I was shaking with fear and horror, staying sane only thanks to Armarillis’s training. So I just tried to push all emotions aside — and fought. Fought harder than I ever had, using every skill I knew. Calypso and I threw everything we had at them: white magic, black magic, shadow magic…

  We fought with swords too: we didn’t waste time looking for Inquisition-issued weapons — Calypso just removed his dagger-shaped earring artifacts and enlarged them to sword size. He kept one silver sword for himself and tossed the other to me.

  We didn’t shy away from hand-to-hand combat either, so several times I literally took down some creatures with my bare hands, since it was easier to neutralize them that way than drain my magical reserves. They’re large, sure, but not infinite, and I needed to save them for the smaller creatures I could simply snap the neck of or knock out with a precise strike to the right pressure point.

  Through all of this, I was constantly feeding magic to Calypso, who had taken to the sky on energy wings and joined the aerial battle. He stayed away from the front line, as the Mentor had asked. Zael and Elza were fighting on the front line, along with Eric and Agnessa and several of our dragon colleagues.

  They were all focused on keeping Effu from fully emerging from the crack between worlds, slowing his advance. Calypso stayed back and mostly hit the various flying creatures with mass destruction spells. The golden mist he released from his palms was especially effective: creatures got caught in it and stuck like they were in tar, making them easy to finish off. Without that protective mist, there would have been way more deaths among the Inquisitors and Fortemins, because the creatures were primarily attacking from the air.

  Among the dragons, I spotted my classmate Grey, as well as Moris, who was flying alongside Fury. Moris was a shapeshifter who could take the form of any living creature, and right now he’d apparently decided to turn into a dragon to help Fury and the others contain the rift from spreading further. Their dragon breath was constantly working on the shadow rift, keeping it from expanding.

  Felicia was there too, skillfully wielding her light sword and trying to get as close to the crack as possible along with other twilight wanderers to attempt to close it. Off to the side, I also spotted my sister Celestia: she was sitting on a conjured cloud and controlling the winds from there, pushing away the clouds that had earlier released acid rain that had killed several mages. Other elemental mages from the Inquisition were dealing with those toxic clouds. A bit further, near the Swiftwater River, Agatha was working with Dayon, Delson, and other water mages over the water that had gone wild from the chaos magic.

  I saw other classmates on the battlefield too: Kem and Patricia were clearing dilmons with a large group of Inquisitors — very dangerous creatures with hard shells, multiple legs, and long antennae that could drain all the magic from mages in minutes. And little Po was burning and incinerating, literally: she’d transformed into a fire salamander and was racing between the creatures, setting them on fire and disorienting them so other mages could finish them off.

  Mia, by the way, had gotten into the zone and was doing excellent work with her energy arrows. Calypso had taught her a trick earlier — enhancing her arrows with shadow magic — and Mia was firing a hail of golden arrows at the dark creatures, which did amazing work against the shadow beasts actively crawling out from the flip side. The delicate elf was an incredible archer who never missed her target, and with the enhanced arrows, her strikes had become even more lethal. Nolan was covering her, wielding an elven blade and a fire whip at the same time. Mia’s golden arrows flew farther than any other archer’s and had a more devastating effect: when they hit an enemy, they didn’t just destroy it - they exploded in a golden cloud that also sucked in nearby creatures. I thought to myself that we could really use at least a hundred archers with skills like hers right now…

  The Mentor in his snow-white robe, sparkling with magical flashes, was visible from everywhere. He stood on high ground, on a hill with the general, issuing orders and communicating with Fortemins through the communication bracelet artifact. Right now, he really was needed here as a leader. The Mentor was like a chess player, rapidly analyzing the battlefield and quickly repositioning his ‘pieces’ on the ‘board.’

  Falling back from the creatures to catch my breath, I happened to come closer to the hill, where I could hear the Mentor and general’s conversation — the wind was blowing my way.

  “Tristan, Edward handle the evacuation of Forland’s residents to Lakor!” Ilforte commanded.

  “I object,” the general replied sharply.

  “I’ll order my people to evacuate everyone to the Water Cordon.”

  “To Lakor, I said!” Ilforte said firmly.

  “There could be problems with the Water Cordon when moving that many people, better not to risk it.”

  “Watch your tone, Mr. Brandt,” Mackelberry said coldly.

  “Don’t forget who you’re talking to. I’m in charge here, and I think it’s right to evacuate Forland’s residents to the Water Cordon.”

  Ilforte swore and spat angrily on the ground.

  “This isn’t the time for arguments and empty talk, General. Either we work together, or we all die.”

  He returned to his conversation with colleagues.

  “Tristan, Edward evacuation is on you! Lakor is already preparing to receive residents. I've notified Emperor Sullivan Raymon-Rodinger of Lakor.”

  “Teleportation between worlds is impossible, Mentor!” an Inquisitor’s voice came through the communication bracelet.

  “What?..”

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  “Colleagues report that some Forland residents, who can teleport between worlds, already tried to evacuate on their own, but it didn’t work, Mentor! You can verify yourself that teleportation between worlds is currently impossible. Between countries in our world, yes, we can also teleport to Armarillis, but between other worlds impossible, Mentor!”

  “What the hell?!”

  “I don’t know, Mentor! Apparently the fractured fabric of reality is preventing it.”

  Ilforte swore again, fouler this time. But he immediately pulled himself together and said quickly:

  “We need to immediately ask the king of elven Geross to take in the residents. Fury, Tristan, Edward focus on the evacuation! Tristan, Edward, stay in touch with Fury. I'm putting this in his hands.”

  “How interesting,” the general drawled lazily.

