10-2: Until She Saves My Soul, Part Two

Radiance #10: She had faith, she was in no doubt / That my heart would find me some new way out.

Welcome to The Story Scrapbook, a fiction newsletter by E.B. Howard. If you’re new in town, check out my Fiction Directory for navigation.

Radiance is a hopeful fiction serial about one of Earth’s darker timelines. It takes place around 2014 in a world where atypical abilities have become increasingly common, with the storyline following a group of minor-league superheroes based in Washington, DC. Our protagonist is Lady Radiance, former teen sensation, aka Christabel Jones, professional ray of sunshine—or, at least, she's trying her best.

Previously, the dismantling of supervillain Archangel revealed that Hades’ body and soul weren’t the only things he was holding together. This time, with the lair crumbling around their ears and much of Lady Radiance’s new power locked away, will it become our heroes’ tomb as well?

<#10, Part One || Directory || Epilogue>

It took them less than three minutes to exhaust the obvious solutions. The rebar content in the rubble was too low for Chained Lightning to shift electromagnetically. When he tried to move it by hand, another chunk of the ceiling fell in nearly on top of Sylph and apparently took the electrical connections with it, plunging the hallway into darkness. Lady Radiance let her hold Liam while she tried to create a portal out, but a small, guttering flame in the palm of her hand was the best she could do. Even if she’d had access to the necessary power, she had no idea how Hades did it.

All the time, of course, they could hear the upper levels caving in. The unventilated air was growing staler and warmer by the second, while every echo fractured her concentration despite her firm resolve to keep calm. Lady wasn’t afraid. It was undeniable, though, that the situation had suddenly become a lot more tense.

They couldn’t stay where they were, but there was only one place to go. Sylph, glowing faintly, flitted ahead of them around another corner and up several more flights of darkened stairs; it wasn’t until Lady Radiance saw a dim expanse of green glass ahead that she remembered what Liam had told her about the lounge. Inside the room, a few steps led down to a large semicircular conversation pit, its lines twinned with the long curve of a glass bubble that replaced three walls and much of the ceiling as well. On the other side of the window was the bottom of the lake.

Lady Radiance’s breath caught, memories of being trapped and drowning bubbling up in her throat again. Then she pushed them aside and pressed forward. She would not be cowed. “How deep are we here?” she asked Sylph.

The other woman shrugged stiffly. “Sixty feet, maybe. It’s nothing.”

A five-story building’s worth of ice-roofed water didn’t seem like nothing to her, but she supposed Sylph was used to it. She gave Liam back to his sister, to save her strength, and stepped over to confer with Chained Lightning. Hopefully, he had a good reason for staring so intently at the seams along the window. “What are you doing?” she said quietly.

“Math,” he said. “I’ve got a bad idea, and a really bad idea.”

“That’s better than I have,” Lady admitted. “Let’s hear it.”

“Well, the bad idea—”

One of the brads reinforcing the window seal popped free of the wall, landing at their feet. Lady looked up past the thin dribble of lakewater forcing its way through the seam to see the insouciance had gone from his face.

Chained Lightning looked back down at her grimly. “Scratch that. You can run a shield, right?”

“Well, mayb—”

“Do it.” He pointed back past Sylph to the solid side of the room. “I’m still hot. You get them, hold the shield for five seconds, then check on me. Go.”

Adrenaline blasted through her veins and prickled her skin as she ran, turning her back on the wall of cold water. Lady Radiance hardly noticed the struggle it took to pull her charges into the corner and shroud them all in a sphere of hardened light; she was trying too quickly to figure how long they might need to swim sixty feet and get through the ice. And how much oxygen, for three—four?—

The bang and crackle of current discharging across metal reminded her that she was supposed to have been counting. She guessed, and dropped the shield to let Chained Lightning duck in.

She turned back, and for one frozen moment she could see everything: the glass falling, the fish-speckled water surging, the light breaking through far above as the ice cracked under the sudden change in pressure. Lady Radiance just managed to brace against the wall and get the shield back up before it all crashed in on top of them.

The wave roared behind the light, drowning any further instructions she was supposed to have heard. Swimming was out of the question, as he must have known but she only now realized. Even at full strength, they never could have stood the force—she had to hold out at least until the flood died down.

The water pressed in, squeezing them along the wall, and the light thinned. She was trying. It had taken so much out of her to get here. She was trying, and she knew she was failing them.

As some other part of the structure failed, a new current slammed into the shield from the side, and Lady Radiance lost her grip on it. The cold water overwhelmed her immediately, shoving them down onto the floor and then, like a pebble from a slingshot, out into the lake.

The very concept of gravity and safe ground fell away in an instant as the light from the caved-in ice spiraled around and around her, and then began to fade. They were floating together, lost.

Persephone’s memories, angry at having been pushed away, clawed at the base of her neck.

Icy liquid rushed in at her feet, quickly rising

She held on more tightly to the others, the only thing she had strength to do.

poured into her nose and mouth, air bubbling up out of her lungs as she tried in vain to breathe

The pain of the cold was fading as her fingers started to go numb. Her body screamed for air, but she had to hold out. If she breathed that water in, it would all be over.

drowning her. She had no one

Wrong. She had Liam.

die here alone

She pushed the memories away to mentally reach for him, through the fear, past the silence. They were still connected, even if she never found out how, even if neither of them ever breathed again. Even if he couldn’t help—

The heat of a portal surged around her, and then she was falling through air. Lady opened her eyes to see rocky ground rushing up towards her before she caught herself just above it with a shriek.

