Continued thanks to all reviewers :) And my betas, for managing to fit this in amongst revision.
Chapter 12
Scarlet lances of flame thrust out across the landscape, trees bursting into cones of brief incendiary brilliance as the fiery waves swept through them, and hurled thick clouds of white ash into the boiling air. Every now and then, as the smoke moved aside the Phoenix burned against the dark sky like some ancient solar god, venting volcanic wrath down on Katryna's towering figure.
Sam was trying very hard not to watch. Actually, if truth be told, she was trying hardest not to choke, as any real watching of the titans' battle was prevented by her being squashed face-down into a hastily-blasted ditch. One of Richard's elbows was jammed into her back as he tried to lever himself upright again after their headlong dive for cover. It has been close, and Sam was pretty sure that the last gout of flame had taken most of her eyebrows with it as it had passed.
The pressure on her back vanished as Richard succeeded in righting himself, and she was just able to roll aside before he was flung back again, his hair smouldering, as a fresh burst of hellish brilliance surged above them. Sam found an arm somewhere amongst the folds of cloak and clutched at it insistently.
"What's happening?"
Richard shook her off and sat up, patting his hair out.
"Katryna's winning."
That wasn't the answer she'd been expecting. Gingerly, Sam eased up until she could see over the edge of the scorched earth. She was in time to see the Phoenix swipe a massive wing across Katryna's face, before arcing round back up into the sky.
She ducked back.
"How is that winning? She's not even moving!"
"Exactly." Richard sat back heavily and Sam was shocked to see how pale he looked. Well, after all the events of the last few days he had a right to be tired, but … This was something else. His skin was visibly pale, even under the collected charcoal, mud and small wounds, and his eyes were hollow, with a strange look in the back of their kaleidoscopic gaze. Distractedly, he dragged his bare hand through his hair, dislodging some remaining ash.
"I don't know what to do," he murmured, so softly that it was barely audible, and his eyes faded to a dull grey, "I don't –"
Any more words vanished as an unearthly screech tore through the air, and Sam yelped, clamping her hands over her ears. It made no difference – the sound was either going straight past her fingers or it wasn't being transmitted in the traditional fashion. She jerked round, failing slightly as the horrible noise reverberated through her mind, and let out another yelp as she focused on the fight. The battle was still going on, but suddenly the whole scene was very different. Katryna had moved. One massive hand swept upwards, clamped like a glittery vice into the depths of a wing as the Phoenix tried to dive again. The firebird screamed and flapped its free wing madly, trying to tear itself free. Katryna smiled, happily, then turned and smashed the struggling form into the ground with tectonic force.
A sizeable swathe of forest exploded. Sam managed to get down a fraction of a second before the shockwave reached the trench. Super-heated sap and fragments of charred tree blasted outward, turning the air into a nightmare blizzard of incandescent shrapnel. The strip of sky above the ditch vanished in the firestorm and Sam pressed herself into the dirt, each new tremor shaking her to the core as Katryna hit again, again.
Abruptly, Sam found herself swathed in clothy darkness as heavy material dropped over her. Before she could even get her lightly-gibbering brain to realise what had happened, Richard's face materialised in front of her, lit strangely through newly-tattered areas of his cloak.
"Alright?"
His eyes were green again. Sam gulped and managed to force a nod. It wasn't exactly the truth, but what could she say? There wasn't anything else to do.
"Y-yeah …" Another miniature earthquake rippled through the surrounding ground and she jumped. "How are they not hearing this?" she muttered, "I thought the school was near here!"
"Influence." Richard growled the word. He shook his head, filling the makeshift tent with a fresh scent of charred hair. "You felt how strong it was. The end of the world on their doorstep, and we're the only ones who'll see it."
"End of the -?"
