The Last Pendragon

Chapter 10

“So is Kharro just supposed to fly us to New York City?” Kenji asked. Lyza crossed her arms as Kenji, Matt, and Kharro gathered around. They had left Shangri-la and camped somewhere in a bamboo forest in China. Lyza had no idea where they were.

“What about teleportation?” Kharro met Lyza’s gaze. “I’m not the only one who should be doing all the work here. I am too involved as it is. I’ve done you way too many favors. By rights, I should just leave you here.”

Lyza grabbed his arm. “Wait! I can’t teleport to a location unless I’ve been there and I can’t teleport to any person unless I see them or their picture. You’re the only way we can get to New York.”

Kharro frowned. “Give me one good reason.”

“How about the end of the world?” Kenji asked sarcastically.

“Kenji’s right,” Lyza started. “Merlin said that his spell that put the Zathran to sleep is wearing off, so it will awake soon. Which means while Kenji and Matt are draining the sigil in each city, the World Eater is out there terrorizing people and slaughtering them.”

Kharro growled. “That means I need to gather as many dragons as possible— there were only a few able-bodied fighters from Shangri-la who followed us to help fight the Zathran in Vergis after you destroy the sigils. The rest of everyone in Shangri-la can’t fight. You’re going to have to find your own way to New York.”

Lyza’s chest clenched. They were talking about the end of the world, and Kharro and the dragons were about to fly off to fight a purely evil creature who couldn’t be killed until the three of them succeeded. There was a likely chance that this would have been the last time she would ever see Kharro again. Even if he only ever did her favors, Lyza saw him as her oldest friend. She cared for him deeply and it hurt to watch him leave. “Be careful, Kharro,” Lyza blurted.

“I’m always careful.” With a grin, Kharro surrounded himself with silver smoke and, in his dragon form, flew off into the night.

Kenji held up his phone and showed Lyza a picture. “This is a picture of the Mayor of New York City. You said you have to see the person to teleport to them, right?”

Lyza nodded. “Technically, yes, but with the Brooklyn Mage Market, if I teleport or cast any major spells, they’ll be able to sense it and teleport to us immediately.”

Kenji blinked. “You lost me.”

Lyza sighed and ran her fingers through her sleek red hair. “Our magic comes from our emotions. If we feel major emotions, it bleeds into the ground. The same thing happens when we use major spells, like teleportation. If I teleported in, nearby Mages could sense it and teleport to us. The only safe way into New York is…”

Her voice trailed off as realization struck her.

“What?” Matt crossed his arms with a light wince.

Lyza cursed. “If we teleport into the Brooklyn Mage Market.”

“Wait.” Kenji held out a hand. “What is that?”

“It’s another place, hidden from the world. There are lots of them everywhere, including in New York. It’s a marketplace for Mages to visit. People teleport in and out of there all the time, so one extra teleportation spell isn’t going to attract attention.”

“Hold on.” Kenji rubbed his eyes. “Why can you teleport there and not anywhere else in New York?”

Lyza groaned and she reigned in her frustration, or tried to. Explaining magic to no-mages was sometimes the bane of her existence. “It’s the same thing as if I lit a candle in a room with a bunch of other candles. No one would notice. But if I lit a candle in a dark room…” Her voice trailed off.

Matt nodded in understanding. “It would be more obvious.”

“I’m lost, but I’ll take your word for it.” Kenji shrugged.

Lyza rolled her eyes and glanced at Matt. “Do you see what I’ve had to deal with, trying to teach your brother magic?”

Kenji lightly elbowed her. “Hey. Be nice.”

Matt smirked. “Yeah, you should have seen him trying to learn martial arts.”

Kenji scoffed. “Quit tag-teaming against me you two. We have the world to save.”

Lyza tried to ignore her happiness at their bantering as she prepared the teleportation spell. So long as she did this without feeling too many drastic emotions, they could pull this off.

She hoped.

*****

Matt buried his surprise at the idea of an entire island completely hidden from the world as he, Kenji, and Lyza teleported into what Lyza called the Brooklyn Mage Market.

“Remember, we can’t feel too many emotions. Just stay calm and don’t feel much of anything. The Bloods train all the White Serpents—guards in every area where Mages gather—to track the magic signatures of criminals. Since they’re hunting you two, that means you have to keep your emotions in check, even if you don’t use magic yet,” Lyza explained.

