Page 132 of Dragon Fires Everywhere
Then louder.
And it catches on.
Slowly it becomes a chant. A spell.
So simple, when the world, and even our future free of black magic, won’t besimple.
But sometimes you have to start with simple to get anywhere. Sometimes, no matter how complex the things you build on topof them, the foundations have to start with the most simple truths.
Hope.
Love.
Unity.
And people brave enough to fight for them all, no matter the cost.
Carol is screeching, but she’s turning into a Joywood zombie herself. Her skin is melting away. Her hair is gone.
The creature she made is falling apart at the seams. Blackmagic oozes all over the bricks, then is covered by the insistent snow.
Though he’s still healing, Azrael begins to create a ring of fire around the black that remains, and another dragon fliesin to help him finish the circle when his energy flags.
We chant until we have Carol trapped. She’s dissolving before us. There is nothing but black ooze left.
“Now what?” Zander asks.
“I can think of several fitting ends,” Azrael mutters.
“I am certain I know a spell for each,” Frost agrees. They look at each other in a moment of perfect understanding, like theymight one day be friends.
Imaginethat.
My father rushes over to me with a book. It’s one of the Joywood books from Carol’s house—I recognize that smell. He holdsit out, opened to a page.
“Containing black magic,” he says excitedly. “There’s a whole chapter on how to contain and dispose of it.”
I take the book from my father, and it doesn’t feel evil anymore. Because wiped of Carol’s intent, it’s just information.As intended.
“We need to contain itinsomething,” I say as I read. “No one person can hold on to it, and it must be displayed for all to see at all times.”
I frown a little. How are we going to come up with that?
“You must choose wisely,” Frost says then, frowning as if this is a memory. “She must be contained by her own evil, or she’llbe a threat again.”
“I have an idea,” Azrael murmurs.
Then, with a loud thump, the dragon statue from the cemetery lands in the courtyard at the end of Main Street.
We all look at Emerson. Her beautiful wedding gown is torn. She has a gash on her cheek, and she’s holding her arm at an odd angle. She is clearly being careful to hide the majority ofher injuries from Jacob, who is standing at the edge of the alley. He’s trying to heal a sniveling Sage, who keeps crying out in a pain that is no doubt minor.
Save everyone else first. That’s our Emerson. And I don’t feel a pang of sympathy or hate for Sage. Just a delightful nothingness.
Because that’s all he really was.
“Yes,” Emerson says, nodding at the dragon statue. “How do we do it?”
I read them the book, the spell. And we all come together—not as our coven, or even the citizens of St. Cyprian. But as anyonewho wants to be part of a new world, free of black magic and greed and evil.
