Original Work The Hour of the Wolf (Schooled in Magic 29)

Hi, Everyone

The Hour Of The Wolf is book 29 of Schooled in Magic, a direct sequel to Wolf in the Fold. It is very much a part II story so it probably won’t make much (if any) sense without reading book 28 first. As always, I will supply copies of the last book (and the rest of the series) to anyone willing to comment on this book.

You can download the first few books in the series through Kindle Unlimited (link below).

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F79CC1MZ/?tag=survivalmonke-20

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The Chrishanger

Thank you

Chris

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CGN

 

Prologue

Master Wolfe giggled.

His awareness expanded, his mind expanding with it until he could see – and comprehend – the vastness of the multiverse laid out before him. Timelines rose and fell, mighty empires came and went in the blink of an eye; he saw giant superclusters of galaxies whirling around the centre of their universe and tiny subatomic particles, each so tiny they couldn’t be so much as perceived by anything less than a godlike being, spinning in precise formations that were both random chance and perfectly planned. The secrets of the cosmic all were laid bare before him, from the petty concerns of tiny little mortals to the immense thoughts and feelings of immortal transcendent entities. An infinity of voices ran through his mind, the thoughts of an infinity of living beings, each one real and singular and yet blurring together into an immensity that even he had difficulty comprehending. Nothing in his experience, from the day he’d become an entity of pure magic to the final challenger he’d absorbed into his multiplicity, granting the honour of eternal life as part of his very soul, had prepared him for being a god. He was omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. He was …

The power pulsed around him, an endless sea of raw power that was magic and science and so much more. He’d thought he would become a god, a creature of raw magic in truth, but instead he was so much more. The timelines hardened every time he looked at them, randomness itself breaking under his gaze. He stared and everything solidified, billions upon billions of potential possibilities collapsing into one; he blinked, for a space of time so tiny even he had trouble measuring it, and the uncertainties rose up to overwhelm him once again. He could see everything. He defined reality merely by existing. He was all-powerful and yet he was trapped and …

He could make a rock so heavy he couldn’t lift it. He could lift it regardless.

His mind pulsed as it slipped into the universe, into the quantum foam underpinning the multiverse. He’d been so small, he realised dully, for all of the minds he’d absolved into his multiplicity. He’d thought himself a lord and master of all, ruler of everything he surveyed, and yet he’d been little more than the monarch of a tiny island, unaware of the vast empires surrounding his little realm. He saw himself as a tiny scuttling thing, trapped in a puddle on a beach, unaware of the ocean only a few short metres away. Waves rolled across the beach, upending everything … his mind was swept up, the power threatening to overwhelm him once again. The sheer immensity of the cosmic all daunted him, terrified him. He wanted to pull back, to drag himself free as a swimmer might escape currents dragging him out to sea, but it was already too late. He was a newborn butterfly with godlike powers, unable to return to the cocoon. He was …

Timelines pulsed around him, the wreckage of the former universe trapped in a flicker of time. It was fragile … it struck him, suddenly, that the entire universe was far more fragile than he’d ever realised. His mere presence, his omniscience, was threatening to collapse the entire multiverse into nothing. He’d wondered, over the long centuries between his first meeting with Emily and the last, why so many transdimensional creatures only extruded tiny aspects of themselves into the human realm. He knew now. They could be trapped, caught within the material universe, or they could do immense damage merely by existing. They would be …

Emily.

A ripple of discontent, of unease, ran through his mind .. and the multiverse. Everyone shivered helplessly; children screamed in the night, adults flinching helplessly even though there was no cause. Random events flowered into life, great sweeping cancers of unreality that came and went so quickly few ever realised what had happened, even when they recovered from the aftershocks; entire galaxies blinked out of existence, stars and their orbiting planets vanishing so completely they’d never existed at all. The entity barely noticed. Something was wrong …

Emily.

A shock ran through the ever-expanding multiplicity. Emily had done something … no. Emily was a prisoner, in a hell he’d made for her personally. She was there …

No. She was missing. She was nowhere to be found.

The contradiction battered his mind. There was no longer any such thing as randomness, not to him; there was nothing that could be concealed from him. He didn’t have to look to know everything; he already knew everything. And yet, he didn’t know Emily. She was in two places at once. She was concealed within the cracks in the universe, in the Roads of Happenstance that linked timelines together; she was … he felt a surge of pure anger, entire universes evaporating under his rage, as he realised she’d done something clever. She’d concealed herself so cleverly that he couldn’t find her, which meant …

He was a god. He could do anything. And yet …

His rage stilled, his thoughts calming. She had hidden herself in the one place he couldn’t see, the one place he couldn’t touch without undoing himself. Clever, he acknowledged sourly, clever and futile. She was an insect – less than an insect – against his immensity. She could do nothing but hide as he pulled on the strings of the multiverse, reshaping the cosmic all into something more suitable for his majesty. She was nothing … and yet, he feared. An insect could sting, an insect could bite … an insect could kill. The fact she was difficult, almost impossible, for even an omniscient being like himself to see …

He narrowed his thoughts to a cold hardness that bent the universe to his will. He needed an agent, someone who could go where he could not. He needed a servant and he knew just where to find one. The ultimate enemy for Emily and the ultimate ally for himself. He had all the time in the universe to find her, all the time he needed to destroy her … a knot of time and space started to form around him, within him. He would reshape the universe to suit himself, once and for all, and then the real work would begun.

He would not rule the multiverse. He would be the multiverse.

And all Creation would bear his name.

Soon.

 

Chapter One (Emily1)

“It’s time to close, my dear.”

Emily barely noticed the librarian, a kindly older woman who had seen too much in her life to be wholly trusting of anything, as the world seemed to shift around her. The library was reassuringly solid, rows upon rows of bookshelves heaving under the weight of countless books, and yet her reality suddenly felt fragile, as if everything rested on a knife edge. Her legs trembled under her, as if they were about to totter and send her plummeting to the floor; her body felt wrong, as if it were no longer truly hers. Sweat prickled on her forehead, a wave of fever running through her mind … she caught hold of the book trolley, clinging onto its reassuring solidity until the disorientation passed. Everything felt wrong …

“You look unwell,” the librarian said. Her tone was … wrong. Not concern, but … certainty. She spoke the truth. “Did you get enough sleep last night?”

Emily looked up. The librarian looked … cold and calculating and yet … Emily blinked and the vision was gone, the kindly old lady returning so quickly it was hard to convince herself she hadn’t imagined it. Perhaps it was nothing more than her imagination. She didn’t feel well … perhaps she was coming down with a cold. Or something worse. Her stomach growled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten anything for … hours. There was nothing to eat in the library. She would have to go home.

“I don’t think so,” she managed. Her memories were a jumbled mess. She’d barely had any sleep last night, her mother had been sick and her stepfather … her skin crawled as he recalled his eyes leaving trails of slime all over her body, as thin and scrawny as it was. The bastard was back home, waiting for her … she felt her gorge starting to rise and swallowed hard. Perhaps she was coming down with something. “I just …”

The librarian turned away. “You’d best be off,” she said, curtly. “I’ll see you whenever.”

Emily nodded and forced herself to start walking towards the door. The library was nearly empty now, the remaining patrons making their way back home. Kids and adults, people with loving homes and people who had nowhere else to go … she caught the eye of a man she knew to be homeless and shuddered inwardly, seeing her fate laid out in his eyes. She wouldn’t be allowed to stay in the family home once she turned eighteen, she was sure, and she had no idea where she would go. There was no hope of university, no hope of finding a decent place to live … there was little hope, even, of finding a job. Her life was over and yet it felt as if it would never end.

She paused in front of the mirror by the door, staring at herself. She was thin, her baggy jumper and ill-fitting jeans covering everything and yet not covering enough … her brown hair hung around her pale face in unkempt ringlets, a reminder she hadn’t had time to wash it properly. If her stepfather went out on the weekend, doing whatever he did when he wasn’t at home, she’d wash it … she sighed as she studied her pale face, feeling almost as if she were staring at a stranger. It wasn’t her face …

Emily blinked. Another woman was staring back at her, a strong confident woman with long brown hair framing an elegant face, wearing a blue dress that flattered her curves without revealing anything below the neckline. She held a device in one hand, an odd mechanical wand, and her other hand … light sparkled around her fingertips, a trick of the light that Emily knew was nothing of the sort. She wasn’t so much beautiful as she was … Emily didn’t know how to put it into words. The stranger was strong and confident and everything Emily had ever wanted to be.

She blinked, again. The vision was gone. Her face stared back at her.

Tears prickled in the corner of her eyes. She wiped them away, feeling an immense sense of loss sweeping over her. She had lost something … images flickered through her mind, a beautiful blonde girl, a handsome young man leaning down to kiss her … her lips tingled, as if someone truly had brushed their lips against hers, the feeling vanishing as quickly as it had come. She was imagining it, trying to lose herself in fantasy … a world in which she went to Hogwarts or Cackles or one of a hundred other magical schools, a world where she was something special, a world where she had friends and a life and a future and … she found herself on her knees, without quite recalling how she’d fallen. The sense of loss was overpowering. She wanted to close her eyes and pretend …

No. She forced herself to stand, brushing the hair out of her eyes. There’s no point in pretence.

The air outside was cold, stinking of cars and cigarettes and all the other horrors of modern life. She heard the librarian locking the door behind her, another sense of loss and bitterness flowing through her as she started to walk. The street felt drab to her eyes, the handful of open shops badly outnumbered by boarded-up establishments that had been closed since time out of mind, their faded signs and posts blurring together into a grey post-urban nightmare. A handful of people were visible, trapped in their own moments of quiet desperation, but she felt alone in the midst of a crowd. No one paid any attention to her as she walked past a bar, the sound of music echoing through the air as the patrons drank and gambled away their paychecks before stumbling home. Her mother and stepfather had argued, more than once, about his gambling … Emily shuddered, helplessly, as she recalled hiding in her room as they shouted at each other. It had been a nightmare and yet …

Her heart twisted as she passed a pair of prostitutes, the middle-aged women drinking and smoking as they waited for their first customers. Was that the fate that awaited her, when she was kicked out of house and home? The women weren’t that old, she thought, but they looked old enough to be her mother, their bodies worn down by drugs and alcohol and abuse from their pimps and johns. There were all sorts of horror stories about teenage schoolgirls selling themselves, whispered rumours passed from girl to girl in the locker rooms … Emily didn’t want to believe the stories, yet there was a part of her that feared they were true. She understood, better than she cared to admit. If someone offered her a way out of the nightmare her life had become, or even just enough money to forget the nightmare for a few short hours, she knew she would be tempted. There was no point in denying it.

She glanced into a shop window and froze. A girl was looking back at her, a girl around the same age as herself with long black pigtails and … a thrill of recognition shot through her, banished a second later as it dawned on her she didn’t know the girl. She was a stranger, a very familiar stranger … Emily’s head spun, her knees threatening to buckle once again. She was going mad. She had to be. She was being haunted by visions out of her fantasies …

Her heart twisted as she forced herself to keep walking. The world felt weird, as if it was changing around her … she had the sudden sense she was the centre of the world, an actress on a stage mouthing her lines as the scenery changed around her. She wondered, suddenly, if the street outside her vision even existed, the thought coming and going so quickly she knew she was being silly. She was no main character, not even an NPC. The world would exist with or without her, the universe never noticing her comings and goings. She would live and die in a world she hated, surrounded by wealth and power she would never touch … a land of boundless opportunity she’d never be able to access. She would never be important. Never.

She heard someone laugh in the distance, a sound that sent chills down her spine. Chad and his friends, teenage boys whose names she had never bothered to learn … jocks and bullies and outright rectums, young men with a reputation for touching girls or lifting their skirts or molesting them in other ways, men who got away with it because they were good at sports or simply too big and strong for the teachers to challenge. Her cheeks flushed with shame as she turned, ducking down the alleyway to escape before they caught sight of her. She hated being so weak, hated being unable to stand up to Chad or her stepfather or every other vile creature in her life … hated it. She wanted to blast them to atoms, but how could she? She was weak and powerless and …

A wolf whistle echoed through the air. Chad? Someone else? She didn’t know and she didn’t care. She forced herself to pick up speed, feeling as if someone was right behind her … it felt as if someone was breathing down the back of her neck. Her skin crawled … she forced herself to look back, half-expecting to find herself staring at an inhuman monster. There was nothing there and yet … she splashed through a puddle and saw, reflected in the liquid, the strong and confident woman she’d seen earlier. She looked disgusted. Emily felt ashamed of herself once again, ashamed of her own helplessness. She couldn’t fight. She was powerless.