Matt had no problem keeping his emotions in check. A few times, his mind had started to drift to his father’s death or what the Bloods put him through, or worse, his past, but having a mission helped him stay focused and not think on things he shouldn’t. He glanced at Kenji. “You good?”

“I will be. I’m not as good at this as you are, Matt.” Kenji shot him a look.

The marketplace reminded him a lot of Afghanistan, minus the sand. Here, the roads were made from cobblestone, like something out of a medieval European town, except that everyone here used magic in some way.

People gathered in a long stretch of narrow road lined on either side by carts and stalls selling all kinds of magical goods he had never seen or even heard of before. Many of them glowed one color or another—a woman glowed red as she shouted a man, who had a pink tint to his skin, while a group of children laughing and playing in the middle of the street glowed bright purple—so he suspected that was because of their emotions, as Lyza had pointed out.

“Stop! Thief!” someone shouted.

Matt’s eyes snapped to attention, immediately alert. He glanced up on the rooftops of the buildings, down the street, and through the crowd. Up ahead, a man sprinted through the crowd, elbowing people out of the way.

Lyza’s back was turned as the thief darted toward her.

Matt reached out for her but the thief slammed into her. The two fell to the ground in a heap. His first instinct was to tackle the thief to the ground but he stopped himself, not wanting to attract too much attention.

Lyza’s skin glowed bright white. It lasted only a few seconds, but it was enough. A block away, two guards in white armor glared right at them. “Let’s go,” she whispered as she stood up.

“What—?” Kenji started.

Matt interrupted him. “No time. Go.” Lyza, Kenji, and Matt all briskly walked through the crowd, which was still chaotic from the thief. Taking a quick glance behind them, Matt sucked in a deep breath.

The white guards were gone.

“Go!” Matt shoved Lyza and Kenji down a side street, wincing as the movements made his body ache. A shield of energy appeared in front of them and Lyza froze.

“We can’t get through.” Her face paled.

Kenji brought his hand up. “Hold on.” He closed his eyes and the shield fluttered around them for a moment before it danced through the air and slammed into him. With a gasp, he opened his eyes and glanced at Lyza. “I did it. Again.”

“Go!” Matt shoved them forward once again but by then, both ends of the alley had white guards surrounding it.

“In here,” a strange voice said.

Matt’s gaze followed Lyza’s where a strange dark-skinned man ushered them through a doorway.

“Lyza Pendragon, Kharro sent me. I’m a Dragon Knight.”

Lyza nodded and gestured for Matt and Kenji to follow her. “We can trust him.”

Matt went last to make sure Lyza and Kenji stayed safe as the Dragon Knight led them through a series of doors and hallways, out into the streets and then down into a basement. Part of it made him uncomfortable and reminded him too much of the prison the Bloods had, but he pushed it back and kept his mind alert for danger.

Inside, Lyza, Kenji, and Matt leaned against the wall, panting. Matt sucked in a breath, but it burned as it filled his lungs.

“This room is spelled to block magic energy. We’ll be safe here for the moment.” The Dragon Knight met Lyza’s gaze.

“Why did you help us? And what’s a Dragon Knight?” Kenji asked.

Lyza pursed her lips. “Once, dragons used to bond with Mages. That stopped when the Mages turned on the dragons and started hunting them to extinction. Over the years, a group of Mages disagreed and broke away from our order of Mages, so to speak. They became rogues but… allied with the dragons.”

The Dragon Knight inclined his head. “I owe my life to Kharro. He sent me here to help. There’s a portal downstairs. Take it and you will end up downtown.”

“Thank you, so much.” Lyza met the Dragon Knight’s gaze as he led them downstairs to the portal.

*****

New York City was one of the largest cities Lyza had ever been to, even in the three years she spent on the run. She would always travel to bigger cities, in hopes it would help her to blend in better, so the Bloods couldn’t find her and yet in all her travels, she had never been to New York before.

As Lyza, Kenji, and Matt stood on the Dragon Knight’s boat that sailed them from the mainland to Liberty Island, Lyza kept her eyes on the Statue of Liberty. It was midnight, so only the nighttime security guards roamed the grounds. According to Matt and Kenji’s vision Merlin had given, the sigil was somewhere in or around the Statue of Liberty.

