Take Back Worlds (Diamond Universe: Sierra Walker #3)

Chapter 12

T he logistics of getting everyone to Dark Earth and distributing angelic weapons is a nightmare that is, thankfully, not my problem. Delegating it is, but Ayaka, Letty, Gaspar, Seamus, and Brook take over that, coordinating with Destien and Nariel’s seneschal Amir. Spirits distribute nodes to transport everyone to the place we’ll be making our stand when the time comes—not too early, lest the angels get the drop on anyone.

There are a lot of politics involved in who gets which weapon and collecting other artifacts to be donated to the cause of powering what we’re going to attempt, but that is also not my problem.

Nariel reminds me of this several times when I get twitchy when someone tries to get us to step in and I take deep breaths and remind myself that I can be unbudgeable where delegation is concerned, too.

What we do first is magic only we can do, and only because we’re connected. A mix of wizardry, which can send messages, and Nariel’s senses, which can locate all the other twelve demon princes of Dark Earth.

We’re sending them an invitation.

We’ll have any wizards who volunteer to come, either armed with angelic weapons if they know anything about them—in this we actually have an advantage over many mages, who don’t generally fight with weapons—or in support roles armed with healing potions and emergency magic boosters.

We have armies of mages, people trained all their lives in magic who’ve all had at least some experience in battle. And wow do I not envy the task of organizing that many people—the idea of it gives me hives.

And we have a huge percentage of the spirits from Nariel’s territory, but that’s only one place in Dark Earth. And his people alone should not bear the brunt of the consequences.

Which is not a good way to market this, so we are inviting the demon princes to come with their people and be part of striking a blow against the angels once and for all, and having a say in the new world order.

“Deciding I can be the representative of all Dark Earth for this purpose due to their lack of response to summons is not an argument that is going to bear up,” Nariel warned me.

“You being the one demon prince in the entire world who actually shows up to fight is kind of determining. If they’re not going to vote, they don’t get a say.”

“My point,” Nariel said, “is that we should not plan on me being even theoretically in charge for long.”

“I’m pretty focused on surviving the next few days to be honest.”

“Which is why I’m talking to you now. Because the decisions we make here are going to change the worlds going forward. We don’t want those undercut later.”

I sighed. “I was about to say that I am open to alternatives, as long as they’re willing to do exactly what I want, but—“

Nariel snorted. “Even I don’t meet that criterion.”

“Oh?” I lightning-flicked his nose, and his eyes darkened. “And if I invited you back to my grove now—“

“I would still say we need to send this message first, but you also wouldn’t ask me,” he’d said dryly. “I’m serious, Sierra. This is a priority. We can’t plan on me being in charge forever, and in fact we should deliberately plan on me not being in charge for very long.”

The message was still the first step, so we did that.

But then we went to my grove.

This was for practical purposes, since both of us needed to recharge power fast. We’d been focused on getting everything moving in the right direction.

But having delegated—

“How do you feel about multitasking?” I ask Nariel.

His mouth crashes into mine, which is answer enough.

This time, in my grove, the place of my power and my sanctuary, we make love, and somehow it is still completely different than every time before.

This time, with our bodies and our souls we say, “Thank everything that you survived,” and “you’re amazing and impossible and a gift beyond imaging” and “we are not going to die,“ and “you are mine , and I am keeping you.”

And we say them to each other out loud, too, so there is zero confusion, and our love and our bond fill us up until we both burst.

Then with a final lingering, desperate kiss that I flatly refuse to think is goodbye, as I fight back tears, as Nariel clenches his fists in my hair, we portal back to Demon World.

We’ll have all the time in the world to know each other as intimately as we can.

I’ll make sure of it.

Now, it’s time to finish this.

N ariel flies me—yes, I can fly, but I have to think about it, where for him to carry me it is an effortless joy for us both and I’m not sad about letting him hold me for longer—to the location of the angels’ spell in Dark Earth first, and I immediately wince. “This is going to be a problem.”

Don’t get me wrong, under other circumstances a view like this would be absolutely stunning. It’s like an aerial view of the Grand Canyon, if the canyon were made entirely of obsidian.

The problem is... well, it’s a canyon. Which means it has steep jagged sides that no one human can stand on without magic and a basin at the bottom where angels can rain fire down on top of us.

“It is both better and worse than it appears,” Nariel says. He swoops us around at an angle. “See?”

It’s... grooves? Ledges?

“What am I looking at, exactly?”

“I told you before that nothing can alter the shape of Dark Earth’s rock,” Nariel says, “which is a common generalization now because of the lack of magic in the world. But once upon a time, when magic flowed freely here, rivers of it shaped the world.”

“ Rivers ? Of pure magic?”

Nariel looks sad. “Yes. I wish it were possible to show you what Bright Earth looks like. It’s not just in everything like in your world—magic is the world. The fruit you pick from a tree is magic concentrated into form. And the rivers run iridescent.”

That sounds beautiful. But—“Okay, if the world is glowing, how did you ever manage stealth with shadows ?”

I was hoping that would get a smile out of him, but he says, “The darkness is a result of my fall, like my wings. In Bright Earth I could simply... fade.”

