I had no memory of my panicked rush from the shrine to the underground section of the ruins. Later, Kira told me that she’d felt a pulse of power, like “a thunderclap that I felt in my soul,” in her own words, and that she feared that whatever it was had driven me mad. That I tore out of there with such desperation that I gouged the stone floor, roaring and shrieking with what she could only describe as unfathomable anguish.
After Herald and Mak vanished from my senses, the next thing I was aware of was the food court. I’d frozen as I went through the door from the collapsed hallway, and though I must have Shifted and moved through the darkness to reach the place, I was fully solid. And while there was no real light in the place, to me, it was as bright as the heart of a star.
Well, that may be a slight exaggeration, but I was entirely enveloped by light. Which, ironically, meant that I couldn’t see a damn thing. The air itself was radiant with molten gold, and it’s not like you can really see anything with a lit torch in front of each eye. And yet, that paled in comparison to what I felt.
In the far north of Mallin, especially as one got close to and reached the ruins of Malyon, there was a feeling in the air. I variously thought of it as a comfortable warmth, or a relaxing hum, or a pleasant, electric tingle. I may as well have described it as a soothing color, a nostalgic flavor or scent, or the sense of peace that comes with walking outside at 5 AM on a cool spring morning. None of them would be more right than any other; they were all just vague approximations for the sake of those who couldn’t experience it themselves. What I felt in the north, the ambient magic there, wasn’t something I felt with any physical sense. It was, as Kira put it, something I felt in my soul.
If what I’d felt all day, every day in Malyon was like the universe hugging my soul, the food court was closer to being thrown into a spiritual auto crusher. It was like what I imagined standing inside a Rift might be like; like a single breath, a single effort to draw any of that magic in, might fill me to bursting; like it might satisfy my need for magical power forever, or turn me into a god, or kill me where I stood.
I couldn’t say how long I stood there before I came back to myself, but I was aware of the blinding brightness and the crushing pressure on my soul slowly falling, and of Avjilan calling my name from somewhere behind me. My first conscious act was to try to reach out to Herald or Mak, but nothing. I still couldn’t sense them, either. Nor could I sense Tammy, I realized, so I tried to reach her. Nothing. That left me with two possibilities: either Herald and Mak were fine, and my senses were out of commission, or whatever had happened to my sisters had caught Tammy as well.
I had to believe in the first, I decided. Otherwise I might’ve gone mad.
I tried to speak. At first all that came out was a croak. My throat felt raw, and the pressure around me made it hard to move any of the muscles in my throat. I was working hard just to breathe. But soon I managed some intelligible sounds, finally managing a pained, “Mak!” “Herald” was just too long.
“Draka? The Mercies be thanked. We’re here, Draka!” Val’s voice came to me from somewhere in the all-consuming light, raw with emotion. It was joined by other voices which were quickly hushed.
“Val?” I croaked. “Where? Can’t see!”
“Here!” he called, “See my torch?”
“Can’t see!” I repeated. “At all! Too bright!”
He didn’t comment on that. “Then… my voice — follow it!”
“Okay,” I forced out as I cast about, trying to figure where his voice was coming from. “You hurt?”
“Sarina and Marvan, Maglan and myself, we are… alright. Sarina and Marvan, they were frantic at first, but they’ve calmed down. But Tam—” his voice broke, and I heard other voices, soft and soothing, before he cleared his throat. “Tam and your sisters, they will not wake. Our lightstones have fallen dark, as well. We’ve had to light torches.”
“Coming,” I managed. I turned back to where I heard Avjilan and said, one word at a time, “Avji! Go back! Keep them away!” Then I started in the direction I thought Val and the others were.
Gods and Mercies, every part of me felt so heavy. It was like moving through water, or trying to run in a nightmare. Every little movement of my limbs was a struggle. But all the while I heard Val urging me forward, and Conscience and Instinct both encouraging me. So I fought. I fought like hell for every step, and I dragged myself toward the beacon that was Val’s voice. I pushed more than kicked bodies and cushions, and I crushed ancient bones and tables underfoot. I didn’t care. The only thing that mattered was to get to Val, and with him, the others. I had to reach Herald and Mak.
They weren’t dead. I held onto that. He’d said that they wouldn’t wake up, not that they were dead. He wasn’t a child. He’d know the difference. They weren’t dead. They couldn’t be.
I fought on. One step after another, breaking old bones and kicking aside furniture as the light slowly became less blinding and the pressure less crushing.
“What happened?” I said. Speaking was getting easier, but my voice was still strained and raspy.