  “Teleportation between worlds is impossible, but the passage to Armarillis where only Fortemins can go and hide until things blow over is open. What does this all mean, Mr. Brandt? Is this a Fortemin conspiracy against the General Staff?”

  Ilforte looked at the general like he’d lost his mind.

  “Have you gone completely insane from stress?” he asked bluntly.

  “Lost your mind entirely?”

  “Watch your language, Mr. Brandt,” Mackelberry said with distaste.

  “I’m merely analyzing the information. How else to explain why you can’t teleport anywhere else, but can get to safe Armarillis, hmm? Considering that I’ve already been informed that Fortemins activated the fifth pentagram and broke the Seal of Creation, and that it’s impossible to quickly save civilians, while Fortemins can run off at any moment while the Inquisition takes heavy losses, the conclusion speaks for itself…”

  “Armarillis exists in a special closed dimension,” Ilforte interrupted.

  “And I’ve told you this many times, Thomson. Armarillis isn’t a separate planet anyone can teleport to, like Lakor. It’s a special subspace, a warped dimension whose exact coordinates in the Universe are known only to me. That’s the ancient nature of Armarillis, given to Fortemins so that at least there, in our home, we don’t have to worry about dark creatures breaking in. We’re not planning to ‘run off’ anywhere. We're taking losses too, but we’ll fight for this world until the end. That’s our duty.”

  “But it seems to me that you’re trying to…”

  “I’m trying to save this country and this world as a whole,” Ilforte snapped, interrupting again.

  “What are you doing, General?”

  Ilforte didn’t wait for an answer and returned to communicating with Fortemins through the communication bracelet.

  “Buddy, we’re in deep shit here,” I heard my father’s voice.

  “Nothing’s working, we can't hold back Effu’s advance. We need your direct help.”

  “My magical reserves will recover in ten… nine and a half minutes,” Ilforte checked his watch on the silver band.

  “When we first teleported here, I had to use White Blaze and White Dome twice to destroy the first two waves of creatures rushing into Forland and prevent them from spreading beyond this district. These are all level-three-hundred mass destruction spells. After using them back to back, I need time to recover, and it hasn’t passed yet.”

  “We don’t have nine minutes, buddy,” Zael clicked his tongue.

  “Five at most. Maybe we should bring in Sirinity? How about using her to summon the Book of Fate? Would that help in this case? If so, now’s the time to start the ritual. Before it’s too late…”

  My heart fluttered with hope. Maybe this was the way out?.. Maybe all wasn’t lost, and we could just erase all this mess?

  The Book of Fate was a very complex spell that only Sirinity — our Mentor’s wife and Guardian — could cast among all living Fortemins. I knew that Sirinity had only used this spell once before.

  It wasn’t a spell you could use whenever you wanted: after all, when you completely erase something or someone from existence by summoning the Book of Fate and literally rewriting its pages, erasing the unwanted and adding the necessary, you have to understand the consequences, weigh all the risks. Because sometimes, erasing just one event from history could upset the world’s balance and trigger a chain of tragic events even more undesirable than the single erased entry. All of this had to be calculated down to the smallest detail, which is why such spells could only be used as a last resort. But I agreed with my father that right now, that moment had come.

  “It would help,” Sirinity’s voice came through the artifact; apparently Ilforte was on a conference call with several Fortemins at once.

  “But don’t forget, Zael, that the Book of Fate isn’t a notebook where you can scribble whatever you want with a pen or pencil. You can only make changes to the Book of Fate by pouring magic into it. A lot of magic. And the amount of magic you pour in has to equal the scale of the event you’re changing. Do you understand how much magic would need to be poured into the Book to make edits regarding all this mess?”

  “So one of us will have to sacrifice themselfs to stop Effu, is that what you’re saying?” Ilforte said.

  “Not yourself. Your magic,” Sirinity corrected.

  “What’s the difference?” Ilforte sighed.

  “In our case, losing magic is like death. For any powerful supreme mage, permanently giving up magic forever is like death. And you know that perfectly well, Sirinity. And I suppose I’ll have to be the one to sacrifice my magic.”

  “Absolutely not!!”

  “Do you have other suggestions? You don’t, Sirinity.”

  “I could sacrifice my own magic…”

  “You can’t write in the Book of Fate and give up your magic at the same time. The sacrifice has to be someone else.”

  I swallowed nervously and turned to look at the Mentor. Damn, they were seriously discussing who should sacrifice themselves to restore the world’s balance, weren’t they?

  I took a shaky breath and looked at my gloved hands.

  Talk about cruel irony. I’d once dreamed of losing my magic, giving it to anyone — just to live, just to survive. Just a few weeks ago, in this same situation, I would have run to the Mentor without a second thought, shoving everyone aside and screaming ‘Me, me, take all my magic, get rid of it for me!!’

  But now… Knowing that all wasn’t lost, that there was a real chance to cure me… Seeing how well Calypso and I worked as a team… Right now, I didn’t want to lose my magic… Not at all. I was maybe just starting to get a taste of life!.. And how must the Mentor feel? I couldn’t even imagine. But he stood there with such a stony expression…

  “If you willingly lay yourself down as a sacrifice, I’ll resurrect you and kill you myself, got it?!” Elza’s angry voice came through the bracelet.

  “Armarillis needs you, don't you dare sacrifice yourself! There has to be another way… Or another mage willing to give up their magic…”

  “The sacrifice has to be very powerful. Equivalent,” Ilforte repeated.

  “My sacrifice would definitely work.”

  “Hey, what’s he doing?” Zael suddenly cut in.

  “Who?” Ilforte didn’t understand.

  “Your son. What’s he doing? Is he flying toward Effu on your orders? Should I stop him, or what?”