Ariel

  Chains clashed against living wood, and sparks of red and green tore through the canyon’s half-light. Dust leapt from the earth in panicked spirals. Ariel stumbled backward, her boots dragging lines through the grit as Tréga’s twin scythes carved through the air in sweeping, murderous arcs. The sound was unbearable. Metal screaming against bark, laughter ricocheting off stone until it sounded like the canyon had given in to madness.

  Ariel twisted her staff to catch another blow, the impact sending tremors up her arms. The wood shuddered under the strain, pulsing with faint green light as it drank what little strength she could lend it.

  “You never stop laughing,” she spat between breaths, the words coming out harsher than she intended.

  Tréga tilted her head, her manic grin wide enough to split her face. Something feral glittered in her eyes.

  “Why would I? The world’s a joke, little spark! You just don’t get the punchline yet!”

  Another swing. Another block. Ariel’s shoulders burned. She felt the shock in bone and tendon, the reverberation of force rattling her palms. Her boots slipped on gravel, nearly giving way.

  Fornaskr slid in from the side, intercepting the next strike with the flat of his dagger. Steel rang against spectral metal. His feet skidded across stone, sparks snapping outward.

  “Stay upright, Ariel!” he barked, never taking his eyes off Tréga. “She’s toying with us!”

  Ariel’s chest heaved. Her blood burned. She could feel the ember within her veins, glowing hotter. Brighter... alive and hungry, as if the warmth that had been sent across an impossible distance had struck the coal of her heart and left it smoldering. It pulsed in rhythm with her heartbeat, a drumbeat against her ribs. Let go, it whispered. Burn her. End this.

  Her grip tightened until her knuckles flashed white.

  “No,” she hissed to herself. “Not now.”

  Memory flashed. The Wisp’s Grove roaring red, the trees turning to ash beneath hands she didn’t recognize as her own, the stink of sap and smoke and guilt. If she lost control again, Fornaskr and Shika would die. She would not become the fire that left only bones.

  The scythes came again, a blur of silver and shadow and manic delight. Ariel met them with her staff. The collision jolted her entire body; her teeth clicked hard enough to ache. Tréga’s strength was monstrous—not heavy, but relentless, like a storm that refused to pass.

  “Still hiding the fire?” Tréga taunted, circling like a wolf with a human smile. “Afraid of what you really are?”

  “I’m not afraid,” Ariel said through gritted teeth, even as the ember clawed upward, hungry for air.

  Tréga’s grin widened. “Then burn, witch.”

  She lunged, chains singing. Ariel pivoted on instinct, sweeping her staff in a tight arc. The ground beneath Tréga rippled as roots burst forth, rising in a lattice of bark and thorn. Tréga’s first strike met the wood, cracking it down the middle.

  Her second scythe slipped around like a whisper in the dark.

  Pain exploded through Ariel’s arm as the scythe struck. A line of white heat ripped across her bicep, then flooded red. She gasped, staggering backward. Blood welled and spilled, warmth running beneath her sleeve, dripping from her fingers in bright trails that spattered the dust. She clutched the wound, biting back a scream that wanted to claw out of her throat.

  Shika leapt forward with a sound that was almost a roar, a low growl that made the canyon hum. The little red panda’s fur bristled, tail puffed and curling tight. She planted herself in front of Ariel, feet spread, hackles raised, lips peeling back from small but razor-sharp teeth.

  Tréga tilted her head, laughter twisting into something cruel. “Oh, the little beast thinks she can guard her master. How precious. Shall I pull out her ribs and play you a song?”

  Ariel winced, lowering her good hand to touch Shika’s back. The fur there trembled like a plucked bowstring. “No, Shika. Stay behind me.”

  Shika didn’t move. The low growl in her throat vibrated like a living drumbeat. Her eyes never left Tréga.

  “She’s more light than you’ll ever know,” Ariel said softly. The truth steadied her more than any spell.

  Tréga’s smile twitched, her madness momentarily darkened by something that might have been envy. “Then let me snuff her out with you.”

  Fornaskr saw the opening. He ghosted forward low, fast, and certain. His first dagger snapped against Tréga’s scythe, sparks fanning into the dust. But he was already turning, already gone from where she thought he’d be; the second dagger slid in deep, punching through her thigh flesh.

  Tréga’s scream pealed across the canyon high and raw; a note that split into a laugh halfway through. Her body trembled with it, a shudder of agonized delight. She staggered a step, eyes wide and bright, staring down at the wound as if surprised to find red in her. As if blood were an old friend she’d forgotten.

  “Blood,” she whispered, voice quivering with ecstasy. “Oh, I missed the taste of it.”

  She dragged her fingers through the flow, slow as someone savoring honey, then raised them to her mouth. Her tongue flicked out, feline and obscene, lapping her own wound. Her pupils swallowed her irises. She shivered, grin stretching impossibly wide. “You want a wound?” she whispered through a purr that turned serrated. “I’ll show you what a wound is!”

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  She slammed her scythes together. Sparks burst outward in pale green fire, crawling up her arms like luminescent ivy. “Let’s make the canyon scream.”

  Chains uncoiled from her shoulders, rattling like teeth in a charnel mouth. The ground began to tremble. Dust fell from the cliff faces in thin, glittering veils. The air grew heavy and wrong, as if thought itself had weight.

  Fornaskr stepped back to Ariel, blades raised, breath steady but shallow. “Ariel,” he said under his breath, “what is she—?”

  “She’s summoning something,” Ariel said. Her voice wavered despite her will. The ember pulsed brighter, orange light feathering beneath the skin of her forearms like embers beneath ash. “Something big.”