Sergeant Harkin taught you how to fight, a voice said, at the back of her mind. And you trained beside Jade and Cat, true men rather than animals in human form ...

She staggered, nearly falling to her knees once again as her hands tore at her head. It was a fantasy! Jade and Cat didn’t exist … a flush ran through her as she recalled having sex with Cat, a memory so intense it seemed almost real. She was a virgin. She knew she was a virgin. And yet she could feel him inside her … she dug her nails into her scalp, the pain helping to centre her mind. She was going inside. Jade and Cat didn’t exist. Sergeant Harkin didn’t exist. Men like that didn’t exist. There were only assholes like Chad and her stepfather, men who bragged of being alpha even as they proved, time and time again, that they were nothing more than animals. She had read countless stories about decent men, but she’d never met any. The most decent man on the street might not be physically or mentally abusive to his wife and children, if rumour was to be believed, yet he was still a cheat. Emily wondered why his wife put up with it … no. That wasn’t true. She knew why. There were far worse men out there.

Her head ached as she kept walking, passing the school. A handful of students were clearly visible, some listlessly kicking a ball around and others just loitering … they had no hope, Emily knew, just like her. Chad and his ilk might brag of their football skills, and tell everyone around them that they were going to be the next great sports star, but she knew better. They weren’t going to get out of the trap, any more than herself. They would graduate, find work stacking shelves or something else that was a dead end, and then … who knew? She didn’t want to think about it.

The hopelessness and despair poisoned the air around the school. The walls were drab and grey, barely lightened by splashes of graffiti; she wondered, idly, which student had managed to misspell a four-letter word that should have been easy to spell. The staff hadn’t seemed too worried either, although in a just world … she shook her head, reminding herself once again that there was no justice. The world wasn’t fair. She swallowed, hard, as she saw Norris scurrying out of the building, eyes flickering from side to side as if he expected to be attacked at any moment. He probably was. Chad was still out there, ready to work off his feelings by punching a nerd … guilt gnawed at her as she watched Norris hurry onwards, right towards Chad. She wanted to warn him, to stop him, to protect him. But there was nothing she could do.

Emily kept walking, circling the school and making her way home. The streets were empty now, the cold wind picking up crisp packets and other pieces of rubbish and tossing them through the air. She wrapped her arms around herself for warmth, cursing her stepfather for wasting his paycheck and her mother for not stopping him. She’d have to go to a charity shop and see if they had a cheap coat before winter really started to bite, although she knew she’d be lucky if they had anything. The whole district was too poor to have many cast-offs … she shifted uncomfortably, reminded – despite herself – that nearly everything she wore, from her jumper to her underwear, was ill-fitting. She had no idea what she’d do if she grew any taller. It was going to be a nightmare getting anything more from her mother and she didn’t have any friends who might be willing to trade … the thought of asking her stepfather was just repugnant. And yet she might have no choice.

She glanced into a window and froze. The girl was there again, watching her with disappointed eyes … Emily felt a surge of sheer loathing and hatred that was directed more against herself than the vision confronting her. Her life was a mess, her future non-existent … she’d let herself hope, more than once, that her father would come back for her, but he never had. She had let herself dream that he might be a prince, or a wealthy man, or … someone, anyone, who could give her the hope she needed to make something of herself. But the odds were that he’d been nothing more than a passing stranger, a john who’d called upon a whore … Emily wasn’t even sure if her parents had been married. Her mother had said so, when she’d asked, but her mother told a lot of lies. She was so drunk, so often, that it was impossible to tell if she believed herself.

The vision changed. Two girls were staring at her, their eyes wide with pity. Emily gritted her teeth in bitter frustration. She hated being pitied, for all that it was nice to have someone acknowledge her situation. It was just like the tedious land acknowledgement the principal had read out one morning in assembly, the sanctimonious babbling about stolen land that – for some strange reason – hadn’t ended with the land being returned to the descendents of the former owners. It was performative nonsense, an exercise in self-flagellation that didn’t really include any actual flagellation. But then, it was easy to make speeches and harder to do anything that might reshape the world. She met the eyes of the older girl and gritted her teeth. It would be so easy to let herself believe …

She shook her head and turned away. There were no miracles in life. No one was going to sweep her off her feet and give her the keys to a kingdom, or even a very large library. There was no prospect of anything from further education to gainful employment; little hope of survival, perhaps, beyond the next few years. She was a poor girl from a poor family, lacking the education to make use of her mind or the beauty that would induce people to overlook her limited education and character flaws. There was no such thing as magic. No matter how many books she read, no matter how many worlds of super-technology or wondrous fantasy she explored through the written word, she always had to return to reality.

There was no such thing as magic.

Emily turned into her street and made her way down to the apartment block. The buildings were dark and cold, the windows largely boarded up after vandals had smashed the glass. Emily was almost relieved, knowing she wouldn’t be able to see the alien reflections any longer. The sky was darkening rapidly, casting an eerie shadow over the drab grey street. All colour seemed to be leeching from the world, leaving nothing but a dull nightmare. It was her reality. It would always be. She paused in front of the door, bracing herself. Her home should be her safe space, a place where she could relax and be herself … where a loving mother and father took care of her, preparing her for adulthood. Instead … she wondered, numbly, what was waiting for her. A drunk mother? An angry leering stepfather? Or … or what? She didn’t want to know.

One day, a voice whispered at the back of her mind, you’ll come home and she’ll be gone.

She took a long breath, letting her eyes wander the dull street as she dug her keys out of her pocket. It was a nightmare, all the darker for being so mundane. It wasn’t a war zone, nor was it a place where death could come at any moment, yet … it was a trap. She would never escape. She would live and die in the drab grey world, her life and death going unnoticed by the people around her, never making something of herself …

It looked very much like hell.

 

Chapter Two (Emily2)

She was in hell.

Emily cowered in the nexus point, feeling raw power battering against her skull. The magic surrounding her was so strong it was hard to think clearly, let alone draw on it to maintain the bubble keeping her and Frieda alive. The spells she’d cast to take control of the artificial nexus point should have been allowed to develop naturally, a process that she knew could take a year or more, but she’d been forced to accelerate their development even at great risk to herself. They were trapped in a single moment of time, a bubble caught within a raging torrent of sheer power that could sweep them away in a heartbeat, if she lost her grip. The slightest mistake could see them both killed, vaporised so completely nothing would be left of them. They were doomed.

She shuddered as she felt the giant presence pervading the multiverse, a cold feeling of being watched as an unblinking gaze swept over her and vanished in the distance. Master Wolfe was big now, an entity so huge that she could barely comprehend the footprints he left in his wake. It was difficult to force what she was seeing, or sensing, into something she could understand; difficult, almost impossible, to get any real sense of what he’d become. She understood magic and technology, she was hardly unaware of the basics of each even if they reached levels she couldn’t even begin to understand, but this was something different. It felt as if even putting hard numbers on his abilities was a mistake, because it would blind her to the truth. He was just too big to be easily stopped.

Her mind expanded, a child peeking into a violent adult world. Timelines spun around her, above her and below her, each one slowly falling to a mad god. She could feel his presence sweeping through the multiverse, taking control of each and every timeline one by one; she saw, now, just what he’d become. He wasn’t just powerful, he was the determinant of reality itself. His gaze locked reality into place, the quantum observer effect made manifest. He defined reality and ended randomness simply by looking, and he was always looking. And … she shuddered, helplessly, as she sensed the growing madness pervading the universe. It was … it was so great that even looking at it made her fear contamination. She was …

A shadow fell across the bubble. Emily froze, holding herself as still as she dared. The slightest motion might attract attention, might draw his gaze to her. She thought they were relatively safe, within the bubble, but that wouldn’t last. Master Wolfe had been a genius even before he’d started absolving other minds into his multiplicity and now he was a god, with all the insight of an omniscient being. He could work out how to do anything … no. It was far worse than that. He could determine that two plus two made five, if he wished, and make it so. The entire universe would bend to his will. In a sense, it would always be so.

The shadow retreated, the awareness moving away. Emily let out a breath she hadn’t realised she'd been holding. How long had it been, since everything had come apart at the seams? An hour? A day? A month? A year? She didn’t know. The magic around her was just too strong to say much of anything for sure, when reality itself was astonishingly – and terrifyingly – flexible. She knew spells that could turn a man into a toad, a woman into a bird … and yet such horrors were little more than child’s play, compared to the power Master Wolfe had unleashed. He could not only change anything he liked, he could make it always be so. He was a cosmic editor editing the entire universe, the world shifting around him with every change. He was a mad god.

“Emily?”

Emily opened her eyes, unsure when she’d closed them. Frieda was kneeling in front of her, one hand resting on Emily’s shoulder. She looked pale and wan, her face streaked with sweat; her eyes tired and wary and yet tinged with a touching faith in Emily herself. Emily knew it was misplaced. The entire multiverse was at risk and she didn’t even know where to begin fixing it, if indeed she could. Everything she’d faced before was tiny, almost immaterial, compared to the nightmare surrounding her. The bubble felt very flimsy indeed.

Her stomach growled. It had been hours since she’d eaten anything and that meant …

“I …” She swallowed and started again. “I don’t know what to do.”

Frieda leaned back, her eyes grim. “What is he doing?”

Emily looked past her, towards the edge of the bubble. The edge looked like a soap bubble … and beyond, the maelstrom raged against the dying of the light. It was hard to force herself to see anything beyond the sheer vastness surrounding them, but … she could see the timelines, see the worlds changing, see the cancer threatening the entire multiverse. Raging red eyes burned through the darkness, a howling laughter battering against her mind … she forced herself to look away, blinking tears from her eyes as she glanced down. The hammering receded slightly … he wasn’t trying to attack her, he realised numbly, but it hardly mattered. A man who stood on an ant might not mean to kill the poor creature, yet it made no difference to the ant. Master Wolfe could swat her effortlessly, kill her without ever knowing what he’d done.

An ant can be lethal, if it bites someone in precisely the right spot, she told herself. And right now that’s what we’re going to have to do.

“He’s remaking everything,” Emily said. “I think …”

She gritted her teeth. She wanted Caleb. She needed Caleb. But Caleb was gone, lost in the dead world … so was her other self, if her bilocated form had survived the holocaust. She’d had no time to strengthen the mental link between them, no time to do anything but improvise desperately. She mourned the loss of her lover, even as she tried to tell herself he might still be alive. It was … she shuddered, helplessly. She didn’t have time to worry about him now. She hated herself for even thinking it. And yet it was true.

Frieda squeezed her hand. “You always said to break down a problem into manageable chunks and go on from there,” she said, lightly. “You could do that here too.”

Emily smiled, humourlessly. How did one break down a god? Master Wolfe had become omnipotent, omnipresent and omniscient. He was … except he wasn’t. He would have eradicated them both if he’d been able to see them, which suggested – very strongly – he couldn’t. The thought gave her a flicker of hope. She might not be able to best a true god, but if he was a creature of magic … hell, that was exactly what the mimic-form was. A structure of spellware, millions upon millions of spell components working together … he might have expanded his mind, yet he was still a creature of magic. And she was inside him. Her lips quirked at the thought. He could no more see them than she could see the bacteria in her stomach.

“You might be right,” she said. The magic thrummed around her as she forced herself to stand. “f we can …”

She reached out gingerly with her mind, recoiling slightly as raw power sputtered against her shields. She’d heard a joke once about a mechanic who’d complained that he did the exact same job as a surgeon, yet was paid much – much – less. The surgeon had pointed out that the mechanic got to turn off the engine before he went to work, while the surgeon had to operate on a living body. She had the same problem, in spades. She had to adapt the spellware she’d created to tame the nexus point, without cancelling or weakening the structure to the point it collapsed. There was so much power around them that the slightest mistake could get them both killed … she gritted her teeth as she drew a little power into the bubble, then shaped it into something they could eat. The effort drained her. Void had taught her how to conjure items from raw magic, but even he had never done it lightly. It wasn’t worth the effort, he’d pointed out. But there was no other source of food.

