Marine set off walking toward the city in the distance. Eliska fell in next to her.
Eliska’s head spun on their way there. She floundered trying to take in everything Marine told her.
Marine herself presented the biggest surprise yet. Eliska still found it nearly impossible to believe that the wild girl from the forest was actually walking, talking, reasoning, laughing, and joking around.
The wild girl from the forest really was this exquisite princess. She was funny, vivacious, friendly, mischievous, and warm.
Eliska cast sidelong glances at Marine on the way. Eliska had trouble taking her eyes off Marine. Eliska had to stop herself from staring too hard.
Marine noticed and smirked at Eliska every time Marine caught her looking. Eliska averted her gaze, but pretty soon, she found her eyes migrating back to study Marine again.
The pair walked for over an hour.
“Why do you think the Voyant wants the Black Watch?” Eliska finally asked.
“It must be something related to building up his power,” Marine replied. “That’s all the Voyant cares about. That’s how he got so powerful in the first place.”
“How do you know that? How is it that you know so much more about the Voyant than the Guardian Templars?”
“I don’t. Like I said, some orders of the Templars are better informed than others.”
“So you found out from the Guardian Templars? Wesh’s order was the one that found out the Voyant sent the Darklings to attack Middleborough in the first place.”
Marine spun around and pointed in Eliska’s face again. Marine’s eyes sparkled with wicked mischief. “Aha! I got you again! Wesh’s order didn’t find out that the Voyant sent the Darklings to attack Middleborough. Wesh’s order found out that someone sent the Darklings to attack Middleborough. Wesh’s order suspected that the Voyant was behind it, but since the order couldn’t confirm that the Voyant was even real, they couldn’t say exactly who sent the Darklings to attack Middleborough—which is also why the order couldn’t figure out why he sent the Darklings to attack Middleborough.”
“But the order knew the Darklings were after something in the town,” Eliska pointed out. “That’s why the order sent out Wesh and the others to try to protect the town—to stop the Darklings from getting it. Besides, why don’t you tell me what it is he wants if you’re so smart and so well-informed?”
Marine burst out laughing again and threw her arm over Eliska’s shoulders. “That’s what I like about you. You aren’t afraid to tell it like it is.”
Eliska turned bright red. No one had ever acted this friendly toward her before, not even Yann.
“You don’t know, do you?” Eliska asked. “You don’t know what it is the Voyant wants. Just admit it.”
Marine sighed and took her arm down. “No, I don’t. I wish I did. I thought I would be able to figure it out once I met up with the Watch, but it’s just as much a mystery now as it was before.”
Eliska skidded to a halt again. “You….you met up with the Watch….on purpose? You…you actually set out to intercept the Watch…..to find out what they’re carrying?”
Marine turned around to eye Eliska again, but Marine didn’t smirk this time. “Why is that so shocking to you?”
“But…you were communing with Darklings! Anríq said so.”
“Ah, Anríq,” Marine murmured. “Now we get to the heart of the matter.”
“What about him? Don’t tell me you had something to do with bringing him to us. I’ll never believe that. He was just walking across country minding his own business. He couldn’t be a part of this.”
“No, you had something to do with bringing him into your group, didn’t you? You were the one who went out and asked him to help the Watch.”
“Well, why shouldn’t I? He’s a Servant and I was the only magic-user the Watch had besides Wesh. The two of us sure as hell weren’t getting the job done on our own. Who better to ask than one of the Servants?”
Marine shrugged and kept walking. “You might be right.”
“You can’t tell me there’s anything Dark about him. He’s one of the best men I’ve ever met. He practically died so you could communicate with me.”
Marine nodded. “I know.”
“Then what are you saying about Anríq?” Eliska heard herself losing her cool over Anríq. Where was he now? She really hoped he was safe—and that Yann and the rest of the Watch were safe.
“I don’t know that Anríq has anything to do with any of this,” Marine replied. “Like you say, he was just minding his own business when you asked him to help the Watch, but he’s up to his neck in it now. He won’t be able to get out of it any more than you can.”
