Gotta go. Showtime.
?
David. If something happens, I want you to know… I love you. And Anna. And C&F and Innocence and… everyone. The whole AC.
WTF? What's going on Alex?
ALEX?!
GODDAMIT ALEX! IF UR NOT DEAD IM GONNA KILL U MYSELF!
Alex?
Alexandra and her father stood with Medea and Hela on a shore somewhere near Detroit. It seemed strange to be crossing Lake Erie, when Alexandra had been taken to Eerie Island across Lake Michigan. But her father said Eerie Island's location was not fixed, which he believed was one reason why only she could have escaped as she did.
"There won't be many guards left," he said to the three witches accompanying him. "With Typhon and Edna gone, and the Confederation otherwise preoccupied, they are probably relying entirely on goblins to continue ferrying supplies, and the Doomguards to keep the prisoners in check. I wouldn't be surprised if there have been more escapes."
And deaths, Alexandra thought. The Doomguards killed anyone who tried to escape. If you failed, you died.
An unnatural summer storm had developed over the entire region. Thunderclouds rumbled and flashed over the lake, and winds chopped the water.
"Did you call this storm?" Alexandra asked her father.
"Indeed," he said. "And a magnificent, terrible beast it is. Can you see into its heart?"
It was leagues away, but Alexandra could sense something. She wasn't sure it was literally the storm's heart, but there was something living there, touched by magic.
"I wonder if it came for her," Medea said.
Alexandra looked at Medea with surprise. Her father had taught her a little about storm-calling, but he hadn't asked her to help with this one. She didn't know why Medea was attributing any part of it to her.
Abraham Thorn and Medea raised their wands together. In minutes, the wind picked up, the waves swelled, and the sky darkened. Alexandra turned slowly about in a circle, watching as their spell stirred the weather in all directions, as far as she could see.
Lucilla and Drucilla had played with weather on a smaller scale. She could feel the storm building. Electricity crackled in her throat and behind her eyes, and tingled beneath her skin.
When the skies overhead were as dark as she had ever seen in daytime, her father cast another spell that was new to her. It called something from the depths of the lake which rose to the surface a quarter mile from the shore.
Hela muttered something in her language.
Abraham Thorn had conjured a ghost ship. But not exactly a ghost ship—it was real and solid, its metal hull and superstructure rusted and caked with muck and algae. It righted itself on the waves, then moved through the water with a groaning sound, as if its long-rusted propellers had been called into action once more. Alexandra could almost see ghostly crewmen walking its deck. She blinked away that image—it was only her imagination. There were no ghosts on the ship. This didn't prevent Hela from mumbling and making gestures with her arms as if to ward off evil spirits.
"Come," Abraham Thorn said, and he cast a Water-Walking Charm. He and Medea walked across the swelling waves toward the ship.
Alexandra followed. Behind her came Hela, whose Water-Walking Charm seemed less able to compensate for the unsteady surface of the water. She swayed and stumbled, arms held out to balance herself. When she finally climbed up onto the wet, rusty deck, she looked a little gray.
The ship was large and empty. Yet it magically sheltered them from the weather, and moved quickly across the water. They couldn't Apparate or fly to Eerie Island, and Alexandra's boots didn't work across large bodies of water; she hadn't been sure how they would cross the lake. She had been hoping, a little bit, that maybe they were going to hijack the goblin packet. She wouldn't have minded seeing the looks on their faces, if it was the same crew that had dragged her across the lake last winter.
A grinding sound vibrated up through the hull—something hammered in the engine compartment, driving the ancient, corroded propeller shaft.
The trip was wet and cold despite the charms protecting them from the rain. Hela found a place to sit down inside a rotted crew compartment, but shortly afterwards emerged to lean over the rail as the ship kept rocking back and forth. Alexandra didn't spare her more than a glance—her father was teaching her the spells he'd used to raise the ship and animate it. Moments like these, especially not devoted just to opening cracks in the world, were rare. She absorbed the attention and the lesson, even though she was sure that pulling a freighter off the bottom of a lake and repurposing it for her own use was beyond her right now.
It was a shorter journey than her last agonizing trip across the lake before her father said, "Alexandra. It is time."
