I open my eyes again, and returning to the world of sight helps steady me. Once corrupted, it appears it stays under his command. I don’t want to think about the implications of that for Fionn and Thorne, whose aether still flows into Krantz in red streams, or for the magic of Thayaria. I have to stop it from reaching him in the first place. I close my eyes again.

Instead of pulling the aether to me, I attempt sending my own pure aether into the mass surrounding him. I worry it will just make him more powerful, but I have to try something, so I keep a firm lock on the pathway that connects me to the current of aether around me to ensure he only gets the small amount I’m willing to give him. The bright crimson of my aether moves toward the maroon-black mass where he stands. When the streams collide, red appears to battle back the black, and the mass surrounding Krantz is encircled with a red glow. The aether I sent into him is absorbed back into the ground, not corrupted.

I sigh. Of course the only way to stop him would be to do the one thing I’ve spent decades avoiding. I do one more test, this time with a larger amount of aether. Once again, red and black fight for dominance, and as my crimson stream wins and returns to the ground, Krantz’s unseemly swirling mass actually shrinks.

Encouraged, I take a deep breath and center myself, letting the feel of my feet on the ground steady me for what I’m about to do. Then I outstretch my arms, palms facing down, and pull massive amounts of aether from the closest leylines and direct them into Krantz. A tidal wave of scarlet crashes into him, and even though I can’t see him, I can tell he falls to the ground at the onslaught. The black mass circling him dissipates, lightening to red, before also flowing back into the world around us. He’s still pulling from everyone around him, but it’s at a much slower rate.