They remained deep belowground. The aether was far from this place, blocked out by so much stone—yet although raw magic was absent, enchantments were everywhere. The lights were magic and fueled by some source from the Tower above. Machines within the walls tugged at Eris’ blood. This was not enough to recharge her, but with a little effort, and a new staff…
She held the top of the wooden haft to one of the mana-fueled sconces along the walls. Through expending a burst of what energy remained in her Essence the sconce’s outer glass shell was destroyed; sparks of green and blue magic arced from the newly-made hole in the wall. Behind was mana circuitry.
Eris attached the staff. Within a moment the blue etchings in the wood glowed and burned hot within her grasp, but in a pleasant way, like the sun through glass in a cool room.
She was a serpent warming her cold blood. Nothing felt as good as power in her veins.
Lukon bumped into her. She saw his branded face. A memory shot through her mind like an arrow. A perforation to make her stutter and cringe with absent agony as she recalled how it felt to have power in her veins—and to have Lukon burn it away with a wave of his hand. She had nearly died in her fight with the orc in Rytus early the last year, but the pain of that encounter was as nothing compared to the sensation of her entire body aflame with mana exhaust. She was grateful now to be alive, but truly, in that moment…
Eris was strong-willed. She knew suffering, but she was not traumatized. She felt only contempt for Aletheia when she bathed in self-pity—although this was more productive than pity for others—and relapsed into tears when confronted with some reminder of her death, or Astera, or any other misery. Such things needed to be overcome. Memories were harmless. Stress and anxiety for history, useless. She had never known why it was the girl acted as she did. Why she could not move on.
Yet for a brief few seconds, she understood. The fear and pain and anger came back to her. Her heart shook. She had the urge to flee.
…only for a few seconds. She told no one and made no externalization, for to do so would have been to inflict her own neuroses on others, which she refused to do—especially at a time like this. Such feelings were illogical. They reflected weakness. She would conquer them and never feel them again.
She needed to moved forward, so she did. After Pyraz.
The other magician-prisoners had the same idea she did. All down the corridor manalights were broken, the circuitry behind tapped. Now the blood-smeared dungeons flickered in strobing green lights. The walls themselves hissed and cracked at the party’s approach.
They turned…
Thunder echoed through the labyrinth and behind it came the nearby screams of children. Down another hallway were cells, but these were better accoutered, with beds lined with straps and bindings—
This was where they kept children waiting to be Seared. Dozens of dirty, terrified, unwashed faces looked at them through bars; others’ skin glowed through with manaserum injections and those children in the midst of recovery, most of whom would die, hardly noticed as they walked past.
Rook stopped. There was a sound like the whoosh of a fireball. Screams, these of adults. A clattering of metal. Then—silence.
A magician was dead on the ground. A spear had been thrust through his heart. Around him was the slag of more golems.
Rook gestured toward the children. “Let them out.”
“They will be little help,” Eris said.
“We’re here, let them out!”
“I do not have the key.”
“You are the key.”
Aletheia broke ranks. She went to one of the cells and melted through the bars, wrenching them off at length and freeing a girl no older than four. She was so terrified that she stayed within the cell. Rook gave Eris a glare; she decided it was easier to comply. The arcane focus over her hand turned gray. She concentrated on its power, honing her spell, and she used Disintegrate by tracing the staff in a line down the cell block. The iron behind turned to dust effortlessly, and with the staff in her hand she barely noticed the drain to her Essence.
“Come with us,” Rook commanded. “We’ll keep you safe.”
“Rook,” Eris protested. “Are we to play babysitter and start an orphanage?”
“Yes,” Aletheia said.
He started down the corridor again, limping from the cuts on his leg. “Come quickly. Everyone! Follow after me!”
But when he turned to look back down at the cell block, the children had not followed. Even through opened bars the young faces looked on in terror. One older boy stepped into the open; but rather than rush to Rook’s side, he grabbed a piece of metal for a weapon off the ground and darted away into darkness.
“What’s wrong with them?” Rook said. “What’s wrong? Come on! We’ll take you to the surface!”
Aletheia was trying to coax the four-year-old into her arms like one picks up a cornered puppy.
“It might be the tiger,” Pyraz said. He glanced up at the eight-foot Marjara behind them. The two shared brief remarks in Ganarajyan.
They were not far from the fight now. A man screamed in pain nearby, his voice echoing through the dungeons.
“Rook! We are wasting time!” Eris said. “If they do not wish to come, leave them!”
Aletheia grabbed the girl. For this good deed she was bit in the finger, and being laden with weaponry she was forced to drop the child and retreat. “Why won’t she come?”
“Go away!” she whimpered.
“It’s okay! We—”
“Your eyes,” Rook said, an epiphany. “You look like magicians. Eris’ staff—we look like Magisters.”
“Then leave them, and they will follow after us when the way is cleared!” Eris said.
An explosion rocked the walls. Dust rained onto them. Rook frowned, sadness in his eyes, but he nodded, and so they went.
Aletheia was last. But Eris wasn’t watching.
----------------------------------------
Blood trickled down the hallway. The elevator in the distance was like a waterfall, the ground a river within a canyon. The gnolls were torn open, all four dead, their bodies strewn down the corridor. Magicians were packed shoulder-to-shoulder like slaves in a ship’s hold vying to get to the deck. Jets of flame burst from their fingertips toward a column of golems with halberds, flashes of lightning escaping between the gaps in people, more spells at a single time than Eris had ever seen: the golems were enchanted to be magic-resistant, yet as they marched forward to skewer the unarmored escapees, they were barraged by blinding light.
