Eliska spiked her staff down into the ice sheet under her feet. The Island exploded in a rain of boulders and ice shards.

The rupture didn’t collapse this time. The ice sheet shot straight up and fired Marine and Eliska into the air.

Both girls screamed and then snapped through what felt like a curtain of water into a pitch-black Layer with no light anywhere.

The wind died. All trace of movement and upheaval disappeared in a split second.

Eliska and Marine held onto each other even tighter.

“Are you okay?” Eliska whispered.

“Yeah!” Marine whispered back. “Are you?”

“Yeah! Any idea where we are?”

“Somewhere in the Dark, I’d say,” Marine whispered. “Do you want to check?”

Eliska created her Coil projection and Marine placed her hand under Eliska’s hand to make the image bigger.

The golden lines still traced through the Coil showing where the Watch separated and came back together.

The lines followed the girls’ route and ended in a pocket of Darkness between a bunch of chaos Layers.

“Well, that doesn’t tell us anything we don’t already know,” Eliska remarked.

“How do we get out of here?” Marine asked.

“We can shatter this Layer, too.” Eliska held up the projection and used its light to try to see anything around her. “It doesn’t look like there’s anything here.”

She raised her staff and stabbed it into whatever solid surface she and Marine happened to be standing on this time.

Nothing happened. Eliska repeated the process three times, but it didn’t work. The Layer didn’t shatter.

“There must be some way out of here,” Marine muttered.

“You’re the one who’s so big on joining our power together. Take hold of my staff.”

Marine smirked at her and grabbed Eliska’s staff. They both held on when Eliska jabbed it down again.

Both girls channeled their magic through the staff but it still produced no effect.

“Nice try, though,” Marine remarked.

Eliska looked around again, but the more she looked, the more there just kept not being anything there to see.

She started to say, “I guess we can just….”

At that moment, a deep, menacing growl broke the silence from her right. She spun around.

She wouldn’t have been able to see the Darkling without the light from her projection. Even that bright glow didn’t make the Darkling any easier to see.

This Darkling grew out of the shadows—except that there were no shadows. The Darkness itself took shape into a giant black outline craved out of Darkness.

Eliska raised her staff to protect herself, but she didn’t dare to close her other hand. This light was her only advantage.

Right then, another Darkling growled from her other side. Marine spun that way and created a blazing orb of light in her left hand to shine on more black Darklings closing on both girls.

“Why are they so Dark?” Eliska asked over her shoulder.

“I guess they come from this Layer,” Marine replied. “I can’t think of any other reason.”

Movement caught Eliska’s eye from both sides. More Darklings drifted out of the Dark all around the girls. The Dark gave birth to these monstrous shapes creeping closer by the second.

Eliska braced herself to fight. If this had been any ordinary Layer, she would have shattered it to send herself somewhere else to get out of it.

She couldn’t do that now. She had to stand and fight.

At least she had Marine with her. Marine backed up a few steps and the two girls sealed their backs together.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

“What’s the plan?” Marine called over her shoulder.

“I say we go on the offensive and strike first,” Eliska countered.

“Sounds good! You say when.”

“When!” Eliska yelled and hurled her Coil projection down at the floor.

It smashed in front of the Darklings, exploded, and flashed outward in a blinding sheet of light.

It lit up dozens of these black Darklings all around the girls, but Eliska didn’t hold back. She grabbed her staff in both hands and ejected a torrent of magic from the tip.

The energy burst to life and lit up the Dark Layer better than the Coil projection. She swiped the beam sideways cutting down as many Darklings as possible.

Marine attacked at the same time. Eliska kept her back sealed against Marine’s, so Eliska couldn’t see what Marine did.

Eliska heard Darklings roaring and explosions going off behind her. She didn’t dare to turn around.

She didn’t stop pouring her magic through her staff to bombard the Darklings with every ounce of her power.

She slashed her staff back and forth. Darklings exploded in front of her, but more came out of the Dark behind those in front.

They waited until she turned one way and charged from the other side. She barely turned in that direction in time to hit them and drive them back.

One of them got within a few feet of her and detonated in her face. A curtain of Dark goo splattered her from head to foot. It got into her eyes and mouth.

Her head swam and Marine screamed. Eliska lost control of her staff, but her own desperation kept shooting endlessly even if she didn’t know what she was shooting at.

