They kept walking. Tick hugged the silver cube to his chest. That unseen presence that had filled him left him with no doubt that the object was vital to what awaited. Everything was about to come to a head.
A brightness began to lighten the air, like the beginnings of dawn. It had a blue tint to it, and it either thinned out the fog and mist or just made it easier to see. But the feel of the air around them was changing. And then it appeared before their eyes. Not gradually, and not from a distance, growing in size. It was suddenly just there, as if they’d been catapulted three miles forward without feeling anything.
A thick shaft of pure blue light, blinding in its brilliance. It came from the sky and tunneled into the ground, running in both directions as far as Tick could see. The perfectly round cylinder was at least fifty feet wide, the radiance within its core pulsing like a heartbeat.
Tick squinted and held up his hands, peeking through his fingers. It was impossible to look at the light for more than a second or two, but there was something incredibly beautiful and mesmerizing about its steady beat of flashing brightness. The purity of its blue. The hum and buzz emanating from it. Tick felt it in the air and in the ground beneath his feet. The steady roar and pounding of a thousand waterfalls.
It was energy and life and power, unlimited and daunting. Tick had to fight to not lose himself to the awesomeness of it all.
“The core of the Void!” Jane shouted.
Tick nodded. He knew that already. Just as he knew what needed to be done. Just as he knew that Mistress Jane would never leave this place, and that he’d never be the same.
He turned to her, finally breaking his trancelike state. “I need your help to harness its energy! I need you to break apart the cube. And . . . me.”
Her half-melted mask stared back at him, saying nothing. Showing nothing.
“You know it’s the only way!” he yelled. She had to know.
“It’s going to fight us,” she finally replied.
Tick nodded.
She paused again. “You have to promise me, Atticus! Promise me!”
“What?”
The roar of the Void shook the air.
“You know!” she shouted. “You know what my heart has always envisioned! It’s always been about the end, Atticus. Tick. Always the means to the end!”
“Utopia.”
“Utopia!” She stepped closer to him, only inches away. “I need your word if you want me to do this. Otherwise nothing matters!”
“I give you my word that I’ll devote everything to it. But in my own way.”
“Swear it!”
“I swear.”
She stared at him a long time before nodding. “Then let’s go.”
She didn’t wait for him to respond. She turned and sprinted for the blinding, brilliant shaft of pulsing blue light. Tick ran after her, hefting the cube in his arms. The Void immediately retaliated.
Things started flying out of the core, all shapes and sizes, some alive and some not. Dozens of man-shaped creatures like the Voids who’d attacked them at the ruins of Jane’s castle came first. Their mouths gaped open as soon as they appeared, yawning wide to reveal the furnaces that burned inside. Beams of lava and flame shot out all at once in an organized volley of heat.
Jane stopped to face the threat, as did Tick. With flicks of his eyes, he directed the power of Chi’karda—bursts of brilliant orange—to shoot forth and meet the attack in midair, obliterating the streams of lava before they could fall toward the ground. The two forces met in a shower of sparks and a burst of explosive sound. Jane and Tick swept their gazes left and right, destroying them all. Then they focused on the creatures themselves, wiping them from existence with one brutal assault of Chi’karda. Wisps of fog flew in all directions.
Jane moved forward again, and Tick followed. They’d only taken a few short steps when all kinds of animals made from the same gray substance emerged from the blue core. There were tigers and dogs and snakes and mad bulls. Alligators. Giant scorpions. They mixed together into a crowd of monsters, scurrying about the ground, all of them bent on attacking the two humans close by.
Jane and Tick stopped again and fired away with Chi’karda. The creatures’ eyes had that same bright look of flames, vicious and angry. Snakes slithered across the ground; tigers leaped forward; everything came at them.
Tick could feel pressure mounting inside him as he picked apart the unnatural creations with his power. Sweat poured down his face. Every blast that took down one enemy seemed to reveal three more—they just kept coming and coming. Jane’s arms were whipping around, back and forth as she aimed and fired, like her hands were weapons. Tick just looked, killing with a glance. Zap, zap, zap. The sounds of explosions and the roar of the core filled the air.