Emily sat down, hard. The bubble pulsed underneath her. “Eat,” she said. The food looked about as appetising as a plate of stovies, and they’d have to eat with their hands, but it was better than nothing. “And then we’ll find a way to fight back.”

Frieda ate her share, without complaint. She’d eaten worse. Emily frowned, inwardly, as she forced herself to eat as much as she could. The taste was funny, wrong in a manner she couldn’t quite put into words … she told herself to be grateful she could feed them, at least for a few days. If they starved to death in the bubble … she put the thought aside and finished the bowl, then leaned back and reached out with her mind once again. Master Wolfe might be immensely powerful, she told herself firmly, but he wasn’t a real god. He wasn’t beyond her. He could be beaten.

Sure, a little voice whispered at the back of her mind. Keep telling yourself that.

She dismissed it with an effort as she started to study the way he absorbed and manipulated power, noting how his mind defined reality in a manner that reminded her of a child playing with building blocks. A Lego city, one that was both composed of plastic toys and living people … a world that was both independent and yet utterly dependent on the defining mind. It was just too big to be easily grasped, so she tried to take Frieda’s advice and break the problem down into manageable sections. It was still hard to find a way to bring him down. She’d once heard that whales didn’t die of cancer because they were just too large … she had no idea if that was actually true, she’d never looked into it, but it was certainly true of Master Wolfe. She could take a piece of spellware apart with a virus, if she wished, yet … his spell-structure was just too large to be easily turned against him. She wasn’t sure what would happen if she tried …

The bubble flickered. She closed her eyes, cursing under her breath as she realised her mistake. The bubble had been force-grown by her will, the spells forced into their final shape by her desperation … and now she was trapped, the bubble held in place only by her living will. The moment she tried to leave, the bubble would evaporate around her … there was just no way out. She couldn’t bilocate herself a second time, nor could she hand control to Frieda … not that she would even if it were possible. She’d imprisoned herself.

“Emily?” Frieda was beside her. “What’s wrong?”

“I think I made a mistake,” Emily said. She’d never faced anything like it, not even during the final battle against Void. There had never been a sense she couldn’t run … she felt like Atlas, trapped under the weight of the world. Shrugging wasn’t an option. It would get them both killed. “I may have trapped us both here.”

“Better that than death,” Frieda pointed out.

I might be able to get you out, Emily told herself. Opening a portal wouldn’t be difficult … except aiming it at the right universe would be tricky. Or would it? Frieda was a creature of her universe and it wouldn’t be hard to use her interdimensional signature to point her in the right direction. Void had done something like it, years ago. But I’ll remain trapped here forever.

Despair threatened to wash over her. Their universe was gone or, worse, the plaything of a mad god. She was trapped, unable to escape … her eyes narrowed suddenly as a thought crossed her mind. Master Wolfe had tried to convince her to join him – in hindsight, she should have wondered why he kept raising odd topics of conversation – and it was possible, just possible, that her other self was still alive. A prisoner, or perhaps part of his multiplicity … if she could make contact, she could use it as a way into the spell-structure. If … she closed her eyes again, reaching out as gingerly as she could. Bilocation was always dangerous, the two bilocated forms trying to merge back together … they were, of course, the same person. If she linked minds with her other self …

We’re entangled together, she told herself. They should be able to make mental contact at any distance, even though it was something she’d been taught to avoid. It risked madness, she’d been cautioned, or worse. If we make mental contact, if she’s already outside the bubble … might it draw me to her, or her to me?

She blinked in surprise as a torrent of thoughts and feelings ran through her. Her other self was alive. Her other self was … memories battered against her mind, each one uniquely hers and yet strange and unfamiliar. It was … a frisson of pure horror shot through her as she saw her old world, her old home, the world she’d been yanked from years ago. She had never wanted to return, never wanted to give up magic and friends and a life of significance; she’d carefully refrained from experimenting with the interdimensional spells Void had devised, for fear she’d find herself back home. No. It wasn’t home. It had never been home. And she didn’t miss anyone there, not even her mother. The woman had never been a true mother to her.

Her eyes narrowed as she studied the world surrounding her other self. It was disturbingly real and yet, there was something about it that reminded her of a funhouse mirror. Real enough, she was sure, but also distorted to the point of being very different. The world curved around her other self, a pocket dimension shaped by her mind … Emily sucked in her breath as she realised it was a very personal hell. It might be an exaggerated caricature of reality, but … to her other self it was reality. It was a nightmare devised for her and her alone.

You always believed hell was more than just fire and brimstone, she reminded herself. She had no idea where she’d picked that up, not when she’d never been particularly religious … perhaps it had been a sense that fire pits and enormous devils breaking wind night and day showed a certain lack of imagination. Why burn forever when you can be hit with something far more personal?

She tried to reach out and scowled, grimly, as she realised it was impossible. Her other self had accepted the reality around her, believing she had no way home … no. It was worse. Everything that had happened over the past seven years had been erased, leaving nothing behind. She had lost everything and she didn’t even know it! Emily knew she’d hate to go back to Earth – the real Earth – but the skills she’d picked up over the last few years would serve her well if she did/ Her other self didn’t even have them …

Fuck, she thought, numbly. What do we do now?

She gritted her teeth. Frieda was counting on her. Caleb and Cat and Alassa and everyone else she’d known and loved were counting on her … if they were still alive. They had to be … she hoped that was true, even as she feared the worst. Master Wolfe was doing immense damage to the multiverse simply by existing, the waves upon waves of raw power battering the fabric of reality itself. She needed to fix the problem and she had no idea where to begin. No. That wasn’t quite true. An idea was starting to form in her mind. It was going to be risky, but …

“Get some sleep,” she told Frieda. “You’ll need to be rested for what is to come.”

“I’ll try,” Frieda said. The faith in her words was touching. Emily felt her heart melt even as she hoped to hell it wasn’t misplaced. “Are you …?”

“I’ll try and get some sleep shortly,” Emily lied. She’d have to make sure the bubble would remain intact, once she went to sleep. If not … she’d been tired before, time and time again, but this time there were no potions to help her remain alert. She would start making mistakes long before her body gave out, plunging her into a sleep from which she might never awaken. “I just need to work out how to … how to deal with this.”

She tossed Frieda her cloak, then leaned back as the younger girl lay down. Her mind reached out once again, studying the sheets of raw power battering the universe itself. She’d known there were cracks in the multiverse, places where someone could fall through a gap and find themselves in another universe, and yet … she’d never realised just how many threads there were, catacombs under the multiverse that could be used to step from universe to universe. She felt like a mouse, peeking through the mouse hole … she told herself, firmly, that mice could be dangerous too. If she had time to study how everything worked, if she found a way to build a weapon, she might be able to turn the tables. She might be able to save everything one final time.

The shadow brushed over her again, a reminder time wasn’t on her side. If she didn’t act fast …

Don’t rush it, she told herself, sharply. You’ll only get one shot at this.

 

Chapter Three (Emily1)

The smell hit her as soon as she opened the door.

Emily stopped, grimacing as the stench wafted against her nostrils. Her mother had been drinking again, drinking herself silly. God alone knew how long she’d been drinking … Emily gritted her teeth as she closed the door behind her, then forced herself to step into the living room. Her mother was resting on the couch, a bottle of booze in her hand and several empties lying on the floor beneath her feet. One was clearly broken … Emily cursed under her breath as she saw the shattered glass, all too aware of just who would have to clear up the mess. It wasn’t as if the broken bottle could be returned either. The glass would have to be tossed and …

“Oh,” her mother said. Her tone lacked all feeling. She was neither happy nor upset to see her daughter. “It’s you.”

Emily felt her fists clench helplessly. Her mother had done as little as possible to take care of her from the very first day, or at least the first she remembered. She’d had to learn to cook the basics just to ensure she was fed, and she was painfully aware she was dangerously thin. A diet of cheap processed food wasn’t good for anyone. It was a minor miracle her mother had managed to clothe her back then, although now she had to purchase her own clothes from cheap shops and pray to a God who had abandoned her long ago that she found something she could actually wear. If she had money of her own …

She didn’t know her father. She feared she never would. And yet … how could he be worse than this?

Her mother put the bottle to her lips and took a long swig. “Go away.”

Emily scowled, unwilling to look and yet unable to look away. Destiny Sanderson was almost a caricature of herself, her face fleshed out and her belly bulging in all the wrong places, a ghastly sight made worse by an outfit that was clearly meant for a woman half her age. Her brown hair was matted, her eyes dead and cold even as she stared at her daughter. She’d said, more than once, that giving birth to Emily had ruined her body beyond repair. Emily had seen mothers who had worked to get back in shape after giving birth and she’d made the mistake of pointing it out, the first time. Her mother hadn’t struck her, not then and not ever, but what she’d said had been so ghastly Emily would almost sooner have been hit. Her mother knew just how to hurt her daughter.

She shook her head, allowing her gaze to wander the room. The ashtray was overflowing with the remains of a dozen cigarettes, something else she’d have to clear up. She’d emptied it only yesterday … she gritted her teeth in disgust, wondering – again – why her mother chose to live in such a pigsty. The sofa stank, the armchair was covered with stains, the carpet was beyond all hope of recovery … she glanced up and noticed the dead light bulb, which had failed weeks ago, had still not been replaced. Her stepfather had promised to do it and he hadn’t … she rolled her eyes, somehow unsurprised. Just why he stayed around baffled her. She certainly wouldn’t want to remain close to Destiny, if there was a choice.
Her heart twisted as she hurried into the tiny kitchen. Someone had taken the loaf of bread from the fridge and left it on the sideboard, the plastic left open … she groaned, inwardly, at the realisation the bread was likely stale by now. The jam had been left open too, the dirty knife plunged into the jar and left there … she shuddered as she saw the ants, crawling over the knife and making their way into the jam. That would have to be tossed too, she told herself, as a wave of hopelessness washed over her. A jar that should have lasted for weeks, a jar that had been opened only a day or two ago … wasted. A wave of anger shot through her – her mother could have shut the fucking lid – only to fade before she could scream, let alone find a healthier way to express it. There was no point in arguing. Her mother was too drunk to care.

She heard retching from behind and cursed under her breath, hurrying back into the living room. Her mother was on her feet, staggering in a manner Emily knew meant she was about to be violently sick … Emily caught her hand and pulled her forward, half-dragging her into the toilet and pushing her towards the bowl. Her mother shuddered, practically falling to her knees an instant before she threw up. Emily looked away, trying not to hear as her mother retched again and again. The stench was horrific, the sink of half-digested alcohol and human waste blurring together into a ghastly whole. She knew she’d be cleaning that up too.

“Coffee,” her mother managed. “Now.”

Emily sighed. Coffee? It was too late for coffee. There was no point in arguing. She hurried back into the kitchen to put the kettle on, hoping her mother would have the sense to stay in the bathroom until she’d emptied her stomach. There’d been times when she’d thrown up on the carpet instead … Emily didn’t want to think about it. She put coffee grains in the mug and looked up. The apparition was right in front of her again, staring at her. A vision of an Emily who could never be …

“GO AWAY!” The scream tore itself from her throat. “GO AWAY!”

She caught herself a second later, her legs buckling so violently that she had to catch the counter to steady herself. She was going mad. She had to be. She knew kids who’d been raised by druggies, kids who’d been harmed by the poisonous environment … kids who were slow, or had problems controlling themselves, or anger management issues. Perhaps she was going the same way. How much second-hand smoke had she breathed in, over the years? She didn’t want to know. The thought of ending up like Patty or Sam, sweet teenagers who would never be able to live independently, was terrifying. Sam was her age, or near enough, and yet he had the mental age of a five-year-old. He would never be anything more.

I won’t end up like that, she told herself. I won’t!

She forced herself to stand. The vision was gone. She poured hot water into the coffee, added milk and sugar, then carried it back to her mother. Destiny was sitting on the sofa again, the TV remote clutched firmly in one hand; her eyes were fixed on the television as if she dared not miss a single moment. Emily gave her the coffee – her mother hadn’t heard her scream; of course not – and glanced at the telly. A romantic movie, a predictable plot that was about as realistic as Harry Potter … she had never seen the movie, but she could guess the plot points. A lonely woman finding a handsome man who would always be true to her. It didn’t happen in the real world.

