Page 100 of Runaway Magic
:So that’s what the lake was doing.:
Marshall didn’t answer, but Cym felt a sensation in his head that felt like an affirmation.
Demons were rushing the barrier from all sides, but so far, nothing made it through. Cym was beginning to feel victorious when he felt a sharp pain in the center of his chest.
:What was that?!:
:A complication.:Marshall’s mental voice was a touch grim, but it still sounded far more calm than Cym felt.
Cym looked for their combined magic and saw nothing more than a glorified puddle being choked with monsters. The stillness of the pool hadn’t abated, but soon there would be nothing of it left.
:It’s time for you to pull back, Cym. Find our friends and get out of here.:Marshall’s confidence in his own authority was almost enough to get Cym to do it.
Almost.
:What will you do?:
:Hold them off until you all escape.:
:Yeah, no. That’s not happening.:
It hadn’t taken Cym long in Marshall’s company to figure out his MO—protect everyone, even at the cost of his own life—and Cym wasn’t going to put up with it. It would be no different than letting Sterling or Fourteen throw themselves away for his sake.
They’d just have to come up with another option.
Cym hesitated. What if there was no other option? Whatever kind of special snowflake Cym might be, he was completely untrained. Everything he’d done up to now had been due to extreme luck or intuition.
What if the best option was for Cym to run and save as many people as he could on the way out? As long as Cym stayed, Fourteen would never leave. If Cym couldn’t figure out a way to help Marshall quickly, he would be condemning Fourteen to death right along with him.
But abandoning Marshall to save Fourteen wasn’t something Cym could live with any more than he could deal with the idea of losing Fourteen. His mind ran in circles, and he began to feel a familiar void open inside his chest.
During Cym’s years of isolation, he’d fallen into a stupor of despair many times. It rendered him insensate to the rest of the world around him until his mind was ready to come back to reality. Right now was the worst possible time for this to happen.He would be worse than useless if he went catatonic. He had to fight it.
:Don’t resist.:
Chapter 25
Cym
The soft but strong voice, which was decidedly not Marshall’s, came from the same place Cym felt his magic reside.
Out of ideas, out of time, and very soon to be out of resources, Cym complied. The void opened wide and swallowed him whole.
:Very good. Now follow me, and I will show you what you need to know.:
A tug at Cym’s center gave him something to latch on to.
Time meant nothing to Cym as he followed the voice through the terrible void. As he went, he felt his sense of self being stripped away. All the mental illusions he’d built in order to protect himself were falling to the side as he continued on.
Cym watched them as they fell away, and he could see how tightly he’d clung to being a victim and the toxic energy that had attached to the concept. Once it was released from him,it became a glimmering cluster of light that drifted off and vanished into the nothingness of the void.
As each illusion left Cym—his need for independence, his insistence that he was useless, his newly found fear that the only thing that made him special was how Fourteen looked at him—he felt more and more himself, like he was waking up and becoming the person he always was but had forgotten.
Finally, he was left with his truest self in this timeless place, and he realized the tug on his magic had stopped. He found himself in the middle of an endless sea of his own magic, and it was the coolest thing he’d ever experienced. Coming from someone who had firsthand knowledge of the firmness of Fourteen’s pecs, that was saying something.
:Remember this place, Stillbringer. You will have to find it on your own next time.:
Cym wanted to tell the mysterious, bossy voice to eat a butt, but he felt so chill that he couldn’t be bothered.
