Act 3, Chapter 92: A red bloom

Day in the story: 29th January (Thursday), around noon—11 hours into the time trial

Alexandra May in Alex’s body

“Is she okay!?” Nickolas shouted over the honking horns, wind, and engine noise.

I reached into the bike’s soul and the essence within my aura and asked it to become an electric motorcycle instead of what it was now. Its artistic exterior accepted the new identity as if I had merely changed its clothes. Instead of those wild, beastly roars, it became a quieter kind of predator as I weaved between the cars.

“I don’t think so,” I said truthfully. “Max acted quickly when the shot hit her, but ever since then she’s been unmoving and not breathing, from what I learned from what he was saying to her. If what I heard through the card is correct, he packed her into the car and they’re on the way to a hospital right now, but she hasn’t made a single sound since she was hit.”

“No,” he whispered. “Can’t be her too.”

“I can feel them. Pretty close. Hold on,” I said, launching us into the air and jumping at full speed over the car that had suddenly stopped in front of us at a red light.

We did not have the luxury of waiting. Fortunately, with sp-eye-ders crawling from beneath my shirt to take their places along the base of my head, I could see everything around me at all times. It made weaving between the cars in the perpendicular lane that much easier.

“They were at a meeting with some company. We were supposed to meet at the office after that,” Nickolas mumbled, oblivious to the near collision I had just avoided.

“Call Max!” I shouted to him. “You have his number, right?”

“I do!” he replied as I revved the engine and sped up even further to avoid yet another collision with a driver who apparently did not know what side mirrors were for.

I reached into the spellbook and focused on the page that displayed a flock of paper birds. Summoning them from within my Domain, I gave them an instant animated order: fly high and become my eyes in the sky.

Seeing around myself was useful, but having a broader view from above would prove far more valuable in finding a proper path through the maze of cars and pedestrians.

As Nickolas scrambled for his phone and selected Max from his contacts, I also found myself thinking about the last blade I had stolen from the Vampire Lord—Blitz Zweihander. It was an amazing weapon, capable not only of striking with multiplied force but also of becoming impossible to forcibly remove from its wielder once touched. On the surface, that was simply excellent protection against disarming. But when one could force a blade to become a flying weapon through an identity borrowed from myths and legends, such a property was also a good way to ensure I would not fall on my face while standing atop the soaring sword.

It was something Alex had tested against Liora during their races.

I could have jumped onto it and rushed toward Sophie, but I feared that a backlash from Reality would strip me of my power, and in a borrowed body that would be disastrous.

“Max!?” I barely heard Nick’s voice over the traffic.

I had to change lanes while taking a very sharp, almost ninety-degree turn at full speed to avoid a complete traffic jam ahead of us that I had spotted thanks to my new eyes in the sky.

I flattened myself against the bike, forcing Nick behind me to do the same, and leaned so far to the right that we almost scraped the asphalt. Then, using the rotors painted onto the bike itself, I launched it onto the wall of a building while sending the Song of Weightlessness through the speaker painted onto my back.

Supplied with enough Authority to become what it represented, it allowed me to briefly ride along the side of a glass storefront without shattering it.

I covered a good few dozen yards that way before dropping back onto the street, unwilling to attract any more attention from shocked drivers and pedestrians. I was fairly certain that feat would not result in backlash, but one could never be completely sure.

“Yes!” Nickolas shouted. I could not hear the conversation at all during the maneuver, but apparently he was still speaking with Max. “No!” he added after a pause.

I was approaching an overpass above the lane I actually wanted to join. My original plan had been to jump from it onto the road below, but one of my birds spotted a fantastic graffiti mural painted beneath the bridge.

It was a semi-realistic depiction of a woman kissing a bulldog. It looked good enough for my artistic sense, and art I declared it. Using the mural as an anchor, I performed a quick blink. A second later—and after another of the world’s reluctant realignments of my position—we burst out of the painted wall and onto the highway.

“Please do that. We’re on our way!” Nick shouted again, completely unfazed by the sudden teleportation. “You won’t miss us, trust me!” he added before ending the call.

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“Fuck! You drive like a demon!” He was fazed after all.

“Never seen one drive!” I replied. “Where will he stop for us!?”

“Stop!? He’s not stopping. He said he’ll keep speeding toward the hospital unless we get to him first. He’s not risking us failing to make it. He’ll stop only when he actually sees us nearby!” Nick replied over the roar of the wind.

“That’s good thinking on his part,” I said evenly, though with all the noise it might as well have been a whisper.

“What!?”

“Good thinking!”

“She chose him for a reason!”

“Did he tell you what happened!?”

“She was shot and dropped onto the pavement, unmoving. He dropped to the ground and dragged her toward cover. Found no blood, but since she’s been unmoving and not breathing, he packed her into the car he’d hidden behind and drove away.”

“And has been driving ever since, right?”

“Yes.”

“We’re close to him. I can feel the card, almost within my aura—and his car, most likely. There’s one vehicle ahead rushing through traffic well above the speed limit.” I steered toward the center of the lane and then onto the oncoming side, as ours had become too crowded. I weaved between the cars now driving directly toward us. “I’d like to teleport into the car the moment it enters my aura to save time, but I’m worried my momentum—” I had to veer sharply back onto our lane to clear a bump in the road. The bike wobbled, but I managed to stabilize it and land safely on both wheels again. “—that my momentum would throw me into the car and cause damage.”