“What does that mean? What does this have to do with me? We already know that whatever the Voyant wants was already in Middleborough before I ever set foot in the town. Whatever he wants, it isn’t anything to do with me or Anríq or even Wesh.”
“Maybe not, but all three of you are tied up in this now—by your own choice if not by some other means. Would you really just walk away from this, now that you know what’s going on? Of course you wouldn’t. Whatever happens to the Watch is as much your business and Anríq’s business and Wesh’s business as it is Yann’s, Yvan’s, and the rest of the Watch’s business.”
Eliska looked away. She’d been coming to this realization for a long time—long before she heard those Barbarians talking in the tavern.
For some reason unknown even to herself, she just kept involving herself in this mess. Now it was her mess as much as the Watchmen’s.
She was the one who roped Anríq into it. Now he wouldn’t be able to walk away, either. Did she make a catastrophic error by asking for his help?
She forced herself to keep walking. “I guess it doesn’t matter. The Watch isn’t here and we have no way of getting back to them.”
“We can still try to find out what the Voyant is doing……but I don’t think we’ll be able to do it here.”
Eliska spun around. “What do you mean? Why not?”
“Look.” Marine shaded her eyes again and pointed at the city in the distance. “We’ve been walking for almost two hours, but we never get any closer to the city.”
“What does that mean?”
“Maybe something is stopping us,” Marine suggested.
“Or maybe this is an illusion Layer like I said,” Eliska pointed out. “Maybe the city isn’t real.”
Marine laughed again. “Of course it’s real, silly! Don’t joke around about that!”
“I’m not joking. How do you know it’s real? You said you don’t even know what city this is, which means you’ve never been here before, either.”
Marine smirked even more wickedly. “Are you telling me that vehicle we jumped on to ride here wasn’t real? Please.”
Eliska tried to shrug it off. “Okay. That part was real.”
Marine finished chuckling to herself and threw herself down on the grass with a sigh. “Oh, well. I guess we might as well take it easy—since we can’t go to the city the way we planned. Maybe we fell into some kind of loop. I suppose we can shatter the Layer and go somewhere else to get out of this, but we might as well relax and enjoy it while it lasts.”
“The way you planned,” Eliska corrected. “This was your idea, remember?”
Marine grinned and then covered her eyes to search the city. She was right. The two girls never got any closer to it no matter how far they walked.
Eliska found herself studying Marine instead. Marine turned around too soon before Eliska remembered to avert her gaze.
Marine burst into another huge smirk, lunged forward, grabbed Eliska’s hand, and hauled her down onto the grass next to her. “Sit down and stay a while. Talk to me. Don’t tell me you want to run off back to those guys when we’ve just made friends.”
Eliska’s cheeks flamed. “Are we friends?”
“Of course we’re friends! What do you think we’ve been doing all this time—plotting each other’s assassinations?! Of course we’re friends! What else would we be?”
Eliska looked away.
“What’s the matter now?” Marine demanded. “Are you offended because I said Anríq is involved in this because of you?”
“No,” Eliska muttered into her collar. “I’m not offended because of that. I mean, he is involved in this because of me.”
“Why are you offended, then?”
“I’m not offended—not at all.”
“Then what’s the problem? Why don’t you want to talk to me?”
“I do want to talk to you.” Eliska looked away again. “I like talking to you.”
Marine exploded in another massive cheesy grin. “I like talking to you, too. It gets so boring communing with Darklings all the time.”
“Why do you do it, then? Why do you go so far out into the Dark when you could be like….like this?” Eliska waved her hand up and down in front of Marine’s beautiful face and dress.
“I do it for the mission, of course,” Marine replied. “I do it to get information about what the Voyant is doing, how we can stop him, and how we can stabilize the Coil so it doesn’t keep collapsing on people and wiping out whole towns and even cities. Can you imagine the loss of life if an Island like this collapsed? It would be disastrous—and yet it happens all the time. It happens because of the Voyant. Someone has to stop him and I can’t do that alone.”
