Lilly saw the world through a curtain of her hair and the blurry rush of rage that seared her as the man carrying her over his shoulder marched through the melee of monsters and soldiers, out of Elliott Way's entrance doors, over a bridge, and onto the crest of one of the facility's many hilly, unkempt lawns. 

When the man's arms released her, Lilly tumbled face-first to the ground. 

The rain was rugged, destructive, falling so hard every fat raindrop caused minute craters in the ground. Everything smelled like citrus and saltpeter, a zest-smoke combination that sent Lilly into a coughing fit. As her coughs died down to mere sputters, she flipped onto her back and looked up—and up and up—to study the man who had kidnapped her in Treasurer's Place. 

He was tall. His hair was cropped into a buzzcut, a lazy smile sat like an unkind gash on his face, and his eyes were the bright, unnatural green of neon signs or sodas. His right eyebrow was slashed through the middle with a dark line of ink, and that line slithered from his eyebrow and down the edge of his face before snaking around the bottom of his ear. He wore black army fatigues, thick and bulky and dark, perfect for concealing weapons. 

Oh crap.

Storm. It was Storm.

Lilly had seen him raise his hands in Treasurer's Place. She'd seen his wicked twin bolts of lightning explode before everything crescendoed into chaos. Lightning and sudden storms and the kidnapping of a space thief. It clicked. 

Lilly scooted back a little, unable to stand. Absolute, all-encompassing dread made her limbs heavy. 

"Your mother really screwed up by keeping you alive. She should've just sent an asteroid to flatten your skull," Storm said over the torrent of the howling wind and rain. He crouched down so that he was closer to eye-level with Lilly. "We need to talk."

Stupidly, Lilly replied, "You're not as ugly as I thought you'd be."

"I tried to go for the handsome army look," Storm replied, that lazy grin sharpening into a sneer. "You look exactly like the scared little girl I was expecting."

Lilly swallowed down the nausea that threatened to spew out of her mouth. The last thing she needed was to vomit all over Storm.

Actually, that wouldn't be terrible.

"Mm," Lilly mused. She could feel her heartbeat all over her body, pounding frantic and chaotic, like thousands of butterflies trying to escape a too-small tank. "I've been looking forward to having a conversation with you, actually."

"Really?" 

"Yeah. You're the only one who can give me a straight answer. What's up with my mother?" As she spoke, she tried to get a read on the magical current, but she couldn't feel it. Her fear made her so unfocused that she couldn't zero in on it. 

Calm down. Calm down. You have to calm down if you want to fight him. 

The rain softened to a drizzle; the wind descended from a roar to a whisper. From behind Lilly and Storm, thirty yards away, an explosion came from deep inside Elliott Way. Lilly jerked her head around to see the facility—merely a silhouette of spires, high rises, and gables—erupt into flames from within the Northern Wing. 

Lilly pressed a hand to her mouth and turned back to Storm. 

"Don't look so shocked," said Storm. "What did you expect? Monsters offering nice warm hugs and hot chocolate?" 

Lilly clenched her fists, took several deep breaths so that she could calm herself down. If she didn't get her fear under control—

Storm crossed his arms. "I'm going to tell you how smart I am. I simply dug into family secrets and found a bored psychic with a grudge who told me you were alive. I tracked down records of Shifters moving to Earthens from eleven years ago. Your cousin moved there. I thought that if you were alive, you'd be with her. Emma really did think she killed you, and when she found out what your cousin did, she was ecstatic. I planned my monsters, then I sent giant wasps to Belle Village to get your scent so that when you were in Elliott Way one of my other beasts could grab you. Emma and your cousin really didn't think about Lydia Cannassa." 

"Why not have the wasps just grab me in Belle Village?" 

"Your cousin made sure to have Belle Village enchanted so no one could take you through a gate without her permission. It's why I wanted you in Elliott Way. It's why Lydia blackmailed you. See? Smart." 

"And my mother...you kept her alive?" If dread had not completely swallowed her whole, Lilly might have felt a sense of relief. She didn't have the room to process it. Emma's not dead. Mom's not dead.

"Life wouldn't be as fun without her teasing me about my failures every night." 

Another ground-shaking crash came from Elliott Way. Lilly did not want to look. She closed her eyes. Were Kaitlynn, Zander, Max, and Wyx okay? How many people were dying because of Storm's beasts? 

"You can't do this," Lilly breathed. This meaning using his monsters to destroy Elliott Way and everyone in it. This meaning taking her magic and using it to destroy the magical dimension, which would, in turn, destroy the world. "This is...these are real human lives." 

Storm rolled his shoulders back, wiped his hands on his pants. "They call you Lillian Cart Ci, right? It's the name your cousin gave you. You live in Earthens, America, Maine, Belle Village, house 1928 with the bright blue mailbox. You've lived there for eleven years. Your birthday is April fourteenth, and you go to some fancy prep school on a scholarship because your grades are so high, but not because you're academically gifted. You just study for hours and do every extra credit opportunity you can find. You need time to process things. You're sarcastic, something you certainly don't get from your cousin, who can't even be called a good guardian, because where is she now? Told you I was smart." 