"Use your brain, kid," he snapped. "You think she'll stop at Hogwarts? It's just the first step. The school, the UK, Europe and beyond – Sues don't know how to have limits. The world - all toys playing out her games, acting her stories. It's all going to hell and I don't know how to stop it!" The last few words were shouted, and punctuated by Richard slamming his gloved fist into the ditch side. As his knuckles impacted, suddenly the all-pervading screech faltered, losing strength so abruptly that the unexpected release of mental pressure was unbalancing. The sound that replaced it was very different – a low, plaintive whine.
The world flooded back as Richard leapt to his feet, tiny eddies spinning in the airborne ash as he swept his cloak back on. Sam scrambled up beside him, squinting with prickling eyes through the smoke. The fight had … paused? Both combatants were still upright and surrounded by a large area of black-scorched earth, although the Phoenix seemed to be only held up by the hand wrapped around its neck. Sam didn't bother to wonder how a creature apparently made of flames could be held so – it had hit the ground solidly enough. The great wings beat feebly at the air, scattering a few sparks.
Katryna smiled. Then she plunged her free hand into the firebird's chest. Scarlet flame erupted around her wrist, utterly ineffective, as she seemed to search for a moment and then ripped her hand back with something clutched in the huge fingers. The flames didn't so much extinguish as vanish. One moment the Phoenix was hanging in the air, the next there was nothing but a few fading sparks drifting forlornly down to earth. Katryna raised her hand to examine the dark shape clutched there.
She ripped out … But the heartwas J –
Two tiny points of red light flared, illuminating the distorted, drawn, but still familiar face surrounding them. Richard took a sharp, half-hissed breath, somewhere between exclamation and gasp, as Katryna closed her fingers around the figure. The was a very complicated movement in the glowing shape – Sam could have sworn that several of the Sue's fingers passed through each other several times – and then there was nothing but her hand.
"She – she just –" Sam stammered, not quite willing to believe what her eyes were reporting. She glanced back at Richard and had to swallow a small cry. He was standing bolt upright, with every muscle in his face pulled taut. His lips were thin, furious lines, and a few small veins were standing out on his neck. His hand dropped onto the side of the ditch, the knuckles gleaming white through bare skin.
"Stay here."
"But -"
"Stay here!"
Sam recoiled. The command had stung.
Without a backward glance, Richard vaulted out of the ditch and stalked forward, silhouetted against the rising trails of smoke. Sam watched him go. She felt torn between a mad urge to run after him, and the intense desire to curl up and sob until everything went away. What was going on? First Kate, then the Terrace, and now …
Her eyes prickled hotly.
Now Jackie. She wasn't sure exactly what had happened in the Sues' battle. 'Fight to the death … I have to kill the victor …' Had Katryna won? The Phoenix had died, but Jackie had been moving before she vanished, hadn't she? And now Richard was heading right for the massive Sue, every inch the enraged avenger, but he'd said he didn't know what to do! He, he always knew, and if he didn't then why was he-?
… he's going to lose …
Booted feet slammed down decisively as Richard came to a halt, barely twenty yards away from Katryna. The huge Sue didn't seem to have noticed him, and was staring at the horizon with a faintly distracted expression.
"Katryna! This night isn't over yet!"
Katryna blinked and turned, a brittle smile creeping onto her features as she re-focused on the figure dwarfed beside her.
"Adrastos. I wondered when you would come to me."
Sam ducked back again, barely daring to breathe. Richard was stood at an angle compared to her position, his face highlighted in stark profile by the dying firelight. She'd never seen him so angry. His features were twisted very far away from handsome, narrowed eyes burning with a furious crimson that was somehow visible even over that distance.
"My name is Richard," he hissed, his wand suddenly in hand and pointing straight up at the huge face above him. Katryna sighed, rolling her eyes as if bothered by some irksome younger sibling.
"Such a pity. I suppose you've come to stop me, Richard?"