The thought mocked her as she hurried into the bedroom. Everything looked disturbed … her mother had been looking for clothes again, even though few of Emily’s garments could fit her without tearing. They were just too different … she groaned inwardly as she saw her underclothes scattered across the bed, as if her mother couldn’t be bothered to put them back after trying to find one that could fit her. She wished for a lock for her door, just to ensure a little privacy, but her stepfather had forbidden it. Fire safety, he’d said. Emily suspected his motives were a little different. She’d known too many young men who were outraged by the idea of a barrier being erected between them and young women, even if they had no intention of doing anything. Assholes. Would it really hurt them to let people have a little safety and security?

Probably, she thought, as she sat on her bed. They hate the idea of being barred even if they had no intention of crossing the line.

She stared down at herself, her body feeling … weird. She didn’t like her body very much and yet … it felt wrong, as if everything was slightly out of kilter. It wasn’t like puberty, when she’d discovered to her horror that her body was going to bleed every month and if it didn’t it was a sign something was very wrong, but something else. She felt dizzy again, almost feverish. It made no sense. Perhaps she was coming down with something nasty. She hoped not. Her mother’s idea of medical care consisted of throwing painkillers at her daughter and telling her to sleep it off.

You could just lie back and close your eyes, a voice whispered at the back of her head. Just let it all go.

Emily shook her head, staggering to her feet. Why was she so weak? She was too weak to live and too frightened to die … she had nothing to live for, nothing at all. She could just walk out of the apartment and never return, leaving her mother to choke to death on her own vomit … no one would care. Her body felt grimy as she stumbled back to the kitchen, a reminder she needed to shower before her stepfather got home. The way he looked at her … her skin crawled. She didn’t want to think about it.

There’s nowhere to go, the voice whispered. You’re trapped. Forever.

She closed her eyes for a long moment. There was no way out. Nothing to live for … nothing at all. And yet, she couldn’t let it all end. She couldn’t!

“Fuck,” she muttered. “Fuck it!”

“Charming,” a new voice said. “Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”

Emily jumped, spinning around so rapidly she nearly fell over. Her stepfather was leaning against the kitchen door, his eyes rising from her rear to her face … she felt a hot flash of panic as she realised she hadn’t heard him coming home, let alone entering the chamber. She was trapped, with no way out … she stared at him, suddenly all too aware he was bigger and stronger than herself. He was hardly the biggest man she’d seen – he was short and weaselly, with a face that made him look untrustworthy – but he was still strong enough to hurt her. His eyes lingered on her breasts, or what little could be seen, before looking up at her.

A wave of hatred and helplessness washed through her, a bitter surge of utter resentment and loathing. He had never tried to be a father to her, never treated her as anything more than an unwanted appendage. She’d caught him leering at her time and time again, as she grew into a young adult, and … her mother hadn’t cared. God alone knew why. It was a mother’s duty to look after her child … not that her mother cared. She’d crawled into a bottle long ago and stayed there.

“You’re looking good,” he said, stepping closer. She could smell his aftershave. She knew teenage boys who drenched themselves with aftershave, on the theory that it drew girls to them like moths to flame, but none of those smells had ever repelled her as much as her stepfather’s more subtle brand. It was a stench she associated with him and him alone. “You’re a pretty young thing, aren’t you?”

Emily flinched. Her hand wanted to reach for a knife, to cut him open … there was nothing within reach. No weapon, no way out … he was inching closer, backing her against the counter. She wanted to scream for her mother, but she’d probably already passed out. Her stepfather was right on top of her, invading her personal space … her entire body felt heavy and wrong, unable to move as he wrapped his arms around her and mashed his lips against hers. It was repulsive and …

She shoved him back, hard. He stumbled backwards, his eyes going wide with shock. Emily was equally shocked. She had no illusions about her lack of physical strength, not after years of being amongst the last to be picked for games in gym and the first to be put out. Her stepfather might be weedy compared to her gym teacher, a sadist in plimsolls, but he was still strong enough to put her in her place. Except … her body felt odd, as if nothing was quite where it was supposed to be. Everything was just wrong.

“You ungrateful brat,” her stepfather snarled. The sheer entitlement in his voice shocked her beyond words, even as his face twisted into a nightmarish parody of itself. “I give you everything and this is how you repay me?”

Emily blinked. Had he been grooming her? She’d been a little girl when her stepfather had entered her life and he’d never touched her, but … he’d known she'd grow up. Of course he had … had he been waiting all along, waiting for the right moment to … her stomach heaved painfully, dry-retching so violently she almost doubled over in shock. The thought was just appalling. She would sooner let Chad do anything he liked to her than let her stepfather give her a kiss. It struck her, a moment too late, that he’d stolen her first kiss …

Her stepfather marched towards her, fist raised. Emily barely had a second to react before he threw a punch at her face … instincts she hadn’t known she had took over, grabbing his wrist to deflect the blow and then twisting it hard enough to make him scream. She gritted her teeth as he yanked his arm back, then tried to hit her with the other one. She stepped into the blow and brought her knee up sharply, slamming it right into his groin. He screamed in agony. Emily stepped back as he doubled over, letting him hit the floor. Her thoughts were a confused mess, her feelings running in circles. The sheer satisfaction of knocking him down was matched by fear of what he’d do when he got up again, no matter how badly she’d hurt him. She wasn’t even sure how she’d hurt him. She didn’t know how to fight and yet she’d fought.

Her hands shook as she turned away and hurried out into the living room. Her mother was sitting on the sofa like Jabba the Hutt, her eyes firmly fixed on the television screen. Emily couldn’t understand how she hadn’t heard the racket … was she truly deaf or was she pretending she couldn’t hear, for whatever reason? Emily didn’t want to think about her mother letting her stepfather have his way with her daughter, and yet … the thought was a nightmarish image that refused to die. Her mother didn’t even look up from the screen as Emily reached for her coat and pulled it on, then hurried outside. She had no idea what her stepfather would do – she had no idea how long it would take for him to recover – but she didn’t want to be there when he managed to stand up again. He’d kill her.

“Fuck,” she muttered, as she ran down the stairs and out onto the streets. There was no pursuit. No one cared enough to run after her. “What the hell do I do now?”

The cold seeped through her second-hand coat, leaving her shivering as she walked down the empty street. The darkness pulsed around her like a living thing, the buildings half-hidden and oddly translucent in the gloom. The air was utterly silent, the noise of cars and wild parties and all the other sounds of the night eerily stilled. Emily felt as if she were half-asleep, as if she were dreaming … perhaps she was. She pinched herself, hard, and winced at the pain. It was real.

She slowed as she reached the park, as empty as the rest of the world, and sat on a bench. There was nowhere to go and yet she couldn’t go home. Her stepfather would kill her. She wasn’t sure how she’d bested him and she had no idea if she could do it again. She was scared of him and yet she wasn’t, as if she’d faced worst things and beaten them … she knew she hadn’t and yet she had. It was absurd and yet … she sucked in her breath, running her fingers down her arm. It was somehow both thin and bony and yet strong and healthy. It just made no sense. The world made no sense.

How did you learn how to fight like that?

The question echoed in her mind. She hadn’t. There had been no secret martial arts training in her life. She had no military father who had taught her his ways, no grand destiny as a vampire slayer or something, anything, that came with skills she didn’t have to practice … the only destiny in her life was her mother, a drunkard who cared nothing for her only child. There was no way she should have been able to do what she’d done, and yet she had. It made no sense. It was …

She looked up. The apparition was right in front of her, perfectly visible even in the gloom. And it was smiling.

Figure it out, Emily told herself. Her ghostly doppelganger looked encouraging. Start from first principles and figure out what to do.

She wasn’t sure where to begin. But for the first time in longer than she could remember she felt a little hope.

She just didn’t know why.

 

Chapter Four (Emily2)

The more Emily studied the growing disaster, the cancer spreading through the multiverse, the more she feared the worst.

It was difficult to wrap her head around the sheer scale of the disaster. She was staring at timelines, threads running through the multiverse, that looked tiny to her and yet were near-infinite realms in their own right. Master Wolfe was destroying them one by one, entire timelines of billions upon billions disintegrating under his gaze; an endless series of atrocities that made all previous use of the word look insignificant. The worst of it, she thought, was that Master Wolfe didn’t seem to know what he was doing, or even intend to do it. He was a gardener who covered his entire garden in concrete, then wondered why his plants weren’t growing.

There’s no room for evolution, she thought. Master Wolfe was eradicating randomness, his gaze freezing timelines and causing them to break up and shatter … her lips twisted, bitterly, as she realised he’d solved the ridden of Schrödinger’s cat by collapsing the quantum waveforms that depended on randomness to exist. The cat was no longer caught between life and death, its mere existence resting on a knife edge, when the box was under constant observation. And everything is dying under his gaze.

She cursed under her breath, trying to think. They were resting inside the body of a mad god, her bubble battered constantly by the waves of raw power running through an infinite spell structure, and they were running out of time. She thought he couldn’t see them, couldn’t get to them, but … it was hard to be sure. Her comprehension was so limited that he could come at her from a completely unexpected direction, warping the multiverse around her to isolate her bubble and then blink it out of existence. Her metaphors imposed a certain degree of order on the universe, but … in a sense, they were the universe. But they were also a very limited way of looking at the world. It was the difference between playing a computer game and real life. Something that worked in the context of the game simply didn’t work in the real world.

Frieda shifted, on the verge of wakefulness. Emily’s heart went out to her. She deserved better than to be trapped in the bubble, watching helplessly as the entire multiverse died around them. They all did. Caleb was gone … she tried to tell herself that he wasn’t gone, that he was trapped like her other self, but she hadn’t been able to find him. They should have gotten married on the spot, she told herself, and embraced a martial bond that would have linked them together. It would have saved her now. But …

The shadow swept over them again, a wave of sheer presence so overwhelming that she cringed and cowered, bracing herself for a blow that would eradicate them before she even knew she was under attack. Nothing happened. The shadow receded, the monstrous gaze sweeping away across the multiverse … a searchlight that might or might not be looking for them. She didn’t know, not for sure. The entity Master Wolfe had become was too big for her to grasp the sheer scale … not that it mattered. A man out for a walk might not mean to step on an ant and kill it, but it wouldn’t make any difference to the ant. It would be dead either way.

Frieda opened her eyes. “It wasn’t a dream.”

“I’m afraid not,” Emily said. She wished she could convince herself it was a dream – or a nightmare. But she knew better. “I think I have half a plan.”

Frieda smiled, rather wanly. “Only half a plan?”

“We might have to start making it up as we go along,” Emily said. Oddly, given the strange intersection of realities, making it up might work better than trying to lay down a plan before they started. “It depends on how things work.”

She scowled as she felt raw power sparking against the bubble. It was galling to be surrounded by a near-infinity of power, yet be barely able to make any use of it. She was a sailor on a life raft, dying of thirst even though he was floating in the middle of a vast ocean. The power around her wasn’t poisonous, but there was so much of it that trying to make use of the power was like flying a hang glider through a hurricane. She had to focus to draw even a little power into her spells, knowing that the slightest mistake would sweep them away into nothingness. It had taken her hours to gather enough power to go to work and she was uncomfortably aware that she would only get one chance. They might as well start mining the sun. Maybe a spaceship could reach the star, maybe it could take a sample from the corona, but it was far more likely the spacecraft and crew would evaporate far before they reached their destination.

“Go on.” Frieda sat upright, putting on an attentive expression that didn’t mask her fear. The worst had happened and it was over, except it would never be over. The roaring howls pervading the multiverse around them was a grim reminder it would never end. “What do you want me to do?”

“I can’t leave the bubble,” Emily said. “The moment I try, the bubble collapses and we die.”

“Right.” Frieda refrained from pointing out Emily had told her that already. “But I can leave?”

“Yeah.” Emily forced herself to think. Frieda was very far from stupid, and she’d had a very good education, but she knew nothing about quantum theory or the uncertainty principle. It had never been part of her education. Emily’s hadn’t been much better. Half of what she thought she knew came from science-fiction and she was painfully aware far too many science-fiction writers had simply made it up. “I can open a portal for you and send you after my other self …”

She took a breath, trying to think of a way to explain it. “Imagine there’s a cat in a box. You can’t see the cat, but you know it’s there. The cat is alive or dead; you don’t know which until you open the box. As long as you don’t look, the cat is trapped between life and dead.”

Frieda frowned. “That makes no sense.”