Eliska looked away again. She didn’t have to wonder about the loss of life from collapsing Layers, towns submerging into chaos, and whole civilizations getting wiped off the map.
She’d witnessed it countless times. Her magic saved her each time. She could just travel to another Island or migrate through the Layers from one place of stability to the next.
Other people didn’t have that luxury. They just had to die.
Marine read her mind. “Looking like this and acting like this aren’t the most important things—not even close. Some things are more important.”
Eliska couldn’t stop herself from turning around to stare at Marine’s glowing face. It glowed with something more than just physical beauty.
Her radiant personality shone through. Eliska’s mind staggered that she’d spent so much time around Marine and never even seen this person before.
“You’re beautiful,” Eliska whispered.
“You’re beautiful, too,” Marine replied. “Why do you think Yann and Anríq both like you so much?”
Eliska turned her head away so Marine wouldn’t see her cheeks flush. “They don’t like me—not like that—or Anríq doesn’t.”
“Of course he does,” Marine insisted. “Everyone can see the way he looks at you and the way he acts around you. You really won his heart. That’s obvious—and then there’s Yann.”
Eliska didn’t want to talk about Yann, so she changed the subject. “I’ve never had a friend before. You’re the first person who has ever called me that.”
Marine split in another broad grin. “Aw! Pals!” She dove for Eliska and gave her a crude hug before Marine leaned back and sat up straight. “I’ve never had a friend before, either, if you really want to know the truth.”
Eliska gasped out loud. “You’re lying! You’re so outgoing….and beautiful….and funny…..and vivacious….”
Marine laughed again. “Ha ha.”
“How can you not have friends?! You’re…like….perfect. You’re everything I wish I could be.” Eliska opened her mouth to say something else, faltered, and then gulped before she blurted out, “I don’t want it to end. I don’t want you to lose your mind when we leave here.”
Marine smiled at her, but this was a sad smile. “I don’t want it to end, either, but some things are more important. I have to commune with the Dark to find out what the Darklings know and to track Dark forces through the Layers. I can’t do that in places like this—in places where there are no Darklings and no Darkness.”
Eliska didn’t answer. She was really starting to dread the prospect of losing this version of Marine and getting back the old one.
“What makes you say Yann and Anríq don’t like you?” Marine asked. “You know they do.”
“They only like me because I’m there.” Eliska’s eyes darted to Marine. “They would both like you better if they knew what you were really like.”
Marine didn’t turn that into a joke. “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. You’re everything either of them could want—much more than I am.”
Eliska stared down at her hands. “It doesn’t matter because Anríq is a Servant and Yann will join the Watch as soon as he gets old enough to take the oath.”
“What do you really know about Anríq?” Marine asked. “What do you know about him, really?”
“Well….nothing. How could I when he’s never told me anything about himself?”
Marine nodded at nothing. “Maybe you just don’t understand him the way you didn’t understand me. Maybe something would happen that would pull aside the veil and you would see the way he really is underneath.”
Eliska looked away again. Marine’s dark eyes made Eliska uncomfortable. “That will never happen. He doesn’t want to get close to anyone, especially not me. If you understand him that way, then you’re lucky. I never will.”
“You saved his life,” Marine pointed out. “He cares about you very much. How could he not?”
“Anyone would be grateful for that. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Marine broke the tension by slapping both hands on her thighs. “Welp, rest time is over. Let’s get out of here. Maybe we’ll have better luck somewhere else.”
She got to her feet. Eliska hesitated to do the same. “Are you sure there isn’t some way to contact these people?”
“The Voyant is probably blocking us from going in there.”
Now it was Eliska’s turn to make a face. “Don’t start assigning everything that happens to the Voyant. It’s more likely that this is an illusion Layer that shows us something unreal.”