She looked ahead, through the sheets of rain. The island itself was invisible in the near-darkness. In her weeks spent on Eerie Island, she'd never seen the lighthouse lit. But she could see the wards around the island—Muggle-Repelling Charms, which were of no concern to them, and Anti-Apparition Wards, which were expected. But there were stronger spells as well. Curses to afflict anyone who sailed past the charms that would have stopped Muggles, wards to trap anyone not stopped by the curses—and those were just the spells meant to keep people out.
"None of this was here last time," she said. "Well, maybe the Muggle-Repelling Charms and the Anti-Apparition Wards." Though in fairness, she'd been in no condition to examine her surroundings on her last arrival.
"Without Typhon and Edna, and probably few wizards they can spare for guard duty, they have resorted to using spells to do their work, and spells are a poor substitute for brains. So, daughter, let us see what you can do."
It was her first test. Her real one would come later, when they were leaving. Her father could probably break these wards by force, but it was her job to put to use what they had practiced. She found the crack she'd opened once before, running through the world, through the air, through the water, all the way to the bottom of the lake. Walking to the bow, trusting her father to hold the ship steady and protect her from a sudden lurch or a gust of wind, she raised her arms.
Returning with a vengeance, she thought, and she opened the crack wide.
The ship surged through waves and lashing rain, and into the crack in the world.
They passed through a realm that was watery and stormy also. They drifted above an underwater city with spires twisted like coral, eerily illuminated in the depths. Figures flitted between those spires, and a school of them came flashing after the vessel floating overhead.
Then they slid out of that green World Away, and almost crashed into the tiny dock in front of Eerie Island's keep. The ship ground to a halt with a terrible rending sound as rocks tore through what was left of its metal keel, and Alexandra almost went somersaulting over the prow. An invisible hand pulled her back.
"We went right through the wards," said Medea.
"Told you I could do it," Alexandra said, steadying herself. She sounded surer than she'd been.
They disembarked. Her father raised his wand again and intoned a deep, forceful incantation that lifted their wrecked ship off the rocks and sent it sliding back into the gray water, where it disappeared beneath the surface in moments.
"You are very confident in Alexandra's ability to get us out of here when we're done," Medea said.
"I am." Abraham Thorn smiled at Alexandra, laying a hand on her shoulder as he walked past her. Alexandra lifted her chin as she looked back at Medea.
"I do have a backup plan, of course," he added.
Medea winked at her.
The four of them walked off the dock and up the narrow path to the keep.
Abraham Thorn raised the portcullis with a wave of his wand, and when a wizard in a red vest appeared, looking sleepy and startled, he pointed his wand and said, "Avada Kedavra!"
Alexandra gulped as the lethal green flash killed the man with a cold whoosh of air. She cleared her throat. "Shouldn't we, like, give them a chance to surrender?"
"We don't need their surrender." Her father kept walking, and Alexandra, Medea, and Hela followed him.
Alexandra remembered the next few chambers, where she had met first Typhon, the terrible sphinx who'd challenged her to a riddle contest, and then his wife Edna, the snake-woman who'd assigned her a Doomguard and a cell. Alexandra had freed those two monsters, sending them off to a World Away. They had warned her that they'd be back.
Now Edna's den was bare, the shelves full of treasures and knick-knacks and crossword puzzle books gone. Only her long, polished oak table remained. It looked as if the dead guard had been sitting in a chair by a small fire, listening to a Wizard Wireless set. Just the one Auror to watch the whole prison?
"You two round up the goblins," Abraham Thorn said to Medea and Hela. "Alexandra, come with me."
The two of them went through a door Alexandra remembered her Doomguard emerging from, the night she'd arrived. Her father walked confidently, as if he knew exactly where he was going. She wondered about his source of information. They descended stone steps that led deep into the rock beneath the keep, and beneath the water level as well.
Eventually, they emerged into a large underground chamber where rows of Doomguards stood in orderly ranks, silent and motionless. Two goblins were here. One was hammering on a piece of armor before a forge that glowed with some sort of ever-burning coal—Alexandra saw no bellows or other means to light it. The other was moving from Doomguard to Doomguard, wiping and polishing them with a rag. Both stopped what they were doing and stared at the two humans who'd suddenly entered their workshop.