“As soon as I do this spell, it won’t be long before the Bloods use magic to track us and teleport here,” Lyza warned them as the Dragon Knight brought the boat to a standstill. She stepped off of it, happy to be off the water, and knelt on the ground with her eyes closed, sensing for the magical energy of the sigil. “Sigil’s energy and sigil’s magic… Show us where you are!” Lyza chanted in runic. Her words mixed with her own magical energy and a pulse, like a thunderclap, resonated inside her body.

Kenji and Matt both looked at her in shock. “I can feel it,” Kenji said, holding his hands outward.

“The Crown,” she whispered. Closing her eyes, she formed a teleportation spell. The Bloods would already be on their trail after her tracking-energy spell, so the sooner they reached the sigil, the better.

Lyza’s stomach lurched and she opened her eyes inside the room. It was massive in size, with window holes around each of the crown’s points.

Suddenly, Mages burst into the room. Matt started toward them, but Lyza leapt in front of him. “Stay with Kenji and have Excalibur ready!” Lyza shouted.

Matt nodded, but Lyza didn’t have time to see where else he went.

A strike of lightning shot toward her, so she formed a wall of flames to block it. When it was blocked, she sent the wall of flames to surround the Mages and hold them off. It wouldn’t last for long.

Together, the Mages formed a water spell and its wave consumed her flames. After teleporting them to New York, then to the Statue of Liberty, enabling them all to sense the sigil’s energy and the spells she used to fight the Mages, Lyza was out of energy. She swayed and was unable to form a spell to block them in time. Water slammed against her body, knocking her breath out. Tiny razors of pain danced inside her body and she screamed.

Two Mages walked over and grabbed her arms while a third cast a spell as he grabbed her head. Sharp, stabbing knives of agony jolted through her and her body instantly went rigid. Her vision blacked out and she tried moving her body, but her limbs refused to obey her.

Kenji! Matt! Lyza mentally cried out.

Agony consumed her and she was lost.

*****

Lyza’s screams tore through Kenji as if he had been shot. It ripped away his concentration and the magical energy he pulled from the sigil waned. “Lyza!” Kenji called.

“Kenji, focus!” Matt reminded him. 

Kenji turned his attention back to the energy as he continued drawing it into his hands. The power’s strength was far greater than he had ever felt before.

Wielding Excalibur, Matt lunged toward the Mages, dodging their attacks. Kenji didn’t have time to watch. The energy was pulsing and thundering toward him faster and heavier than he could fully control. With a wild cry, he pulled the energy into himself and it burned. It was blazing hot and intense inside him, raging through him so much that Kenji lost all conscious thought.

“Kenji! Now!” Matt’s voice pulled him out of the pain.

Throwing out his hands, Kenji screamed and threw all of the energy toward Matt.

As the energy surged toward Matt, he collapsed to his knees with a pained cry. Excalibur trembled and buzzed. Instantly, it glowed, flashing so bright that Kenji had to look away. The energy inside it burst open, exploding with a voluptuous roar.

As the earth trembled, Kenji collapsed, looking around the room. The Mages had all been blown back. Lyza was unconscious and Matt was covered in energy burns that had peeled part of his skin back. Excalibur glowed bright blue and lay on the floor beside Matt.

“No,” Kenji whispered. He crawled over there, groaning as every movement sent a thousand needles of pain shooting through him. Lyza and Matt were both breathing, but he had to get them out of here. Somehow.

There was a loud roar from outside. Kenji looked through the windows of the crown to see a massive silver dragon flying outside.

Kharro tried fitting through the windows, but he couldn’t. Instead, the windows shattered upon impact, sending thousands of glass shards into the room. Kenji did his best to cover Lyza and Matt. 

Picking up Lyza with a cry as pain tore through him, Kenji slid her out one of the windows. Kharro easily caught her as Kenji went back for Matt, who was stirring. He grabbed Matt with one arm and Excalibur with the other. It took time, but Kenji managed to squeeze Matt’s body out the window first, then his own, still clutching Excalibur which was throbbing with energy. He was careful not to take any of it away.

Then Kenji leapt out the window and landed on Kharro’s back.