A bolt of scarlet light erupted from the wand tip in response and shot up towards Katryna. She didn't even blink as the hex ricocheted harmlessly off her and ignited a nearby tree. Richard whipped the wand round again and tried a different spell, sending what seemed like a wave of orange-hued air surging upward. That one ripped a huge gash in the ground when it bounced off. Katryna didn't seem to notice. She regarded her diminutive opponent coolly and then her lips twitched, as if something was vaguely amusing.
"How very heroic. How very … Stu. You've never really been able to fight that aspect, have you, little residual?"
Richard snorted. He lowered his wand slightly and Sam saw his expression flicker for a moment. He was changing tactics …
He had a plan. Sam caught a tiny thread of hope. He had to have a plan …
"I am nothing like Adrastos," he said quietly, but the force behind his words even made Katryna blink, "Nothing."
The Sue laughed softly. The sound washed over the landscape and Sam felt her skin crawl. There was something very, very wrong with that noise.
"Poor Richard," Katryna sneered, "Such a trial it must be for you! How about I ease your pain, for old time's sake?"
Richard's eyes narrowed even further and the wand came back up.
"I won't play games with you, Katryna."
"Good." She straightened and her eyes lit up, threads of a yellowish glow rising around her pupils. Richard took a step back, the tip of his wand switching aim rapidly between the increasingly bright points of light above him. Katryna smiled brightly and spread her arms in a corrupt gesture of welcome.
"Adrastos Riddle! I draw you out!"
Light exploded in her eyes and the air around the huge figure shimmered like a yellow-hued heat haze. Before Sam could see anything else her attention was wrenched aside by Richard's sudden scream of pain. Shock jolted through her as she focused on him. It wasn't just Katryna's eyes that were glowing. Yellow light was spilling from Richard's bulging eyes and his face was twitching bizarrely. His wand dropped from shaking fingers, spasms rippling down his body so that his limbs jerked erratically, like a bad puppet, but his glowing eyes seemed frozen in place, his body shuddering around them as if they were fixed immovably to the backdrop. The air around him rippled and suddenly the intensity of his scream increased as thin threads of smoke began to rise from his body.
Sam couldn't move. She wanted to do something but her body wouldn't respond. It was partly her own fear, but somehow Richard's cries reached deep inside her, prompting oscillating waves of terror from the Sue. That surprised her: her Sue was terrified.
All other thoughts broke apart as Richard crumpled to his knees, arms flung out in front of him. The screaming ceased, but his breathing was audible in the sudden silence, heavy, erratic, and as much of his face as was visible behind fronds of sweat-soaked hair was horribly twisted, his teeth bared and lips pulled so far back that his features took on a skeletal appearance. Smoke was pouring off him, the same thick, oily greyish colour that had become familiar deep spork wounds. This time though, there was no weapon and the smoke was boiling from every inch of his body. He was barely even visible, surrounded by a cocoon of greasy fog that was punctured only by two searing points of light.
Suddenly he grunted and the smoke writhed, contracting around him until it lay in a thick, shimmering layer.
"… so … this … is how … you did it …" The words were barely audible over the grunts that were all his voice had degenerated into. Katryna laughed again.
"My, my! You really are a strong one, aren't you?" The light in her eyes swelled again, and Richard let out a fresh snort of pain. "Let's test it." A shudder ran through her and her arms widened even further. Her eyes flared.
"Come to me!"
This time he didn't even scream. Somehow, that was worse. There was a sound, but it was a groan that echoed strangely within itself, as if there were two voices sounding at once and slightly out of synchrony with one another. His smoky shell rippled, tightened –
The moment froze as the hunched figure distorted, two nearly identical images overlaid on the world for a tiny fraction of time – and then they split apart. Richard slumped, but even as he pitched forward the smoke above him swirled and, just for a second, a pair of slashed yellow eyes stared out, horror-struck, before whirling away into Katryna's welcoming embrace. The smoke splashed as it hit, but condensed quickly into the Sue's surface, like it had done befo-
- no -
A tiny part of Sam's mind that wasn't blinded by near-paralytic terror noticed a difference. This time, as the new smoke blended in, Katryna looked more finished, some of the blur gone from her edges. Very close now …
The Sue's eyes dimmed and she looked down, an expression of gleeful scorn settling onto her smoothing features.