"You're an armorer," Abraham Thorn said pleasantly to the goblin with the hammer. "One of those who forges these constructs for wizardkind."
"Yes," the goblin said, looking more annoyed than nervous. "Who are you? I wasn't told we were to expect visitors."
"I am Abraham Thorn, the Enemy of the Confederation. We're here to take your Doomguards."
Both goblins turned pale. Their greenish complexions looked positively sickly in the glow of the forge and the braziers around the room.
"What recompense will you give us, Abraham Thorn?" the goblin smith asked.
"None whatsoever," Abraham Thorn said, in that same pleasant tone of voice. "I have declared war against the Confederation. All that is theirs is mine by right."
"What right?" demanded the goblin.
"This right." He brandished his wand.
"They do not belong to the Confederation," said the goblin smith. "They are goblin work, and the Confederation has not yet paid their lease."
"Then I am taking them from you."
"Do you make war on us?" asked the goblin.
"Whoever treats with my enemy is also my enemy."
The goblins fell silent, glowering.
Abraham Thorn walked around the Doomguards, inspecting them, while Alexandra watched the goblins. She preferred to stay away from the Doomguards, knowing how swiftly they could spring to life and draw their sharp, heavy swords. The goblins muttered to each other. She brandished her wand threateningly, and they fell silent and stared back at her.
Her father walked slowly back to the front of the chamber. "They resist my commands."
"You have not been given command over them," the goblin smith said. "They will resist you. Goblin iron is very hard for wizards to command, as you well know."
"Give me command over them."
"I will not. We demand compensation, Abraham Thorn. Without a contract signed and sealed, they are not yours. And I'm not bargaining with the Enemy of the Confederation."
"I see." Abraham Thorn turned to the Doomguards. "March."
As one, the Doomguards all stepped forward. The goblins' jaws dropped. Their eyes bugged out, and they turned paler still. Alexandra couldn't suppress a grin as she stared fiercely at the two goblins.
Her father turned back to them. He pointed his wand at the goblin smith, and said, "Avada Kedavra!"
The goblin fell dead to the ground. His hammer fell next to him with a thud. The other goblin ran, darting into a passageway behind what had once been the smith's workbench.
Alexandra's grin vanished. She looked at the dead goblin. "Why?"
"Those who will not serve me, serve the Confederation," her father said. "However they justify their service, they are an asset our enemies can use. These goblins knew what role they were playing." He looked at her, and his eyes were like fire. "We are at war now, and this is no longer a personal quest or a vendetta. It is about defeating our enemies and denying them resources. Do you remember when I told you there would come a time when you must kill, and refusing would not be an option?"
With a sinking feeling, Alexandra nodded.
He pointed in the direction the second goblin had run. "It's time for you to get your hands dirty, my dear. I am sorry for it, but I need to know you're capable of it, and will do as I ask. Find that one, and bring me his head."
His gaze bored fiercely into her. Alexandra could feel the force of his will as an almost physical thing, but he wasn't compelling her. He was testing her.
Dry-mouthed, she nodded again. He turned and walked up the steps, following after the Doomguards.
Alexandra stared after him, then looked at the dead goblin, and the little nook in the rear of the workshop where the other goblin had fled. Was she really going to have to chase a goblin through a dungeon?
She walked across the room, cast charms to detect curses and wards, and then a Shield Spell followed by a Light Spell. She tried not to think too hard about what she was doing. Could she refuse? What would her father do if she came back empty-handed? Probably he wouldn't do anything to her, but surely she would lose any confidence he had in her. She would prove herself unfit for war.
Would it be so terrible to be like Julia, or her other sisters, whom their father didn't expect to fight?
She walked into the dark tunnel, which was narrow and low. She supposed it had been made by goblins for goblins. She was very conscious of the possibility of traps—she was reminded both of the stupid fantasy roleplaying games David had once sent her, and the real traps she'd encountered in the tunnels beneath New Amsterdam. She wondered if it had been goblins who'd constructed those.