I touch his jaw, bringing his focus on me, and, oof . I don’t think I will ever get used to that.

“I don’t want you to fade,” I tell him quietly.

And then he smiles.

“I won’t,” he promises. And then adds: “Except where tactically entertaining. See?”

This time I laugh, because he’s pointing at a tunnel.

“Okay, so we can hide our people and spells for an ambush—“

“Not spells. Angels will sense those, the same way I can be sure they haven’t yet laid traps for us here.”

“We can if you cloak them.”

Nariel pauses, then grins. “Yes. I imagine I will be distracted before long and won’t be able to hold them, but traps won’t have to last if we’re planning to spring them. The more angels we can take out quickly by the element of surprise is to our benefit.”

“Right, so, how do we keep them from just lighting up the canyon? In theory a spell could do that, but it would have to be insanely powerful, and we’re already going to need all the power we can get our hands on for dealing with this shit.” I wave my hand around us.

‘This’ being the proverbial elephant in the canyon.

The bright white lines of angel magic, a spiderweb spreading through Dark Earth’s foundations like a virus.

And nothing and no one else.

Nariel says, “I warned you that the demon princes would not answer your invitation.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t realize quite how dire our need for them was. I thought it was like, we’d have a bigger struggle on our hands if they didn’t join us, not that without them we will definitely get every person who volunteers to help us killed.”

“Ah.” Nariel keeps flying in circles, apparently as loath to land on the invaded ground as I am. “I thought you meant to summon them if they refused.”

I sigh. “I think I can. But High Earth mages won’t have worked with summoning spells for Dark Earth, so I have no way to check.”

“And if you’re wrong?”

I blow out a breath. “The big problem isn’t if I’m wrong, honestly. If I’m wrong, nothing happens, and we’re no worse off. It’s if I’m right. Then what? What do I have to make this an attractive proposition? What does every demon prince want that we can offer? I bargained with Casimir for power, but we very much don’t have an endless supply of that.”

“You also bargained,” Nariel points out, “for safety.”

“Right. That spell anchored to his domain by placing physical anchors to block summonings from that place . But as you pointed out, the demon princes probably don’t want that for most of the spirits in their territories, right?”

“They’ll want it for themselves.”

“Spells are about parameters. I can’t block, like, a high power range from being summoned without being able to define that measurement in a way that functions across worlds—“

“Do you always argue with yourself this much when designing a new spell?” Nariel asks.

I pause. “Yeah. Probably a result of my training—always looking for the weaknesses on my own before Evram could point them out to me.”

“But you don’t have to do this on your own,” he says.

I frown. “I told you, High Earth mages—“

“There’s at least one Low Earth wizard who knows as much as you about demon summoning.”

That silences me.

Finally, Nariel says, “You hadn’t forgotten.”

“No,” I admit uneasily. “But... the one thing she asked is that I never contact her. If I want to build a better world, but am willing to violate a boundary when it’s convenient for me—“

“That was years ago, and ‘convenience’ is not the same as facing the deaths of hundreds of people and possibly worlds,“ Nariel growls.

“I know, but if I can do this myself, I can—“

“ Sierra . The angels could be upon us at any moment, and you’re dithering out of misplaced guilt? No, don’t argue about whether it’s misplaced—that’s irrelevant. I know asking people for help is hard. I don’t know if I could have done it before you. But that is also the world you’re trying to build—one where people can help each other, and do.“ He bites my mouth. “So suck it up.”

Goddammit.

I portal straight back to my grove.

Nariel doesn’t follow me, and for once I’m grateful for that, and the fact that we don’t have inter-world communication set up so that I have to return to Low Earth to do this.

I don’t need him to watch how hard this is for me.

He would be here for me if I needed him or wanted him like he was with my parents, but he knows me. And he knows this is something I’ve carried alone, and that I need to deal with myself.

I demanded an apology from the grand magi, because I deserve one.

Emmie deserves one too, but she shouldn’t have to ask me for it.

I’m not going to repeat their mistakes.

My brain wryly reminds me that just means I’m going to make different ones, and I roll my eyes at myself even as I find Emmie’s number in the wizard contact info database.

A database I built, from the work Letty had started doing all on her own, that now my sister has been using to coordinate with wizards around the world. But I haven’t been using it.

Until now.

I hit the call button and close my eyes, as if not having to look will make what I’m doing better.

“Hello?”

Her voice is hesitant and curious.

“You answered,” I blurt.

A pause. “I mean, yeah. Just because I’m not active in wizard circles doesn’t mean I can’t program a number into my phone so I’m not surprised. This is Sierra, right?”

I take a deep breath. “Yes, this is Sierra. It’s... been a long time, Emmie. Shit. Do you still go by Emmie?”

“Oh, yeah, definitely don’t call me anything else.”

“...I honestly can’t tell if that was sarcastic.”

She laughs. “Completely sincere.”

She always was. I bite my tongue.

“I don’t answer to anything else. No ‘Em’s or Emily or Emelie or whatever else people think my name is. Just Emmie. So, I assume this is important?”

