Ilforte frowned in confusion and turned toward Effu. I looked too and saw Calypso, blazing through the air like golden lightning, moving rapidly toward the rift. He was climbing higher and heading straight for Effu, quickly mowing down any demons in his path, not getting distracted by fighting other creatures, moving directly toward his goal.

  “Calypso, NO! STOP! Stop right now!” Ilforte shouted deafeningly, clutching his head.

  He took off, rapidly teleporting between the fighting mages on the battlefield, pushing forward. I immediately ran after him.

  I tried to contact Calypso through the bracelet artifact, but he didn’t respond to my calls. Maybe the bracelet wasn’t working properly — Calypso simply couldn’t hear me because he’d gotten so close to Effu that the artifact might have entered the anomalous shadow zone.

  “Calypso!! Stop!” Ilforte kept shouting.

  I didn’t bother, because I understood that if Calypso wasn’t responding, it was because he simply didn’t want to — didn’t want to be interrupted. A commendable desire, sure, but not in this situation when we had no idea what was happening. What was he planning?..

  “I have an idea… But no one’s going to like it” — I didn’t know what Calypso had been talking about, but I definitely wasn’t liking this already…

  He was climbing higher and higher… He’d never tried flying this high before, but the energy wings were holding him firmly. That was partly thanks to me, because right now I was focused on feeding Calypso magic. I didn’t know what he was planning, but the last thing I needed was for him to fall out of the sky like a stone, losing his wings without my constant energy feed…

  So I got as close as I could and stopped, covering myself with a dense protective dome. The creatures pouring out of the shadow crack ran past me — there were plenty of fighting Inquisitors and Fortemins around taking the hit. I wasn’t wasting extra magic right now, just keeping my golden protective dome up and desperately watching the flying golden streak.

  I couldn’t see well what was happening up there in the sky. Colorful spell flashes were blazing all around, lightning bolts, demons and other flying creatures. And the shadow vortex itself was glowing with such bright purple light it was blinding.

  My father wasn’t rushing to chase Calypso and stop him — he and the entire front line were keeping their distance from the rift, maintaining a safe gap from Effu. And I understood perfectly: the dark magic radiating from the rift was so intense that even I felt slightly sick. The space around was literally pulsing with constant changes, fluctuations — you could see it with the naked eye.

  The creatures running around finally forced me into battle, as some truly vicious things started pouring out of the shadow vortex and actively bombarding my protective dome. I had to fight something that looked like a cross between a scorpion and a dragonfly: similar wings and eyes (only huge), but the claws and curved tail with a stinger were just like a scorpion’s. Escorius, I think they were called. Not as venomous as real scorpions, but their claws could easily cut you in half.

  I wasn’t screaming from fear only because terror had closed my throat… But I wanted to scream not because of what was happening around me — though that alone could drive any unprepared mage insane.

  I wanted to scream because out of the corner of my eye, I’d seen a glowing golden streak flying straight toward Effu and entering the shadow rift to get close to him.

  “CALYPSO, STOP!!!” I heard the Mentor’s desperate scream somewhere ahead of me.

  He seemed to have decided to scream for both of us. Not that it helped…

  I barely fended off the attacking escorius’s stinger, but I couldn’t dodge the claw perfectly, and I hissed in pain when the creature caught me. Partially, but still not pleasant, to put it mildly… I was about to fire back with a powerful death sphere, but at that moment the ground beneath us shook. Really shook, like a strong earthquake. Everyone on the ground stopped fighting — even the creatures instinctively pressed themselves to the ground, unable to attack during such powerful tremors… Or was this not an earthquake at all?

  I waved my hand anyway, setting the escorius on fire, so it wouldn’t attack me again, and stared at the sky with my heart pounding — up there where one golden winged speck was now blazing blindingly bright, hovering at arm’s length from Effu’s not-yet-fully-formed face…

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  What the hell was he doing?!!

  Calypso’s voice, strangely distorted, suddenly carried across the entire plain, rolling out like a deafening sound wave:

  “Submit to me, Effu… You want to submit to me…”

  That’s when it finally hit me what Calypso was planning, and I grabbed my head and howled in horror. If I could fly, I would have rushed to Calypso right then and smacked him good with a frying pan!..