Her Revealing Charms revealed nothing but stone, and the tunnel turned out to be small and short. It led ten feet to a storeroom that didn't even have a door. There were bumpy sacks and long hard wooden rods, and stacks of copper, iron, and brass rings ranging from tiny to large enough for a bull's neck, and one corner of the room was filled with a pile of coal.
The goblin was there, cornered, huddled up against the pile of coal and staring at Alexandra with wide, fearful eyes.
He didn't have any weapons, though he could have grabbed a piece of metal, or thrown lumps of coal at her. Perhaps he realized the futility, against a witch with a wand. He stared at her, obviously terrified, but he didn't beg or plead. He said nothing.
Alexandra couldn't judge his age. She knew nothing about him. Was he an apprentice smith? Or just a janitor here to sweep the floors? Some guy doing his job, barely aware of the Confederation and its politics? Or did he know and not care about the Deathly Regiment, and the crimes of the humans imprisoned here on Eerie Island? Would he have hit her over the head and thrown her into the icy waters of the lake for a laugh?
He could have been one of those goblins—she couldn't even be certain he wasn't. Alexandra realized she really didn't know anything about goblins at all. She'd actually met less than a dozen in her life, and exchanged about that many words with them. And they really did kind of all look alike.
The goblin just kept staring at her, almost defiantly.
She licked her lips. The goblin tensed.
"Stay here," she said.
The goblin blinked.
"Don't make a sound," she said. "And don't leave this room until you're sure we're gone. If you want to live, do as I say. Do you understand?"
For a moment, she thought maybe the goblin didn't even understand English. Then he nodded. It was such a tiny gesture she could have missed it if she weren't staring so hard at him. His dark, glittering eyes never left hers.
She backed away, and didn't turn around until she was at the far end of the little tunnel. Then she walked back over to the body of the first goblin, whom her father had slain with a Killing Curse.
He didn't look exactly like the other goblin, Alexandra thought. But she wouldn't have noticed that if she weren't paying attention. How much attention did her father pay to goblins?
She pointed her wand and said, "Diffindo!"
She found her father in the central courtyard of the prison. Though the storm was still thundering overhead, drenching the island, prisoners were gathering at the portcullises that surrounded the courtyard. This was where Typhon had lazed about, napping or doing whatever he did when not playing riddling games.
The Doomguards lined up in a neat formation before Abraham Thorn. Across the courtyard, Medea and Hela stood before a surly mob of goblins—the cooks, launderers, and janitors of the island.
The muttering of prisoners and goblins ended when Alexandra walked into the courtyard, carrying the head of the goblin smith. Goblins didn't have much hair, so she had to carry it by one ear. She'd left a trail of blood dripping behind her, all the way up the stairs.
She came to a sudden halt when she saw the mangled figure lying on the stones in the middle of the courtyard.
It was not a goblin, but a human in robes and a jacket. Alexandra was pretty sure it had been a human. The body lay in a pool of blood and entrails. Alexandra swallowed hard, and looked up from the corpse to Medea and Hela.
Medea met Alexandra's gaze coolly. Hela's eyes kept darting from the dead body to Medea, and now they were flicking from Alexandra to the grisly trophy she carried.
Alexandra composed herself and turned to her father. She tossed the head on the ground, and suppressed a wince as it thudded before rolling a couple of feet.
Her father looked down at the head, and back at her. His expression was unreadable, but she felt him pushing at her mind. She mustered all the calm she could, and presented him with a mind as blank as her expression. She let herself be a little bit angry, as if her reasons for trying to hide her thoughts were that she was annoyed at being tested like this.
He nodded, then turned to face the prisoners who were watching them through the bars separating them from the courtyard. Behind each prisoner was his or her personal Doomguard, still ready to slay anyone who attempted magic or escape.
"I am Abraham Everard Thorn," he said. "Some of you know me as the Enemy of the Confederation. As you can see, I have earned that title. Today, I am here to free you of your Doomguards."
He waved his wand, and all the portcullises rose. Then he snapped his fingers, and said, "Forward." The prisoners gasped in shock as their Doomguards moved forward, forcing them aside and marching into the courtyard. Soon they were all standing around the nervous-looking goblins.