Four more Darklings hit her from behind. She tried to turn around when another punishing concussion hit her from somewhere else. She didn’t know where it came from.

The Layer ruptured without warning and she, Marine, and the Darklings plummeted through a void.

Eliska’s mind cleared enough to see forks of Darkness shooting at her from all sides. They converged on her at the center. She didn’t see Marine anywhere.

Eliska rotated from one side to the other trying to see Marine, but all the black Darklings fell through the Layers with her. They surrounded her trying to attack her and orient themselves at the same time.

The Dark came perilously close to enveloping her. She struck out with her staff at one of the forks and it burst in her face the same way.

The Layer exploded in an outward starburst shockwave and she landed hard on the ground somewhere. A flood of cold water washed over her, but it soaked into the ground in a few seconds.

She really was on the ground. Grass poked her in the face. She lifted her head out of the puddle and found herself in some kind of woods.

She froze when she saw Yann, Anríq, Wesh, and the Watchmen battling a different kind of Darklings in the trees. These Darklings looked like people with multiple limbs and no heads.

Every hand held a weapon and the Darklings surrounded the Watchmen in droves.

Wesh kept blasting magical eruptions from both hands. Anríq stood off to one side swinging his axe in one hand and his club in the other.

Magic detonated from his club every time he hit one of the Darklings. His strikes exploded a dozen Darklings with each blow, but more Darklings flooded out of the woods behind those he killed.

Neither he nor Wesh could stem the tide. Darklings passed both wizards by and went after the Watchmen.

They fought their hardest, but they couldn’t do much with so few weapons in so few hands.

Eliska launched to her feet still holding onto her staff. Her feet splashed in what was left of the water on her way deeper into the trees.

She opened fire and slashed down dozens of Darklings surrounding Vidal and Niyazi.

She carved a path through the horde, pivoted sideways, and cleared a little bit of space around Rien, Omer, and Barsali who stood in a clump to one side.

A massive swarm of Darklings surrounded Yann and Yvan. Eliska couldn’t see Neils anywhere. He better not be dead.

She stormed into the clearing dropping Darklings on all sides, but she couldn’t stop more of them coming out of the forest.

She threw caution to the wind, swung her staff over her head, and nailed the tip down into the ground.

She didn’t shatter the Island. She didn’t want to send the Watchmen back into the Layers after she just found them.

She sent out a powerful shockwave of magic radiating outward from her position. The pulse leveled dozens of Darklings and kept spreading deeper into the trees.

The blast knocked the Watchmen off their feet, too. Only Anríq kept his balance.

He never stopped fighting, not even when her blast took out most of the Darklings surrounding him.

Eliska swiveled toward the trees facing a few scattered Darklings coming from there.

With so many dead Darklings lying on the ground, she could finally see a breach in the Island farther away in the trees. The Darklings poured from another Layer beyond the opening.

She grabbed her staff in both hands, thrust it longways at the oncoming Darklings, and sent out another blast to finish off the last of them.

Then she aimed the point of her staff at the rift to close it.

The Watchmen, Wesh, and Anríq started to relax when they saw the Darklings defeated. It was over.

She fired her staff at the top of the rift to pass the beam down the two edges. It would close and then the Watch would be safe in another Island.

The instant she fired, another blazing light shot through the rift from the other side. The Voyant rushed her from the Dark Layer beyond. She tried to run her magic down the breach faster to close it, but he came too fast.

He didn’t seem to fly through the air the way she and Marine saw that light dive into the White Spire.

She saw the light in the Dark Layers, and the next instant, he stood in front of her glowing the way he did last time.

He flew straight into the blast from her staff, but the jet of magic just vanished inside his halo.

Wesh sprang forward before Eliska had a chance to cut off the beam or even to think about trying something else.

“Stay behind me!” Wesh yelled to the others and he raised his hands to attack the Voyant.

Without warning, a plume of fire ejected out of the ground right underneath Wesh. The Voyant didn’t move even to look at him before a geyser of flame vaporized Wesh to nothing. Not even a wisp of smoke remained where he just stood.

Eliska dove for him, but it was all over in a split second. “NO!!” she bellowed, but Wesh was already gone.

She landed five feet in front of where she started, and almost as if her own movement made it happen, the Island collapsed.

The ground beneath her feet buckled and the group plunged through the surface into another Layer just below it.

End of Chapter 52.