Yann and Eliska raced up the tunnel trying to intercept Yvan. They got to the room where he disappeared, only to discover that the door had turned into another rock wall.

  Yann slapped his hands against it. “Damn it!”

  “Quick! We can’t let him get away! Follow me.” Eliska projected her diagram of the tower onto her hand. “He went this way.”

  She took off running, dodged into a few side passages, and burst out into another corridor.

  High windows let light stream in from outside. She caught a glimpse of the turbulent ocean outside. She and Yann were on one of the tower’s highest floors after they’d just been underground a few seconds ago.

  Yann followed on her heels when she charged down the hall following her diagram. It showed how the tower morphed when Yvan stepped into that room.

  She veered into a completely different room and saw him standing at the window. He looked down at the ocean, but he turned around when she and Yann entered.

  His features started to harden. He didn’t believe they were real—or maybe the tower’s charm made him see them calling out to him and then vanishing.

  She didn’t hesitate an instant. The only place he could escape was out that window.

  She no longer had a staff, so she raised her hands and bombarded him with bare magic. She blasted him as hard as she could and rushed the rest of the way to where he stood. “Yvan! It’s me! It’s Eliska! We found you!”

  Yann crossed the room in a split second. “Father! Are you all right? We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

  He blinked at her and then up at him. “Son? Are you real?”

  Yann burst out in relieved laughter. “Yeah! I saw you calling to me earlier and then you vanished. Eliska found me. She can use her magic to find the others.”

  He looked back and forth at both of them. His eyes softened when he looked down at Eliska—and his cheek twitched. “Thank you!” he choked. “I thought we would all be lost in here forever.”

  She burst into a grin. She couldn’t hold it back. She never thought she’d be so happy to see anyone.

  She grabbed his hand to pull him out of the room. “Come on. We have to stay together from now on so we don’t get lost.”

  He pulled them out of the room and stopped in the corridor outside to check her diagram of the tower. “Vidal is closest to us.”

  “How are you doing this?” Yvan whispered.

  “My magic came back when we landed in this Island. There’s Vidal. Let’s go.”

  The three friends traveled much faster through the corridors, and this time, Eliska pulled Yann and Yvan into a bedroom.

  She lowered her voice to a confidential murmur. “We’ll stay in here and ambush him. He’ll pass in the hall outside and I’ll hit him with my magic to break the spell.”

  “You’ll what?!” Yvan countered.

  “It’s the same thing I did to both of you. Don’t worry. I won’t hurt him. He won’t feel a thing until we get to him.”

  Yvan frowned. She couldn’t take any more time to explain it to him. She heard Vidal’s footsteps coming down the corridor.

  Yann and Yvan backed off. Vidal passed the doorway and she slammed him with the same counter-spell she used on the other two.

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  He blinked in a daze when Eliska rushed up to him. “Vidal! It’s me! We found you.”

  He glanced around at the other two Watchmen and frowned. “Are we….? What happened? Where have you all been? I’ve been wandering around in here for hours.”

  “Everyone is lost,” Eliska explained. “We’re going around freeing everyone. Oh, look! Anríq isn’t too far away. Let’s get him next. He can help us.”

  The party laid a trap for Anríq. Eliska monitored him as he passed through the tower.

  He kept stopping, placing his hands near the walls, and scanning them with his magic. He must have been really confused by how the tower kept changing its configuration every few minutes.

  He finally worked his way to a large gathering hall at the end of one of the corridors. Eliska pushed Yann, Yvan, and Vidal into a corner.

  She wedged herself in with them where Anríq wouldn’t see them when he first entered the hall.

  The doors boomed open. He eased inside looking around at where the furnishings should have been.

  She hit him with another burst of magic and then grabbed him. “Anríq! It’s me! It’s Eliska! We found you!”

  He started to say, “Eliska…..” and frowned.

  She ran through the quickest explanation she could. “You have to stay with us. We don’t want to lose anyone again.”

  He frowned even more when she used her diagram to locate Omer. “He’s near the courtyard.”