"Such a pity. All that bravado, all that posing, and in the end you're no better than the rest of them." She crouched down and leant forward, the huge head swinging closer to Richard's still form. Katryna smiled.
"Enjoy humanity, Richard. There's a few hours of it left." With that, the iridescent figure straightened up and turned, stepping impossibly delicately over the vestiges of smouldering forest as she resumed her earlier course.
Behind her, skidding erratically across the devastated ground, Sam ran. She wasn't even panicking – between the all-consuming terror, overwhelming confusion and repeated bolts of shock seething through her mind, there wasn't space for panic. What remained of her thoughts were fixed on the crumpled figure ahead of her, although she didn't dare contemplate what she was going to find when she reached him. The actual distance wasn't far, but it took an eternity to cross. Her eventual arrival was less than graceful, involving considerable amounts of skidding and a final surrender of the knees as she dropped down, searching the hunched shape desperately for any sign of life.
…
… he's not moving … he's not …
Black dread rising all around her, Sam reached forward and brushed her shaking fingertips across his shoulder. The speed at which her hand was caught, wrenched aside and driven into the ground hard enough to send a painful explosion of protest from her elbow, was shockingly impressive. Richard went from crumpled to crouched over her with a knee on her throat without apparently passing through the intervening space.
A pair of impossibly still, single-shade, normal brown eyes locked with her own, but for the first few heartbeats they were glazed. Then Richard blinked, and the familiar fire returned to his gaze. He looked down at her, surprised, and frowned.
"Sam?" his voice sounded as if it were arriving from very far away. Sam nodded as much as she was able to and he sat back very suddenly. His eyes unfocused again as he stared at his hands, and, cautiously, reached towards his face. Disbelief blossomed on his features.
"It's really …" he trailed off, then shook himself and stood up, wobbling a little. "You alright?" he asked sharply. Sam nodded, not really paying attention to the words as she stared at him. He looked … different. Not just the stable eye colour, although that was the most obvious change. His jaw was a little less defined, his hair suddenly an ashy mess rather than stylishly ruffled, and exhaustion was showing in shoulders set less harshly square than they had been before.
"She took Adrastos?" The question slipped out before she could stop it, and Sam recoiled automatically, but the rebuke didn't come. Instead, Richard just nodded wearily as he found his wand and picked it up.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because he's strong. Three-for-three …" he seemed to be talking to himself, and cut off suddenly. Sam followed his gaze, which was fixed intently on the palm of his bare hand. There was something there and Sam could see it now. A narrow strip of old scar, etched into the flesh …
Richard's expression flickered. His fingers snapped closed and he straightened up, properly this time, and set his jaw.
"Only human? We'll see. Sam – " his gaze hit her again, all the old determination burning freely in the halted shade " – I want you to go. Get back to the others and get the hell of here. The wing'll work well enough in reverse."
His next words sent a jolt of ice down her spine:
"Go to the Ministry. Warn them. I don't care what you have to do, just do it fast!"
Sam's jaw dropped.
"The Ministry? But – "
"For once in your life, girl, do not ask questions!"
The shout was like a punch to the stomach, and Sam physically rocked before she turned and ran. She hadn't gone far before the tears started but she ignored them, ignored the scorched air tearing at her lungs, ignored everything other than the image burned into her mind. The last look in Richard's eyes.
He was going to die.
He was going to face her again. He'd got no Stu, he couldn't hurt her, but he was going back. Why? Because of some stupid scar? Because he didn't know what else to do?
Or because he's the only one who can?
…
But I'm here too.
