The Common King by Brian Olsen

Author:Brian Olsen [Olsen, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-11-08T22:00:00+00:00

Twenty-two

Fire fills every square inch of the museum basement. It’s an inferno, a massive pillar of flame towering three stories high, at least. The piles of clothes, the sleeping bags, the boxes of brochures, the stored exhibits, all are incinerated instantly, reduced to invisible ash. Nothing could possibly survive being engulfed in a fire like this.

Except we are surviving. It’s not even warm.

There’s a lot of screaming. It’s terrifying, being in the middle of a huge fire.

“What’s happening?” Zane yells in my ear. It’s hard to hear him over the roar of the flames.

I squeeze him tighter. “We’re all right! We’re all right!”

I have no idea if we’re all right. I don’t know what’s going on. But the flames are passing right through him. I hold out my hand. The same. Like we’re phantoms. Is this an illusion?

I look up. The flames are bright, especially from the inside, but I see shapes where the Common King and his allies float.

I stand, slowly, bringing Zane up with me.

“What’s happening?” he shouts again.

“I need to see.”

“Don’t leave me!”

I guide him towards the edge of the room, nearer the king. I can only see our friends when I’m right on top of them, but nobody is burning. Everyone is as unharmed by the flames as Zane and I are.

I stop when I hit the wall. The once-gray stone is now charred black, but somehow cool to my touch. When I pull my fingers away, there’s no ashy residue on them.

I press my face to the wall and look up. Here at the edge of the blaze I can just about see a sliver of the sky. The Common King is there. Laughing.

Jasmine looks horrified. Shonda’s turned away. Nate’s screaming, reaching down to the fire but unable to move towards us. Finlay flies circles around the museum, cheering.

Jasmine grabs the king’s shoulder. He turns to her with an annoyed look on his face. She says something, but he pulls away to watch the flames again. She grabs him one more time and says something more insistently. He sighs, then nods. He beckons for Finlay, who flies over to join the rest.

They all put a hand on the king. Jasmine grabs Nate’s arm and forces him to touch him as well. The magical artifacts come together into one big pile behind them and Shonda reaches back to get a hand on it.

They vanish.

The towering inferno collapses immediately, the flames around us fizzling out. The tops of the walls continue to burn here and there, but all the fuel in the basement is burnt up. There’s nothing left but us and the clothes on our backs. Everyone’s down on the ground, holding one another in pairs or small groups.

I step away from the wall. “They’re gone.”

Alisa untangles herself from her parents’ arms. “How are we alive?”

“Er, yes.” Ihsan coughs. “I believe I may have had something to do with that.”

He’s holding Kenny’s hand. Kenny’s shaking, but he looks down at their linked hands and gently pulls his away.

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