  The party went through the tower from top to bottom more than once rounding up Rien, Neils, Omer, and finally Niyazi.

  “Where’s Barsali?” Vidal asked.

  “I haven’t seen him since I got here,” Eliska told him. “I don’t see him in the window, either. I don’t know if he even is in this tower.”

  “He must be,” Niyazi countered. “How can all the rest of us be here but not him? He’s only one man. Even Marine is here. I’ve seen her.”

  “I know. I don’t know why Barsali isn’t here.”

  “Can you locate him?” Yvan asked.

  Eliska searched her tower diagram. She was just about to suggest that the tower’s magic might be concealing him somewhere. Then she remembered.

  She shut her palm, made the tower diagram disappear, and projected her Coil image instead.

  She studied the Layers until she found the tower, but she couldn’t see individual people inside it.

  She glanced around at nothing. Marine wasn’t here. Then she had an idea. “Anríq…..”

  He looked up at her.

  “I need to touch you. Okay?” she told him. “It’s….it’s in service to humanity.”

  He nodded and she took his hand. It felt big and strong and rough in hers. Calluses covered the ridge of skin along his fingers and thumb where he held his club and battle axe.

  She placed his hand under hers with his palm facing up toward her knuckles. “Add your magic to mine.”

  She projected the Coil image and he sent a flow of magic into her hand. The image expanded and showed a bunch of golden lines tracing through the image.

  All the lines went to one Layer—except for one line that went to the next Layer down from this one. “That has to be Barsali,” Yann murmured.

  “It is. Look—he’s an imp.” She pointed at the image and then closed it before she looked around at the others. “So he’s in another Layer. We’ll get Marine and travel there to find him.”

  “But….that was a chaos Layer,” Niyazi pointed out. “He isn’t in an Island. The place was full of Darklings.”

  “All the more reason we should get out of here so we can help him.”

  “How will we convince Marine to go with us?” Yvan asked. “She was out of her mind when I saw her.”

  Eliska glanced around again and held out her hand to Yann. “Give me your glaive.”

  He handed it over immediately. “What are you going to do with it?”

  “As soon as we locate Marine, I’ll shatter this Island and we’ll fall down into the chaos Layer where Barsali is. Get your weapons ready so we can fight the Darklings as soon as we get there.”

  “Take this.” Anríq took out his machete and handed it to her. “You’ll need something to fight with when you get there.”

  She found herself smiling at him, but the rest of the men taking out their weapons distracted her.

  She hefted the blade a few times trying to get the feel of it. She’d never used a weapon as a channel for her magic before. This would be a whole new experience.

  She checked her diagram and found Marine in the courtyard. The group had to travel through multiple different tower transformations to get back there.

  Eliska paused inside the doorway out of the rain and took a deep breath. “Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do. I’m going to hit her with my magic to break the spell. I’ll do that from in here so she doesn’t use her own magic to get away from us. As soon as I hit her, we’ll run out there and I’ll use Yann’s glaive to shatter the Island.”

  “How will I get my glaive back once we fall through?” Yann asked.

  “Stay near me. Keep your hand on the shaft with me. As soon as I hit the floor, I’ll let go of your glaive and you can take it back.”

  He nodded. “Okay.”

  She faced the courtyard. “Here we go.”

  She raised her hand and pointed Anríq’s blade at Marine. Marine cowered in a corner snarling at empty space.

  Eliska sent a shivering crackle of magic down the blade and it jetted across the courtyard.

  The Watchmen burst into the open even before the blast hit her. They charged her.

  Her eyes widened when she saw them coming at her with their weapons drawn.

  Yann and Eliska both gripped the glaive staff as they sprinted across the courtyard. They skidded to a halt next to Marine and Eliska slammed the staff down into the floor.

  It exploded in a deafening smash and everyone pitched through into the Layer below.

  End of Chapter 22.

  ? 2024 by Theo Mann

  I post new chapters of The Corrupted Coil series on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday PST.

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