Allison hurtled across the chamber, right hand squeezed tight to draw blood from the cut she’d made against the cultist’s unsheathed knife tucked into their belt. It had been right where the Coyote Lady said it would be, and when the hunchbacked thing began to rise out of the milky well, the cultists had become distracted with awe, just as she’d said as well.

Through the screams of the captives, Allison heard shouts from cultists calling for someone to stop her. She’d made it almost halfway across the half-court length of the chamber, when a quake shook the ground and threw her forward.

As rocks tumbled from the ceiling, Allison scrambled to her feet. Her right hand was red with blood now. Coyote Lady said a drop would do, but Allison never did anything in half measure. She ducked under a lunging cultist and kicked another in the knee as they stepped in front of her. A hand stretched out to grab her by the neck and she bit down hard on it, then twisted away. The chamber shook again, and the floor felt like a rolling ocean. Allison kept her feet.

The pounding filled her mind and invaded her heart. Drums that played within her very soul. Boom. Boom. Boom.

She reached the stone altars where the victims lay stretched out. Locking her eyes on the dripping, hulking figure above the well, she passed Kattoh’s body and felt a surge of satisfaction. His death would not be in vain.

The well loomed ahead. Stretching one leg out, Allison rocketed up the first step, landed on her other foot with the third, then jumped upward over the rim. She held her bloodied right hand out, thrust forward like a sword. Her hands passed through the cold white liquid, then her arm, then the rest of her. She exploded out the other side, dry and untouched, and fell in a heap on the rock floor.

A croaking sound stretched out, growing louder and louder until it roared like a jet engine firing up. Allison rolled and saw the white figure swelling like a balloon until all shape deserted it and the thing popped like a massive pimple.

Allison threw an arm up to shield her eyes, but just like when she’d passed through the figure, nothing touched her. When she lowered her arm, a round golden animal with bat wings flapped in front of her.

“You’re Allison, I’m Vex and we’ve got to go!”

Kellen threw up another shield just in time to drive back a charging cultist with its club raised overhead. To his surprise, Allison’s act of defiance sparked a revolt in the captives and most chose to stand and fight rather than flee. Allison always was good at starting fights.

A brief sensation flashed through Kellen’s mind, Vex, letting him know the Mana Beast had Allison and she was unharmed. Just ahead of him, Shani moved like lightning. Thrusting her spear forward to stab one of the masked cultists in the gut, she wrenched it back and raised it overhead, hurling into the chest of another, running toward them. Kellen shot out a dart of sun mana from his left hand. The bolt hit the cultists in the thighs and they crumpled to the ground, not dead but out of the fight. Seeing a beastcaller and a warrior attacking the cultists, the armed captives fought their way toward them, led by a black man wielding a stolen club like a baseball bat.

The assault was too much for the cultists who fought to escape the chamber. Now the former slaves were armed, they fought with fury and blocked the only exit. Then a man appeared. Darting out with a stone spear just like Shani’s, he killed two captives in an instant. The slaver’s arrival caused both sides to draw back, and he advanced to the front of the cultists. Yellow eyes shone above a scarlet wrapping that covered him from nose to collarbone. Kellen knew at once who it was.

“Ubira!” Shani’s scream of rage rent the air. She strode forward, bloodied sword in one hand, knife in the other.

“Am I supposed to know you?” Ubira asked.

“I am your death,” Shani said. Without waiting for a response, she attacked.

The first exchange happened in a flash of sparks and shrieks of metal on stone. When they broke away, Shani prowled around the slaver like a hungry wolf, heedless of the cultists she’d place at her back. Ubira held his position, spear out in front of him in a low stance. In the moment Shani’s sword struck the stone staff again, the air above the well exploded. A burst of wind drove Kellen back a step.

Ubira and Shani fought on, oblivious. But when Kellen looked up, he saw a tear in the very fabric of the world itself.

“Home,” Allison whispered. The slice in reality opened wide enough to show their old red harvester, right where Kellen had parked it in the field when the glowing blue light had appeared. In a trance, Shani took a step toward it, but the fluffy bat flew in front of her, blocking her path.

“Whoa, what are you doing? Don’t do in there. Something bad is in there. Something very, very bad.”

Allison shook her head. “No, it’s not, that’s my home,” Allison said. She took another step forward, brushing the round bat aside, eyes locked on her family’s field floating ahead of her.

“That can’t be,” the bat protested. “There’s nothing in there, it’s just… emptiness.”

“No!” Allison said again, louder this time. “It’s home!”

As if in answer to her statement, she saw Kellen running toward her. Tearing her eyes from the portal, Allison sprinted toward him. When they collided in an embrace, she squeezed him until her arms ached.

“I found you.” She looked up and saw Kellen sobbing, arms wrapped tight around her as well. “Allison, I found you.”

“Kellen, we can go home!” Allison turned and pointed to the split in the air. “Do you see it? Do you see the harvester?”

Kellen nodded, speechless. Then the little bat named Vex fluttered in front of them again.

“Is it true?” Vex asked Kellen. “Can you really see your home there?”

“Yes,” Kellen said, breathless. “Look! The harvester is there, right where we left it, almost like we were never gone at all. Can’t you see it, Vex?”

“There’s nothing there,” Vex said. “It’s just empty void in the air. It makes me feel awful. I… I don’t want to look at it. Just go.”

Wings drooping, the little Mana Beast flapped away, barely off the ground.

“Vex, wait!” Kellen called after him.

The black bird appeared like a bolt shot from a nightmare.

