Starlight (Book 1)

10: That Could Have Gone a Lot Worse

He can't lose, I told myself. That's impossible.

But the longer I watched Orion writhe beneath Phantom's power, the further I tried to convince myself out of believing it.

There's no way.

"Well, I'll be," said Phantom, slowly. "Have I finally bested him—the Almighty Orion?"

I watched Orion as he lifted his face. "I will never lose to you."

It was at that moment I began to realize what was truly going on. Only one person between the two battlers was tired, and it wasn't the one currently being thrown back and forth like a juggling ball.

Phantom was tiring. Orion wasn't losing. He was exhausting Phantom's powers, forcing him to lose steam until he had no energy left to fight any longer, and it was working.

I scolded myself for not seeing it sooner: Orion had telekinesis, for crying out loud; he could have thrown Phantom off him ten minutes ago. The only reason he hadn't was simple. He had somewhere to be, and dragging on the fight any longer might actually take another hour. The only way to end it quickly was to get Phantom to overexert himself.

Or so I hoped.

"I hope we weren't planning on going that way," said Eleni.

"Oh, well," Alaina replied, her eyes still glued to the scene, like she was busy in her own head, trying to figure it all out. "We can go around the long way, it's not a big deal."

"I wonder why Phantom is here," Eleni continued, and Lily nodded even though I wasn't certain she was listening to the actual words her friend was saying. "I mean, isn't this kind of... out of his way?"

I was wondering the same thing myself. Normally when Riley was involved, I would manage to put the pieces together at one point or another, but I wasn't privy to anything most of the time. If Phantom had a reason, well, tough luck. Personally, I thought he just liked to be dramatic. There really was no other reason he had such an evil laugh. Absently, I wondered if he practiced in the bathroom mirror like Riley did.

Either way, Phantom's ability was tiring. The shadows waned around him, and his movements seemed to slow.

Orion's hands wrapped around the bindings which had held him back for the past few minutes. Without so much as a tug, they dissolved into thin air and the particles scattered in the surrounding air.

"Are you all right?" Orion asked, a brief moment of concern passing over his face.

"Oh, yes," Phantom replied, stumbling over the words. "Perfectly fine, not that it makes any—" The final word was broken by Phantom's sudden inability to speak. He stood there, surrounded by open space and nothing else, transfixed to his spot.

Lily shot me a look. I shrugged, not quite sure what to say. Jax grunted, slouching further towards the ground like a deflated balloon.

"What, are you upset?" I asked, trying to make a joke, but he genuinely was cheering for the loser here.

"There he goes!" shouted Eleni. Just as she spoke, I whipped my head back around to look.

Phantom, who still had yet to speak, began to stumble over himself wildly, and as though the invisible platform beneath him instantly caved in, he began to fall.