“It is impossible to say, but something must have been triggered when Mak touched that stone surface,” Val answered. I’d never heard his voice so filled with emotion — fearful and right at the edge of grief. “If we were not underground, I would have sworn that lightning struck. Blindingly bright light filled our vision, and there was a crack and a rumble and a strange buzzing, as though from deep in the earth. Down below, perhaps. Tam, Mak, Herald, they simply collapsed. Just dropped, as though there was nothing to animate them. They breathe, but I swear Herald’s heartbeat is getting faster, and her breathing shallower. Nothing we can do will wake them! Draka, please, if there is anything you can do—!”
Val choked, and Maglan’s voice took over as Marvan spoke softly in the background. “He’s not wrong about it being like a thunderbolt,” Mag said. “The rest of us, we all feel the ache, right?”
There was a murmur of agreement from Marvan and Sarina. I still couldn’t see anything, but I must be close, I thought, to hear them so clearly.
“And there’s a feeling in the air, like standing by a waterfall — like it thrums through your bones. And that smell. Like, cold and… like it stings your nose?”
I tried to focus on my nose. There was the dust and bones and old death and silver and gold from before, the sweat and fear of the humans, and the faint burning scent of the torches, but above it all was something I recognized distinctly: a lingering smell of ozone. They may not have been so wrong about the comparison to lightning, though that fell far short of explaining everything.
“Magic,” I told them. “Ambient magic. Heavy. So heavy in the air. So bright I can’t see!”
“Thought it might be, since Lady Herald and her siblings took the worst of it,” Marvan said. His voice was close, and no less shaky than Val’s. “I can see you, Lady Draka. Here, I’ll touch you in a moment and lead you over.”
Now that I was closer to them, I thought I might, perhaps, be able to see a patch of brightness that was more intense in the sea of gold that enveloped me. A moment later a hand carefully touched my snout, and Marvan spoke again.
“There, Lady Draka. Just continue straight ahead. There you are.”
Soon we were all gathered before the broken and partially demolished gate. There was definitely a brighter patch on the ground, and instinct and reason both told me that this must be Herald, the only one of the three who’d been outside the gate when they collapsed.
“Bring her closer,” I said, my heart clenching in my chest. I was so close, and still I couldn’t feel her. It was agonizing.
Someone shifted, making the air swirl softly, and Mag asked hopefully, “Is there anything you can do?”
“There’s something I can try. I need to touch her.”
I had no idea if Herald was so full of magic that she shone brighter than the background, or if her brightness only added to what I was seeing, but I’d never seen a human shine the way she did, not even in the dream when we both gained our Advancements. It was deeply unsettling, in a way that I couldn’t fully explain. It was the incongruity. Humans with actively magical Advancements had a ball of light around their heart when they used them; in Herald, that golden light had expanded throughout what I assumed were her veins and arteries. But now, to my eyes, Herald was almost a solid shape of golden light. The only creature I’d ever seen where their very flesh seemed to be filled with magic was Mother; even The Might And Splendor Of The Depthless Ocean hadn’t been that saturated with the stuff.
I couldn’t imagine that so much magic was healthy for a human body. Trying to draw any more from a Rift once they were full was unpleasant to the point of being almost painful. Having it forced into them the way that must have happened here…
I imagined an overinflated balloon, just a touch away from bursting, and shuddered.
Or, considering what I was about to try, perhaps a tyre would be a better comparison. If you had too much pressure in a tyre, all you had to do was to open the valve a bit. So that was what I was going to do, with me as both the valve and the one opening. Not a great metaphor, maybe, but good enough.
Mag maneuvered Herald close enough for me to lay a hand on her. I was practically shaking as I did so. Val had told me that she was still alive; that she was still breathing, if barely, and that her heart was still beating, though much too fast. But for months now I’d been able to feel her, wherever she was, and the fact that I couldn’t…
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I forced myself to rest my hand above her heart. My relief at her warmth, at the rapid pulsing of her heart and the slight rise and fall of her chest, was immeasurable.
Even with the air as charged as it was, I could feel the power thrumming inside her. My balloon or tyre analogy felt all the more appropriate; the magic inside Herald felt tense, taut even, as though it was only waiting for a tiny opening to tear its way out of.
“I’ve never tried this before,” I warned them. “Never thought of it. May not work. May… do something bad. No way to know.”
Mag was silent for a long while. Then he swallowed audibly and said, “Please. You love her as much as I do. You have to try.”
I nodded, not sure if they could even see me properly in the torchlight. Then I tried. With my palm flat on Herald’s chest I did the same thing I’d do with a Rift or a lightstone and drew the magic out of her and into myself.