Lilly opened her eyes and reached out for the magical current again. Desperation rose up within her, tsunamis on steroids. "How did you know...?"

"I read up on you and your cousin and wrote letters to your teachers pretending to be a concerned uncle. I guessed the rest by knowing your mother. Was I right?" 

"Uh..." Lilly bit her lip. It wasn't like she could fight him without being able to feel the magical current. She needed time to find the magical current before Storm used her to destroy the magical dimension. She could indulge him. She could stall. With every ounce of sass and disrespect she could muster, she said, "I don't study for hours. I tape pieces of information on my bedroom walls so I'll see them every day, not because I care about that stupid scholarship to that fancy prep school, but because I want to make my amazing guardian proud. So you were wrong about that." 

Please work, magic.  

"Am I right when I say you're trying to use magic but you're so scared that it's not working?" 

"You wasp." 

"Mm. It might be fun to show up a space thief."

"I could always get up and run." 

"I know almost everything about you, sweetheart. You will not get up and run." 

He didn't have to add that the reason why she wouldn't just get up and run was because his magic worked at the speed of light and he could knock her out with a simple blast. 

"How much do you know about the magical dimension?" Storm asked. 

"Not enough to know why you needed to create eleven beasts to get inside it."

"If the magical dimension is opened by a rip in the world, and the world rips open because of dense magical energy squeezed together in one place, then where can I open the magical dimension?" 

"Obviously Elliott Way." 

"The lawns, specifically. I experimented to figure it out. The ground soaks up magic like a sponge. In a place already completely alive with magic, a facility so jam-packed with magic that it has its own personality, the lawns are the perfect and only place in the Shifter World that can open up the magical dimension." 

"But why destroy it? Why kill everyone?" 

Storm slowly rose from his crouch. Lilly, too afraid to move, took several more deep breaths as the wind rose to a shriek, thunder crackled, lightning lit up the writhing maelstrom of clouds above, and the rain fell harder. 

Lilly shivered, completely soaked, completely frightened. 

She did not have to be unafraid to use magic; she simply had to get her fear under control...that felt impossible. 

Storm glanced up at the sky, at his own storm, and answered with a snarl that belonged to monsters and world-destroyers: "They all deserve it." 

***

Zander had a word he wanted to scream out: Paroxysm.

It meant a violent expression of emotion or activity. He could feel activity stirring within him, ready to rage, to explode. He wanted to share that dangerous, world-saving tidal wave of emotion with the world.

But he couldn't even get his voice to work. Stupid silence. Stupid anxiety.

And he did not want to save the world. He did not think he could save the world. He just wanted to save Lilly. 

Not even a shout or a cry of fear came out of him when the beasts unveiled themselves in Treasurer's Place or when the man in the black army fatigues with a bulky hood drawn over his face raced towards Lilly. Zander pressed himself into the nearest wall and couldn't tear his eyes away when the man grabbed Lilly. He couldn't figure out why he couldn't talk and how Elliott Way was going to get out of this one and why no one saw Storm grab Lilly or if they did see it, why wasn't anyone doing anything about it? Why wasn't he doing anything about it? 

Of course, it was hard to pay attention to one man and one girl when eleven monsters attacked. 

Suffocated on all sides by a monsoon of bodies and monsters, Zander followed Storm and Lilly out of the cafeteria. He lost them several times and had to crawl the final twenty-foot stretch to the door in order to avoid a large purple hawk swooping low to take out eyeballs with its claws, but he eventually got just outside of Treasurer's Place just in time to see the large entrance doors to Elliott Way swing shut. He rose to his feet and started towards them, but a shout stopped him in his tracks. 

"Zander! Thank the Greater Gods!" Kaitlynn had just come around the corner of the corridor that led to the dormitory rooms. Every bare inch of skin was encased in a thin layer of mud. Her hair was falling out of its ponytail and frizzing at the crown of her head, and her wet clothes clung tight to her body. As she walked towards him, her boots squished. Wyx, who was perched on her shoulder, looked no more comfortable: He was wet, shivering, muddy; his eyes were so big that they looked unproportional to the rest of his small body. 

"Kaitlynn," Zander started, out of breath, voice trembling. He wanted to finish with, It's Lilly—it's Storm—he has her—, but anxiety gnawed on his vocal cords and he couldn't finish. He could speak earlier when he learned about what Lilly had done, so why couldn't he get his voice to work now? 

"I need your help," said Kaitlynn, pulling him towards the corridor she'd just come out of. 

You're going the wrong way! he wanted to shout, but Kaitlynn, who was excellent at reading people and saw the distressed look on his face, explained, "Desidonna told us how to seal the magical dimension." 

Kaitlynn yanked Zander harder, nearly pulling his arm from its socket. "We need someone else," she said, "but we have to go this way so we don't get caught. Desidonna said monsters are attacking Elliott Way." 

"Where—?" 

"Elliott Way's lawns, no time to explain." Kaitlynn led him into Privates' dormitory, towards the floor-to-ceiling windows on the opposite side. One of the windows was still shattered from the beast attack yesterday, and a semicircle of shattered glass still glittered, rain-slick, at the window's base. 