"I did not come to liberate you," Abraham Thorn said to the prisoners. "That is merely your incidental good fortune. I don't care what crimes against the Confederation you have committed, but no doubt many of you deserve to be here. No matter. You are on your own now, and free to stay or go, if you can find a way off this island.
"That said, those who swear to serve me now, and join my war against the Confederation, I will take with me. You will be given responsibilities and privileges according to your abilities. Those who fall short or prove… unreliable…." He showed his teeth in a grin that was white beneath the flashes of lightning from the sky. "You would be better off staying here."
Alexandra frowned. She had some sympathy for her former fellow inmates—but she also remembered Elisabet Todd, and the Gaunt Man, murderers who preyed on Muggles. She was sure her father was right that many of these witches and wizards deserved to be here. Still, how could she judge, knowing how untrustworthy the Confederation's justice was?
They trickled into the courtyard. A few tried to bow to Abraham Thorn. He waved them away and told them they would be sorted later.
A familiar aged figure approached them, hobbling a bit, and flinching as rain lashed against him, but he still held himself with the odd dignity Alexandra remembered.
"Oren," said her father.
"Abraham," said Oren, the wizard who'd occupied the cell next to Alexandra's. He was an old man in breeches and a shabby coat, a lifer who'd had most of the privileges of long-time residents. He'd exchanged a few words with Alexandra, answering her questions but never really engaging her in conversation. Now he faced her father as if they were old acquaintances.
"Took you long enough," Oren said.
"I did counsel patience," her father said.
"You might have told me it would be nigh on seventeen years!"
"Shall we revisit the events that brought you to this place? Had you done as I told you back then—" Abraham Thorn shrugged. "Well. It is wind on the waves. Are you still with me, Oren?"
"I kept your little girl alive, didn't I?"
"What?" Alexandra exclaimed. "What did you ever do for me?"
Her father held up a hand. He gave Alexandra a warning look. She bit her tongue. "Yes, yes, we're both grateful," he said. He gestured at Oren, and muttering to himself, Oren shuffled over to join the other "recruits."
"He was a member of the Thorn Circle?" Alexandra asked.
"Not one of my best or brightest followers. But at least he did not betray me. And he has been a valuable source of information."
Alexandra wondered why her father had let Oren sit here on Eerie Island since before she was born. "What now?"
He turned to the goblins, still surrounded by Doomguards, now looking both cowed and surly. Alexandra stood tall next to her father, realizing that the prisoners, too, were seeing not just Abraham Thorn but his daughter in a position of leadership.
She felt powerful. Once again, it brought to mind her childhood fantasies of being a Dark Queen, daughter of darkness, badass and scary—
"Kill them," said Abraham Thorn.
The animated suits of armor, as one, drew their swords. Before a single goblin could make a sound, before Alexandra could do more than open her mouth, the Doomguards slashed downward, like deadly synchronized clockwork executioners. A dozen goblin heads tumbled to the stones, followed by their bodies, in sprays of blood that glistened darkly against the metal armor before the rain began to wash it off.
Alexandra stared, mouth agape. She closed her mouth and glanced over to Medea and Hela. Medea's arms were folded. She watched with an almost bored expression. Hela's hand was curled in front of her mouth.
Alexandra looked back at the fallen goblins with a sick feeling in her stomach.
"Was that… necessary?" she asked.
"Necessary?" Her father turned to her with a dreadful expression. "Every witch and wizard, every goblin, every Being who still serves the Confederation, or works for them, or treats with them, now knows what they are, what the Confederation represents, and what they are abetting. There is no more excuse for anyone. No refuge in willful ignorance. They all—all of them—enable the dark machinery of the Deathly Regiment, and they do so knowingly."
He put his hand on Alexandra's shoulder, and squeezed it hard. "Mercy is a luxury in war, and we do not have that luxury right now." He lowered his voice. "And you will stop questioning me in public, daughter. I respect your feelings, and I will hear your objections in private, but do not do this again."
The two of them stood there for a moment. To onlookers, he was merely putting a hand on her shoulder as they conferred quietly.
Alexandra held his gaze, feeling a mixture of anger, fear, and indignation. She nodded, and he released his grip.
