“It’s not possible,” D’Argen argued for the sake of arguing once he calmed down a bit from the initial shock.

“Did you not feel it?” Haur asked and he looked so confused. Abbot was sobbing again, his face buried in Yaling’s chest and her arms wrapped around his shoulders after D’Argen pushed him away almost violently.

“No. No!” D’Argen almost screamed again.

Then he heard a mutter from the side and focused on the mortals, all huddled together.

“What did you just say?” he could not keep the anger out of his voice.

The woman that had spoken hunched further in and dropped her eyes. The man beside her did not and he glared at D’Argen. “She asked how it was possible for gods to die.”

“Lilian is not dead!”

“We should get out of here,” Borianna, the mortal that led them up this mountain, said and stood up from her crouch. “The quake earlier could have dislodged something and blocked our way out.”

Haur opened his mahee, the scent of honey grew thick and then faded away right before he said, “We are good. If we leave now.”

“No! Wait. Stop, for a moment,” D’Argen tried to call even as the mortals started packing up their small camp. “Lilian is not dead. I would have felt it. We would have, right?” D’Argen turned to Thar. He had yet to say a word.

Thar was looking down at his hand, flipping it over as if he was looking for something specific on it. When he felt D’Argen’s eyes on him, he looked up and then immediately looked away.

“What?” D’Argen growled out though it was less of a question. “Did you feel it?”

“I felt something,” Thar said quietly.

The sound of metal hitting stone distracted the others to where one of the mortal men had dropped his canteen on the ground. D’Argen barely glanced at him before focusing on Thar again.

“What did you feel?”

Thar finally looked him in the eyes but said nothing. Instead, D’Argen felt the heat inside him intensify even more than before and the itch from the crystals in his blood covered him from head to toe.

“When was this?” D’Argen focused on Haur again, ignoring where Abbot tugged at his robe to keep him from stepping away. Abbot had yet to stop crying but it was not as loud now. Yaling still held the artist close to her bosom and she was glaring at D’Argen with wet eyes. Her tears had stopped falling.

Haur ignored him and went up to Thar, turning the man around to look at his back.

“Thar,” D’Argen heard Haur speak quietly. “How are you... how is your mahee so full?”

Thar looked at D’Argen again and they locked eyes.

“I did not use that much,” Thar lied so naturally it was as if he had lied every single day in his existence.

After a moment, D’Argen realized that this may have indeed been the case, especially with every one of the few words he had shared with D’Argen. The runner turned away to try and hide the anger that he was sure was visible on his face. He faced Abbot and Yaling again and felt something inside him creep toward his mahee. It was a pain that made no sense at all.

“What happened?” he asked them both and kneeled beside their tangle. Abbot’s grip on his robes changed to pull him in closer but Yaling did not touch him.

“We felt it,” Yaling said. “It was so brief though, that it confused all of us for a moment. And it was not… it did not… I mean…”

“It was the breeze atop the ocean,” Abbot finally spoke up through his sniffles. “It was both you and Lilian.”

“Then the ocean faded away as if it was never there and the breeze got so strong it blew us all off our feet,” Yaling continued. “It was Lilian. But it was not… not like before.”

“So, it’s possible,” D’Argen started, feeling hope blossom inside him. “It’s possible they are not dead. Right? I didn’t feel it. Thar—” he cut himself off and glared at the man. Who knew if Thar had felt it? Who knew if Thar would have told him? “I didn’t feel it,” D’Argen repeated with a firm tone.

“Nothing at all?” Abbot asked, hope blooming in his voice as well. “Nothing strange at all?”

Then D’Argen remembered that horrible white space and Lilian running him through with his own sword. He remembered Lilian’s tears even as they twisted the sword. He remembered Lilian’s panic as they told him to leave. He remembered Tassikar’s smile and closed his eyes to try and shove the memory back. As if all he needed to do was think about it, that wall of ice at the edge of his consciousness grew and expanded and hid the memories behind it. D’Argen could see their distorted reflections through the ice until it hardened and thickened and he did not remember it anymore.

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He did not answer Abbot’s question because yes, something strange did happen. He knew it was horrible and would haunt him, so he refused to think of it at all. But Lilian… Lilian could not be dead.

The wall got thinner.

“This way,” Borianna’s voice felt like it came from the other side of the ice with the memories.

Abbot and Yaling got up, still in their close hold, and Abbot still held D’Argen’s robes. D’Argen followed the tug as if in a fog. Haur moved past him, his hand trailing along D’Argen’s shoulder and down his arm. D’Argen flinched but his body only made the motion once Haur was already a few steps ahead of him.

Thar did not touch him at all, specifically walking past him where Abbot and Yaling were between them. The mortals had packed up, put out their fire, and were already gone through one of the large tunnels in the cavern.