Emily was tempted to agree. On one hand, the cat’s objective reality was already set in stone; on the other, as long as she didn’t look she wouldn’t know what objective reality actually was. If a tree fell in a forest, with no one around to hear it, would it make a sound? Perhaps it would, but how could anyone be sure? They weren’t there. She had a sudden vision of hundreds upon hundreds of versions of conflicting reality, contrasting and clashing depending on who was watching … it was hard to wrap her head around it. And Frieda, who was pragmatic to a fault, would find it even harder.

“It works, I think,” Emily said. “The point is that I can look at you and my other self. As long as I am looking, he can’t simply blink you out of existence by denying your existence. Just as you looking inside the box determines the cat’s exact state, my gaze determines your existence and keeps you in place.”

Frieda looked doubtful. “Him denying my existence doesn’t mean I don’t exist.”

“It does here,” Emily said. She’d met far too many people with deluded views of their own importance, and thought that as long as they refused to acknowledge reality they would never have to deal with it, but in this case … Master Wolfe was the determinant of reality. He could tell himself that anyone within the timelines and the threadlines running through the multiverse simply didn’t exist and they wouldn’t. “But as long as I keep my eye on you, you should be immune to his power.”

“And what’s to stop him dealing with you?”

Emily hesitated. “Right now, we’re inside him,” she said. She tapped her chest. “Imagine there’s someone inside your heart. You might be able to feel his presence” – she had no idea if someone could and she didn’t want to find out the hard way – “but you couldn’t get to him without cutting your skin and tearing your way into your own heart. You’d kill yourself in the process.”

Probably, she added, mentally. From Master Wolfe’s point of view, getting rid of her and her bubble might be no harder than using a pair of tweezers to dig out a splinter. Unpleasant and painful to be sure, but hardly fatal. I may need to find somewhere else to hide.

“I hope you’re right,” Frieda said. “What do you want me to do once I’m with your other self?”

“She’s trapped in a bubble of her own,” Emily said. It was a prison, a private hell shaped by her mind. A chill ran through her. And then she woke up and it was all a dream. She’d had nightmares about that, over the first few months she’d spent at Whitehall. Was she having a dream? Was she trapped in a coma? Would she be awakened to confront, once again, the realities of life with a drunkard of a mother, a creepy stepfather and an enormous medical bill? “You break her out, get her back into the threadlines between universes. And then we can proceed from there.”

And hope that between us we can come up with a better plan, she added. The link between her and her other self could be used to channel power, which meant … they might be able to find a way to fight back. She had half an idea, true, but it rather depended on being outside the bubble. Or having someone on the outside who could do the working for her. If we can get it to work …

“Got it,” Frieda said. She stood, brushing down her outfit. “How long do we have?”

Emily didn’t know. Nexus points existed outside time and space – and inside, all times were one. They could be used for time travel because they touched all times simultaneously, something she’d done twice in her life, but navigation was extremely difficult without a great deal of prior preparation. The unique nexus point Master Wolfe had created might just be usable for time travel, yet … it was impossible to tell if putting so much stress on the nexus point was wise. They could be snuffed out … and if she accidentally killed this nexus point she’d likely kill herself at the same time.

“I suggest you hurry,” Emily said. They were relatively safe from entropy inside the bubble, she thought, but that would change the moment they started interacting with the outside universe. “Get her into the threadlines and then … we’ll work from there.”

“Got it,” Frieda said, again. “Is there anything else I need to know?”

Emily hesitated. “The bubble you’re entering looks like a world,” she said. “It isn’t. It isn’t bound by the regular laws of time and space. Or magic. You might not be able to use magic there” – her other self didn’t recall magic, which meant she probably hadn’t tried – “and reality itself is mutable. And …”

She swallowed. “It’s shaped by my – her – mind, a nightmare crafted for me personally. What you’ll see … don’t judge her too harshly.”

“That sounds bad,” Frieda said.

Emily nodded, feeling her cheeks flush. Frieda’s childhood had been far worse than hers. It was selfish to suggest otherwise, or that Frieda would judge her for her upbringing. And yet, she’d met Emily well after she’d entered the Nameless World, after she’d had two years of magical education under her belt. The Emily trapped within the bubble wasn’t that Emily. She wasn’t even the girl Shadye had kidnapped from one world and dropped into another. She was … Emily swallowed, again. If the bubble was truly shaped by her nightmares, it could be a great deal worse than anything that had actually happened.

“It is,” she confirmed. Shame boiled through her, all the worse for knowing Frieda had been through an utter nightmare. “She doesn’t know anything about magic. Or us. Or anything.”

“I’ll take care of her,” Frieda said. “You took care of me.”

Emily smiled, rather wanly. “You’re a good friend,” she said. “I …”

It struck her, suddenly, that Frieda might be the only friend she had left. Master Wolfe could have destroyed their home universe by now. Alassa and Jade and Imaiqah and Adam and Lilith and everyone else, every friend or enemy she’d made over the last eight years, could be trapped in their own private hells … or dead. Or never existed at all. She pushed the thought aside as hard as she could. If she let herself think about it too much, she’d never be able to fix it.

She blinked away tears. “You want to be my bridesmaid?”

Frieda smiled. “It’s a poor time to ask, isn’t it?”

Emily had to smile, even as her heart skipped a beat. If Caleb no longer existed, were they still engaged? She shut that thought down too. She had to believe otherwise.

“I guess so.” Emily shrugged. “But will you?”

“If you’ll have me,” Frieda said. She winked. “But won’t they be fighting duels over who gets to be your bridesmaid?”

“Probably.” Emily tried not to wince. Alassa had warned her that their wedding was going to be the event of the season. Everyone would expect an invite. “But at least no one can deny I have the right to choose you.”

“Bet they will,” Frieda said. She took a breath, then stood upright. “Are you ready?”

Emily smiled, rather wanly. “Give me a moment.”

She stood, taking a moment to compose herself before giving her friend a hug. Frieda had filled out a lot over the past six years, after going to a school that served proper meals and provided proper medical care, but she was still thin and bony. Frieda returned the hug, then stepped back. It was time.

Emily took the blade from her sleeve and cut herself gingerly, wiping the blood with a handkerchief before passing it to Frieda. Frieda nodded as she took the handkerchief and tucked it away in her pocket, a flicker of awe and respect clearly visible in her eyes. Giving someone a sample of your blood was the ultimate gesture of trust, clear proof that you trusted them completely. More than completely. In the wrong hands, a blood sample could be used to break down anyone’s mental defences, leaving them helpless; they could be made to say or do or believe anything. It was difficult beyond words to even recognise you were being attacked through your blood, let alone do something about it. It was like being attacked by your own mind.

“It’ll let you find her, and let me channel power through to you,” Emily said, sitting down. “Good luck.”

She started the spell gingerly, gritting her teeth as raw power washed through her. It felt as if she were playing games with live wires, the slightest mistake likely to shock her – or worse. It was normally challenging to gather enough magic to open a portal, but now … it was harder to limit the flow as the magic roared through her spellware, harder to ensure she didn’t accidentally overpower the spell. It was the kind of problem, she reflected grimly, that she would have loved to have a few months ago. Now … it was a headache she wasn’t prepared to face. The portal needed to be opened, true, but it also had to be perfectly aligned with the bubble. If it wasn’t …

The air twisted in front of them, a shimmering column of light rapidly coalescing into a square of light that wasn’t light. It wasn’t a square either … Emily knew, from experience, that it was always look the same no matter which direction she was looking from. It was …

“Good luck,” she said, again. Tears prickled in her eyes. She wiped them away angrily. “I’ll see you soon.”

Or one of me will, her thoughts added, silently. If this version of her died, the other would go on … perhaps. It had been painful enough to lose one of her bilocated forms and that had been before a mad god had started tearing reality apart. She had no idea what would happen if she died now. The two of me may never be able to integrate again.

Frieda hesitated, then stepped through the portal. Emily felt the universe jerk and swore under her breath as the portal snapped out of existence, realising she might have given Master Wolfe a shock. If he hadn’t known that she existed, and where she was, he might well know now. Even if he didn’t, he knew something was wrong …

She shook her head, then concentrated on watching her other self. As long as she kept her eye on them, they should be safe … relatively so. Master Wolfe could easily find other ways to deal with them. Emily had no trouble coming up with a handful and she dared not assuming he was any less capable. He’d been a multiplicity even before he’d become a god. He could not be underestimated.

Don’t think of him as a god, she told herself, sharply. Think of him as an immensely powerful being instead, powerful but not invincible. You can win.

She shivered. Master Wolfe might not be omnipotent, not yet, but he was so powerful it hardly mattered. Nothing about him was going to be easy, and if her plan failed …

No, she told herself. Don’t think like that. Not here.

Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to wait.

 

Chapter Five (Emily1)

Emily walked for hours, her feet wandering seemingly at random, before looking up and finding herself in front of her apartment. They’d carried her back home … a wave of despair washed over her, a wave of something she didn’t want to look at too closely … a flash of horror ran through her as she realised she’d left her mother alone with her stepfather. The man had been hurt by someone he’d thought he could push around at will and that meant … she swallowed hard, torn between fear and an unwillingness to leave her mother at the mercy of a merciless man. If she went back upstairs … she found her legs taking her through the door and up the stairs, her depression too strong to resist. She would face what was at the top because there was no way to escape. There was nowhere to go, no one willing to help …

She pushed the door open and stepped inside. Her mother was seated on the coach, eyes glued to the TV. The newsreader was babbling loudly, a liturgy of violence and hate and bigotry that blurred into a tidal wave of darkness, threatening to overwhelm the light. Emily glanced into the kitchen and saw nothing. There was no sign of a struggle, no sign of anyone lying dead on the floor or … perhaps he’d called himself an ambulance and gone to hospital or perhaps he was in the master bedroom, trying to recover from the beating she’d given him. She held her breath as she glanced into the bedroom, but saw nothing. The room was as cold and silent as the grave.

The TV was still babbling. The President was in trouble. Again. Emily glanced at the screen and froze as she saw a skeletal face, right out of nightmares, with glowing red eyes that seemed to peer into her very soul. She’d never been a fan of the President and yet she was fairly sure he didn’t look like that … she blinked, then reached for the TV remote and turned it off. The ghastly face vanished. She felt a flicker of relief, mingled with fear. What was wrong with her?

What was wrong with the world?

“Turn it on,” her mother ordered. “Now.”

Emily shook her head. “We need to talk.”

“Turn it on,” her mother repeated.

“No,” Emily said. She spoke with a confidence that seemed to come out of nowhere. “Your husband just tried to rape me.”

Her mother’s face flushed with anger. “Liar!”

Emily gritted her teeth. “I am not lying,” she snapped. She knew there were far too many people who would do everything in their power to avoid recognising an unfortunate reality, such as the simple fact they were married to a rapist, but her mother … was supposed to be her mother. “He tried to rape me.”

“It’s always the same, isn’t it?” Her mother glowered at her. “A pretty girl draws a man and then cries rape …”

“I don’t believe this,” Emily snapped, although she did. She’d seen it before. Women blamed for their own rape, children blamed for their own abuse. “You …”

Anger burned through her, burning through the haze in her mind. “Your partner just tried to rape me,” she added. “He tried to cheat on you! With me!”

She gritted her teeth. “You don’t have to be scared of him. We could go to the police together …”

Her mother reached for the TV remote and turned it back on, flicking through the channels until she found a romantic comedy. Emily stared down at her, rage boiling through her mind. Her mother was not a very good mother, but this … despair washed through her as she recalled other men who had been arrested, for far worse crimes, only to be released to take their revenge on those who had reported them. What did it profit a battered wife or abused daughter to report their victimiser, when nothing was done and the monster returned to kill them? Better to crawl into a bottle … Emily felt sick, wondering just how much her mother had tried to hide from over the years. Her stepfather had never tried to rape her before, but God alone knew what else he’d done …

She turned away, heading for the door. She couldn’t help her mother any longer, not if she was unwilling to help herself. It was hard to convince herself she needed to try. Her mother could have taken her away, could have found work elsewhere, but instead … she had left Emily to the mercies of a merciless man. Emily took one last look around the apartment, then hurried back down the stairs. It was broad daylight. It was …

Her mind skipped a beat. It had been night, only a moment ago.

What?