Marine laughed. “You and your illusion Layers! I swear I never met anyone more committed to believing the world isn’t real.” She jutted her chin at Eliska’s staff. “Do you want to do the honors or shall I?”
Stolen novel; please report.
“Do you know how to?” Eliska asked.
“Of course I know how to! How do you think I found you?”
Eliska didn’t know or want to know how or why Marine found her. Eliska turned away, raised her staff, and stabbed it down into the grass.
She didn’t do it as hard as she might have. She didn’t want the whole Island to collapse—if it was a real Island and not just some hallucination in the Layers.
She opened a hole just big enough for her and Marine to fall through into the next Layer.
Chapter 50
Marine and Eliska fell through the crust of soil, plunged through a few Layers, and landed in another Island.
This one looked like another countryside of gently rolling farmland, but instead of people and houses, enormous monsters of every variety covered the terrain from one horizon to another.
The monsters roared at each other, charged, and attacked each other, but for some reason, they completely ignored the two girls.
Marine and Eliska moved closer together. Marine bumped into Eliska and they wound up holding onto each other.
“They aren’t Darklings!” Marine called over the noise. “I don’t know what they are, but they don’t belong to the Dark.”
“I know!” Eliska yelled back and she opened her palm to check her diagram of the Coil. “This shows a few more cities to the west. Let’s head that way and see if we can find some people. These monsters don’t look dangerous.”
Marine rolled her eyes to heaven. “Yes, they do.”
“I mean they don’t look dangerous to us. Come on.”
The two girls inched across the landscape. This place didn’t have any roads, so the girls just had to cut straight overland and hope for the best.
They held onto each other and had to keep springing out of the way to avoid getting trampled by ongoing conflicts between the monsters.
Their roars made conversation nearly impossible.
“How do you think they got here?” Eliska yelled over the noise.
“Some of them look like people—or like they used to be people!” Marine hollered back. “Maybe the Dark took them and transformed them.”
“They aren’t Dark!” Eliska pointed out. “Something else must have caused it.”
“Maybe the landscape changed them,” Marine suggested.
Eliska nodded. “That makes more sense.”
Another bone-shaking roar startled her into turning around, but the monsters still didn’t attack the girls.
Some of the monsters attacked others if they even came close to the girls.
“They’re trying to protect us!” Eliska pointed out.
Marine looked over her shoulder. “I don’t like this. Something isn’t right about this landscape.”
“Everything isn’t right about this landscape.” Eliska created her Coil projection again. “I’m not picking up any instability. The Island is holding steady—which explains why the environment is so pleasant.”
Saying that out loud only reminded her that everything wasn’t all right with this Island. Everything about it was pleasant except the monsters.
The girls’ presence triggered some kind of reaction in them. Monsters blundered into each other or outright attacked each other for no reason.
Others lunged in to tear these monsters apart if even one of them accidentally stumbled close to the girls.
Brutal fights broke out right near the girls. Dozens of monsters nearly trampled both girls even when the monsters tried to protect them.
“We gotta get out of here!” Eliska yelled.
Marine nodded fast. “Should we shatter the Island? I don’t want to wreck such a nice place—and these monsters are some of the very few we’ve seen who don’t belong to the Dark. They don’t deserve us destroying their home for no reason.”
Eliska opened her mouth to suggest that the girls transport themselves to another Layer without shattering this Island.
Before she could say a word, another group of dozens of monsters barreled toward her and Marine from the side.
Multiple fights broke out over there and another three monsters came perilously to squashing the girls between the monsters’ giant bodies.
This new group might have decided they needed to protect the girls from the same monsters who had already been trying to protect the girls.
The new group thundered across the plane, collided with those they wanted to attack, and the whole pack toppled right onto Marine and Eliska.
Instinct took over. Eliska grabbed Marine, hugged her close to her body, magicked both girls out of the way.
She acted in time to save them from getting crushed, but it didn’t take them completely out of danger.
More monsters barreled in from all directions. That one collision set off a chain reaction in all the other monsters. It seemed to give them the license they needed to all pile in at the same time.