Sam's pace dropped, falling to a jog as her hand swung up, touching the ragged, bloody hole in her sleeve and prompting a fresh ripple of pain from the spork-wound. A few short months ago, she hadn't even known what one of the bulbous little tridents even was. She knew now. She knew a lot of things now, including that the fact that there even was a 'her' to know was because of him.
Her finger twitched and she shook her head, as if it would fling out the swirling thoughts. He'd told, no, ordered her to leave. She should leave, go back to the others-
- and what? Have the world go to hell around me as I'm trying to get everyone awake?
She stopped and tried to summon some enthusiasm for her task. Alright, so it took her away from the fight – it wasn't like she was being useful here – and at last she'd be doing something.
Yes. I'd be running away.
She looked round. She was near the treeline again, standing in the scorched area where the Phoenix had risen. Which meant …
A very quick search produced a slightly scorched broomstick. Before she could do anything with it, however, the crack of a magical ricochet broke through the air and she span round just in time to see a fresh distant tree ignite in a pillar of green light. Sam's heart missed several beats until another jet of light, this one blue, sent a shower of sparks into the night sky. Katryna didn't use magic like that. That meant Richard was still fighting.
Still alive. For now.
His words echoed painfully loudly through her head. 'Get the hell out of here!' She'd obeyed him unquestioningly before, safe in her absolute certainty that he knew what he was doing, that it was all planned. But now it wasn't.
I can't just run away.
The broom weighed heavily in her hands.
x - x -
"You just don't know when to give up, do you?"
Richard scrambled back onto his feet and spat out the clump of grass that landing had forced into his mouth. This was not going well. Whatever he'd been expecting, whatever scraps of ideas he'd thought even slightly possible; they all hinged on him being able to do something. Nothing worked. Unforgivables, classic and less-well known; Horrifics; blasts of raw power from Light, Dark and the regions neither side wanted to claim responsibility for –
Nothing. Ricochets had left the surrounding trees in a variety of interesting shapes, and if his reflexes had been any slower then the last reflected spell would have taken off his head, but nothing he'd attempted had even put a scratch in that shimmering visage.
What had he expected? That something would just turn up? Well … yes. It usually did. Nothing was ever static, and he was very good at taking any sudden change to his advantage. But this was different. For the first time in his adult life, he was out of ideas.
He narrowed his eyes, ignoring the bizarre sensation of the irises remaining utterly stationary, and picked a verbal response. If he could do nothing else, he could stall for time.
She liked to gloat.
"I don't give up." He straightened up again, aiming his wand even as his gaze searched desperately for some kind of useful target. Of course, if his suspicions about what was stood in front of him were accurate – and he was quite sure now – there wouldn't be any vulnerable areas. An illusion couldn't bleed.
Katryna stared down at him, a small smile playing across her lips. She looked amused, as if she were being pestered by some foolish yet entertaining insect.
"Maybe you should learn to."
His mind may have been uncharacteristically disordered, his subconscious unsettlingly void of its unwelcome lodger, but some instincts were ingrained so deeply that Richard managed to move a fraction of a second before she did. The result was that the massive fingers closed around his ankle rather than his neck, although the following rapid vertical acceleration would have been bad no matter how he'd been caught. His leg muscles exploded in pain as his bodyweight twisted them unnaturally, the ground dropping away below him as Katryna lifted him effortlessly into the air and held him there. Her huge fingers tightened, and Richard suppressed a grimace as he felt the bones in his ankle creak dangerously.
"I've given you so many chances, Richard."
This close, the voice was deafeningly loud, and he suspected the only reason his eardrums hadn't ruptured was the folds of cloak hanging over his head. He tightened his grip on the wand and tried to aim for the massive eyes opposite him. Katryna laughed and shook him like a toy, sending crackles of ligament-straining agony surging up his leg. His vision – and aim – vanished in the clothy darkness and he flailed at the cloak with a free hand, trying to push it out of his eyes. A sigh like the prelude to a hurricane swept over him and he felt himself be lifted even higher, until he was right in front of the twisted parody of an angel's features.
