Empire Island, Exile the First

Chapter 24

I was halfway down to the beach before I controlled my legs and stopped running. Calla's magic had overpowered me and there hadn't been much I could do about it until distance and time gave me a moment to catch my breath.

I filled my lungs, opened my vision and saw her glyph entangled around my thighs and hips, clinging to me like neon pink vines. I focused and fought back, making a small glyph of my own. Hers hadn't been binding magic, so it fell away after a small struggle, or else I would've been fucked. From where I stood looking at her skill and her power, I wouldn't survive going head to head with my aunt.

It was a good thing we were on the same side, then.

I turned and ran up the path from where I'd come, but voices and screams stopped me in my tracks before I broke out of the forest again. I moved slowly this time, as I approached the compound again. I nearly tripped on the remains of an old tent in the underbrush, more evidence of the environmental destruction these people had caused my beloved island to suffer. Once they were expelled, the cleanup and returning this part of the forest to its pristine natural state might take time, depending on how we did it.

But first things first, where was my aunt?

The screams came from a couple of cult members who appeared to have been burned in the same fashion as the demon. They were human, and I felt a pang of sympathy for them. Everybody I'd met so far had been quite nice. Just naive and seeking direction in their lives. I didn't blame them, I mean I'd been floating through my own life without a rudder until my return to Empire, for fuck's sake.

I saw a clot of people gathered around the front of the main building and I opened my vision wider to find my aunt.

Calla was in the center of it, between two demons in human form. I saw them so clearly now, it almost embarrassed me that I'd ever been fooled by their disguises.

Oddly enough, Mara and Mike appeared to still be one hundred percent human. There wasn't anything demonic about their energy, nothing evil per se, other than the stains of darkness spreading from the center of them, radiating out along their bodies.

Of course I was biased, I thought they both were horrible garbage human beings who didn't deserve to be breathing the same air as me, let alone destroying Empire Island and harming my family or the other unwitting girls in their compound.

I tried to get a better look at how they held Calla, but everything was so knotted up and tangled around her that I couldn't. I wanted to get closer, but I worried that we'd all be lost if every one of our Empire lines fell to the evil brewing up from the well source.

"Fuck," I muttered, and my mind darted off in a hundred different directions as I planned out the best line of action. First things first, I had to rescue Phoenix. That was the one resounding note of clarity banging through my head. Day and Calla would be okay for another few hours, or even overnight.

Phoenix wouldn't survive it. She wouldn't make it through another full moon ceremony, and since they missed the one last night, Mara and Mike would double down for this one.

I was so tired, though. I sagged to my knees on the mossy ground of the forest and slipped my fingers through the carpet and into the soil below. It wasn't Empire magic, the well source, but I realized that I could pull up power from the earth the same way I did with the well source.

It was slower, like a much larger, ancient beast as opposed to the lightweight creature I was used to dealing with in the well source.

But it was steady and dependable. Like charging your phone with an old, thick cord instead of a wireless platform. There wasn't any way for me to become disconnected now that I'd found the earth's energy. I reached out whenever I needed that extra boost.