Eliska transported her and Marine from one place to another and sent them whizzing across the landscape. Eliska had to keep zooming, dodging, and blinking off somewhere else to skid around more monsters charging in.
Marine craned her neck to look over Eliska’s shoulder. Eliska really hoped Marine saw something over there—like a way out of this death trap.
Too many monsters crowded the landscape even before the girls showed up. Once the fight started, what looked like every monster in the whole country charged in to converge on that one spot.
The two girls bounced off monsters roaring and pounding across the terrain. Eliska had to work her hardest to direct herself and Marine out of the monsters’ path.
The fight spread. More monsters tried to protect the girls from each other. The fight followed the girls even as they tried to flee.
So many of these massive creatures gathered from all over, ran everywhere, and hammered their weight on the ground that it trembled under all those pounding feet.
A deadly crack jutted under Eliska’s feet the next time she landed somewhere. She transported somewhere else and landed on the ground fifty feet away only for the same crack to fork in her direction.
The earthquakes set off another ballistic response from the monsters. Eliska didn’t see how they could get any heavier. Their jumping up and down must have fractured the Island’s structure.
It imploded and the girls, the monsters, and tons of bedrock plummeted into the next Layer down.
Marine screamed as the two girls hit a Dark Layer just beneath the monsters’ country. The Dark Layer might have been responsible for transforming the monsters, but Eliska didn’t have time to think about that right now.
She crushed Marine in a death grip and Eliska shut her eyes against hurricane winds.
She could always defend herself in any Layer she happened to fall through or any Island she happened to fall into.
She couldn’t find another friend—not one like Marine.
The girls struck something brutally solid, crashed through that, and then plunged into a frigid snowbank that didn’t seem to have any bottom.
Eliska had to let go of Marine to flounder out of the snow, but neither girl could tell anymore which way was up.
“Marine….” Eliska choked on a mouthful of snow. “Hold onto me! Stay with me, Marine!”
“Eliska!” Marine yelled back and tried to say something else before the snow muffled her.
Eliska tried to paddle through the snow toward the sound of Marine’s voice, but they couldn’t find each other.
The monsters must have fallen into the same Layer. One enormous furry behemoth slammed down right on top of the same snowbank.
The creature’s weight drove the girls all the way down, down, down, into the Dark before whatever lay at the bottom of this Layer broke, too.
The girls tumbled out onto another riverbank somewhere, but this one didn’t pass by a beautiful city of glass and flying vehicles.
Eliska rolled onto her stomach on a bed of cinders that scorched her through her clothes. She jumped herself up immediately to get away from the heat searing her skin. Then she saw where she was.
She and Marine landed on a sloping mat of hot ash and smoking rock chips leading down to a black river oozing through a Dark landscape.
Four gargantuan wolves stood on the other side of the river. Their coal-grey fur stood up in ridges along their backs, flared outward in thick ruffs around their necks, and stuck out in spikes up their tails.
The wolves paced back and forth on the opposite bank, bared their fangs, and narrowed dark, glowing red eyes at the two girls.
Marine scrambled onto her hands and knees and scooted closer to Eliska. The fall turned Marine’s beautiful dress back into a shredded mass of soot-stained rags.
Grime and filth covered her face, arms, and hands and clung to her hair in stringy, greasy ropes, but at least Marine’s eyes still registered all her old vivacious personality. She didn’t lose her sanity when she landed in this place.
Eliska grabbed her and pulled her away from the river. Eliska didn’t have to wonder what the wolves were doing over there.
The wolves paced back and forth between the river and another city spreading from the opposite riverbank—or it used to be a city.
The charred remains of buildings, smoking piles of rubble, and blackened streets littered with bodies and destroyed vehicles bore silent witness to exactly what this city used to be.
And there, on the horizon, towering over the whole horrid scene, stood the White Spire.