When she turned back to their companions and newly-liberated recruits, her only comfort was seeing that Hela was more shaken than she was. Alexandra kept her face impassive, hiding the revulsion and dismay churning her insides at the sight of all these bodies.
Not all the prisoners had joined the ones waiting for Abraham Thorn, though the ones who remained outside the courtyard now looked a lot more nervous, as if they were reconsidering their decision not to join the Enemy. Alexandra scanned both these holdouts, and her father's new "allies," looking for the Gaunt Man. She didn't see him. It was hard to make out faces or even figures in the rain, but one woman raised her hands to the sky and cackled when lightning flashed, as if she were calling it down herself. Alexandra thought that was Mad Haddie, who used to boast about speaking to Powers.
"March to the dock," Abraham Thorn said to the Doomguards, and they all moved at his command, with clanging metal steps that echoed through the keep above the sound of thunder. Marching like an army, they walked through the now-open portcullis and down the stone steps to the dock. As they left the keep, Abraham Thorn spoke to those who remained. "You are on your own. It is not likely the Confederation will send anyone else. Make your own way back to the mainland… if you can."
Alexandra looked at those who'd declined to join, wondering if they were leaving them to starve here. They were wizards. She thought that without guardians or wards to stop her, she would somehow find a way off this island, even without a wand. She assumed they could too.
"The rest of you, come along," her father said, gesturing to the other former prisoners. The bedraggled, wandless, freed inmates followed the Doomguards, walking ahead of the four wand-wielders. Oren fell back, and spoke to Abraham Thorn as if they were old friends.
"So where are we going, Abraham? You know, I'd keep an eye on some of these folks, especially—" he lowered his voice. "Mortimer and Bradley and Felicia." He pointed a finger at the three he'd named. "Vile, unreliable people."
Alexandra wanted to ask Oren about the Gaunt Man, but her father spoke first. "Thank you for your counsel, Oren. I will keep it in mind."
They had reached the stone outer path leading down to the water, but they couldn't go much further because the scores of Doomguards stood in their way in a double column, blocking anyone from reaching the dock.
"Alexandra." Her father's voice boomed over the sound of rain and wind. "It is time to make use of what you have learned in our weeks of practice."
"You never exactly told me what I'm supposed to do," she said. "If we all pass through the World Away, I don't know if I can guarantee where we arrive with this many people…"
"We will not be passing through the World Away. I want you to take us to the Lands Below."
She stared at him. "Are you serious? I don't know how to do that!"
"You do. You have been there before. The paths to the Lands Below were once open to any who could see them. You can see all of them."
"But… the Lands Below aren't the same as the World Away!"
"They are." He placed his hands on her shoulders and turned her around to face the stormy lake, and the crack that ran beneath its waters. "I have been able to move back and forth to the Lands Below by means of obols, which give us passage through places that once were open to any who knew the way, but which were closed by the Confederation. I cannot move between worlds without an obol, but you can, my child. Now you're going to open the way to the Lands Below."
Alexandra stared at the crack between worlds. "I hope you have a good backup plan."
"I don't need one. You can do this, Alexandra."
She didn't want to disappoint him. Maybe he was right. The Lands Below were just another place, weren't they? Could she even open a crack to the Lands Beyond? She shuddered.
This crack was the same one she'd opened before. She remembered Typhon and Edna disappearing through it, when she'd had no idea how to control what was on the other side. The two monsters had plunged through, because what did Powers care about the world they went to? They simply wanted to leave their prison here. Now Alexandra had to open a way to a place she really had no desire to return to, just as she'd had no desire to return to Eerie Island.
Green and yellow fire flared beneath the waves, until the island tilted and the world itself seemed to spin and darken, and Alexandra saw all the way to the bottom…. so much farther below them than the bottom of the lake. An underworld beneath the world above, a place of eternal sunless gloom, yet a world of its own where all manner of beings lived in their own strange ecosystems.
The former prisoners gasped in horror and awe as the waves parted and the dock vanished, leaving a scar-like defile in the world, a dark chasm that descended into utter blackness. Alexandra felt cold.