  Was he… trying to mentally influence Effu? The primordial spirit of chaos himself? Had he completely lost his mind?!!

  “You submit to me, Effu…” Calypso’s eerie voice sent shivers down my spine.

  “You are joining me and will not harm me… You submit to me…”

  “Have you lost your fucking mind?!!!” I screamed.

  But it was so loud from the strange crackling coming from the shadow crack that I don’t think even the Fortemins standing right next to me could hear me, let alone Calypso.

  And then it hit us…

  The shockwave that followed knocked everyone, who was still standing, off their feet. A terrible wind rose, becoming hurricane-force within seconds. This wind was coming from the shadow vortex, which suddenly started sucking all the creatures back in. They were being pulled like a magnet, back toward the flip side. Utter chaos erupted — creatures trying to cling to mages and wound them one last time, and mages trying to dodge the clinging creatures.

  Fortemins and Inquisitors helped each other as best they could with protective shields, trying to stick together. I also covered several Inquisitors with my protective dome — we’d huddled together. Several escorius creatures scraped their claws across my protective dome as they were dragged into the shadow vortex.

  I raised my head, squinting against the freezing gale-force wind, holding back my hair that was getting in my eyes and blocking my view of what was happening ahead. But I couldn’t really make anything out because of the creatures swarming overhead.

  Calypso… Where was my Calypso, damn it?!

  The terrifying sucking vortex wasn’t touching the mages. Those who had been fighting in the air had to land quickly and crouch as low as possible so the shadow vortex wouldn’t accidentally suck them in along with the other creatures, so the mass of creatures wouldn’t push them into that pulsating hole. My parents had also landed near me, and a bit away I saw the Mentor’s snow-white robe — he’d had to lie on the ground with everyone else, waiting out the storm.

  I don’t know how long it all lasted… Probably a few minutes, but they felt stretched into one small eternity. I just pressed myself to the ground and prayed for it to end soon, and for my Calypso, my dear Calypso, to land beside me now, reassure me, tell me everything was okay… My nerves were frayed with tension, and my naive little heart just wanted peace and happiness…

  It all ended very suddenly.

  The wind died down, the ground stopped shaking. I raised my head and saw that the glowing purple shadow rift had gone dark. There were no more creatures… None at all, anywhere. They’d all been dragged back to the flip side, it seemed. Effu was gone too. Only Fortemins and Inquisitors remained on the battlefield, and everyone’s eyes were fixed on the bright gold-and-purple speck rapidly approaching the ground… Calypso was falling — falling, but slowing his descent as best he could, though his landing was rough.

  He hit the ground with a thud but immediately sat up with a groan, clutching his head, bowing it so low that his long white hair completely hid his face.

  The Inquisitors and Fortemins standing in front of me all suddenly backed away, and I stayed in place, ending up in the front row, so to speak, staring ahead at Calypso, not knowing what to expect from him now.

  A brightly glowing dome was flickering around him, shifting between gold and purple, flashing like a Christmas tree. And the same crazy-feeling energy was ‘flashing’ around — that’s exactly why my colleagues had backed away, not understanding what was happening but instinctively wanting to get away from the obviously dangerous object.

  Calypso was sitting on the magic-scorched soil, muttering to himself, but I couldn’t hear what. All I could see was this strange energy sphere around Calypso, sparkling and shifting between two colors. The sphere was slowly shrinking, compressing… I got the feeling the energy was concentrating for… what? What did this all mean, and what was happening?

  I don’t know how much time passed while I, like everyone else, just watched Calypso, waiting for… something. I didn’t even know what. To be honest, I wasn’t sure who was sitting on the ground in front of me — Calypso, or not quite him? Or not him at all?..

  Very strange, murky energy was emanating from Calypso… I couldn’t analyze it — I didn’t have the experience for that. So I just watched silently and tensely as the purple-gold energy sphere around Calypso kept shrinking, compressing, and, well, sort of absorbing into Calypso himself… My eyes were fixed on Calypso’s wrist, where the communication bracelet artifact was — the kind all Fortemins wear. But now this bracelet looked different. The bracelet on its silver chain had turned distinctly black, and numerous runes glowing purple had appeared on its surface — I couldn’t make out what runes they were from this distance. The energy was definitely concentrating in that bracelet — I could feel that for certain.