Page 48 of The Tribes of Magic (Paragons #3)

RAVENS AND RIVERS

C onner was right. I couldn’t imagine a better way to travel. I’d taken trains, cars, Spirit Trees, even teleported—but I’d never felt anything half as thrilling as flying. Flying on the back of an alicorn, the cool evening air kissing my face, was nothing short of magical.

My heart was racing, my soul singing, my skin electrified.

Every part of me was one hundred percent alive.

The euphoria was doing a good job of drowning out my feelings of impending doom.

Breaking into the General’s office was necessary—we had to know if he’d sold out the Apprentices—but it was also highly risky.

Conner had rented one of the winged beauties for each of us.

My alicorn had a body the color of midnight.

Her mane and tail were a few shades lighter and tinged with magenta, and her horn shone like starlight.

Her powerful wings beat sure and steady as she slowly lowered toward the tip of the Black Obelisk.

Conner’s and Kato’s alicorns had already dropped them off.

The boys both stood perfectly balanced on the side of the building, with the agility of spiders.

Conner waved me forward with an encouraging smile.

I took a deep breath and tried not to look too far down.

I didn’t need to look down to know it was a very long drop to the bottom.

I took the plunge. My breath stalled as I dropped. Then I felt a strong, magnetic pull, the building pulling me in. My feet and hands hit black glass. I didn’t slide a millimeter. The spell Kato had cast was working. Like flies caught in a pool of honey, we were all firmly stuck to the building.

The wind was wild and rough up here, so none of us bothered to talk.

Kato pointed toward a window about twenty meters down.

Conner and I nodded, then we all started the slow descent.

We were at the windowless peak of the Black Obelisk.

There were no offices, rooms, or indoor space of any kind way up here at the top.

We had to go down to reach the General’s office.

The going was slow, but I was in no danger of falling, or so Kato had assured me as we’d put on our magic bodysuits. Hanging here from the Black Obelisk by nothing but my hands and feet, it was hard to feel wholly confident of that, but for now at least, the magic seemed to be holding.

We’d made it about halfway to the General’s office window when an ear-splitting screech cut across the sky. I froze. Looked. Listened.

It came again, closer this time. And then I saw them, black beasts flying in on the wings of death. Ravens. Alone, one of them wouldn’t have been a problem, but there wasn’t just one or two or ten or twenty. There were hundreds of them. It wasn’t a flock. It was a swarm.

The birds swooped in, scratching and clawing, pecking and piercing. I rolled to the side. Only my magic suit kept me on the building. Like a black river, the swarm streamed past, screaming, then they came around for another pass.

Conner had his bow out. Sizzling arrows shot toward the birds, but they hardly did anything at all.

The swarm had a lot more birds than Conner had arrows.

Kato moved super-fast, slashing his sword at the incoming attackers, for all the good it did us.

Black feathers rained down from the sky.

New ravens appeared to replace the fallen.

I felt a buzz in my fingertips. It started subtle and soft, but quickly escalated into a heavy percussive beat that rocked my whole body.

The building was shaking too. Electric tendrils poured over the top of the obelisk, slithering down the black glass toward us.

I didn’t know what that was, but I knew one thing: we did not want to be here when the rivers of lightning reached us.

I allowed myself to slip lower down the building, closer to Kato and Conner.

I pointed up at the encroaching lightning, then down at the General’s window.

Safety was just one big slide away. They nodded at me.

We all joined hands and let loose. We slid down the smooth glass, fast and furious, picking up more and more speed.

We were faster than the birds, faster than the lightning, faster than…

oh, crap. The window was coming up fast. And we still weren’t slowing down.

Then, suddenly, we came to a hard stop, so abrupt that I fell forward, my head hitting my legs before slamming back against the glass. I grunted in pain. I was still mostly stuck to the building.

Conner’s head came into view. “Are you all right?”

“No.” I groaned again. “Not really.”

“Kato put on the brakes a little hard there, didn’t he?”

Kato’s head appeared next to Conner’s. “Sorry about that.”

“You can apologize later,” Conner told him. “Let’s get inside before we get eaten by birds or struck by lightning. Come on, Red. Let’s go.” He offered me his hand.

So did Kato, and between the two of them, they managed to peel me off the glass. Conner made quick work of the lock on the General’s window. He swung it into the building, then we all tumbled into the office.

Unfortunately—but not unexpectedly—the General’s floor wasn’t covered in soft, plushy carpet.

It was concrete, hard and unyielding, painted over in black paint.

I got to my feet, slowly and painfully. I was going to wake up to so many bruises tomorrow morning.

Conner and Kato were already snooping around the office.

I limped over to the General’s chair and sat down with a heavy plop.

They might be used to putting their body through the blender, but I was not.

“What was with the birds? And the lightning?”

“Magical defenses,” Conner said.

“I thought there weren’t supposed to be any magical defenses on the outside of the building.”

“Yeah, what’s up with that, Kato?” Conner slid him a look.

Kato just shook his head. “There weren’t supposed to be. I don’t know how they got there. I certainly wasn’t told about them.”

“I guess the General doesn’t trust you now that I have you enthralled.” I tried to roll my eyes, but it hurt too much.