"I'm… not sure I can close this," she said. "We're messing with the world. If we leave cracks to the Lands Below…"
"Once there were many such cracks," her father said, "before the Confederation sealed them. Costs must be paid. The Confederation, and a complicit Muggle government, have enjoyed generations of relative quietude. If the cost of ending the Deathly Regiment and the Confederation is a few more dangerous places in the world and a few more terrors hunting the night, we will have time to track those down when the war is over."
Darkness yawned at their feet. Hela stepped back fearfully, while the Doomguards marched into the Lands Below. Only when Abraham Thorn threatened to Petrify anyone who remained did the others follow. Alexandra watched with clenched fists, thinking about the price she and Maximilian had paid for that first journey to the Lands Below.
She and Hela were the last to follow. She glanced back, and in a flash of lightning, thought she saw Mad Haddie waving at them from the top of the lighthouse. Or perhaps she was merely waving her fists at the sky. Then they descended into the underworld, and the chasm closed behind them, leaving the raging storm behind.
The Lands Below were a vast, cavernous world. The "roof" was the world above. The ground at their feet, for all Alexandra knew, went down forever.
The liberated inmates of Eerie Island stumbled down the stony slope from the world above. The clanking Doomguards continued after them. Abraham Thorn and Medea remained with Alexandra and Hela.
Alexandra looked at her father, now that she realized what use he had put her power to. She wondered if she could duplicate the feat. There was some Dark magic involved in bringing people to the Lands Below.
"You did well," he said. "Both of you."
Alexandra didn't think Hela had done much of anything, but Hela looked as if she just wanted to be gone.
"I don't know if I closed that crack properly," Alexandra said. "I mean, I don't think I can."
"Then don't concern yourself with what can't be changed."
"We should be concerned about what messing with the world will do." It was just the four of them now, so she had regained her nerve enough to argue with him.
He was unmoved. "All wars wreak havoc on the world. A wizard war will wreak its own kind of havoc, and even Muggles will be affected."
"And what exactly is our plan for that? I mean, after we win, right? We end the Deathly Regiment, we hang the Governor-General, and then what? The wizarding world is being exposed, and magical creatures are being let loose on the world—how do we undo that?"
"Are you only now thinking about the ramifications of destroying the Confederation?" Medea asked. "Alexandra, we cannot undo it. Muggles will have to learn to live with the world as it was before so much of it was hidden from their sight."
"Isn't the rest of the wizarding world gonna be kind of mad about that?" Alexandra asked. "I mean, there's a reason we've kept magic hidden, right? How do we keep the peace?"
"You ask excellent questions, Alexandra," her father said. "And there are no easy answers. Since you have become interested in the political side of this war, let's discuss it. Soon, but not today." He held out his hand. "Take one. Both of you."
Alexandra and Hela looked at each other. Then they both held out their hands.
Abraham Thorn dropped a shiny coin into each of their palms. Alexandra almost dropped it when she realized what it was.
"Obols," she said. "You can make obols now."
"And I no longer need elves to ferry those who bear them," he said. "It's time for you both to return to Larkin Mills, for now." He took Alexandra's hand and closed her fingers around the obol. "Goodbye, my daughter. We will speak again soon."
She stood at the edge of Lake Erie, holding the coin, which remained cold in her grasp. She turned her hand over and stared at it, then flung it into the water.
A moment later, Hela appeared beside her, looking shaken. She too looked at the coin in her palm, and dropped it on the ground. Alexandra cast a spell that made it sink deep, deep into the earth.
Keep going, she thought, until you reach the Lands Below. She knew it didn't work like that, but she didn't want the obol to ever be found again.
"What you and your father are doing is unnatural," Hela said.
"What does natural or unnatural mean where magic is concerned?" Alexandra asked.
Hela shook her head. "You think like a Muggle. Or a Colonial. Magic is a part of this world, but that—"; she pointed at the ground where the obol had disappeared, though Alexandra thought she was really indicating the Lands Below; "—is not."
"Like my father said, we're fighting a war. If you don't like it, go home." Angrily, Alexandra gestured with her wand and allowed the wind and rain to batter her. She was drenched in seconds, and her hair whipped wildly about her face. Without another glance at Hela, she stepped seven leagues away.
