Chapter Text
The fuel had been whispering lies to him since Maxwell found the key. Sweet little lies, promising him passage and protection. But when it was clear that he wasn’t listening, the lies were sung to a different, more persuasive, tune; lauding him for a job well done, and for the good he was doing for the other survivors. Never before had the fuel been so generous in its praise—especially when it pertained to more than himself.
Maxwell had no illusions that the voices were being anything but deceitful. And for them to congratulate him on his endeavor… It wasn’t reassuring.
He’d followed their path for an interminable time, movements mechanical and forced. A spring coiled too tightly and awaiting the release—the trap to be sprung. He felt more like his beloved chess pieces than he cared to admit.
Come, come. Look here. We’ve something to show you.
Maxwell squinted into the darkness, but saw nothing but stone. The fuel ushered him forward, and he hesitantly approached. The torch light showed little to him beyond the grit and grime, but what he could make out revealed more than the stone’s face—a mural. Embers shone in the golden inscriptions, catching fire until he could see the image for what it truly was; a multitude of sickly people and their creations. A failing city, before the fuel. The poor fools.
Those who cannot control the fuel must succumb to it.
And Maxwell knew that, all too well. He moved on to the next mural, although he had already guessed as to what he would see.
But that does not mean it cannot be controlled. The power it can bring…
Maxwell looked at the engravings of the people, basking in fuel; drinking it, bathing in it. He ran his own disfigured, taloned fingertips over the carving.
...it’s too much power for simple minds.
In the third mural, a shadow. All consuming. They never stood a chance against what was to come.
But a great mind—a mind touched by Them. The mind of a king…
The fourth, and the people depicted were no longer human—or anything resembling. Their husks of ill flesh lay at their feet, raw insectoid bodies stepping free, contorted and straining; they were dancing. Reveling in their metamorphosis.
Maxwell scowled, and his numb grip on the torch tightened. “I know why you brought me here,” he said, darkly.
He turned away to the fifth and final mural. To the depiction of a prosperous, golden city. A glistening house of cards, soaked in fuel, and waiting for the match to strike.
Resolutely, “But it won’t work.”
The torch’s flame sputtered and hissed in retaliation, but he felt none of its heated temper. No temptations would ever convince him to bind himself again to the throne. To be king was to be forever indebted to a life of servitude, to his higher power, and to his subjects. For who was a king without a kingdom to rule? It was a curse. And one that she would now suffer in his stead.
“Don’t be fooled by Them, Charlie. Whatever you were promised, or whatever your plans…” He shook his head. “You must find a way out. There is no way to win in Their game. There is only a part to play.”
Spoken like one already resigned to losing.
“The only way to stop playing is to escape. I’m finding a way past the board.”
The tall watchers chittered and squealed in mindless delight. Maxwell quailed from them, but they did not encroach further; simply content to enjoy the spectacle. Amidst their mania, he could hear her petal-soft laughter.
So you think. Well, come on, then.
Arms full of Codex pages and the glow from the magiluminescence lighting his way, Wilson followed in Maxwell’s direction as swiftly as he could. Whenever he found himself lost, a page of the Codex would miraculously appear, or a heeled footprint would catch his eye, and away he would go, deeper into the depths.
Clue after clue, but never a single glimpse of the man he sought.
And the light he bore was dimming.
“No, no, come on, now!” he shouted at the weakening yellow gem. With his veil of light thinning after every step, he was forced to slow, and the darkness was allowed to creep in that much closer. “I can’t be that far behind,” he pleaded, “just last me until then.”
The forced delay gave him a moment to stop and take in the surroundings he’d been rushing past. Or, the remainder of them. The wreckage he stood before was not the consequence of time, but a warpath. Floored tiles broken under monstrous feet, and walls grooved by unnatural means.The smell of mechanical oil and exhaust permeated the air. And something else Wilson couldn’t quite place.
Clockworks?
Great, as if the creepy-crawlies weren’t enough, now he’d have to contend with machines. At least he should be able to hear their squealing, grating movements long before he had to confront one. The one thing to be thankful for in these pits was the echo of sound. It would be impossible to be surprised by them.
The stench of grease and more made his stomach churn, but he grit his teeth and pushed forward. He followed the putrid smell and the imprints of heavy feet. At a certain point the spiders and the spitters, emboldened by the quiet and unoffended by the smell, would take turns at him. He stowed away the pages of the Codex and retrieved his axe. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but he was quick enough for it to matter little. He cut through their webs and skirted their dens, until the throat of the cave flexed wide. Wilson was swallowed and spilled into a field of light flowers, soft and blue and tranquil.