Easing down onto the ground, she gasped for shaking breaths. She couldn’t understand what had happened. How had she ended up out in daylight and fresh air, back on the shore?

“Christabel,” somebody said hoarsely behind her, and a hand descended on her arm to roll her onto her back. She stared up into what looked like, but wasn’t quite, Hades’ face. There were ordinary and very human dark eyes searching hers, not a hint of the grave in them, nor in the flush across his pale cheeks.

“Liam,” she breathed. “Liam.”

He reached out for her tentatively, and she let him pull her up to sit against him. Christa embraced him through a cloud of steam as the flames still lapping at his feet died away only slowly, leaving a wide ring of bare gravel where there had been snow.

“I’m all right. I promise,” he said, but he said it past her. Leila was standing, shaking, at the ring’s edge, cradling her arm at an unpleasant angle. “You’re hurt?”

Leila gave him a pained but honest smile. “No. Well—not too badly. Nothing that won’t heal. Christabel?”

Christa shook her head and smiled brightly back, not quite trusting words yet.

There was a loud, wet cough from their other side. “Yeah, I’m fine, thanks,” Baz said. “I wasn’t usin’ those ribs.”

“You’re welcome,” Liam said.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d say you was still sore about last time.”

“Last time? That wasn’t even me,” he said innocently.

“Uh-huh. You know that’s only gonna get you out of so much.” Baz limped into view dragging a sizable log, which he dropped in front of Leila. He’d acquired a few dents in the newly-repaired armor, but otherwise looked all right. “Good job, anyway. If one of you can get that burnin’ for the squishy mind-bender, I’ll try to figure out where we are and phone home.”

They didn’t seem to have gone far. The strip of woods behind them was dense and anonymous, but to the lakeside, Christa could see the ice starting to break up over the underground base. She helped Leila dry off and get more comfortable, glancing out at the water occasionally in deep gratitude to be on the right side of it this time.

Her thoughts were interrupted again by a squawk of static. “That woman,” Baz said. “Hey—you there?—yeah, I figured out why that integrated comm never worked. You used the five-micron, you gotta use at least five-point-five-micron with that alloy or it’ll burn out—” He paused. “What? Yeah, I’m okay. I called you, didn’t I?”

Leila raised her eyebrows in disbelief, and Christa sighed. “We’ll work on him.”

“No, look, it’s all good. She’s fine too. We all got out, it’s done. We even got Hades, sort of. …oh, yeah, he’s toast. Sylph can tell you about that.” He waited again, listening to Marissa talk. “Honest. No more undead psychic. We won. …so you’ll marry me now, right?”

Christa whipped her head around to see Baz smirking. “Yeah, I know I’m on speaker. I just don’t care,” he said. Catching her eye, he shot her a thumbs-up as the smirk dissolved into a loose grin. “See, that wasn’t hard. I’m proud’a you.”

Liam ran his hand weakly along her arm as he laid himself down on the rocks, drawing her attention back. “I’m really not Lord Hades anymore, am I?” he said. “I mean, I don’t know what I am, but…not that.”

Christa pushed his hair aside so that she could look into his face. “You can just be Liam.”

“No,” he said. “Your powers need mine, remember? I’ll have to be your henchman now.”

She giggled, seeing the sincerity in his smile. “Heroes don’t do henchmen. You’ll have to be my sidekick—that’s a much better deal, anyway.”

“That’s not better,” he protested.

“What? How is that not better?”

“My dear Lady, there is dignity in being a good henchman. It’s a venerable profession of longstanding…”

Leila leaned over. “Rest and rehabilitation first.”

“Oh, certainly,” Christa agreed.

“I don’t—”

“Yes, you do,” Leila said firmly.

“You can’t just boss me around anymore. Christabel, you can’t let her treat Lady Radiance’s devoted henchman this way.”

“Don’t you dare drag her into this after all she’s done for you! Do you even know how many pieces your soul is in right now, Liam?”

“Is it one? God, please tell me it’s one.”

Out on the lake, the little pools of gray water continued to bubble and slosh above the destruction far below. Christa watched them churn to foam against the broken ice, their sound lost under the conversation behind her and the rush of wind around her ears. Between the clouds overhead wisped small streaks of blue, pale but cheerful all the same.

A slight chill ran across her skin, but only slight, and easily burned off by the warmth settling in her limbs. Winter couldn’t last much longer now, she thought. April would come, and May. There would be flowers again, bright and open to the sun.

She moved Liam’s hand aside gently and laid herself down next to him, her head on his arm. Cold, sharp stones pressed through her tights and into her legs, but his robes were soft and still hot. She turned her face up to the clouds and pulled his arm back across her chest, tuning out the words around her to listen to his heart beating by itself, and watched the wind stretch the wisps of blue into a single wide and untroubled lake of sky.

<#10, Part One || Directory || Epilogue>

Thanks so much for reading! The Radiance epilogue, Halos Made of Summer, will be up next week.

If you enjoyed this installment of Radiance, you can show it by leaving a like or comment, sharing this post, or just continuing to read. :) Everyone’s welcome in the fan club!