“Right. I’m—look, I’m sorry, I know you asked me never to call you and I’m doing it anyway—“

“Which is why I’m assuming it’s important, since you haven’t for the last decade?”

Emmie isn’t a person who is trying to kill me, so I absolutely cannot tell if she’s actually mad at me for calling her. Or for not calling her?

“Or is it not important? Because—hm. I guess I have more feelings in that case.”

I almost laugh but keep it in, knowing it would come out hysterically.

I mean, there it a lot to have feelings about, but I still need to get a grip.

How can I face down angels unflinching but making a phone call is the hardest thing in the world?

“Sorry,” I say again. “I have never learned how to do this.”

“Talk to humans or make phone calls?” she asks lightly. “Big mood either way.”

That makes me laugh, even though I know she was trying to make me, because she’s nice and she’s trying to help me even though I’m imposing on her, so finally I manage to put on my metaphorical big girl pants and say, “I need your help with a summoning spell. Two, if you can.”

The line goes quiet.

Then: “You know I don’t actually approve of summoning.”

“I know, and the first spell I actually want your help with is to make it so that thirteen specific spirits can never be summoned. But I don’t want to anchor the spell to an object or place that could potentially be messed with or stolen or something—“

“I mean if you have their consent it’s easy, you anchor it by getting them to give you a drop of their blood.”

I blink my eyes open for the first time. “What? Really?”

“You are planning to get their consent, right?”

The trees look like they’re spinning, possibly because my vision is adjusting.

I’ve never done a spell that needed me to ask for consent before, but if this is a thing—

“Yeah, making them un-summon-able is the thing I want to trade with, so if they don’t want that they just won’t agree.”

“Okay, great! Do you know what that should look like?”

“I could probably figure it out, but honestly time is kind of limited here, so if you—“

“Really? Why?”

I bite my lip. “Do you want to know? I mean, I can totally tell you, I just thought you wanted space from wizard stuff?”

A beat. “No, good point, you’re right. My bad. Let me just sketch this out really quick and I’ll send you a pic.”

The line drops.

So does my stomach.

Should I have just told her?

Oh gods. Dark Earth is in the most imminent danger, but what Bright Earth did to them, they can do to the rest of us if they fail.

The problem with putting Low Earth back on the map of interdimensional politics is, well, that it’s on the map.

Low Earth has functioned on little magic for so long, but if there were no magic, what then? Or more likely: What if the angels decide to bomb the shit out of the billions of people in this world who don’t have any idea that’s even possible?

I knew we needed to win for me and Nariel, for Dark Earth, for magic users everywhere. But as usual, I’ve forgotten to think about normal people. I’ve made the angels’ shit everyone’s problem, yes, but that really means I’ve made it everyone’s problem .

And I didn’t have anyone’s consent.

My phone beeps, and I look down at the diagram Emmie sent me, distantly noting that it makes complete sense and I would never ever structure a spell like that otherwise, because—

Well. Because I was trained by someone with a very specific agenda where summonings were concerned.

My phone rings, and I pick it up in almost a daze. “You got it?” she asks.

“I got it,” I say. “Thank you.”

“Great! Well then—“

“And I do need your help with the other spell, which is a summoning, and they’re not going to consent. The reason I’m doing it anyway is because if I don’t summon them then no one will ever be able to consent to anything ever again.”

For a long moment, all I hear is the sound of her breath.

Then: “Well, that’s very dramatic.”

She sounds almost wry, and maybe tired too, like of course this is what she expected of me. That I would have good reasons but still be part of something fundamentally shitty, and she’s not wrong—

But I’m also not wrong.

“I know,” I say hollowly. “Can I send you a picture? I think I need to summon them by power level—“

“ High power level, you mean?“ she asks sharply.

My grip on my phone is crushing.

Because of course to her it must look like I’m only attending to spirits with a high power level, and they’re the only ones I’m planning to make immune—

I don’t have time for this. “Yes.”

“Awesome, send it.”

She hangs up again.

And did not actually say she’d help me.

And I still can’t tell if she was being sarcastic or sincere.

But I send her a quick rendering of the spell I’m planning, and then plop down in my grove to take some deep breaths.

It’s fine. If she won’t help me, I will try it on my own first, and there’s a good chance it will work. And if not, I can always ask Destien, or maybe one of the other grand magi will know something or know a book that knows something, and—no, that will take too long. Will I actually have to go to Emmie and make her—gods, I don’t even know how to find her, which is probably for the best if I even had to think about that—

My phone chimes.

She has squiggled lines all over my spell, and I... don’t know what they all are. She might have fucked the spell for all I can tell.

Cautiously, I send her a question.

She replies immediately, and her explanation makes me raise my eyebrows and do another double take. Okay, now I can see what she was doing, though given the spell structure I’m working with, there’s a better way I can incorporate that targeting.

I can do this.

I can do this.

Emmie helped, and together we made a spell.

I manage to type out an all caps THANK YOU before collapsing over my phone.

Relief is still crashing through me when another text notification pops up, filling me with dread—

Emmie: Fuck them up.

No ‘you’re welcome’. Honestly, she deserves a better apology than me fumbling over the phone, so that’s more than fair.

But she’s fully sincere.