And the smell made him retch.
He gagged, dry and desperate, but with nothing to expel it was a wasted effort that served only to burn his eyes and constrict his ribs. The smell—he recognized it now. Decay. Rotted, rancid meat. Once he got his breathing back under control, he looked around. The light flowers illuminated the cavern just enough that if he focused, he could see two large, immobile mounds.
Or, mostly?
Wilson toed closer, axe raised and ready to flee at the first sign of trouble. The smell was so much worse the closer he came. And as he drew near, he could at last see the source.
It was the corpse of some great beast. It had mangy, coarse fur, and grotesquely death-slack jowls. Its blackened tongue lolled fat and swollen in the dirt. The remaining glazed eye bore through Wilson in judgement, and Wilson was struck by the crushing certainty that it had found him wanting.
And then the eye bulged and squelched out of its socket to roll wetly at Wilson’s feet.
Barely able to stay upright, Wilson muffled a scream and scrambled to put distance between himself and the creature. Lifeless, dead, and now in the light of his own magiluminescence he could see how its flesh squirmed and writhed unnaturally. Not muscle and sinew, but beneath the skin lived something all the same. Something parasitic.
Wilson covered the amulet’s light with the palm of his hand, and held his breath. Not long to wait, he then could see it. Between the torn skin and matted fur, crawling out from graying, cold flesh, was nightmare fuel. The beast was being eaten. Consumed.
The poor, wretched thing.
Wilson couldn’t stand to watch for long; he moved away, passing through the field to the other large mound; the clockwork rook, quiet and restful. Watchful in its mournful silence as its ilk decomposed—for even as horrid as the remains were, Wilson could see the resemblance. He left them both to their respective ends.
What caught his eye was what sat on a ledge, just higher than the tallest light bulb could brush. He levered himself up to it, and thus stood in awe of a great, ornate chest. An open chest. And Wilson might be a genius, but it hardly took one to discern what had taken place.
“And just what were you after here, Maxwell?” he asked the chest’s open maw. He peered inside, half expecting nothing, half expecting something worse. But all that lie within were tools of miscellany. Staffs, gems, thulecite. Materials that surely would prove useful in such a place, and yet Maxwell had left them all behind. And there was a barren space in the center, where something large had once been, and where it remained, no longer.
Whatever it was he wanted, he’d gotten it. Something of far greater importance than the treasures he left behind.
Wilson gathered what he could to fill his pockets, and held the weight of the staff adorned with the orange gem in his hand. It felt sturdy, but its purpose he could only speculate at. Still, it would likely prove more useful than the axe. He quickly swapped between the two, tucking the axe away along with the Codex pages in his pack.
The protective glow of the magiluminescence dimmed further. He held it tightly in his fist, just to feel the warmth of it against his skin and to steady his nerves. Then he moved on.
In a barren plain of bones and rubble, the gateway still remained.
Maxwell could hardly believe his own two eyes—almost didn’t. The atrium was vast and tall, but only in the sense that where the floor ended, the darkness spanned forevermore. The arena of earth and tile was dwarfed in it. Maxwell stepped towards center stage.
His wrong-footed heels caught on and crushed shards of brick and bone. Impossible to avoid, even if he’d been trying. But while he did wonder at this strange place, he was compelled forward toward the broken gateway. At long last, he had made it. Everything he’d done to be weighed upon this unfamiliar precipice.
And it was unfamiliar. All of it. He had hoped that perhaps, once he’d made it this far, that he might have some sort of recollection. But nothing of the rubble or the aura held any sense of familiarity different to that of Them. An oppressive dread and malice. Nothing he had any use for.
The closer he came to the gateway, the more its decay became apparent to him. Its foundation was rotted and cracked, and a portion of the circle had even crumbled away. But there was still an energy to it that Maxwell could feel resonating inside of it, and thus in sympathy through himself.
He switched the torch from his right hand to his left, so that he might more securely hold the key. Even though the inscriptions on the device and the portal were incomprehensible to him—how could he have forgotten how to read this?—what he had to do was simple enough to puzzle out.
Insert the key. Await what happens.
He leaned forward to do just that.
Wilson felt as if he were flying by how swiftly he moved through the dark tunnels. Nothing could touch him—not the creatures or the shadows or the fear—he just ran until his legs burned and chest heaved, and he found himself in a vast, entombed room for which They could hold court.