Conner stopped foraging for evidence. His gaze slid between Kato and me. “What are you talking about?”

“The General thinks I’ve put Kato under a spell. He thinks Kato’s mind is no longer his own because I’m controlling him.”

“Of course you have, Red. You’ve put us both under a spell.” Conner winked at me.

Then he and Kato went back to searching the General’s office. It was a good thing too because I wasn’t sure how to respond to that statement. I mean, I was pretty sure he was teasing me, but I wasn’t completely sure.

“Those defenses were way over the top,” Conner was telling Kato. “I wonder who made them for the General.”

“I would like to know the same thing.”

My head wasn’t spinning so much anymore, so I joined in the search.

We went through every filing cabinet, every desk drawer, every folder.

Kato even hacked into the General’s computer.

But we didn’t find anything of interest, except that the General played a spaceship battle game.

And from the high scores, he was frighteningly good at it.

We thought the whole thing was a total bust—until Conner found a folder with all the General’s notes on the Apprentices.

I flipped through the pages. “He’s keeping a very close eye on us.

Some of this stuff…he really shouldn’t know.

He knows about the Paragons’ spellbook, but not what it is.

He knows I seemed to be chatting with an invisible someone at Miss Christie’s on Tuesday, and he rightly assumes it was Conner…

he’s also been tracking my meal choices, whatever that’s all about.

And here…” I looked at Kato and Conner. “He knows Kylie’s still alive. ”

“May I see that file?”

I handed Kato the folder. “The General knows Kylie isn’t dead. How?”

“Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it?” Conner said. “He knows Kylie is alive because he’s working with the people who took her.”

“We haven’t found any evidence he is working with the kidnappers.”

“Oh, come on, Kato. What will it take before you accept it?”

“I don’t know, Conner. Maybe, um, some actual evidence? We can’t go around accusing the General without…” His eyes froze. They’d clearly caught on something he’d been reading.

“Kato?” I asked. “What is it?”

“The General has a whole folder dedicated to just you, Seven.”

Conner snatched the folder out of Kato’s hands. “He’s tallying up your abilities. There are test reports going back years. And pictures too.” He looked at Kato. “You know what this is, right? The General has created a whole brief on Savannah, like he’s preparing for someone to kidnap her.”

“You don’t know that.” But a shadow fell over Kato’s face. A part of him didn’t believe his own words. I could hear it in his voice.

Conner must have heard it too. He punched one of the filing cabinets with his bare fist. A drawer popped open. Conner yanked out the first file he saw and buried his anger in its pages.

“We don’t know that the General wants to sell me to the Order of Kings.

We don’t even know if he’s working with them.

All we know is he’s watching me, but that’s hardly surprising, is it?

From the day he met me, the General didn’t like me and didn’t trust me.

And he told me himself that he’s watching my every mood. ”

It was pretty clear he had a spy in the Castle, reporting back to him, but there was nothing here to indicate who that spy might be.

“I’ve found something,” Kato said.

“The name of the spy at the Castle?” I asked.

“Evidence of his shady alliance with the Order of Kings?” Conner added.

“No, something else.” Kato began reading from the file he was holding.

“December 6 th , 2028. Two weeks ago, the tree spontaneously appeared in California, south of San Francisco. The tree is like nothing anyone on Earth has ever seen. Its branches seem to glow from within, pulsing with an unnatural kind of light. Strange colored balls of lights orbit around the tree. It started with just a couple, then a few more, and more and more and more. By now, the glowing balls number in the thousands, and no one has any idea what they are or what they mean. The scientists could find no source for the tree lights and no pattern to the pulsing.”

I squeezed in closer. “You’ve found an account of the first Spirit Tree appearing on Gaia.”

“Indeed.” Kato continued reading. “A box was found buried beside the ‘Spirit Tree’, the tree’s name according to the instructions in the box.

The instructions also explained the tree’s purpose.

It’s a gateway to other realms, powered by the magic of the ‘spirits’.

The scientists protest that there’s no such thing as magic, but as of yet, they’ve been unable to explain the tree’s sudden arrival or its glowing lights.

“February 14 th , 2029: The First Expedition. After months of preparations and negotiations with other world governments, today we sent the first team through the Spirit Tree, a collection of the world’s brightest scientific minds, escorted by elite soldiers.

“May 2 nd , 2029. The expedition team returned to Earth five days ago…”

Kato looked up from the page.

“What is it?” I asked.

“The team brought back the Curse.”

“I know. Everyone knows. It’s in all the history books.”

“ This isn’t in any history book.” Kato handed me the file.

“The Curse wasn’t a mistake. The Spirit Tree brought the expedition team to another realm, where they…

stole magic.” I glanced up from the page at Kato and Conner.

“There was a sacred tree with some magic apples. The team picked the apples and brought them back to Earth. That was the whole point of the expedition. It wasn’t to explore or learn.

It wasn’t a scientific endeavor. It was a military operation.

They stole magic to make weapons. And when the people of that other realm found out what the humans had done, they cursed us.

“Do you know what this means? It means the Government, or the precursor to it at least, caused the Curse. They brought this plague upon our world.”