She was going mad. She had to be. The world didn’t change like that … a flash of paranoia shot through her. Had she been drugged? She wouldn’t put it past her stepfather to slip something nasty into her drink. He could have put her to sleep and then done whatever he wanted to her … or worse. She could have lost all sense of time … it looked like mid-morning now, the schoolchildren making their slow way to school and the … she shook her head. Everything was just wrong. It made no sense at all.

The library, she thought, numbly. There’ll be answers there.

The sense of wrongness only grew stronger as she walked down the street. It felt like a funhouse mirror, a warped and twisted reflection of the real world, but the distortion was so minimal that she could hardly convince herself it was there. And yet, it was. Everything was slightly wrong, slightly out of place … it felt as if someone had come into her room, picked everything up and put it back down again. No matter how careful they were, they wouldn’t get it completely right. The world felt the same way. Everything was just wrong.

Her stomach growled as she passed a café, the handful of customers lining up for overpriced coffee and a sandwich they could have made themselves, for a far cheaper price. She had no money now; she’d spent the last of her cash yesterday and she’d never been allowed to open a credit card. There was no way she could buy something … a trio of boys ran out a corner shop, the shopkeeper shouting curses after them in a language she didn’t recognise. Shoplifters, stealing sweets and money and … she watched them go, then resumed her walk. There was nothing to be done about it. A shopkeeper who beat up the boys for stealing would be arrested while his tormentors walked free.

The library loomed up in front of her, already open. Emily stepped through the door, breathing in the familiar smell even though she had no idea what she’d do in the library. Perhaps … if the world was changing, there would be a clue. Or …perhaps she really was going mad. It was … she took a bunch of newspapers from the stand and carried them over to the nearest table, sitting down to read. The stories blurred together: unemployment on the rise, police brutality on the rise too … it was just the same as always, a nightmarish reminder there was no hope for her. No better prospects, no chance to even make something of herself …

“Emily!”

Emily looked up … and blinked. The young girl in front of her was ... strange. She wore an outfit right out of a steampunk fantasy novel, as if she were cosplaying … but there was something authentic about it, as if it were real. A brown leather jerkin, a belt crammed with odd tools – some understandable, some truly alien – a set of loose trousers that concealed a frame that was almost disturbingly thin … the girl had two long pigtails, framing a round face that would have been cute if her skin hadn’t been so tight around the bone. The mere sight of her sent Emily’s mind into a spin. She wasn’t sure why.

“I …” She swallowed and started again. “Who are you?”

The girl flinched, as if Emily had struck her. “You don’t know my name?”

Emily studied her for a long moment. The face was oddly familiar and yet … she couldn’t place it. Not a girl at school, she was sure, and not someone she knew elsewhere. She had no siblings or cousins, as far as she knew, and her stepfather didn’t have any children of his own … unless he had a whole secret family somewhere else. She didn’t think so, but it wasn’t impossible. She certainly wouldn’t put it past him. And yet, the girl facing her wouldn’t know her if it was so …

“I’m Frieda.” Frieda eyed her sadly, a hint of pity in her eyes. Emily found it worse than contempt. “Can’t you recall me?”

“No,” Emily said. Frieda was a stranger. And yet, there was something about her that was oddly familiar. Emily wasn’t sure what to make of it. She wanted to tell the silly girl to go away and bother some other random stranger, if she was out for money or food or something else, but some instinct told her to listen instead. “I don’t know you.”

“You do,” Frieda said. “You’ve just been made to forget.”

“Impossible,” Emily said. The denial was instant. And yet … she had the oddest sense of something plucking at her mind, reshaping the world around her even as she tried to grasp what was happening. “What are you …?”

“Don’t you remember Whitehall?” Frieda’s voice was low, urgent. “You studied magic there …”

Emily felt a hot flash of anger, rapidly dulled by the depression. God! She’d fantasised about going to Hogwarts from the very first day she’d read Harry Potter. She had told herself her father had been a wizard, that one day the letter would arrive and she’d go off to learn magic … something useful, something she could use to build a life for herself, something – anything – other than a drab grey existence that would end in her death, her passing as unremarked and unremarkable as her life. She wouldn’t have cared if she wound up in Slytherin as long as she had the chance to practice magic. But the letter had never come. Of course not. There was no such thing as magic.

“You’ve been made to forget,” Frieda repeated, “but you were there.”

Emily wanted to believe, really she did. The yeaning for something greater than herself was almost overpowering. Had she been expelled and memory charmed? Had she been …

No. There was no such thing as magic.

“Shut up,” she snapped. The cold rage burning through her made it hard to think clearly. It was a joke. A trick. An unfunny prank committed by someone who had no sense of humour – or at least no sense of human decency. She wanted to believe, and so she didn’t. The easiest lies were the lies the victim wanted to believe and she wanted to believe this one very much. But in the end it was a lie. “It isn’t true.”

“It is,” Frieda said, quietly. She sounded as though Emily was breaking her heart. “Don’t you remember Princess Alassa? Imaiqah? Jade?”

A memory shot through Emily’s mind, so powerful it would have sent her to the ground if she hadn’t already been sitting. A blonde girl with a heart-shaped face, a darker girl with tanned skin and brown hair, a handsome young man with a smile and … Emily had kissed him. She had. Her lips tingled at the thought. And yet, she knew she hadn’t. It was no more real than her Hogwarts fantasies. There was no such thing as a true alpha male, just silly little boys insisting they were alpha and special and …

She gritted her teeth. It wasn’t real.

“They were your friends,” Frieda said. “They still are. But you need to help them.”

Emily scowled. She didn’t have friends. Not really. She had acquaintances at best. She was a socially awkward teenage girl, lacking beauty or money or anything else that would convince people to look at her. She wanted friends, yet … it wasn’t easy to open up to anyone. She wanted … she knew she was being taunted. She wanted friends and a chance to go to magic school and … she didn’t have either. She never would.

“Go away,” she snapped. She stared down at the newspaper, wondering if she could lose herself in the text. Another sad story, another hint of a world dying around her. “Just … go away.”

Frieda sat, facing her. “You need to listen to me.”

“You’re having a laugh,” Emily snarled.

She couldn’t see any cameras, but she was sure they were there. It was just some idiot influencer filming content for her blog, making fun of the desperate teenager who wanted to be something – anything – more than she was. If someone could toss a homeless woman into a lake to watch her try to swim, just for clicks, someone else could pretend to be from Hogwarts. Frieda wasn’t even doing a very good job of it. Her outfit was hardly from Harry Potter. But wearing that on a blog would probably offend the lawsuit gods.

“Emily, you need to listen to me,” Frieda said, with quiet urgency. “You know this isn’t your world.”

Emily hesitated. Something was wrong. She knew it. And yet … she would sooner believe she’d been drugged than … than something, anything, that might imply she was from a finer world. Was she a little cuckoo, taken from one world and hidden in another … she’d read a story about that once. More than once. Perhaps her father was a mighty sorcerer who’d come back for her. Or a king of a far-distant land. Or was Emily just a magical student who’d been expelled? Or … God! She wanted to believe. But she didn’t dare.

“This is a trap, a prison,” Frieda hissed. She reached out to take Emily’s hand; Emily drew back, somehow reluctant to touch the strange girl. “The walls are already closing in. You have to remember.”

“I don’t remember you,” Emily said. She felt as if she’d lost something without quite knowing what, the feeling fading almost as soon as she put a name to it. Tears prickled in her eyes. She wanted to cry and she didn’t know why. “Just … go away.”

Frieda looked offended, offended and dismayed. “You don’t remember me …?”

She slapped Emily hard, her hand moving so quickly Emily barely had a second to realise what was happening before she struck, slapping Emily so hard she nearly went tumbling over backwards. The pain hit her a moment later, making her cry out in agony. She’d never been hit before, not really. Her mother had berated her time and time again, as a child, but she’d never slapped or spanked her daughter. Her stepfather had never struck her. Even at school … she had been taunted, true, but never hit. Girls rarely were. But now …

“You’re mad,” Emily managed. The pain was excruciating. There was blood in her mouth … her blood. She stumbled to her feet, desperate to get away from the madwoman in front of her. She no longer cared if she were being filmed, if she were being set up for the Gullible Prat of the Year Award. She just wanted to get away. “Leave me alone!”

Frieda’s voice followed her as she ran to the door. “You don’t remember me? Or Caleb?”

Emily’s legs buckled. A young man, maybe not classically handsome, but … bright and clever and loving and … the sensation of holding him, loving him, swept through her. He was real. He had to be. He was … if it was a fantasy, to have a man who was both her lover and her intellectual partner, she didn’t want to stay in the real world. She could practically feel him holding her, his eyes alight with love and passion and …

She hit the ground, hard. The shock jarred her, but this time … she could feel the memories slowly coming into focus, a whole other life … she could sense something plucking at her thoughts, trying to overwrite them with memories that no longer made sense. If there was nothing wrong with her, perhaps there was something wrong with the universe; if the universe was changing, and all the tools she used to measure it were changing too, would she even know the universe was changing? But she knew now. The moment she started asking specific questions, the moment she started wondering why it had been the middle of the night one moment and broad daylight the next, the whole scenario started tumbling down.

“Frieda,” she managed. A torrent of memories shot through her, a life she’d lived. Frieda was a friend … practically a little sister. No wonder she’d been so offended when Emily had forgotten her … why had she forgotten? The memories were confused, as if everything had happened at once … she could barely put them into some kind of order. “I …”

Frieda helped her to her feet. “We need to move,” she said. The urgency in her voice caught Emily’s attention. Frieda rarely panicked, but she was panicking now. “I don’t know how much time we have.”

A shudder ran through the air. Emily felt it, something tearing at her mind … at reality itself. A headache … no, something worse. Much worse. The entire universe was screaming in agony. It felt like the end of the world.

She hurried outside and stopped, dead. The sight before her …

It was the end of the world.

 

Chapter Six (Emily1)

Emily had never been so scared before, not in either of her two lives.

The world was shifting, changing, as if it belonged to a mad god. Towering apartment blocks were parting, skyscrapers bending in directions they were never intended to go, shifting to clear the way for something pushing its way into the world. Light hazed and bent around the intruder, framing a growing structure that was taking shape and form without ever quite showing itself. It was something defined by the absence of itself, something outlined rather than present … she had the sudden impression of a giant foot on the beach, shoving aside the sand to leave footprints behind. It was just too big to be grasped easily. It was … she saw a skyscraper bend right over, as if it had been pushed aside by an angry god, yet … the building remained intact. It looked more like a distorted painting than anything real.

There was no noise as the world shifted around her. No panic … the handful of people on the streets seemed utterly unconcerned, going about their business even as their universe stretched and threatened to tear itself asunder. She saw someone walk right into the distortion and vanish … no, reappear on the other side as if she’d never been there at all. They honestly couldn’t see the distortion, she realised, as if it simply didn’t exist. It didn’t, to them. It was so far out of their context that they couldn’t even see it.

“My gods,” Frieda breathed.

Emily barely heard her. The entity was taking on shape and form. Four shimmering translucent legs, a shape that was decidedly lupine and yet disturbingly large, extending in directions her mind wasn’t built to comprehend; the back of her mind, still trying to integrate the memories she’d lost and then recovered, yammered about multidimensional beings that existed on planes so far above the human realm that it was different, if not impossible, for them to interact meaningfully with humanity without breaking them beyond all hope of repair. The world was just too fragile for such creatures … horror washed through her as she realised her mother was about to die, along with the rest of the pocket universe. But it wasn’t her real mother, was it? She was nothing more than a construct shaped out of Emily’s nightmares …

Something tore, above her. Emily staggered, her ears ringing as a silent scream battered her mind. The universe was giving birth to a demon child … she shuddered, feeling warm liquid trickling down her legs, as she saw the giant red eyes burning high overhead. The wolf was a monster, a nightmarish hunter … what she saw, the back of her mind whispered, was her mind’s attempt to force what she saw into something she could comprehend. It wasn’t a real wolf. It was a monster that simply didn’t belong.

Frieda caught her arm. “This way!”

Emily let herself be dragged away, as she felt the world warping and twisting around them. The wolf didn’t seem to be able to see them directly, but she knew – at a very primal level – that it was just a matter of time before it put its foot down on top of them and … she wasn’t sure what would happen, yet she was certain it would be utterly disastrous. The silent howling grew louder as they fled down the street and into an alleyway, the shadows taking on nightmarish shapes in its wake. She didn’t dare look up at the monstrous shape above her, behind her, but she could feel the red eyes burning into her very soul. It was …


“Keep moving,” Frieda snapped. “Don’t let it get its hands on you!”