Chapter 51
Eliska took hold of Marine’s arm to pull her away from the Dark river. “We have to get away from the river. It could enchant us and pull us into the Dark Layers.”
Marine didn’t hear her. She stood frozen to the spot and stared across the river at the White Spire in the distance.
Eliska shivered at the sight. She would have recognized it anywhere after seeing it in the vision Marine sent her. The characteristic cornice around the spire’s topmost peak stood out against the swirling vapor Layers above it.
The spire itself wasn’t white—not now. It might once have been white before whatever disaster struck this country hit the spire, too.
Now it towered over the landscape as black and foreboding as everything else in this wasteland.
“No!” Marine stammered. “No, it can’t be! This is all wrong! The White Spire ruled over a beautiful land—a paradise Island full of prosperous trade and productive people! They had the greatest technology in the whole Coil! They can’t all be….gone! This is all wrong!”
Eliska pulled Marine’s arm one more time. “Don’t you get it? The Voyant turned this place to the Dark. Come on. We gotta get out of here.”
“NO!!” Marine’s voice spiked. “We can’t leave! This is our chance to stop him! We finally found him! We can’t just walk away. He’s right there! We can….”
She broke off when a ball of light rocketed out of the heavens from deep in the Layers above the spire.
The light plunged out of the vapors and shadow up there, burned a fiery path through the atmosphere, and dove straight into the spire’s highest peak. The light vanished inside.
“There!” Marine yelled and pointed to the light just as it disappeared. “That’s him! He’s inside the spire right now! We have to go over there and find out what he’s doing! We’ll never get another chance like this, Eliska. Come on!”
Marine grabbed Eliska’s hand and pulled her toward the river instead of away from it.
Eliska reared away in alarm. “Hell no! We are NOT going over there! Are you out of your mind?! Look around you! We would have to cross that river—a Dark river—and then we’d have to deal with those wolves. We aren’t going over there, Marine. Forget it!”
“Come on!” Marine countered. “We have to stop the Voyant! He’s the one doing all of this. Look at this city! It used to look like that other one we just left! Don’t you see? All those people—all that technology—he wiped them all out! He killed all those people….”
“You don’t know that. The Dark could have taken them or the landscape could have changed exactly the way you said it changed those monsters. A firestorm could have hit this city. It could have injured or changed the Voyant, too. He could be an innocent victim in all this…..”
“Innocent!” Marine bellowed. “That’s outrageous! He controls the Coil! Don’t you understand? If the Dark took this city or the landscape changed or a firestorm hit it, any of those things happening would have been his doing! He’s the only one who would cause that to happen!”
Eliska glanced toward the spire. “I don’t know…..”
Marine spun away again and tried to tow Eliska with her. “We’re going over there….”
“What about the wolves?” Eliska asked.
“We’ll just have to fight them.”
“How do you plan to cross the river? We would get sucked into the Dark Layers if we tried to swim it.”
Marine waved that away. “The Dark Layers aren’t dangerous. I go into them all the time. They’re no big deal.”
“No big deal?!” Eliska yanked her hand out of Marine’s grip for the second time. “You saw what happened after I fell into the Dark river last time. No way am I going in there—not for all the tea in China.”
“No! It will be fine!” Marine countered. “You’ll see.”
“It definitely will not be fine.” Eliska planted herself there and refused to move. “None of us will be able to fight the Voyant if we’re dead. You go if you really want to kill yourself. I’ll find another way out of this Island on my own.”
“Then you’ll be turning your back on even more deaths. Would I let anything happen to you? Would I ask you to go into the Dark Layers if I thought it would kill you or leave you in danger? I’ll be with you. I’ll get you out in one piece. I promise.”
Eliska didn’t believe that for a second, but right at that moment, Marine grinned at her again.
Marine really had been going into the Dark Layers all this time. She went into and out of them all the time.
She dove into that river and came out untouched—or mostly untouched.
Eliska, Wesh, and the Watchmen would never know just how untouched she came out of it because none of them knew what condition she was in before she went into it.