  Tréga’s laughter splintered into chant. Words knotted under her tongue, syllables slipping like fish. The green light around her brightened until her body became a silhouette, chains crossed in front of her like a mockery of prayer. “Come, Veylun.... my grief… my hunger… come to me.”

  The wind reversed. It was small at first, the fine grit lifting from the floor of the basin. Then pebbles rose. Then a shale of dust lifted off the cliffs like breath drawn from sleeping lungs. The hair on Ariel’s arms stood up. Her teeth ached.

  The sound came low at first, like a mountain groaning in its sleep. It deepened until the ground under their feet hummed like a drum. A crack raced across the basin floor, then another, then another, a web of dry lightning etched in stone.

  Fornaskr’s grip tightened. “By the gods…”

  A roar tore the canyon open.

  The cave across from them lit with a sickly, unclean glow. The light rolled outward, painting the stone in colors a forest would never grow. The roar hit like thunder and kept going, becoming wind, becoming pressure, becoming pain.

  Something massive crawled forth from the cave mouth.

  Claws came first: pale, semi-transparent, each the size of a man, each hooked like a butcher’s tool. They sank into dirt with wet, sucking noises. The earth recoiled. Then the head—a long, skull-like mask with eyes like blown glass full of ghostly fire. Teeth shimmered in and out of visibility, as if reality struggled to decide whether to grant them purchase. The body followed: a grotesque braid of muscle and sinew and spectral mist, dragging chains that scraped and shrieked against stone. Bone spines jutted from its back like the ribs of a shipwreck.

  The Veylun pulled itself into the open and stood.

  It howled a sound so deep it seemed to tear the air itself apart, turning the wind into shrapnel. Ariel tried to cover her ears, but the noise vibrated in her chest, in the roots of her teeth, in the marrow. It found the ember in her blood and shook it like a bell.

  Tréga threw her head back, arms outstretched, baptized in green light. “Do you see it, little spark? Do you see what grief becomes? Sing with me! Sing until you forget!”

  Ariel lifted her staff, every nerve screaming in warning. “Even grief can be extinguished.” Her voice surprised her with its steadiness. She clung to it as if it were a hand.

  The Veylun did not stalk. It ran.

  It moved faster than anything that size should have moved. One instant it crouched at the far side of the canyon; the next, the basin floor cracked and bowed under its charge, throwing up waves of rock dust like surf. Its chains rattled a message older than language.

  Ariel slammed her staff into the earth with her good arm, breath breaking. “Rootwall,” she rasped. “Now.”

  The ground answered. Thick vines exploded upward, twining into a woven barrier that threw its own shadow. Thorn and bark and green light braided into a wall taller than three men.

  The Veylun hit.

  The vines held for a heartbeat—

  —and then they shattered. Bark splintered; thorn spun like shrapnel; the air went white with dust. The impact knocked Ariel sideways, her injured arm a hot, screaming livewire. She threw her other hand out, power lashing around Shika and Fornaskr like harnesses. She yanked, feeling their bodies slide free of the danger zone. The spell ripped a rent through her reserves. The world whited out.

  She didn’t see the Veylun’s shoulder coming. A bulk like a falling mountain caught her chest and flung her backward like a toy.

  Sky-earth-sky-earth. Something slammed her hip. Something cracked. When she stopped, she lay near a broken ledge, the taste of iron in her mouth. Her ribs felt out of place.

  For a long moment, she could not move. Sound fell away to a steady rush, as if she were underwater. She forced breath into lungs that wanted to stay empty. The ember inside her flared, then guttered, then held on, stubborn and hot.

  Her staff lay several feet away, half-buried in rubble. She dragged her good arm forward inch by inch, fingers clawing at dirt. “Come on…” she gasped. “Come on, damn it.”

  The staff trembled, then jumped. It flew into her palm and sang, power ringing down the wood like a struck bow.

  A tendril of spectral flesh lashed toward her face. A pale whip with too many joints. She snapped the staff up, catching it in a crook of carved roots. Power surged down the length, a green flare that shoved the tendril aside. The blow still knocked her across the grit. Her vision doubled, then tripled, then tunneled.

  Another tendril came. She twisted, pain tearing through her ribs, and deflected again. Weaker. Too slow. Her lungs ached. There was almost no sunlight down here; the basin’s walls swallowed it, and the dust had turned day into a kind of twilight. Her chloromancy was starving. The life she usually drew through leaves and light had nowhere to enter.

  She blinked hard. The world swam. Fornaskr’s voice came like a muffled shout through cotton. “ARIEL!”

  Metal clashed against chain in a diminishing storm. Shika snarled somewhere close, a small, furious sound that refused to surrender.

  The next tendril reared above her like a scorpion tail. She lifted her staff but knew she’d be too slow.

  Not like this, she thought, and the ember flared against her fear. Not without saying goodbye. Not without finishing this.

  Not without…

  … A sound like a chime cut the world.

  It was delicate. Crystalline. A single note dropped into a black lake. Golden light whipped through the air, bright enough to pierce the gloom. A thread, thin and impossibly strong, coiled around the tendril mid-strike and tightened with a humming chord. The tendril froze. Then, in a flare of heatless light, it snapped. The severed end dissolved into mist.

  Ariel’s breath caught. Her eyes widened, the dust suddenly nothing, the pain suddenly elsewhere. The thread was real. It was real. She followed it upward, into the dark sky above the basin to something bright; a shimmer like a bridge strung across distance. The thread joined others in a web that arced out of the world and back into it.

  And hovering over the bridge: a woman

  A warmth… the warmth… bloomed in her chest, reached into every cold corner, and lit them like morning windows. It filled her lungs, her veins, her soul, turning the ember bright.

  Her lips parted, voice breaking on a whisper. “Holly?”