And a man in the center stage, about to be judged.
“Maxwell,” he breathed.
The shock and relief was enough to knock the wind right out of Wilson. It was him! He’d done it! He’d managed to find the madman before the worst could happen, and now he could bring him back. Wilson had begun to lose hope he’d ever get to this point. Heart high in his chest, he started forward.
He skidded to a halt just behind the damp, molding statue on the edge of the arena and hid behind it. He covered his chest and the draining gem’s light. His blood turned cold as he took in what he saw. So elated as he’d been to see Maxwell in one piece, he hadn’t even noticed the changes to his appearance. But he could see them now in stark clarity.
Those hands that Maxwell had kept so carefully hidden, now fiendishly sharp, with skin so stained in fuel that he nearly blended with the shadows. He stood tall and resolute, but his movements were measured; stiff and reluctant. Like a condemned man walking towards the gallows.
And he was holding a key.
Wilson watched in horror as Maxwell took the key in hand and approached the broken gateway. Everything was about to go very wrong if he didn’t put a stop to it. Discarding his heavy backpack to relieve his burden and hasten his steps, he then rushed into the atrium.
“Maxwell, stop!”
It was hardly as if Maxwell could do anything else. He whirled around to see, exactly as he feared, the one who had called his name. Not a perversion of shadow nor trick of the light—just scraped flesh and bruised bone. Entirely human; a vision worse than any conjuring of his imagination.
“Wilson,” he rasped. “Why did you follow me, you bloody fool?”
“You had to know I would come to bring you back,” Wilson implored, stepping closer, bringing with him his own golden ring of light.
Too close. He was too close! As Wilson inched towards him, Maxwell panicked and bared his fanged teeth in a wild snarl. Wilson recoiled in shock and fear, and Maxwell felt his heart caving in to have caused it. But then his stupid, brave scientist grit his teeth in grim determination, and began walking straight at him without a hint of hesitation.
“I have to do this! I have to see this to the end!” Maxwell shouted, unsteady heels catching and causing him to stumble as he flinched away. Wilson made as if to reach for him—a plea for acquiescence or a bid to take the key away, Maxwell couldn’t say—but with no other options left to him, Maxwell followed through with what he had intended from the beginning, and he thrust the key into the machine.
The ruins shook and crumbled around them, flaring to life with molten light. In his head, Maxwell could hear Their onslaught of laughter and triumph, and he dropped his torch to clutch at his head. At last, at last! He’d done exactly as he needed to—exactly what They’d wanted. And now the fun could begin.
Bones embedded deep in the atrium dust split and fractured and reformed into strange shapes, slicing their skin as they flew by. In the center of it all, shadows coalesced and throbbed, and Maxwell could feel the medallion in his pocket drum in its sympathetic rhythm. The nightmare cycle was about to start.
Maxwell turned to Wilson, who now stood within arm’s length, and cried out, “Leave! This is my ruin to fix!” He reached out and took Wilson by the shoulders, shaking him, bringing him in close enough to see—to see what Maxwell had seen when he looked at his own reflection. To see that this creature he’d become was beyond hope of saving.
Wilson saw him—saw all of him, and pulled him closer, anyways.
Hand twisted in Maxwell’s frayed tie, he said in a tone that brokered no argument, “Then finally trust me to help you.”
Maxwell had nothing left to hide, and even less to lose with him stripped down to the truth of his corruption. He had no more bribes to entice him with, no more prevarications or falsehoods. If Wilson still stood by his side now, then it was because he believed this to be an effort worth making.
Maxwell, stricken and numb, could only reply, “As you wish.”
Wilson smiled broadly, in of himself glowing, and surged upward into a kiss.
And Maxwell felt Wilson’s light, deep in his chest and filling his lungs—buoying him from out of the darkest depths. He wrapped his arms around Wilson and held as tightly as he dared, for he could not feel the fabric of Wilson’s clothes nor the heat of his skin to know if they were to tear beneath his talons. He felt like glass that had already splintered apart, jagged and sharp and desperate to be whole. Wilson held him and all of his broken pieces, and did not shy away.
A lifetime too soon, the ferocity of the chaos around them made them part. Rock and rubble rained from above and bone and shadow dove skyward, creating, in the center, an unholy amalgamation of them all. The behemoth; a skeleton with a heart of darkness and veins flooded with fire that loomed tall above them. The medallion in Maxwell’s pocket began to pound its frantic rhythm: thump-thump thump-thump thumpthumpthumpthump
Booming, deafeningly, the monster spoke, “A pity. This will be quick.”