Eliska didn’t want to end up insane or permanently trapped in the Dark, but something drove her forward.
No one knew what the Voyant was doing, what he planned to do, what he wanted, or why he went after the Black Watch.
What if Marine and Eliska really could find that out—just by crossing this river? Wouldn’t that be worth it?
Eliska couldn’t explain why she trusted Marine, but she did trust Marine. Marine could go into the Dark Layers and survive if anyone could.
Eliska didn’t argue when Marine took hold of her hand again and marched straight down to the river’s edge.
The river’s Darkness didn’t cast the same spell on Eliska’s mind. Did Marine do that?
Marine halted at the edge and shot Eliska one last wild grin. That grin was really starting to give Eliska a terrible feeling.
She should have resisted harder, but for some reason unknown to human rationality, she allowed Marine to pull her to the river’s edge.
Marine shot her one more crazy smirk. “Ready?”
“No,” Eliska replied.
Marine only laughed. “On three—one….two….THREE!!”
On three, Marine dove into the river. She didn’t give Eliska a chance to back out. Marine kept a hold on Eliska’s hand the whole time.
Eliska told herself not to do it right up until the moment when her face broke the surface….and then the black ooze closed over her head and she sank into the Dark.
The two girls plunged into a solid black Layer full of objects that pummeled the girls from all sides. Darklings roared in the shadows.
Eliska turned in all directions, but she couldn’t see a thing. Only Marine’s grip on her hand oriented her that the two girls were still together.
In half a second, they broke through to a vapor Layer, but this was nothing like the chaos Layers Eliska had traveled through before.
She always avoided the Dark Layers at all costs and for good reason.
The instant the girls entered, the vapors of shadow and deep hues at the outermost edges came together to form Darklings. They reared and roared at the girls.
Marine spun to her left, raised her hands, and fired magical bursts from her palms the way Wesh and Mael did.
Eliska wheeled to the right and blasted her staff at four Darklings. The vapors exploded and faded into the wind, but more Darklings gathered from every side.
The Darklings didn’t concern Eliska as much as the shadows themselves. They hit her every time she fell through one of them.
They infected her soul with fear, rage, menacing jealousy, and every other Dark emotion. She couldn’t get rid of them.
Bitter resentment flared in her mind against everyone she’d ever met—everyone who failed to help her when she needed it most.
The Darkness twisted every memory into a torment and every face into a nightmare.
She lashed out even harder against the Darklings and slashed her magic at them to tear them to shreds.
She saw herself losing control, but at that moment, one of the Darklings behind her let off a pulse of its own.
The shot hit the two girls and sent them cartwheeling backward.
They broke through some barrier that felt like a hedge full of thorns……and the girls somersaulted onto the cinder bank right next to the same Dark river.
The spire raked the horizon in the distance. The smoking rubble marked the spots where buildings once stood.
The wolves kept pacing back and forth and raising their hackles every time the girls looked in their direction.
The Layers stripped all the Dark goo off Eliska’s clothes and hair, thank goodness. She landed dry and relatively clean if she could call it that. At least the stuff didn’t drip off her.
Marine clambered to her feet, pushed her hair out of her eyes, and ran her hands down her dress. All these falls and battles left her as ragged and filthy as when Eliska first met her.
“Right,” Marine snapped. “We’ll just have to try again.”
“No,” Eliska countered. “It’s a waste of time—and don’t argue about it, Marine. Do you honestly think the Voyant didn’t surround his spire with magical protections to stop people like you from getting inside?”
“Well, we have to try something!”
“If you really absolutely have to cross the river, I’ll transport you across. I’ll transport both of us across. Then we have to deal with the wolves.”
Marine blinked at her, stunned. “Transport! I never thought of that.”
Eliska snorted. “You know a lot about the Dark Layers but not much about the Coil.”
Marine glanced behind her. The wolves didn’t suddenly decide to go away while the girls had been gone.
