They tumbled through the portal. Koronos, Corvannafax, Daggeroth, Shelove, and Zeyzey, pulled into the wake.
The sphere of green energy engulfed them, and time stretched like taffy pulled between two worlds.
Koronos felt it immediately. A will pressing against them, malevolent and focused. Supremus wasn't just fleeing. He was trying to kill them. Using the portal itself as a weapon. The entropy rose. Reality began to tear at their edges.
Corvannafax cried out as her hand flickered translucent, bones visible through fading flesh. Daggeroth curled inward, his form wavering like a reflection in disturbed water. Shelove's presence in the Bond became a scream of pain, wordless and terrible.
Koronos poured everything into holding them together. The Sword of Otepi blazed in his hand, its light an anchor in the chaos. But Supremus was too strong. Too ancient. Too focused.
He felt them slipping. Dissolving. Becoming nothing. I'm losing. I'm losing them. I'm losing everything.
Then, through the chaos, a hand found his.
Warm. Solid. Alive.
Zeyzey.
Not fleeing. Not hiding. Not betraying. Here, beside him, fighting.
Her witch powers, always present, always useful, always hers, surged in response to the ambient majik of the portal. On the Spires they had awakened like never before. Here, in this space between worlds, scraping the Void, the realm of the gods, they exploded ten fold.
She poured everything into him. Not just her power: her will, her resolve, her absolute refusal to fail. And something happened. The sum became greater than the parts. A force multiplying factor neither could achieve alone.
Zeyzey screamed. Not in fear, but in agony. The power surged through her body, burning, transforming, threatening to unmake her from within. Only her will, that endless iron will held her together.
The tearing stopped. The forms solidified. Koronos, bolstered by her power, pushed back against Supremus's will. The balance shifted. They were holding against his incredible power.
She came back, Koronos thought. She never left. She was always fighting.
What followed was outside the frame of temporality. Moments and ages rolled into one. The sphere of energy carried them through the void, Supremus's rage a distant thunder, Zeyzey's hand never leaving Koronos's.
Then a sphere of green light enveloped them.
And snap. Time started again when they materialized in a blinding hall of white stone and light. Smooth, polished black granite floor beneath their feet. Massive columns rising toward a ceiling lost in radiance. Windows looking out on a sky of perfect blue and sheer cliffs of the towering canyon walls.
The Celestial Citadel of Rylar. Heart of the most mysterious kingdom on Terra Primius. Outsiders knew virtually nothing about them. Home of riders of the giant bat-like creatures called Kelawar. A king rules over coalitions of clans and priests of strange beliefs, and as they were about to discover, a little girl with a stolen demigod's soul around her neck.
Zeyzey collapsed. She flopped onto the floor, drifting in and out of consciousness. Her hand still gripped Koronos's, but her eyes were closed, her breathing shallow. The exertion had nearly killed her. Nearly unmade her. But she was holding on. She always held on.
Lyra, princess of Rylar, age ten, had been sitting on a cushion near her father's throne, practicing her letters. Boring. So boring.
She'd rather be in the gardens, or the library playing hide and seek with her hand maidens, or anywhere but here. The letters blurred before her eyes. She was just starting to doodle in the margins when the air tore open.
Green light exploded into the throne room. Figures tumbled out, strange figures: blue and red and furred and frightening. One collapsed immediately, the normal looking human lady, but she was clearly not from Rylar. The others stood, weapons ready, eyes wild.
And then he stepped through.
The one from her dreams. The metal man with the glowing green eyes. The one who had screamed at her in the vault, who had been more afraid of her than she was of him. She clutched the locket instinctively. It had been silent since she woke with it in her hand, its beautiful, lonely song gone. But now, in his presence, it pulsed. Warm against her chest. Alive again.
He saw it. His eyes, those terrible green eyes widened. First with hunger. Then with rage. Then with something she didn't understand, something ancient and broken. He wants it back, she realized. He wants to hurt us. He's going to hurt everyone.
For a moment, Supremus was frozen.
Ten thousand years. Ten thousand years of waiting, planning, building and here was the last part of the plan. His soul. His immortality. Worn by a child. And he was finally free from his prison, free to let loose upon worlds.
His voice, when it came, was barely a whisper. "You."
Royal guards rushed in, weapons drawn, forming a wall between their king and the intruders. They had no idea what they were facing.
Lyra's father rose from his throne, placing himself between his daughter and the metal nightmare. "Guards, protect the princess! Whatever happens, protect Lyra!"
The irony was lost on no one but the guards. They thought Koronos was the threat. They had no idea the real danger had just stepped through the portal behind him.
The scene became a tableau for a heartbeat.
Koronos, still holding the unconscious Zeyzey, the Sword blazing in his other hand. Corvannafax and Daggeroth, weapons ready, forming a defensive circle. Shelove, growling at the metal man. The guards, confused, pointing weapons at the wrong enemy. The king, brave and standing before his daughter.
And Lyra, clutching the amulet, her eyes wide, understanding more than anyone. She could feel them now; the Everliving presence of the blue man, a halo of light around him. And the other one, the metal man, a corrupted stain on her senses.
Supremus's metal face could not smile, but if it could, it would not have been pleasant. Only a metal skeletal face and metal teeth. Green light flickered in his eyes. "Give me the locket, child." His voice was silk wrapped around razors. "Give it to me, and I might let some of you live."
He didn't reach for it. Didn't try to take it by force. He was afraid, afraid because Everliving children never developed powers, but she was different, and she might damage it somehow. Afraid that his telekinesis, weakened here, might fail and shatter what he'd had come to reclaim.
Lyra didn't speak. She just held it tighter. Because somewhere, in the depths of her child's heart, she knew: this was important.
The battle for the Omniverse began in a king's throne room, with a little girl clutching a soul and the metal monster who wanted it back.