Immediately, Herald took a long, raspy breath, then another, and another. I felt her press against my hand, her body trying to arch up off the floor, but with my strength she might as well have been strapped down. At first my heart nearly stopped with the fear and guilt that I might have done something terrible, but then I realized that whatever else was happening, it was working! The tension I felt in her diminished, her flesh dimming as the power drained into me, a whole Rift’s worth and more, far more than any human should ever hold.
Slowly, Herald’s breathing settled into something more even and less like pained gasps, and both our hearts settled into something more like a normal rhythm.
“You did it,” Mag said, his voice full of wonder. “Whatever you did, you did it! It worked!” He practically tackled my arm, barely budging it as he threw himself at Herald. “Oh, sorry! I just—”
“No, I get it,” I said. Speaking had become much easier in the past minute or two, and the brightness, though still all encompassing, wasn’t quite as totally blinding. I could vaguely see the outlines of shapes now. I reluctantly removed my hand from Herald’s chest. “Go on, Mag. Hug your girlfriend. Val, Marvan, Sarina!”
“Yes, Lady Draka?” Marvan said.
“We need to get Tam and Mak out, so I can do the same to them. And we need to get you all out of here. This ambient mana… Mercies, it’s oppressive, even to me. If you all can feel it I can’t imagine it’s good for you.”
Getting the three out of the control room was awkward, with them being entirely limp and Sarina being only one woman. But they got them out, and I drew the magic out of them as well, feeling my own Heart fill as their breathing grew more even. Then we brought them outside, and none too soon in my opinion; the ambient magic had been decreasing, but the rate of that decrease seemed to be slowing, and I really didn’t think it was healthy for humans to stay there. I was immensely relieved that the level dropped steadily as we passed through the collapsed hallway, through the guardroom, and emerged into the excavated stairwell. I hadn’t been unable to see to at least some degree ever since I became a dragon, and I’d properly hated the experience.
As relieved as I was to be able to see again, I was far more so when I began to be able to feel Herald, Mak, and Tammy. Only then did I truly believe that perhaps things were going to be all right.
Outside, the level was practically as I remembered it. A little higher, perhaps, but nothing concerning. No one was waiting for us, which was both disappointing and satisfying; I had told Avjilan to keep everyone away, after all.
“That was goddamn awful,” I observed once we were all back in the shrine. “Is goddamn awful,” I corrected myself as I curled around my little family.
Herald, Mak, and Tam may have been breathing normally, but they were still out, and hadn’t shown any sign of awareness. Kira had diagnosed them with an incapacitating exhaustion and said that there was nothing essentially wrong with them, but seeing them like that, completely unresponsive… I suspected that Instinct was doing something to keep me calm, because I felt like I should be going to pieces the way Val was. I loved the three Tekereteki siblings — a possibly unhealthy amount in the case of the girls — but they’d been his family for years. Now that it looked like the danger may be over, and there was nothing more he could do, he sat leaned against me with Tam’s head in his lap, as Mak and Herald slept much too deeply beside them. He was trembling, shaking silently as he finally released his grip on the helplessness and terror of the last hour, allowing himself to slowly fall apart as pretty much everyone else, Zabra and Tammy excluded, tried to soothe and comfort him.
“Never felt power like that before,” he said, his voice choked and uneven. “They just fell. A flash, darkness, and then I just heard three bodies hit the floor. Gods and Mercies, before we got the torches lit… before we could see that they were still alive…”
“I know,” I told him. I didn’t know what else to say.
“What was that?”
“I don’t know,” I said honestly. “A violent burst of magic, best I can guess.”
“I felt it here,” Kira said. “When you left, Draka. Like a thunderclap that I felt in my soul. Terrifying.”
“How do you feel?” I asked her with a twinge of guilt. In my worry for my unconscious family, I hadn’t actually thought to see how Kira was doing. I probably should have; she had a shine to her. Nowhere close to what Herald and her siblings must have looked like before I drained them, but Kira was definitely slightly radiant. I’d been meaning to do something about it, but since she hadn’t complained at all, I’d focused on soothing Val and worrying about the others.
“Afraid,” she replied frankly. “Anxious. But… I don’t know the word in Karakani. Energized,” she added in Tekereteki.
“Good description,” Avjilan said, unprompted. “I feel it too.”
I turned and looked at him in surprise. Though in hindsight, I should have expected it. He was a magic user as much as anyone, and he’d been much closer than Kira had. Yet, he didn’t have the glow that Kira did, and he definitely didn’t shine as brightly as the others had. To my embarrassment, I’d overlooked him entirely.
“And you’re all right?” I asked him. “No pain or nausea or other unexplained ailments?”
“None. It’s like Kira said. I’m afraid and anxious for the others, but physically, I feel like I’ve had a good meal and then a good night’s rest.”