Paws, Emily thought numbly, although she knew it was silly. The paws were just protrusions of a greater reality, tools a godlike entity might use to manipulate the lesser realms. They were no more paws than a cursor was anything more than something used to interface with a GUI. It certainly had no material reality. This universe is a computer program and that thing intends to take control.

The world kept shifting and bending around them. She sensed, more than saw, the universe stretching behind her, the very fabric of reality itself pulled to breaking point. Half-forgotten memories tore at her mind, reminders of things lurking outside the interdimensional walls … she had the sudden nasty sense that they were scratching at the walls, waiting patiently for a chance to force their way into the world and tear it apart. It had happened before and it would happen again, if the walls fell … she could feel them weakening, the laws of science bending and breaking under the hammering from above. They weren’t being rewritten so much as they were being ruthlessly discarded, raising the spectre of ultimate chaos. It was going to be a nightmare.

A giant paw crashed down, right next to her. Her mind yammered in shock. There had been a building there, a solid wall … no, it had been pushed aside to create room for the entity to grab her. She could feel the jaws behind her, sweeping down … she could feel the raw malevolence, a loathing that would never be satisfied with just killing her. It was going to rip her apart and condemn her soul … instincts she’d forgotten she had took control, levitating her up and away from the snapping jaws. She found herself high in the sky … horror washed through her as she realised she was flying, that she was about to fall … no. It was real. She laughed, despite everything, as the pure joy of magic ran through her. She hadn’t lost it after all.

Frieda flew beside her. “Stay down,” she snapped. “We’re in the open here …”

Emily swallowed hard, sucking in her breath as the true nature of the world around her became clear. It was a pocket dimension, one centred on her … a giant multiversal hamster ball, she thought numbly, a feat of construction none the less staggering for being created by a god. No matter how far they ran, the dimension would always be centred on her; the world around her, the people and the buildings and everything else, created as she passed and fading into nothingness afterwards. It was a very personal prison.

She dropped down as she felt the universe screaming once again. A tear appeared, right in front of her, a gash in the fabric of the world itself. There were things there, things so alien her mind refused to grasp their mere existence. She had the sudden horrific impression of something that laid eggs in human minds, something that waited for the newborn to flower into life before tearing greater holes in reality and ripping the universe apart. It was reaching for her … a sickening sensation battered her mind, as if she were going to throw up in her head, before she managed to turn it away. It was too much. She could barely focus enough to run.

“Keep moving,” Frieda snapped. “Hurry!”

Emily stared at her. “Where do we go?”

“This way!”

Emily hoped to hell Frieda knew what she was doing, because there didn’t seem to be any way out. The entire universe was a prison and … if they fell through one of the gashes, it would be the end. The wolf was above them, seeking them … it was both behind them and in front of them, its presence growing until it dominated the entire world. It was just a matter of time until it found them. She could feel it sniffing the air, searching for them in a manner that had nothing to do with their scent. It was …

They ran down a street, real and yet utterly distorted. The shoppers didn’t seem to care that their world was being torn apart, didn’t seem to notice even as more gashes appeared around them and things boiled into view. She saw people change as the things overcame them, saw a policeman club a little boy to death and a mother strangle her own child; an endless liturgy of horror both cosmic and frighteningly mundane. Others staggered as newborn monsters grew in their brains, exploding outwards to unleash more horror … the street beneath her feet cracked and broke, shattering to reveal more darkness reaching for her. The universe was breaking up … a memory shot through her, a desperate flight from a pocket dimension that was on the verge of snapping out of existence and taking her with it. But here there was nowhere to go.

A paw crashed down again, right behind her. Emily forced herself to run faster, summoning reserves she hadn’t known she had. The wolf howled in victory and came after her … Emily ran right into her stepfather, the impact knocking the wind from her body. Her mind spun in utter confusion. Where the hell had he come from? The rest of the passers-by wore the same face, all slowly turning to face her … the local timeline was breaking too. Magic flared around her, flame exploding out of nowhere and blasting him … he stood unharmed, his face twisting into a leer. The ground below her was breaking too …

Emily heard the wolf behind her, felt a mighty paw coming down like the hammer of God. A demented idea ran through her mind; she stood still as long as she dared, then jumped aside at the very last moment. The paw hit the street and smashed through, smashing right into the space under the pocket universe. The wolf howled in pain, shaking its paw so violently that the shockwaves burst into the real world. Emily staggered, barely holding itself upright as an almighty earthquake shook the pocket dimension like a snow globe. It was a snow globe. She didn’t have to look up to see the red eyes peering down at her.

Frieda caught her eye. “How long will that hold him?”

Emily had no idea. The wolf wouldn’t remain stuck for long, not when it was clear the creature didn’t care about the pocket dimension’s safety. It could do immense damage to the world around it by thrashing around until it tore itself free, even through the things were already swarming the giant paw. Emily wondered if she’d only made matters worse … cracks were already spreading, the remaining shoppers walking into them and falling out of the universe in a manner that chilled her to the bone. It was inhuman …

Her memories drove her onwards, forcing her to look at the wolf. It was big … she staggered back, nearly blinded, as she got an impression of its true form. It was just too big, too incomprehensible … it would always be there, had always been there, in a manner she couldn’t quite comprehend. It was a fixed point of reality, a solid thing in a world that was very fragile indeed. And it’s mere presence was tearing the pocket dimension apart. There was nowhere to run.

“The world is centred on me,” she said, catching Frieda’s hand. “If we can run it out of the ball …”

Frieda shot her an odd glance – half-worried, half-worshipful – as they started to run. Emily hoped to hell she was right. If she was the hamster at the heart of the hamster ball, she should be able to use the walls of the universe to slice the wolf right out of the universe … or at least hit it with something that might actually hurt it. She thought … there was no way to be sure. It sounded like utter nonsense and yet … she kept running, feeling the world creaking and groaning around her. If she was right …

She felt the universe shudder and knew she was wrong. The wolf had pinned the universe down and was pulling itself free, the cracks in reality growing stronger and stronger as the world came apart around her. Frieda was muttering words under her breath, words in a language Emily didn’t know and yet understood perfectly … words to open a portal, words that might get them out of the trap. The words … didn’t work. She could feel their power and yet … it wasn’t working. They were trapped.

Frieda swore. “I can’t get the portal open!”

Emily forced herself to think. It was hard to get any sort of traction. There were two sets of memories in her mind, the one that insisted she was a teenage loser battling the one that defined her as a sorceress. Her body felt wrong … she was both sixteen and twenty-two, thin and scrawny and yet also strong and healthy. Another gash appeared right in front of them, things rending and tearing at the air …was that why the portal wouldn’t open? The laws of the universe were changing …

She looked up and saw the library. It hadn’t been there … she was beyond concern now as she shoved the door open and led the way inside. The librarian was gone, the bookshelves transformed into horrors … she shut her mind as best as she could as she slammed the door behind them, knowing it was just a matter of time before the wolf put its foot on the building and smashed it flat. The walls could no more stop it than a chalk line on the ground could stop someone from walking right across. It existed so far above the line that the line might as well not exist.

“I’m sorry,” Frieda said, quietly.

Emily nodded, unsure what Frieda was apologising for. The walls were cracking, things moving through the gap … one wall looked so insubstantial she was sure she could walk right through if she tried. A memory shot through her – a nightmare at Heart’s Eye, one she’d tried to forget – and triggered a handful of other memories. If there was a mirror …

“This way,” she snapped. “Hurry.”

The walls stretched as they ran to the lobby, the silent screaming growing louder. The mirror was there, utterly unchanged; she blinked as she caught sight of herself, both her selves, looking back at her. A teenager, a young adult, a teenager again … she bit her lip to draw blood, using it to outline runes on the mirror. Mirrors could be gateways to alternate realities, she knew; Heart’s Eye had used them to anchor pocket dimensions, eventually reaching out into the higher dimensions. She’d seen an alternate version of herself … she shoved that thought out of her mind as she finished the runes, trying to ignore the whispers at the back of her mind that insisted she was wasting time. The mirror started to glow as she imbued magic into the runes.

Something shifted, overhead. She glanced back. The wolf was there, glowing red eyes peering into her very soul. She whimpered, despite herself; Frieda lifted her hand and hurled an entire series of curses at the wolf, the magic somehow slipping past the entity even through it should have hit it directly. The wolf opened its jaws, revealing teeth that were not teeth and … Emily felt her eyes hurting, painfully, as she forced herself to look away. The nightmare was reaching for them … she reached out herself, trying to slam the laws of magic into place and hold them there. The wolf howled, red eyes burning with hatred, as she worked the spell. It wouldn’t last long, but if it held a few seconds …

She caught Frieda’s hand and yanked her back, pulling them both against the mirror … into the mirror. The world went white – she had a sudden impression of the pocket dimension finally shattering into nothingness, the human shadows that had inhabited it evaporating into the interdimensional void – as she landed on something solid, something … she wasn’t sure what it was and she didn’t much care. A flurry of images brushed against her mind, so many so quickly that there was no time for anything beyond fleeting impressions. She was seeing a hundred thousand million alternate universes, giant timelines and thin threadlines blurring together into an endless tapestry.

And above it, the wolf.

Don’t look too closely, she told herself. She wasn’t sure how much of what she was seeing was real, and how much was her mind trying to interpret what she was seeing as something she could understand, but she suspected it didn’t matter. It might look back at you.

“You’re back!” Frieda hugged her, tightly. “You’re back!”

“Yeah …” Emily staggered as she felt her mind loosen, as if she was suddenly free of a pressure that had pervaded her mind so completely she hadn’t even been aware of its existence. The memories were slowly snapping back into place, returning her to herself. She looked down and saw an adult body, wearing an outfit very much like Frieda’s. “It’s good to see you again.”

Her adopted sister looked embarrassed. “Sorry for slapping you.”

Emily shrugged. The pressure was gone, and it was hard to believe she hadn’t known Frieda … or that she’d been fooled for so long by the fake universe. If her memories and nightmares hadn’t been used to create it, perhaps it wouldn’t have held her trapped for so long. She might have broken out eventually …

Clever, she had to admit, sourly. Master Wolfe had constructed a neat little trap. Most prisoners know they’re in prison. I didn’t. I had no reason to plan an escape if I didn’t even know I was trapped.

“Don’t worry about it,” she said. If the slap had jarred a few memories free, it had been worth it. If not … Frieda had been desperate. Everything was at stake. She would be churlish to complain when the entire multiverse hung in the balance. “You saved my life.”

A voice spoke from behind her, a very familiar voice. “Hello, me.”

 

Chapter Seven (Emily1)

“Hello me,” Emily answered. “It’s good to see myself again.”

Her doppelganger smiled. “It’s good to see myself again too,” she agreed. “So we can find out what everyone else already knows about us.”

Emily smiled back, although she was conflicted. The last time she’d bilocated herself, she’d been careful to keep a distance from her other self and sorting out the memories, which insisted she’d been in two different places at the same time, had been a minor nightmare. She hadn’t dared exchange a handful of words with herself, let alone hold a proper conversation. The risk of accidentally merging back together was just too high. But here … they were separated by the interdimensional walls, her doppelganger barely able to use their shared blood to communicate. It should be safe.

Yeah, her thoughts pointed out. Should.

She studied herself for a long moment, feeling an odd twinge of discomfort. A mirror was a reflection of herself, but this … her doppelganger wasn’t quite right. It was jarring in a way she couldn’t quite put into words, as if her mirror image was wearing different clothes or posing in a very different manner. She wished, suddenly, that she’d kept her teenage clothes, even though they no longer fitted. It would have been easier, she thought, if her doppelganger hadn’t looked so much like her. But they were the same person. The point of divergence had only been a few hours ago.

“Are we still the same person, if our experiences are so different?” Her doppelganger was clearly thinking along the same lines. “Will we be able to merge back together afterwards?”

“Good question,” Emily agreed. “But right now, does it matter?”

“Probably not,” her doppelganger said. “Master Wolfe may leave nothing behind, if we don’t stop him.”