The Fuelweaver howled in agonizing fury, shaking the atrium walls. Wilson watched as Maxwell clapped his ears in pain at the sound, and then crumpled to his knees. Wilson reached out a hand to help, but the echo of the fuelweaver’s howls ricocheted in his skull, shattering him from the inside out. He took one stilted step towards Maxwell, who looked up at him with unwarranted hope.
Wilson was petrified, barely able to cling to his staff, and he thought to himself that his eardrums must have ruptured for something hot and wet was leaking out of his ears and down the sides of his neck. The magiluminescence had gone cold and dark. The weight of the amulet’s chain now felt as comforting as the coil of a noose around his neck.
Maxwell staggered to his feet, despite his obvious pain, and Wilson closed his eyes as the nausea made his vision swim. Whether it was the ground that shook or merely his own nerves he couldn’t say, but all he knew was that any happiness he’d felt was completely drowned in the torrent of dread, and the emotional upheaval was too much to bear witness to with eyes open.
“Wilson! Get up!” Maxwell was screaming, voice only just louder than the echoes in Wilson’s skull. He couldn’t force himself to react, so he held tighter with a vice grip around his staff, for it was all he could manage. Every second that slipped by took more and more of his sense of self with it.
Maxwell struggled closer and pulled Wilson’s face up with his cold hands. Wilson finally gathered enough of himself to look into Maxwell’s white-hollow eyes, completely insensate with terror. The staff he clung to fell from his fingers, so he steadied himself by holding fast to the magiluminescence and Maxwell’s arm instead.
The Fuelweaver groaned, “You will fall as we did.” It took one great, lumbering step toward them, and the points of Maxwell’s nails dug into the skin of Wilson’s chin and the side of his neck as he tried to jerk back and look.
“If you want to help, then you have to live long enough to do so,” Maxwell shouted into Wilson’s face. His sharp talons fell away from Wilson’s cheek to down his neck, and Wilson ducked his head to see them come to meet at the center of his chest where the magiluminescence lay dormant.
“What are you doing?” Wilson asked, unwilling to relinquish his hold on the amulet to Maxwell’s prying reach.
Maxwell grit his sharp teeth. “Using the fuel. This will work,” he said, and Wilson believed him. He gave it up.
Fuel-laced fingers held the magiluminescence securely, and Maxwell’s thumbs worked to coat the pendant’s surface in the sleek substance—like coaxing a still heart into beating. Wilson watched, mesmerized, as the light within it flickered weakly, and then brighter than he could stand to look at.
The paralysis lifted in the wake of receding shadows. He took a deep, fortifying breath in relief, and then smiled thinly at Maxwell.
The Fuelweaver was nearly close enough to reach them with its fearsome claws. The window for hesitation was gone.
"Can you fight?" Maxwell rallied.
Wilson replied, “I can. I will.” And then he added with a tremulous grin, “I only promised to bring back one walking skeleton, not two.”
The gobsmacked look on Maxwell’s face was well worth the effort of the joke, in Wilson’s opinion.
"If we live long enough,” Maxwell said, “I am going to make you regret choosing now of all times to jest.” Behind him, the Fuelweaver grabbed its own gnarled skull, prying it from its spine and wielding it like a club; prepared to land a blow. But despite himself, Maxwell had smiled, and then promptly shoved Wilson aside. “Now move!"
“Some extra pairs of hands would be very useful right now!” Wilson was screeching, swiping left and right at the oozing, skittering creatures at his feet. He crushed their bodies with his staff, where they burst apart like boils of pitch.
“You think I don’t know that?” Maxwell hollered in return, only narrowly managing to avoid the snare of bones that threatened to stay him. Any slower and he’d have been skewered. It was far from the first close call, either, and the prolonged strain was wearing him down. “Just don’t let them reach the monster!”
“There’s too many!” Wilson shouted, only just avoiding a trap of protruding bones, himself. But he was faster than Maxwell by a wide margin—dashing about the arena and killing the small woven shadows without ever staying within reaching distance of the Fuelweaver. “How about some puppets, you dummy!”
“You want to add more shadows to this mess?”
“No! Yes! I don’t know, just do something!”
“What do you think I’m doing?!” Maxwell punctuated his outcry with a thrust of his dark sword through the Fuelweaver’s heel. It cleaved a chunk of shadowy flesh away from the creature’s rotted skeleton, but it seemed to deter it very little from its rampage. The entire atrium rumbled and throbbed, red and pulsating with rage.