"So many chances," Katryna paused, making a soft 'tsk' sound as if scolding a naughty child, but when she spoke again the playful edge had become distinctly icy, "all rejected. I was going to let you … No, not live as such. Exist, maybe. For nostalgia's sake. It was such a good story, after all."
Her fingers tightened again and this time Richard couldn't swallow the gasp of pain. Several bones were very close to their limits.
"I'm not part of your 'story'," he hissed.
"No," Katryna said softly and the edge in her voice changed again, now to something like malicious delight, "you were part of hers. Such a delicious tragedy, and you know what makes it so beautiful? You brought it on yourselves! It'll be hard to match that, dear Richard, even for me -"
Something snapped. It wasn't his ankle. Richard hurled his cloak aside, a scream of indescribable fury boiling up his throat as he brought his wand up, his lips readying with every curse in his repertoire, priming to unleash a barrage of – probably useless – rage into that damned face, but in that moment the futility didn't matter, he didn't care, he just wanted to –
The first sound that broke the air didn't come from him. Both gazes moved, their respective owners sharing the flicker of surprise at the unexpected intrusion, and both settled on the indistinct shape speeding erratically towards them, emitting green sparks and a high-pitched, terrified yell.
Things changed.
Richard reacted first. He swivelled, snapped a curse so fast his lips scraped the end of the word and he heard Katryna shriek as black smoke poured out of the tip of his wand, wrapping around her face. It wouldn't last more than a few moments, but it didn't need to. He swivelled, planting his free foot firmly onto the glowing flesh wrapped around his ankle and swung the wand again, this time with a new target.
At the same moment his boot exploded, he kicked out hard with his other leg, forcing his foot out of Katryna's grip with an impressive amount of pain. Gravity regained interest in him a fraction of a second before the Sue snatched at him again and he twisted as he fell, trying to angle his plunge. On the one hand, he was furious that his last order had apparently been ignored.
On the other, he really, really hoped he had timed this right.
- x - x -
Screaming seemed the only sensible thing to do. Sam clung desperately to the charred wood beneath her hands and tried to find some way to knot her knees under the broom. It wouldn't exactly help with the near-overwhelming nausea, but it might make her feel slightly like she wasn't about to fall off at any moment. She fixed her watering eyes on her goal, and felt her stomach give another violent lurch – this time of horror – as she saw the flash of light, and watched Richard's dark form start to fall.
Oh hell…
"GO!" She shrieked, trying to physically force the broom to go faster. The ancient wood shuddered in time with her stomach, the air screamed even louder in her ears – and suddenly the broom lurched horribly and Sam screamed again, wrenching at the tip as she tried desperately to get it back under some semblance of control. The broomstick lurched again.
"What in Merlin's name do you think you're doing?"
Sam nearly fell off. Her eyes snapped open and she looked round and down, her jaw dropping wide as she focused on the gloved hand clamped just above the bristles. The stick rocked madly as Richard swung again, managing to get his other hand onto the wood. Narrowed brown eyes glared up at her, but Sam could see the repressed relief there and besides, she didn't think she could get any more scared.
"I'm not running away!" she yelled, and then something caught her eye and she yelped, wrenching hard at the broom and sending it into a fresh mad spiral just above the trees as the huge hand swept through the air, missing them by less than a metre. Sam craned down at her sudden passenger.
"I don't know what to do!"
"Pull me up!"
"But I can't stop!" Sam yanked on the broom again, trying to force her eyes to stay open against the wind. What she saw did not help. The broom's near-corkscrew flight had brought them around behind Katryna – who was brushing some kind of black fog away from her face – and they were heading straight for the glowing cliff of the Sue's back. Sam scrabbled for control and her grip chose that moment to give out. She nearly swallowed her tongue as she dropped sideways and she just managed to cross her legs tightly around the broom, leaving her dangling by the knees, her arms flailing down at the yawning drop below her. Her support shuddered and she took a moment out from panicking to see Richard above her, struggling to keep his own balance from where the broom's spin had carried him onto the right side of the handle.