Emily nodded, glancing up. The wolf was still there, still expanding and growing into something beyond her comprehension, even more beyond her comprehension. Magic – raw power – was flowing in and out of him, his mentality directing change on a scale she could barely grasp … she gritted her teeth as she felt a shadow washing over her mind, as if something was brushing against her, searching for her. He might not be able to see them directly, but … sooner or later, he’d realised they had to be hiding in a place he couldn’t see properly.

She looked down, wondering just what they were standing on. There was nothing there and yet the ground beneath their feet was solid. She had the sudden disturbing sensation that they were standing on ice or glass, something transparent and prone to breaking at any moment. She had her powers back, although her magic was drained, but even at her prime it would be difficult to alter the world around them. She wasn’t sure where they were. Another pocket dimension or something else, something new?

And the more disruption we cause, the greater the chance he’ll find us, she thought. A man with a stomach ache didn’t need to be able to see inside his stomach to feel the pain. What can he do to us?

A dozen ideas shot through her mind, each one worse than the last. Master Wolfe could devise a new body for himself, and transfer his mentality over to it, before erasing the last as easily as a human would wipe a computer. Or he could devise tools to search his own body and root them out … she would be surprised if he wasn’t already working on it, perhaps multitasking to both remake reality and track them down. He had to know his wolf-thing had failed. It had been an extension of himself. He knew what had happened to it.

“He’s powerful, but he’s not God,” her doppelganger said. “We can outwit him.”

Emily hoped she was right. Master Wolfe had been brilliant even before he’d become a mimic and started adding other minds to his own. She couldn’t imagine what it was like to have so many thoughts and personalities within hers, and now … he was a god. It was hard to fight something when you couldn’t comprehend it, when you couldn’t even begin to put hard numbers on what it could – and couldn’t – do. Sure, an ant could sting a man, but …could it kill? And if it killed, what then?

If we were on even terms, we might be able to outwit him, she thought. But we can’t even begin to understand him.

“He was human once,” Frieda said. “That limits him, doesn’t it?”

“I hope so,” Emily said. “But how far beyond humanity is he?”

She winced, inwardly. Being transfigured into an animal risked being overwhelmed by the animal’s mentality, all the more so if you cast the spell on yourself. Being transfigured into a god … he might have been human once, but he was godlike now. His thoughts would run so fast he’d outstrip her as easily as a hare would outrun a tortoise, as long as the hare didn’t get arrogant and have a nap in the middle of the race. Even so … the hare had nearly won. Would Master Wolfe make the same mistake? She didn’t know. He had to be smart enough to understand the dangers.

“We need to take control of the power ourselves,” her doppelganger said. “The nexus point is a start, but it isn’t enough.”

“And doing so risks going mad ourselves,” Emily finished. Master Wolfe might be able to channel such power without going mad, although she feared he was mad already, but she couldn’t. “If we can use it to attack him from within, take over the spell-structure.”

“Like a computer virus,” her doppelganger agreed. “The mimics are spells, after all. Just very advanced ones.”

Emily sat on the eerily-shifting ground and winked at Frieda. “This could take some time.”

“Two minds are better than one,” her doppelganger said. “And between us, we should be able to come up with something.”

Emily grinned, then forced herself to relax as they bounced ideas off each other. It was a strange discussion, her other self finishing her sentences or jumping ahead … she wondered, mischievously, if talking to herself was a sign of insanity. Frieda was more practical than either of them, but … Caleb would have been better. A rush of grief and guilt shot through her, grief for her missing lover and guilt for thinking less of her friend; she gritted her teeth, telling herself that in the nexus points all times were one. If they could get rid of Master Wolfe, they could use the nexus point to return to the final moments of their timeline and … she wasn’t sure. Reboot it?

“Recreate the Big Bang?” Her doppelganger said. “That worked in Doctor Who.”

“Of course it did,” Emily countered. “Matt Smith had a friendly scriptwriter on his side.”

She rubbed her forehead. “We do have another problem,” she added. “How are we going to get the supplies we need?”

“And food,” Frieda said. She’d always been ruthlessly practical. “How long has it been since we ate?”

Emily hesitated. Hours? Or days? Had she really eaten anything in her prison? Or …

“We can’t conjure everything we need,” she said, grimly. “I don’t think even Void could have done it.”

The thought stabbed at her heart. Void had been her father in every sense that mattered, save blood. He’d plotted to take over the world, for the world’s own good, and she’d stopped him … she didn’t doubt she’d done the right thing, but she regretted having to kill him. She wanted to believe he hadn’t been killed, yet … she doubted even a sorcerer as powerful and knowledgeable as Void could have survived. It was hard not to feel guilty. He’d been far more of a father to her than either her biological father or her stepfather …

“No,” her doppelganger agreed. “But I have been giving the matter some thought.”

She smiled. Emily wondered, morbidly, how many people secretly loathed her smile.

“You’re currently in an interstice between dimensions,” her doppelganger said. “From this vantage point, it looks like a bubble attached to a threadline that runs from dimension to dimension, timeline to timeline. I think we can use it to get you two into another timeline … one close to ours, to Frieda’s, and search for help there.”

Emily’s eyes narrowed. “And what will we find there?”

“I don’t know,” her doppelganger said. “I can follow you, and watch you, but I can’t look into alternate timelines without you being there. I think – I think – that the timeline will be near enough to ours that you’ll be able to navigate, and that he’ll have problems attacking it, but … I could be wrong. It isn’t rocket science, you know.”

“I’m starting to understand why the Doctor bitched and moaned about meeting his other selves,” Emily said, although she took her doppelganger’s point. Rocket science was nothing more than applied physics. It was easy to chart out just when and where the rockets should be fired, to steer the spacecraft onto a new course, even if actual technological development lingered far behind. “Is there a version of us there?”

“Unknown,” her other self said. “There could be.”

Emily winced, again. How many times had she come close to utter defeat? How many times had she been defeated, in other timelines? Would they step into a world where Shadye had won the day? Or Void? Or one of her other enemies, from the short-sighted and greedy to the noble and selfless? She didn’t know what kind of world they’d created, in a timeline where they’d won … perhaps they’d been defeated by someone else, perhaps they’d become rulers of all they surveyed. She wasn’t sure she wanted to think about it. But she had no choice.

And if there’s a Caleb in those worlds, he’s marrying a different Emily, she thought. Isn’t he?

She shoved the thought aside. “Get into those worlds, get the supplies we need, get everything put together … what a plan.”

“We’ve done it before, with less,” her doppelganger pointed out. “And we are irritating each other because we are, technically, the same person.”

Emily scowled. “Which one of us is Caleb going to marry?”

Her doppelganger winked. “Does it matter, if we are the same person?”

But we’re not, not quite, Emily thought. You didn’t get trapped in your own past.

“I’m sure he’ll be very happy to see both of you,” Frieda said, sharply. “Can you both … focus?”

“We are meant to be one person,” Emily said. It was rare for Frieda to snap at her. “And being unable to merge back together is draining us.”

“It’s certainly irritating us,” her doppelganger agreed. “And I suspect that staying in the interstice isn’t doing you any favours either.”

Emily nodded. Their environment was wrong in a manner that made the pocket dimension look perfect. The floor was invisible, yet present; they were surrounded by hundreds of millions of timelines and threadlines, each one tiny and yet an entire universe in itself. And the wolf … she could feel his presence, a distant burning that lingered in the back of her mind even when she wasn’t looking at him. It was hard to wrap her head around the devastation he was wrecking on the universes around him. His mere presence was fatal to their mere existence. It was a crime on a scale beyond comprehension. God alone knew how many lives were being lost with every passing second …

And if there is a God, she asked herself, why isn’t he stepping in?

“Then we need to move,” she said. Her stomach growled. She tapped her belt, wishing she’d thought to bring some more coins. There hadn’t been any need for money in the Blighted Lands … God! Had it only been a day or two ago when everything had been normal? Master Wolfe had swept everything away, so completely it was hard to believe it had ever existed at all. “Can you help us open a portal?”

“I can steer you towards the right mirror,” her doppelganger said. “And I think you should be able to get through it.”

“As long as we can get back,” Frieda said. “Just make sure you don’t lose sight of us.”

“This isn’t the Wood between the Worlds,” Emily’s doppelganger said. “And it won’t matter if you don’t come back to this particular interstice.”

“Probably,” Emily agreed. It had never worried her that there was no way home, at least at first. She’d had nothing to go back to. Diggory and Polly, by contrast, had had loving homes and families. The thought of wandering forever through countless universes, trying to make their way back home, had been utterly nightmarish for them, all the more so because they had come so close to doing just that. “How much danger are we in, if we stay here?”

“I don’t know,” her doppelganger said. “I’ve seen people travelling the threadlines, moving from world to world, but I haven’t been able to speak to them. It could be very dangerous or … completely harmless.”

Emily had a vision, suddenly, of entire networks of traders and explorers making their way along the threadlines, each trading network huge by human standards and yet infinitively tiny compared to the sheer vastness of the multiverse. Entire empires could rise and fall and vanish in the blink of an eye, on such a scale; she wondered, suddenly, if they could find help from other explorers. Or other entities. She was wary of contacting the fairies, or demons, or creatures so alien meaningful conversation was impossible, but surely … they’d help if everything was at stake. Wouldn’t they?

“See if you can track someone down we can ask for help,” she said. “We’re going to need it.”

“I can try, but the more disruption we cause the easier it will be for him to hunt us down,” her doppelganger said. “And once he pops the bubble surrounding me, we’re done.”

“And summoning a demon would be disruptive,” Emily mused. “Or the fairies …”

She scowled. She’d made and repaid her oath to the fairies, yet … she didn’t understand what they truly were. The Other Folk didn’t seem to follow the laws of magic, as she understood them, which raised all kinds of questions. Their morals were very alien too, if the old stories were to be believed. There was a reason no one ever went near the deepest darkest places in the wood. They knew there was a very real risk they’d never be seen again.

“Yes,” her doppelganger agreed. “We dare not show our hand too openly.”

She paused. “Asking ourselves, other versions of ourselves, for help might work better.”

“As long as we don’t run into her,” Emily said. The last time she’d had anything to do with mirror magic, she’d seen a warped, alien and evil version of her face. “What if …”

She caught herself. She didn’t want to finish that sentence. Didn’t want to think about the monster who had looked like her … who’d been her. She didn’t want to think she could be that person, that she could have been a monster … that a tiny change could have blossomed into a nightmare. But she couldn’t deny it either.

“She wasn't inherently evil,” her doppelganger pointed out. “She just made a mistake.”

“Yeah,” Emily said, sarcastically. “And I’m sure that’s a great comfort to her victims.”

Frieda squeezed her hand, gently. Emily wasn’t sure she deserved it.

“Go,” her doppelganger said. “We’re short of time.”

Emily stood. Her body was filthy, her clothes … she needed a bath and a good night’s sleep and … the sooner they got started, the better. There was nowhere to rest here. She had no idea if she’d be in danger, if they lay down and tried to sleep, but she didn’t want to find out the hard way. Her doppelganger was in very real danger, if she tried to sleep. The nexus point was safer than the interstice, but who knew what would happen if the bubble eroded while her doppelganger was asleep?

She took Frieda’s hand. “Come on. Let’s go.”

A thrill of tired excitement ran through her as she started to walk. The idea of exploring countless other worlds was fascinating, although the looming threat overhead made it impossible for her to relax and enjoy it. She would have been tempted, if she hadn’t had so many responsibilities … Void had told her, once, of a pair of sorcerers who’d opened gateways to other worlds and stepped through, never to be seen again. She thought she knew how they felt. They’d been so powerful that there were no challenges left, nothing to fear and nothing to overcome … why not go exploring? Caleb and her could go later, if they had time …

Frieda grinned up at her. “We have a plan now, don’t we?”

“Half of one,” Emily agreed. It was more than they’d had earlier, even if she was still out of sorts. She had no idea how long it would take to recover completely. Her mind felt as if she’d been put through the winger. “If we have a chance to gather ourselves, we can fill in the rest as we go along.”

She felt the world shift again and cursed under her breath. Their environment was shifting, strange images coming and going so quickly she could barely catch a glimpse before they were gone. They looked like windows into other worlds … it dawned on her, suddenly, that she could jump through and find herself in a whole new world. The path shifted underneath her, steering them onwards … she barely had a second to realise they were starting to fall, before they plummeted down and into a light. It reached up and swallowed them, the light so bright it seemed to touch every cell of her being …

And then they were somewhere else.