Daring his luck, Maxwell rained a rapid series of swipes against the Fuelweaver’s flank while the creature stayed turned towards Wilson’s weaving light. The sword hungrily devoured the carnage that ensued, absorbing the shadows into itself—each strike deeper and more cruel than Maxwell’s numb grip should have allowed. It was all he could do to keep moving and pray that he struck true.
But the many slashes did not even cause the Fuelweaver to slow. What it did do was catch its attention, drawing it away from its flashy prey, and Maxwell suddenly found himself victim to a backhand so strong it sent him flying into the slimy arms of a thulecite statue. The night armor writhed across his chest as it recoiled from the shock, and Maxwell had to fight to keep a bout of squeamishness from making him jerk. It was nearly a relief that he could not feel it squirm against his skin.
“Stop! Look over here!” Wilson cried out. Maxwell saw him at one end of the arena, frantically trying to get the Fuelweaver’s attention back on him by waving the magiluminescence and his staff. But the Fuelweaver paid him no need and advanced upon Maxwell’s prone body before he could hope to catch his breath. Then, between one heartbeat and the next, Wilson appeared at Maxwell’s side in a noxious cloud of smoke.
Wilson sputtered and lurched at his sudden displacement, but Maxwell couldn’t form the question of how before Wilson had righted himself and sprung into action. He put himself between Maxwell and the monster and pulled him out of the statue’s arms and into his own, then all but dragged him as far away from the Fuelweaver as he could.
“Th-the staff,” Wilson answered to Maxwell’s unspoken question. “Teleportation? It’s,” he gasped out, “it’s not something I u-understand. Stars, it’s hard to think.” He teetered on the spot, and Maxwell stabilized him with a hand on his shoulder.
“Hey, don’t! Stay with me. I can’t have you off in your head now,” Maxwell said.
“How are we going to beat it?” Wilson gasped, holding tight to Maxwell’s vest. “I can’t—we can’t keep running forever. Our attacks don’t hurt it—why can’t we hurt it?”
Maxwell wanted to comfort him, but there was little he could say to assuage his fears. He had no answers, and his desperation to see this through to its ultimate conclusion seemed to have finally caught up with them.
“Wilson, listen to me. The staff can allow you to teleport, yes? Use it to escape the arena.”
Wilson’s head snapped upright, and he was glaring. “Not on your life."
“Wilson, please.”
“No! No, nonono—” in his panic, Wilson had to force himself not to hyperventilate. “I won’t! We have to do this! Just tell me how!"
“I don’t know how! I don’t see any way we can survive this!”
“Your puppets—they can help, they can—”
“The puppets can’t help us. Even if I had the Codex, they don’t—they won’t attack the shadows. You were right all along. I was never in control.”
“Okay fine—fine, no puppets. Something else! Maybe something from my bag?” His eyes darted over to the side of the atrium from which he’d first entered, but then seemed to think better of it. “No, that’s not enough. Something, something, something—” Wilson’s nerves only increased the rate in which words bled from his mouth, and they caught like a hook in his jaw. “What about the hands? They must—must do something. But they just stay there. Why?”
Maxwell looked at him wonderingly. “What hands?”
“The hands! The ones around the gateway!”
“There’s no hands around the gateway.” Wilson looked fit to clock him in the face, and so Maxwell was quick to add, “I can’t see them, Wilson.”
“Why not?”
“It might have to do with my transformation, or the Codex, or insanity—it doesn’t matter. What about the hands?”
“I don’t know what! But I think—maybe they’re important. I am going to test that theory.”
And before Maxwell could ask for further clarification, Wilson was off and running. It was just as well, their moment of reprieve couldn’t last forever, and they couldn’t keep on the defensive. So while Wilson went on his way to do whatever it was that he felt he had to do, Maxwell would just have to ensure he had the chance to do it. He was a master of misdirection, after all. It wouldn’t be hard.
They both took turns at their tasks, hacking and slashing at their targets—Wilson at what could only be assumed to be the ‘hands’ that only he could see, and Maxwell at the Fuelweaver and the woven shadows that swarmed at their feet. The trial felt like a ceaseless task, but just as Maxwell was about to concede to the futility of it all, everything changed.
Maxwell’s dark sword swung true, right through the skin and bone of the Fuelweaver’s back. The atrium crumbled and seared with both fire and shadow, and the Fuelweaver howled in overwhelming outrage. It was in pain. Maxwell’s heart matched the harsh rhythm of the medallion in his pocket.