"Hold on!" he shouted and lunged forward, gripping the wood tightly and wrenching the broom upward, trying to gain control over the dizzying flightpath. A fresh wave of green sparks flared from the long-suffering tail bristles and the broom lurched forward, swinging up wildly as the ancient spells strained against the sheer physics of the moment. Katryna's back suddenly became floor as the broom went vertical. Sparks showered Sam's face and she shrieked, trying to shield herself, but the distraction had been enough and her knees failed. There was a moment of stomach-churning, erratic depth, and then Sam landed heavily on Katryna's shoulder. Automatically, she flung her hands forward and tried to get a grip to stop herself falling straight off.
She didn't fall off. Quite the opposite.
Sam yelped as her fingers sunk into the glowing flesh, as if she was clinging to a giant ball of luminescent dough. She pulled one back and it came out easily, trailing tiny lines of smoke behind it, but she'd had to shift her weight and her other hand plunged even further into the gleaming surface. A thin mental veneer of curiosity noted that, this close, the surface of Katryna looked oddly glassy. Rather like Serenity's globe had been when the Sue was diffusing around inside it …
The thought vanished, and Sam struggled to stand up, arcing her body back in an attempt to pull her hands free. It worked, but left her kneeling in a precarious position. She had time to experience the fascinating combination of vertigo and mind-numbing panic before the surface beneath her knees gave up on integrity and she started sinking again.
"Sam!"
Sam's head shot up as Richard dropped out of the night sky, bringing the broomstick around until it was hovering next to her, still giving off sparks. He leaned over, bracing one foot on the surface as he reached over towards her. Sam stared, momentarily distracted.
"You're not sinking!"
Richard finally seemed to notice that Sam was knee-deep in Katryna's shoulder, and he blinked. Something akin to realisation flashed across his face.
"I was right," he muttered, "It's a shell- Quick- " he broke out of the thought, "– or she's going to notice – "
"Richard!"
Sam clamped her hands over her ears automatically at the assault of the thunderous voice, then let out another cry as she dropped even further down. The sensation around her legs was bizarre, like static-cling creeping across her skin, but she didn't want to sink! The image of Jac – Zitka – whoever vanishing into Katryna's hand earlier flashed across Sam's mind and she renewed her struggles, even as she could feel Katryna start to turn …
"Grab my hand, kid!" Richard commanded, bracing himself again against the glowing surface as he reached for her. Sam goggled at him.
"Wh-why aren't you –?" she stuttered, desperately scrabbling at the air before his hand.
"I'm not a Stu anymore!" Richard lunged forward and grabbed her hand, clamping it tightly between his fingers, "I don't – Hey!" he exclaimed as he slipped, his foot suddenly starting to sink. Automatically, he let go and Sam shrieked as even more of her body disappeared beneath the glowing surface.
"Get off me!" Katryna's voice boomed and Sam's eyes widened as a massive hand swung across the shoulder towards them. They'd be crushed! Richard saw it at the same time and for a moment his expression flickered.
Then he leapt off the broom and dived towards Sam, wrapping his arms tightly around her waist, and pushed down. She didn't even have time to cry out as all resistance failed and she plunged downwards into the blinding glow, Richard on top of her. The surface healed over behind them just as Katryna's hand sliced through the air they'd been occupying seconds before.
Sam felt as if she'd been submerged in luminescent syrup. The blinding light was somehow thick, heavy, clutching at her as she slid ever downward into its embrace, sending electric prickling across her skin where it touched. She had to fight a strange urge to giggle as she half-wondered if they'd just keep on falling until they tumbled out of Katryna's ankles.
They didn't.
- x -