When D’Argen entered the tunnel, his vision went completely black even as the mortals lit torches and Thar shined his cold white light ahead of them. It was all a blur. His feet were so heavy. He tripped over a crack in the ground and somebody’s strong hands righted him and asked him something.

D’Argen focused on the wall of ice as it became transparent. He felt the sword running through him yet again and with every step, it twisted more and more. Lilian’s eyes were the bright blue of a warm summer day with small white clouds in the sky. When they got wet, it felt like looking at the reflection of the sky on the surface of a lake. Barely a few ripples broke the image before the water spilled over.

The ocean waves inside him started churning, raising high and crashing down. The foam turned into ice crystals.

“What is going on?!” somebody screamed and though D’Argen heard the panic in their voice, a familiar voice that felt like it belonged beside him, he could not concentrate on anything but the waves as they beat against the wall of ice to try and break it apart.

“Run!”

The wall started crumbling.

“This way!”

The chunks that fell from it into the ocean waters only made the waves grow taller.

“Here, here! Get out here!”

One large piece broke off and it fell so slowly it was like time had slowed. When it hit the water, it shattered into millions of spikes that flew into the rest of the wall.

The scream of pain that came from behind that wall echoed around him in multiple voices. One of them sounded too much like Abbot’s.

“RUN!”

He heard the words in an unfamiliar voice even as he watched Lilian’s lips move as they cried.

“I’m so sorry.”

“We must go.”

“Grab him.”

“You must go.”

“This way.”

“Abbot! No!”

“Go, go, go!”

“Thar, hold it off.”

“I cannot stop it.”

“You have to leave here.”

“Now!”

“Somebody help me!”

“Thar!”

“I don’t have the time to explain it now.”

“D’ARGEN!”

All of the voices overlapped, Lilian’s at the forefront even as they stabbed him over and over and over again, a loop running through until they twisted the sword and then stabbed him once more. D’Argen reached for the wall of ice that seemed to grow outside of where it touched his mahee and then he reached inside for each crystal that was made of water. He broke them apart and the entire wall came crumbling down in millions upon millions of shards.

They looked like snow.

They fell like rain.

They burned like love.

* * *

Thar’s entire body was frozen completely still in both shock and awe as he looked up at the tall mountain of ice they had run out of. Haur had led the charge, the mortals had to help him on multiple occasions when D’Argen’s mahee lashed out at him and through him, and both Abbot and Yaling had to carry the completely unmoving D’Argen.

But they were out.

And then Thar’s mahee wrapped them all up in a way that it never had before. And then he stopped running only for all of them to slide through snow and ice so far from the mountain it was an impossible distance to cover without D’Argen’s speed.

And then the mountain cracked.

The ground shook and snow flew up as the first of the ice caps broke apart. The avalanche that rushed down exploded in a white cloud before another followed, then another, and another, and everything kept shaking so badly.

As he watched, the peak of the mountain against the clear blue sky came down. Then it dropped even more.

The mahee around them was absolutely wild. Thar felt his own mahee reach for the mountain to try and tear it apart—keep it together—into tiny pieces that would bury everything—keep it together!—and clear the entire landscape.

Thar let his mahee go to the wall of snow rushing at them and though it was able to hold it at bay, it rushed past it only to crash against the rocks against his will. He felt the hit inside him as if somebody had punched him in the chest. He spat out a mouthful of blood even as his mahee raged and tore everything apart.

And then it stopped.

The snow settled. The mountain remained tall but it was much shorter than before and there was barely any snow left on it. Its sharp peak seemed to mock them all.

None of the others knew what happened. Even Thar was not sure. But he found his eyes straying over the group – the mortals were wind-burned and could barely stay on their feet. Haur was shaking so visibly as he hugged himself, eyes focused on the mountain in fear. Yaling and Abbot were not much better, but they were focused on D’Argen.

D’Argen was lying in the snow, completely unmoving.

Thar felt his legs buckle under him when he tried to rise but he forced himself to at least crawl over to them.

“He is not waking up,” Abbot informed him as soon as he was close enough to hear the artist’s hoarse voice. Abbot screamed a lot as the mountain started coming down on their heads.

Yaling was bleeding from her temple and ignoring the wound as her mahee reached inside D’Argen. When she stopped, the shock on her face made a shiver run down Thar’s spine.

“His mahee is gone,” Yaling whispered out and looked at Thar in fear.

“It is there,” Thar said back with conviction. He felt the ocean waves lapping at the edges of his consciousness. But they were tiny. They were so small.

When it finally registered what happened, Thar felt the exhaustion cover him completely. When he told the others, he saw the fear on their faces.

D’Argen had used up the entire ocean and most of the iceberg in it to bring down the mountain.