“We’ll have to use magic to get into the spire,” Marine remarked.
“Obviously,” Eliska countered. “The Voyant won’t just let us walk in.”
Marine frowned. “How would we do it?”
“You tell me. You’re the Voyant expert around here.”
“We should try breaking into the spire from here,” Marine decided. “That way, if it doesn’t work, we won’t be on the other side when it happens. We won’t have to fight our way past those wolves only to find out that we don’t have the magic to break in.”
“Now you’re thinking. Let’s try it.”
The two girls swiveled shoulder to shoulder. Eliska concentrated all her mental attention on the spire’s highest tower. The light went inside there.
She pointed her staff at it and Marine ejected a stream of magic from her hands. Eliska fired her staff at the spire.
The wolves burst into a torrent of baying, howling, snarling, and roaring when the girls’ combined magic jetted over the wolves’ heads.
The wolves couldn’t stop the girls’ assault. Both beams hit the spire’s highest point.
Nothing happened. The girls’ magic didn’t even seem to touch the spire. It didn’t bounce off. It didn’t shake the spire. It just….vanished.
The spire remained untouched and as formidable as ever.
Eliska cut her fire and lowered her staff. She didn’t want to admit defeat.
Marine let her arms fall to her sides. “I don’t understand!” she quavered.
“The Voyant is stronger than any of us understands. That spire is probably the best-protected building in the whole Coil.”
Marine’s shoulders drooped, but at that moment, the same light rocketed out of the high vaporous clouds, shot across the landscape, and plunged into the spire’s highest pinnacle again.
The light vanished exactly the way it did before.
Marine jolted to high alert. She spun around to look back and forth between the spire and the place where the light came from.
“That’s impossible!” she cried. “I didn’t see him leave! Did you see him leave?! How did he get out of the spire without us seeing?”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Eliska asked. “He must have left it after we went into the river.”
“You have to transport us across, Eliska,” Marine insisted. “It’s our only option.”
“All right. Just be ready to fight those wolves the minute we set our feet on the other side. The Voyant must have channeled all his power into them to protect the spire. They’re likely to overpower us—which means we’ll have to run for it if the fight turns against us.”
Marine dipped her chin once. “Got it. You can count on me.”
Eliska didn’t hold out much hope for this plan, either. She was beginning to see a pattern here.
Why on earth would a wizard as powerful as the Voyant Mendicat leave his spire unprotected?
If he really did control the whole Coil, then he must already know that people were trying to stop him.
He probably knew exactly what the girls were doing right at this moment. He could probably hear every word they said to each other.
He might be sitting up there in his spire sending all these countermeasures against them depending on what method they tried. Eliska wouldn’t have been surprised.
That’s what she would have done in his position. She wouldn’t let some pesky teenage girls mess up his carefully constructed plans.
She didn’t want to completely dash Marine’s hopes. The Voyant would do that just fine on his own. She would realize she couldn’t defeat him. Then she would have no choice but to give up.
Eliska took Marine’s hand, planted her staff into the cinders at her feet, and magicked both girls off the ground heading straight for the wolves.
They all turned on the girls and bared their teeth. The girls would have soared straight into the wolves’ jaws, but at the river’s exact midpoint, another almighty slam hit both girls.
The blow sent them flying backward and they both landed hard on the riverbank where they started. Neither of them got anywhere near the wolves.
Eliska picked herself up and dusted herself off. “Well, that went about as well as I expected. Come on, Marine. We’re leaving.”
“Leaving!” Marine gasped. “We can’t leave!”
Eliska turned her back and started climbing the cinder bank. “If you want to try again, go ahead. I’ll see you when you get back.”
“Hey!” Marine yelled. “You can’t just walk away!”
“I’ve been traveling in the Coil my whole life and this is the first time I have ever gone through the Layers and wound up in the same place. The same thing will happen. Trust me. I’m going to those trees over there to make camp for the night. Come and join me when you get tired of playing his little game.”
End of Chapter 49.