“Right. Good. Let me know the moment that changes, if it does.”
Avjilan inclined his head. “Of course, Great Lady.”
Turning back to Kira I asked, “Have you tried doing any healing since?”
“No? Should I have?”
“Well,” I said, drawing it out to give myself an extra moment to think. “I don’t want you to worry, but you have more magic in you than I’ve ever seen before. Like Herald, Mak, and Tam before I drained them.”
“But Avji does not?” she asked. Because of course she’d be more concerned about his wellbeing than her own.
“He doesn’t,” I confirmed. “Couldn’t say why, though. Avjilan, any ideas?”
“I have used my magic extensively,” he mused. “I most definitely have a much larger reserve than I did when it was all new. And, well… there is my condition. I couldn’t say if that would affect anything.”
Ah, yes. His condition. The minor detail that he had, through occult ritual magic, had his soul transferred from his original body into that of a friend who had been, I suspected, severely depressed. And that this friend’s soul was still with him as a silent watcher and companion.
We hadn’t made that public knowledge, for obvious reasons, but he was right. Gods only knew what effect the presence of a second soul in his body might have when it came to absorbing and holding magical energy.
“It might,” I said, my tone carefully neutral. But in your case, Kira, I don’t know if it’s bad for you, so I figure we should get it out of you to be safe. And I could just take it, I think, but…”
“You’re curious!” she said, and she didn’t sound at all concerned about that. If anything, her tone was closer to the affectionate teasing that Herald, Tam, and even Mak sometimes subjected me to. “Well, I don’t see why not, as long as my patient is willing.”
“Um… I would be happy to,” Tammy said from where she sat next to a sleeping Zabra. Because of course she did; I’d said that I was curious about something, and she’d move heaven and earth and sacrifice anything to make it happen.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “And don’t just say yes to make me happy. Tammy, I command you to be honest: are you comfortable with being a test subject?”
“Yes,” she confirmed, and now even her earlier hesitation was gone. “Kira would not hurt me willingly. And we should know. Please. I want to do this.”
“All right,” I said. “Kira?”
“You say I have more power than you’ve seen?” she said. “Then Tammy is perfect.”
Kira rose, giving Ardek’s shoulder a squeeze as she did. Tammy and Zabra had their bedrolls beneath the second panel, the one that showed the colony that would become Malyon beginning to flourish, and it took a few seconds for Kira to cross. Just barely long enough for the tension to build. “Give me your stump,” she told Tammy in their own language. “Let’s see if this does anything.”
“What about my leg?” Tammy asked as she offered her truncated right arm.
“Your leg is healing nicely; a day or two, and you should be able to walk normally. But this—” Kira took the stump in her hands and began to unwrap the bandage covering it. “Another month, at least, before your new hand is fully formed. Let’s see if we can’t speed that up, shall we? It’s worth a try.”
The first time Kira healed Tammy’s stump, it had been entirely undramatic — except for the circumstances. Kira had still loathed Tammy then. This time undramatic would not be how I’d describe it.
It began normally. Kira held Tammy’s wrist in her left hand, her right cupping the smooth, pink end. Power gathered in that familiar little ball around her heart, and a slow stream flowed through her arms into Tammy’s. Then Kira said, “I’ll try something now, all right?” and things got exciting very quickly.
In just a second or two, the soft glow that saturated Kira’s flesh all drained inward, gathering in that little ball, which grew not only brighter but larger than I could remember seeing it. Even when she’d healed Kesra — and I was still convinced that woman had been dead for at least a few seconds — Kira’s power hadn’t been so… visible. Kira gasped, deep and slow, and then all that gathered power shot down her arms all at once, leaving Tammy’s stump glowing brightly as Kira slowly fell backward, catching herself with her hands and sitting there breathing deeply as Ardek and I both rushed over to check on her.
“I’m fine!” she said, waving us off. “I promise! Just surprised, and tired.”
Tammy, meanwhile, yelped and snatched her stump back. She was gritting her teeth, almost whining, and I would have thought that she was in pain except that she wasn’t protecting her limb or groaning the way people usually would. Instead she was making repeated, aborted clawlike motions with her remaining hand.
“You okay?” I asked her, looking worriedly at her. She’d settled on clamping her hand firmly around her right wrist.
“Itchy!” she gritted out. “So, so itchy! But look!”
I looked. I looked closely at the pink, almost shiny skin, and as I did I could have sworn that I saw movement.
“Sarina,” I said, not taking my eyes off the stump. “Get this woman some dried meat and water.”
Because I did see something. I could see Tammy’s goddamn fingers growing.
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