"Before we go out, you have to promise me that whatever happens, you'll seal the magical dimension." 

"Yeah, but—" 

"Promise." 

"I promise." 

"Good." Kaitlynn bent down and picked up two jagged triangles of glass. He'd never heard her sound so serious, so down-to-earth, and it scared him a little. Her fever-bright eyes said do not mistake my love of childlike imagination for naivety; the firm set of her mouth said do not think for one second that I am guileless. "When I open the dimension, you're going to walk in, find the blue string, and cut it. Then you're going to run out. And you're not going to worry about me or Wyx. You can't stop. Do you understand? You can not stop. Not for me, not if a monster carries me off, not if Storm comes into view, not if the world ends, not if Lilly is screaming bloody murder on the other side of the lawn." 

"I think you're being slightly dramatic...but I get it." 

Zander sucked in a deep breath and Kaitlynn pressed the glass shard in his hand. 

Kaitlynn patted the pockets of her pants and pulled out a blue vial capped with a black stopper. Zander, feeling very stupid because the words simply wouldn't form in his mouth, simply watched as Kaitlynn unstopped the vial and dripped several drops of its contents onto the glass in her hand.  

"Desidonna said that the way for us to open the magical dimension is to astral project and then let the magic within your body bleed out while the spirit that's projected tears open the dimension," Wyx said. It was strange to hear Wyx sound so determined, serious, and terrified all at once. 

And just like that, he found his voice. It came in a rush, fast and furious and exciting, the way it did when he'd spoken in front of Lilly, Kaitlynn, and Max for the first time. He and Kaitlynn were about to save his friend. This was important. This mattered. His voice mattered. Explode the paroxysm, he thought. Explode, burst, whirlwind.

Paroxysm burst from him like a firework. He wanted to help, to do anything he could. With quiet confidence, he said, "Do you want me to astral project instead of you?" 

"Have you ever done it?" 

"Well...I don't really know what it is exactly, so no...but if you taught me—" 

"Well I have. It's part of a Shezekian religious practice. You'll only get one shot because if you accidentally put yourself back into the body, the dimension will close. Desidonna says that if a person projects back into their body while opening a magical dimension if they're not trained in tearing open layers of the world in magically-dense areas, they'll get crushed under the weight of the magic. So you'll die, and you'll lock me in." 

"Right." Zander raked his teeth over his bottom lip, loving the way the words filled up his mouth. "Then I'll do whatever you need me to." 

They climbed out of the window and tromped out into the storm together.  

***

Eleven beasts tore Elliott Way apart.

One of them was merely a whisper and did not look like a beast at all. It had the ability to open and close things; when it rose from the ground upon first being created, it had opened a great chasm in the ground, toppling an entire village as a result. It also closed the mind, making humans and animals fall asleep upon impact. It took the form of a little white spider.

There was a giant bird; when it had fallen from the sky, its talons were so sharp and so vast that it had ripped a hole right through space and time, causing the sky to bleed. Its wingspan was the size of a small cottage. Great horns curved from its head, and its beak had snapped off more arms and legs in the past month than the number of times it had flapped its wings.

Yellow and black colored gas that could turn into any animal, but chose giant wasps that bled blue blood. An acid-spitting scorpion whose poison had the ability to burn through any metal, marble, or gemstone. A giant lizard-like creature with green skin and a forked purple tongue, the only beast of the eleven that could speak. A fleshy eight-foot-tall man with bulky muscles and a distorted face that wielded a club and spat cockroaches. A reptilian monster nearly as tall as Elliott Way itself, with a long tail and a mouth full of fangs and webbed hands. A white-coated werewolf-bodied creature with horns growing from its forehead, wrists, shoulders, and kneecaps. A plum-colored, round furry ball with bat wings and bright blue eyes that caused the human body to go into a seizure upon direct looking. A vine as thick as oak trees with a mind of its own that slithered like a snake and opened a circular mouth to reveal twenty rows of sharp teeth. A monster that looked like a gazelle but would puncture your throat with her antlers without hesitation. 

They were everywhere, ripping Elliott Way apart from the inside out. Walls sang arias from tragic operas, and the tiny, finger-sized fairies gathered to help, using their growing magic to help the nurses provide medicine. Every Bloom Official available worked with gateway networks to find Storm's location. Six adults and three hundred trainees fought ten beasts all throughout Elliott Way.

The battle was bloody.

Instructors directed a team of eighteen-year-olds to fight the giant bird in the entrance rotunda. They devised a plan to distract it so she could stab the back of its ugly feathered neck. In the North Wing, Bloom Officials avoided stumbling into a giant chasm in the floor caused by the little white spider, and his group of a hundred trainees charged it from all directions. The ground opened in several directions. Two of the Board Members, Stem Sankta, and every other trainee battled in the courtyard. 

The battle was messy and chaotic and the war of elevens was bloodier than any Shifter World battle seen in the past decade.

Far, far below, Amaranth charged her secret weapon and Elliott Way began to flood with water.