathy’s voice cuts through the mayhem as she steps up next to me and holds out the laser gun. “Here.”
“No! I can’t!” I shove my hands into my hair as I stare between the gun and Ivy. “I can’t!”
“Do it!” Torin roars. “She is as good as dead if you don’t!”
With a shaking hand, I take the laser gun and aim it at Ivy, panic and fear ripping through me with an overdose of guilt.
“I’m sorry. I love you.” I pull the trigger and watch, feeling sick to my stomach as the laser hits her and disrupts her aura, shattering it completely. “No!” Grief bears down on me, forcing me to my knees as she falls. Torin is holding her up like a macabre puppet, a sickened shock on his face.
The chaos vortex contracts, drawing back into Ivy like water down a drain. Reality knits itself back together, though everything feels slightly askew - as if the world has been broken and put back together imperfectly.
Finally, the last of the purple energy fades.
She’s barely recognisable. Parts of her keep shifting between states of existence, never quite settling into one reality. Her skin is translucent in places, showing the chaos still coursing through her veins.
“We were too late. She’s been torn apart at the quantum level. This is exactly what I was afraid of.”
“Can we fix her?” I demand, my voice cracking.
Bram moves closer, almost robotically. “She exists in multiple dimensions now. Parts of her scattered across realities we can’t even comprehend.”
