Page 71 of Violet Spark
Choice made, I looked over at Mom. Looked her square in her worried mom eyes.
“Do you believe in me?” I asked. “Do you think I can do this?” Because that was all that mattered.
She looked at me a beat. Then her brows smoothed and lifted. And I saw the worry clear as her eyes took on a different shine. Got me right in the feels, that.
She gave me one short nod and squeezed my hand. She was ready to run. With me.
I hoped I’d made the right choice.
I nodded. If we lived, I’d cry about it later. I knew she loved me more than anything too. Definitely more than herself. Enough to live with her pain for a while longer.
I turned my attention back to the door, took a quick breath, and sprinted.
Thank God it was a good back pain day because Mom was right behind me. Or was she running through the pain? How bad would it be later? How much was this costing her? Nerves weren’t forgiving. Nerves screamed.
We got to the stairwell door in a skid and a crash. Yeah, locked.
I stepped back, ready to blast it open, but a quick glance over my shoulder showed me Jen 2.0, Alling behind him. And Jen 2.0 was aiming a gun. Something about the flex of his forearm and I knew he was going to fire.
It was instinct. Not the kind you get from just being born. The desperate kind ingrained by days upon weeks of gaming at all hours of the nights I couldn’t sleep until my eyes burned, my brain buzzed, and my muscle memory acted independently from my dreams-are-for-losers fatigue.
My hands came together, fingers forming the diamond of an EldWitch [shield] spell. I quickly pulled wide my area of protection to include Mom just as I heard thepow!of gunfire.
It was insane. Stupid. It shouldn’t have worked. I mean, I knew the difference between reality and fantasy. This was the real world. I was just really tired. And hungry. And in the moment, confused and terrified.
I was going to die. Shot like Brayden.
But the bullet hit the shield—lighting up the purple moths that had responded to my command, bright violet at the point of contact—and ricocheted—pew!—into the server racks. A purple shimmer lingered before me and Mom…like magic.
Jen 2.0 gaped.
So did Alling, frozen mid-grimace.
But I went very calm inside.
I got it now. I’d been trying too hard. Trying tomakesomething happen with my new power when symbiosis was about working together. No wonder I could only blast with no control, no nuance. When I’d busted the lock on the door of the lab room, I’d used the motion for the [seize] spell I would’ve used in Legendelirium.
Because in Legendelirium I didn’t haveto thinkabout how to make each spell work. I picked from my arsenal—the spells I had bought or stole or earned and then practiced for hours on end—and gave the command via hand motion. The game did the rest.
Just like the moths had now. Mom had told me I played in my fake world too much, and she wasn’t wrong. The EldWitch version of me wasn’t real…but only because I hadn’t let her be. She was the version of me when I wasn’t afraid, wasn’t doubting myself, wasn’t holding back.
And right now, in a way, Jen 2.0 was just one more bog gnome threatening to gnaw my bones.
He’d fired on me. Well, now it was my turn.
I brought my hands toward each other, palms in. With a quick side-to-side ratchet of my wrists, I summoned [strike].And thrust my left hand toward the gnome-man.
The air between us crackled with an arm’s-width cloud of purple energy, cotton-candy threads of lightning pinging from moth to moth. The spell roared toward the gnome-man, who shuffled backward, smacking into Alling, and was just turning to run when it hit him.
The force smashed into his hunched shoulder, crashed him into Alling, and knocked them both three feet through the air. They collapsed together, bodies sliding on the floor, Jen 2.0 on top of Alling.
Wait. Had I killed him?
Sudden nausea threatened to bend me over retching. And I ached from my bones to my teeth to the ends of my hair, as if I’d been the one hit.
Oh God, I might’ve really killed him.
One of Alling’s sprawled legs moved, though he was still pinned under the other man.
