Rowan dangled between two angels as they flew him toward the large aquarium Marcus had designed as the Trickster’s tomb, torture chamber, and display case. Rowan’s bleeding and injured shoulder sent jolts of pain through him. The angels stunk of oil and diesel, a smell Marcus must have intended for reasons unclear to Rowan.
Rowan struggled, but the metal angels had a literal steel grip. He pondered shifting to crow form. Could he fly faster than the angels? Their wings seemed more like decoration than propulsion, meaning they were flying using magic rather than physics. He remembered how fast they had filled the sky and doubted he could outpace them. If Marcus had talked to Ellie, then he had likely planned for Rowan if for no other reason than Marcus was not just the god of power but the god of strategy. If Marcus was anything, he was calculated.
He looked around for Marcus and spotted him strolling toward the aquarium. He wasn’t going to supervillain this execution and leave Rowan to die alone. Overachieving, effing murderers.
At this point, Rowan was less worried about dying than being trapped in the aquarium and not dying. Each beat of an angel’s wing brought him closer, and now the open aquarium was only feet away. He needed to escape now.
He pulled in magic, and both angels holding him turned their glowing eyes on him. He could feel the heat radiating from those stares. A deeper red formed within each iris. He suspected that was the only warning he’d get. He shifted into a spider as molten bolts of steel shot through the space his head had been moments before. The abrupt change in weight caused the angel he was riding to bolt up a few feet higher, and the arm holding him jerked up even higher. The angel’s slick arm flung Rowan through the air. As he spun downward, he realized why the oil on the angel’s skin mattered. Marcus had thought of everything.
Rowan fell straight into the aquarium with a little plop.
“Seal it,” Marcus said.
Rowan’s eight legs floundered in the water as a giant metal cover settled above him, blocking the sky. He was sinking, and while air trapped between the hairs of his carapace would allow him to breathe for a few hours, he was going to drown in here if he didn’t do something. He could use his remaining energy to shift to an octopus, the form he had only used once before, but that was a card he wanted to save. If Marcus knew about Rowan’s octopus shape, the god of strategy wouldn’t have made a prison of water.
An odd sensation came over Rowan, a request as someone far away in reality pulled on chaos magic. He saw a new surrounding. Through the bars of a cell, he could see glowing blue runes on the walls. Oddly, a can of soda was in the corner, fizzing loudly from a small puncture. From the vantage point of the spellcaster, he saw a feminine hand reach out toward a lock and whisper, “Draleq.”
The spell was weak, but he recognized the freckles on the back of the hand, and with every ounce of energy he had, he willed magic to flow to Gretta to power her spell. He released the last of his stored strength.
A crash, hiss, and thunk brought his consciousness back to his watery prison. A molten-tipped spear had cut straight through the metal top of the aquarium and smashed through his body. He was on fire and drowning, and none of his limbs were working.
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In his mind, he heard the whispered words: Thank you. And thank you for Rowan.
He tried to respond ‘Good luck,’ but all he could manage was: glrrrrk!
His consciousness didn’t fade into oblivion. Instead, it shifted into the Astral. He knew his consciousness was back in his human body because of the absurd pain in his stabbed shoulder, but he guessed he was in the Astral because he was looking down at Marcus, who was holding a spear and glaring at the aquarium as if daring something mighty to blow the lid off. He mused that maybe Marcus suspected he had a secret combat form. While untrue, it might be something Rowan could use against Marcus in the future.
The real giveaway he was in the Astral was that, despite floating in the open air, none of the hundreds of angels seemed to see him.
The chaos magic that had tied him to Gretta still buzzed in his awareness, the last remnants of his magic draining as his body was annihilated. His Astral form wavered, fragile and insubstantial, barely held together by magic ungrounded from any physical body. He could feel himself slipping back, reality reasserting itself as Marcus’s world dragged him down. Even the angels sensed his return, their eyes snapping toward the spot where he would soon solidify.
He clung to the last strands of chaos, letting them drag him skyward. If he wasn’t fast enough, he’d snap back into reality—visible, vulnerable, and wingless.
Even as he gained altitude, the angels closed in, spears flashing past him, slicing through his incorporeal form like they expected him to suddenly decide to be solid.
When the shift was inevitable, he returned to Marcus’s reality as a raven, and felt relief that the shift had not cost him more—as he was completely drained and passing out now would lead to a very uncomfortable eternity. Spears shot through the point his human heart would have been, and he banked to the right, gave a mighty flap of his wings, and slipped back into the void.
Even as he broke free, he felt his broken spider form snap back to the Astral. His relief at being free was short-lived as Marcus unleashed a massive pull of raw magic, creating a vortex that threatened to drag him back.
He beat his wings against the pull and mentally sought a strand of nature magic. A terrifying moment passed when he felt his tail feathers touch Marcus’s domain again, but then Rowan found the thread he was looking for and grabbed hold. It wasn’t much. It was just a trickle of magic, but it was enough to pull himself free from the vortex and further out into the void.
As he glided, he spotted the soft emerald glow of Abby’s domain. Taking care to watch for any other domains that might blindside him, he floated gracefully into the light and out into a lush green world of giant trees and meandering animals of every description.
Laying on a small island on a patch of soft grass was a woman he’d know from anywhere: his best friend, Abby. She was dressed in a flowing violet dress, and her short dark hair was nearly as wild as Rowan’s. She looked almost nothing like her niece Gretta, except maybe something about the shape of those twinkling blue eyes.
“Why is your tail still on fire?”
Rowan didn’t land so much as he tumbled through the grass, still smoldering.
“Stay still, and I’ll see what I can do.” Abby was smiling despite the seriousness of Rowan’s condition. She clearly knew that, as an immortal, he wasn’t going to die on her, and this was going to make a great story to mock him with later.
“Cookie ice cream,” Rowan managed to squawk.
Abby’s smile turned mischievous. “You think the cookie ice cream story is going to prevent me from telling anybody who will listen about the burning raven who landed so hard in my domain that he shit on my grass?”
Rowan let out a baleful squawk.