Nowhere to Run

---Indigo---

Aaron spoke up first, turning to me. "Where did the first stanza come from? We've never heard of that stanza in our lives. Did he just make it up?"

"For some reason, it sounds familiar, but I can't recall where I might've heard it," Katherine said, frowning. Both of them looked at me expectantly for an answer.

"'When power corrupts, the innocents bleed'…" I muttered the lines back to myself. "'A darker night shall rise from the old'…" They did sound vaguely familiar. My brain spun as I searched its depths for everything I've ever read. I found it.

"It was Rachel! Do you remember, back in Northbell, when Rachel read us two lines from a book that was burnt?" I grabbed Aaron's shoulder and shook him for emphasis. He stared back at me blankly. I turned to Katherine, hoping she would remember. "Rachel read us two lines! She said there was more, but the book had been burnt. We thought it was another prophecy, but it was actually part of our prophecy!"

Katherine's mouth slowly formed an O. "I do remember! We were discussing the prophecy on that day. The book was badly burnt."

Lord Victor watched our discussion with a look of amusement on his face. "Tsk, tsk, tsk. How can you ever hope to defeat me if you don't even know the entire prophecy? But it doesn't matter; the prophecy is fake. Nothing it said came true. I have won, and you have lost."

My mind was working double time as I tried to interpret the newfound stanza with what we knew.

'When power corrupts, the innocents bleed/Injustice is the darkness's seed.' These lines spoke of Kendric and his ambition to take the orb's power for himself, which led to the deaths of Bianca, Marcellus, Annalise, and hundreds of other innocent people. The injustice of the situation pushed Victor to the extreme.

'A darker night shall rise from the old/When all hope is lost, and truth is untold.' These two lines foretold Lord Victor's ascension to become the next evil lord after the deaths of his best friends. No one knew the truth of what really happened, and no one was ever able to find out because that piece of history has been hidden and erased.

The prophecy was real. The prophecy foretold it all. We just failed to see it, because we didn't know there was a missing stanza.

"No. The prophecy is real," I insisted. "The entire first stanza is talking about you and Kendric. The rest of the prophecy came true as well—we found the three magical items, and there are three of us standing before you. You're wrong, Lord Victor."

"Yeah? Well what about the last stanza? What does that mean, Indigo?" Lord Victor looked down at me. "Why don't you tell me, if you're so smart?"

"I—" He got me there. Nothing in our quest so far could explain the last stanza.

"You're a mastermind too, aren't you? Why can't you figure it out yourself?" Aaron challenged Lord Victor, whose face darkened.

"I'm tired of arguing with you stupid children. It's time for this to end." One moment he was next to us; the next he was standing in front of his throne. He raised his arms in the air and began chanting. The orb rose up and hovered above his head. As it glowed and pulsed with magic, the growling of Evils was heard around the throne room. They emerged from the shadows by the hundreds and slowly prowled towards us. Katherine, Aaron, and I slowly retreated to the center of the room and stood back to back on the walkway.

I heard the whoosh of wind. Around the room, large floor-to-ceiling portals appeared, each ringed with smoky tendrils of darkness. They led to towns and villages all around Crystallea. I saw the Academy on the other side of the largest portal. Lord Victor shouted one last incantation—or maybe it was a command—and all the Evils began charging toward the portals.

"No! We have to stop them!" Katherine shouted. She leapt into combat, despite her own wounds, and tried to cut down as many Evils as she could before they reached the portals. Aaron and I spread out and tried to push the Evils back as well.

But we were fighting a losing battle. There were simply too many portals and too many Evils. More emerged from the shadows in an endless stream. Although most ignored me and sprinted straight into the portals, there were many that stopped to fight. I was surrounded within seconds.

As I stabbed and twirled the spear of light, I caught sight of the Academy through the portal. Most of the Evils were heading there. I saw smoke rising into the sky and flashes of spells. I heard weapons clanging and people shouting. My beloved school and the one safe haven in Crystallea was once again a battlefield.

Something flashed outside the window. My heart sank as I realized portals opened up outside as well. More Evils were going to attack more places in Crystallea. More innocent people were going to die. No one would be prepared for this invasion. There were only a handful of experienced fighters, and even fewer who knew how to defeat the Evils.

The oncoming Evils forced me to retreat until I was standing on the walkway again. My back bumped into someone. "There are too many of them!" Katherine shouted. Her right hand was clamped over her bleeding left shoulder. Blue magic flickered feebly.

The Evils swarmed past us as they headed for the different portals. It was as if we were standing upon a rock in the middle of a fast-moving river. Katherine and I hacked and stabbed and cut down Evils until there was a small circle of safety around us, but there were still too many of them. Both of us were wounded and tired. We had lost sight of Aaron, but the occasional Evil sailing through the air indicated that he was out there using his wind powers.

"Katherine, look out!" My spear stabbed through an Evil that was about to pounce on her. Katherine sliced another one in half. "More are heading towards us now!"

Although the majority of Evils still charged to the portals, a lot more were running towards Katherine and me now. Lord Victor's cackling and Evil's roaring and growling created a symphony of evil. Katherine and I stood back to back, facing away from the throne and toward the oncoming pack of menacing monsters. I readied my spear to keep fighting.

"Indigo, we can't keep fighting like this forever! We need to be fighting Lord Victor!" Katherine shouted over the din of the battle.

"I know, but we can't even turn around and get to Lord Victor when there are so many Evils attacking us!" I yelled back as I stabbed three Evils through with my spear to create an Evil kebab.

Katherine responded, clearly frustrated, but her words were lost in the growls and thundering steps as another Evil leapt out at me and I turned my attention back to the battle. I tried to think of a plan as I fought. What can we do? What can we do?

An entire row of Evils charged towards us. Katherine and I had to focus entirely on fighting them in order to even stay alive. We had never fought side by side like this before, I realized, but we were working together cohesively as if we had done this a thousand times before. I couldn't ask for a better teammate—or friend. As my spear and her sword locked together to form a stretched X to block the Evils and hold them off, Katherine caught my eye and smiled. I felt myself smiling too.

"Look out!" Aaron's cry sounded somewhere behind us. Katherine and I turned our heads at the same time to look behind. Lord Victor was still standing in front of his throne, but he was grinning evilly. A large streak of black magic was making a beeline for Katherine and me, and as we watched in horror, it split into a hundred daggers of darkness that would turn us into minced meat. I could feel their evil presence coming like a tsunami.

With the pouncing Evils all around us, there was nowhere to hide. Katherine and I couldn't move our weapons to block the attack without being killed immediately by the Evils. Most importantly, we had discovered this threat too late. There was no time to run. The despair in Katherine's eyes was crushing as she looked to me and saw her hopelessness reflected on my face.

In the split second before the oncoming daggers reached us, they were blocked from my view by a flurry of red and brown. My brain registered Aaron's face, streaked with blood and grime and filled with fierce determination, and his blood-soaked cloak that billowed behind as he leapt in front of us with his arms stretched. Our eyes met, and he gave me a rueful smile. His lips moved, but I couldn't decipher his words.

"Aaron! Move!" Katherine screamed. Or was it me?

Then the torrent of daggers arrived and descended like a downpour upon Aaron's back as he closed his eyes and braced for his inevitable death.