“The hands were a power source,” Wilson exalted, “for a shield! That’s why our attacks had no effect!”
Brilliant. He was absolutely brilliant. Maxwell had more than half a mind to tell him so, but star-struck accolades could be given later when the threat was vanquished.
“That’s all very well and good, now help me kill it!”
“You are just unimpressed by everything,” Wilson moaned, rightfully indignant, but nevertheless did as he was bade. They fought on in this fashion, side by side, revolving between aggressor and distraction until their resolve came to fruition. The Fuelweaver was getting worn down.
The prospect of victory made them overconfident.
A cry of pain halted Maxwell in his tracks, and he turned in what felt to be slow motion. At one end of the atrium, he could see with dawning terror that Wilson had braced himself against the cage of bones that ensnared him. He trembled and weakly buffeted the bones with his staff, but to no effect. Why was he just standing there?
“Wilson!” Maxwell screamed, slicing at the Fuelweaver’s legs as the great beast turned its focus from himself to its captive prey. “Wilson, get out of there! Teleport!”
“I can’t!” he wailed. “I can’t—I can’t think! I can’t m-move! Maxwell!”
Oh, no, no, no, this couldn’t be happening. The insanity must have finally, entirely overtaken his light. Maxwell furiously struck the Fuelweaver with his blade, sloughing away chunks of viscera and shadow, and it must have been enough. The Fuelweaver was drastically slowing, moving at a near crawl with bones creaking akin to the decaying ruins. But in its death throes it had a vengeful mission to execute, and Maxwell would not deter it. Not unless he forced its hand.
With every intention of giving the Fuelweaver no other choice but to face him, Maxwell lashed out. He plunged his blade deep into the monster’s hide, so deep that the hilt dug into the pit of its spine, and then he twisted.
And then it broke.
Maxwell stared at the splintered fragments in utter disbelief. The Fuelweaver trudged on, closer to Wilson and the fulfillment of its purpose. Here he stood, weaponless, helpless as the the Fuelweaver’s steps rang out like a funeral bell’s toll.
The last of his magic had failed him in this pivotal moment and he was about to watch Wilson die because of it. He staggered back as the burden of his uselessness weighed upon his shoulders. The Fuelweaver’s long, sharp claws (so alike his own) gouged trenches in the floor. One swipe would be more than enough to eviscerate flesh. Maxwell took another step back. Just one touch, and Wilson would be dead. This was all his doing. Wilson was going to die, and it was all his fault. A step more.
His heel caught on something soft.
Wilson’s backpack, the one he’d abandoned in his foolhardy attempt to stop Maxwell before this could begin. Something bright and sharp caught in the hellish red light of their tomb. Maxwell pulled it from the sack and thought, this will have to do.
With the strength and heedlessness born of desperation, Maxwell rushed between the behemoth and its claim, took the axe and drove it spitefully through the great beast’s heart.
It shouldn’t have been enough. It hadn’t been enough, Maxwell was absolutely sure. But still the Fuelweaver was stopped, roaring and struggling—raging against the dying of its light. Succumbing to the darkness it was thought to command, once and for all. With the last of its will, the Fuelweaver stared at Maxwell in all his feeble glory, wielding the axe running slick with its blackened blood.
“You’ve made your choice.”
Hands of shadow shot up from the earth, twining through bones and forcing the Fuelweaver to the ground—down, down, until its bones were ground to dust. The fuel of its skin flowed heavy and thick across the atrium floor. The energy of the ruins waned, failing, dying, and gateway’s power flickered in and out as its power drained. Slowly, so slowly, the world began to reorient itself. The board reset.
And there, in the center of the carnage that remained, grew a single red rose.
Maxwell collapsed. There was nothing more he could do. The medallion’s heartbeat felt so much stronger than his own. He focused on it, numb to everything else. He felt cold. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
“Maxwell?”
Ah, but there was Wilson. Alive and warm with light. And now—clinging to Maxwell with desperate, quivering arms, pressing the glow of the magiluminescence into his skin. The burn seared him, and Maxwell was grateful. This was real. So terrifyingly, wonderfully real. And yet he feared his own darkness might bleed through and cause it to ruin.
“Please, Maxwell, it’s over. Let it be over.”
Really, there was nothing more he could do. He reached back and trusted himself to hold and be held; to let the glow between them chase away the last of the shadows that lingered there. To be safe, for as long as they kept together.
At some point, Maxwell’s heart beat all its own, strong and steady as the darkness receded.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.