“Is he going the same direction!?” Nick shouted back.

“Roughly!”

“Then match his speed as closely as you can and teleport afterward. You’ll land safely inside!”

“You sure!?”

“Fuck, Alexa. Yes, I’m sure. We’re talking about Sophie’s safety!”

“Chill, Leben,” I barked back.

“Send me first to wherever you’ll be taking her.”

“Sure.”

The moment I moved into the vicinity of the speeding car ahead of us, I focused on my Domain and sent Nick there. Whatever momentum he retained upon arrival, the Domain would nullify quickly.

Then, with two separate thoughts from two separate brains at the same time, I sent my bike away into the Domain and myself toward the card Sophie still carried with her. Fortunately for me, Nick had been right about the physics and I appeared inside the jeep Max was driving, slouched over Sophie’s body on the back seat as if I wasn’t moving at all. She was strapped in with the safety belts.

“What the fuck!?” Max shouted.

“You spoke with Nickolas moments ago. This is you not missing us!” I shouted back at him. “I’m taking her. I’ll let you know what’s going on as soon as possible.” I removed the safety belts. “And thanks. Whatever happens, you did great, and I won’t forget that. I owe you.”

With that, Sophie and I appeared in the center of my Domain, almost directly beneath the Weaver’s Tree, where Nickolas had been waiting, my original body joining him while being carried by the folded spiders.

“Let me!” he shouted, pushing me aside. He touched her neck gently with two fingers, checking for a pulse, while I unbuttoned her white shirt torn with a small entry hole, exposing her chest. “What’s that!?” he shouted, staring at the crystal fragments embedded in her skin where my soulcore-fragment necklace had been.

The area bloomed with what looked like internal bleeding—a large patch of crimson skin pierced by small crystal shards protruding from beneath the surface.

“That’s—”

“The necklace you made for her. It broke. Maybe it’s what stopped the bullet?” he asked, looking over the rest of her body. “I can’t see anywhere else she could have been hit.”

“There’s no entry wound, though. Does she have a pulse? Is she breathing?” I asked, feeling the contortion worsen in my own left leg. Muscles cramped, and I finally released direct control over Alex, returning fully to my own paralyzed body and observing from the side.

“No wound. She has a pulse, and she’s breathing, but very, very slowly,” Nickolas replied standing up and focusing eyes on Alex first, then right at me. "See to it that she doesn't die here, Alexa." His eyes were wide and pleading, voice calm and steady.

"I understand," I replied.

Alex grabbed Nicholas by the shoulder, and half a broken heartbeat later both of them were gone, already on their way to the Lebens’ household. They would return soon with something as miraculous in its healing properties as it was delicious.

As for me, the minions beneath my armchair carried me closer.

It hurt to see her like that, especially when I couldn't even hold her in my own arms. Apparently, I wasn't the only one who felt that way. The spiders created by the soul core itself abandoned their work and hurried toward our position. They converged from every direction, each one a tiny beacon in its own right, wrapped in a thin film of colorful shadowlight.

Beneath the harsh daylight of my star, the glow was barely visible. Yet against the darkness of the non-Euclidean waters of my black lake, they looked like drifting stardust racing to answer a silent call. With care, they slipped beneath her still form, lifted her onto their backs and bore her toward the Soul Core. It was only a matter of inches and yet those few inches changed everything. The moment Sophie crossed that invisible threshold, my soul core erupted in wonder.

The Weaver’s Tree blazed to life, every vein of crystalline bark and every shimmering thread woven through its branches igniting with color so bright it was like staring into the sun itself. Blinded in all the eyes that weren’t of the Shattered I observed, as at the same instant, the crystal fragments embedded within Sophie’s chest awakened, flaring with equally prismatic brilliance. Rainbow light spilled across the agora in dazzling waves, painting the building fronts in hues that seemed too vibrant to belong to Earth, nor to Ideworld.

Then the colors began to gather. Streams of radiance twisted together, folding and weaving into a single breathtaking column of shadowlight that stretched between Sophie and the Weaver’s Tree like a bridge spun by the hands of Ali herself. Sophie’s chest lifted first, as if pulled closer by that thread. Then gravity had forgotten it existed and the rest of her body rose after it.

She floated high above the ground, suspended within the heart of the luminous beam.

The shadowlight thickened and began to spin around her. Silken strands of color unfurled from nowhere, winding through the air with hypnotic grace. They wrapped around her in layer after layer, each strand woven with impossibly quick and yet careful precision. It was as though a cosmic spider hidden beyond the surface of the crystal was spinning a cocoon from the fabric my own reality.

And with every turn of that celestial weaving, the magic grew stronger until that cocoon erupted into blinding light once more. Before sight even returned to any of my original human eyes, before I had a chance to protest or comprehend what transpired, I already understood it deep down in my soul.

Sophie had disappeared from this world. She was inside the soulspace of my Domain’s guardian, undergoing a trial.