The first attack was a blast of white-green light, the color of pus. It struck Kellen and Allison, knocking both off their feet. As nausea overtook him, Kellen struggled to one knee and threw up a shield a second before the bird collided with it. The force of the black raptor’s strike forced Kellen on his back, but the shield held. Shrieking in anger, the bird threw itself without regard for itself over and over. Kellen raised his right hand to join his left, channeling mana through both to reinforce the shield. His beast heart had been all but dry until they’d entered the foreboding aura of the chamber. Terror inducing as it was, the air was rich with mana.

“Go away!” Allison groaned. She grabbed a stone off the ground and threw it weakly at the bird as it circled around for another attack. Kellen rose to his feet, fighting the sickness plaguing his body. Every limb felt exhausted, every joint ached. A cold sweat trickled down his back but he burned with a fever. The bird struck the shield with greater force and Kellen saw a spiderweb of cracks scatter over the surface of the dome held over himself and Allison. He pushed every last drop of mana from his beast heart into the shield.

It wouldn’t be enough. He knew it already as the bird reeled for another diving strike. Kellen’s fingers spread wide, and he braced himself, holding the cracked remnants on his shield together before the attack came. The bird shrieked and dove.

A surging blast of golden light burst across the room like a comet and collided with the enemy Mana Beast. Vex drove the bird down to the ground, where they twisted and rolled in a tangle of feathers and fur. The bird was a fraction of the size it had been during Ira’s attack, but Kellen still felt the strain on Vex as it sought to hold it off.

“Go — hurry!” Vex shouted in the brief moment before the bird’s beak drilled at him again. Kellen’s Mana Beast squeaked and, in a flash, was a football-shaped fox instead of a bat.

Kellen hauled Allison to her feet. Standing, she teetered back and forth, face a sheet of white, eyes sunken and ringed with dark. Recalling the effects of the attack on the bird, he worried Allison would suffer even worse without the strength his beastcaller powers lent him. As if to confirm, she sagged in his arms. Kellen scooped her up, stumbling for the portal above the well.

His conscious tore itself in two. One half strove to get Allison back to Earth before the sickness claimed her. The other blared a warning that Vex was on his last legs. Cultists and slaves fought all around them, no longer held at bay by the two champions. Up close to the portal, Kellen couldn’t see Shani or Ubira or anything on the far side of the well. Grunting from exertion, he climbed to the top of the well. A fresh autumn breeze played across his face. He could smell the rich earth and the fresh cut wheat. The sounds of the battle and the nausea within him faded. In his arms, Allison’s eyes fluttered open.

Kellen helped her stand. The next instant, a searing pain in his beast heart sent him toppling backward from the lip of the well. As Allison rushed to steady him, he looked back and saw Vex pinned to the ground by the black bird’s claws, struggling faintly as streams of golden light drifted up from his body and into the bird’s beak.

Pulling his sister forward, Kellen hugged her tight, just as he’d imagined he would when he found her every time he thought about the moment over the last several weeks. He pulled away and looked Allison in the eyes.

“Kellen —”

“I love you.”

“Kellen, wait!” Allison clutched at his arm, tears running down her face.

“I’m sorry. I’m so proud of you.” Kellen pulled free and grabbed her hands with his wrists.

“No!” Allison screamed. “No, no, no!”

With a heave born of desperation, Kellen shoved his little sister backward into the tear in the sky showing a peaceful early autumn in Idaho. Allison strained, reaching for him, but the portal pulled at her, dragging them apart again. Forever.

As soon as Allison’s outstretched fingers passed through to the other side, the portal snapped shut and disappeared in a silent flash of light. Kellen twisted and a dart of golden sun mana shot from his hands and struck the black bird, knocking it off of Vex. Running for his Mana Beast, Kellen shot another dart at the bird. This time, it rose in the air, wings beating as it gathered infected mana before it.

Kellen knew he wouldn’t survive a second hit, but he ran for Vex, heedless of the danger. If they died, they’d die together. He reached the little fox and scooped him in his arms.

“You came back,” Vex said in a weak voice. “You chose me.”

The bird released its attack, enveloping Kellen and Vex in its infectious light. Time stood still. Somewhere, golden bells rang out.

The sound of a hundred singing and chanting beastcallers filled the air and for once, Kellen understood nothing they said. A golden circle fizzed like a firecracker around them, spinning faster and faster. In Kellen’s arms, Vex glowed solid gold, then it grew to a brilliant white light.

“You have watched over me,” Vex spoke, but it was in a chorus of voices, high, low, loud and whispering. “Now we join together, as companions.”

Several spinning rings of gold joined the first, rising up around Kellen and Vex. Geometric designs danced in the gaps between rings and Vex rose out of Kellen’s arms until he hovered over his head. Kellen stared until the light blinded him. A rush of fire and heat filled his veins and burst into his beast heart.

When the light faded, a new Mana Beast stood before him.

Vex had grown. His body was lean and muscular, smaller than a cougar, but larger than a lynx. Short, golden fur marked with electric blue streaks and swirls rippled over his powerful form. Although his face kept some of the snub-nosed face, sharp, thumb-length fangs filled his mouth. His ears had widened to something more feline and tufts of whiskers covered his cheeks. Vex flexed his paws and razor-sharp claws gouged at the stone floor. He gave his new tail — a long one with a tuft like a lion’s — an experimental flick and then turned his glowing, golden eyes to the bird.

A growl built in the Mana Beast’s chest, rising to a furious feline scream of rage, and Vex leaped.

The bounding attack knocked the bird out of the air and pinned it to the ground, all in the same movement. Before Kellen could stop him — not that he would’ve bothered to — Vex’s fanged mouth closed on the raven-sized bird in a terrible crunch. With a final, agonizing scream, the bird disappeared in a flash of gray light.