One magician near the front had his arm cut halfway off while channeling a beam of frost. Another stepped forward and melted its metallic hands, slowing its assault, when the troll jumped forward.
The troll covered with Manastone tattoos. He pulled the halberd from the golem’s grip and drove it through the metal plates of its chest like cloth. Then he grabbed the next in the line and he ripped off its empty helmet, throwing it to the side, and from the ground he conjured a wave of fire to consume the other two. They staggered backward—and another magician rushed forward, a ball of lighting in his hand, and he jumped and brought it down on the ground.
Another flash of light erupted. The corridor was overcome with a gust of energy. Both golems were blown apart.
These were not trained battlemages, but they were highly motivated. The power of magicians fighting in ranks was not to be underestimated.
The halfling in dwarf armor, who had let the magicians take the lead, looked to Pyraz as he approached the carnage. “About time,” he said. “What were you doing back there?”
“The same as you, by the look of it,” Rook said.
The halfling smiled. Beside him were the other non-magicians, the fat Arktid and the hobgoblins, who now went for fallen weapons and formed up before the elevator.
This was much larger. It could fit ten at least.
“How summon?” the troll shouted. The shaft was empty.
“It’s already on its way!” said one of the magicians. She pointed at a dim manalight at the shaft’s side.
Rook stared. “On its way,” he said. “They’re sending guards down. Form up! Make ranks! Be ready for them!”
Eris stepped forward. “There is only one way to the surface; they will try to recall the elevator quickly. We must get aboard it at once, before they lock it at the top.”
“I can operate the elevator,” Lukon volunteered. “Please step aside.”
“How about you wait until the way is cleared, scarhead?” the halfling said.
Lukon didn’t respond. Eris blocked his way forward; at her command he stilled. Then they watched, everyone, as the dim light in the shaft grew brighter by the moment, until it was very bright indeed, shining into all their eyes, and they heard a noise like a whirring overhead, and in the shaft there appeared the fast-slowing elevator.
It was loaded full with Cult Custodians in enchanted plate. At their head was an elf, tall and lithe, dressed in red armor.
Eris knew him. He was Antinaz’s bodyguard.
The Custodians raised shields and rushed forward into the corridor in a wall formation. Spells flew toward them from the magicians, an endless barrage, but each strike of energy dissipated as nothing against their armor. Every escapee was forced back; the Custodians approached slowly, in formation, but there was no way through their armor with simple spears and pollarms.
“Forward!” the elf shouted. He raised an arm, and as the prisoners turned to flee, a forcefield appeared behind them—impenetrable, thick, too heavy to get through.
“What do we do?” Aletheia yelled.
The magicians screamed as they scrambled over each other to get away, but soon there was nowhere to go. Two of them were cut down. One conjured a forcefield to push the Custodians away, but they walked through it as nothing. Eris used her arcane focus to conjure a field of ice on the ground so that the Custodians would slip, but their enchanted boots dispelled the mana before it settled.
The troll roared with nowhere to retreat. He rushed forward. His thick hide deflected one Custodian’s slash, then he grabbed a shield and wrenched it free, into his own grip. He brought it down onto another Custodian and he collapsed, dazed but not dead. The halfling rushed forward, too, and the hobgoblins, and next the Arktid, all disregarding their weapons to fight with bare hands, but without armor they were sliced to pieces. The Arktid took a sword through the gut. The halfling climbed onto one guard but was pulled backward into the formation and beat to death through his mail with plated feet. The hobgoblins were cut down in seconds.
Only the troll still stood. He received a dozen more cuts before he slowed. He hit another Custodian across the head with his shield, then threw it, roaring, before succumbing.
Rook and Aletheia and Marjara jumped forward and traded blows. Marjara landed a lucky strike through the visor slit of one Custodian and he fell screaming to the ground, but there was nothing to do once their ranks were reformed and their shields raised.
They marched forward in their wall. Impenetrable.
Rook looked over his shoulder. To the forcefield. “Dispel it!” he said. He bumped into Eris, who had no notion of what to do against enemies immune to magic, and then the field. “Pyraz!”
Pyraz had not joined battle. He was focused. Through his mask his red eyes closed. “Grab me!” he shouted in a bass that shook the walls.
They complied. First Rook, then Aletheia. Eris didn’t know how—her hands were full, there was no room, and now people were scrambling over her—but she had one idea. She conjured a forcefield of her own, between her and the remaining magicians scrambling to flee the Custodians, and she sustained it with the staff. Now the few prisoners still alive were stuck, distracting the guards as they were slaughtered. Eris slipped the orb into her pocket and grabbed Pyraz by the shoulder. She commanded Lukon to do the same, then Marjara, and then finally the woman with Manaseared blue eyes from the prison cell, until it was a farce of physical contact, like they were playing some strange game.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
The Custodians walked through Eris’ forcefield. It dissipated.
“Blink, but do not move!” Pyraz yelled.
Eris blinked. When her eyes opened she wasn’t standing against a forcefield, but in the elevator, on the other side of the room, facing the backs of the Custodians—along with all her companions, everyone touching Pyraz. She nearly threw up from disorientation—but she recognized the spell.
“Do. Not. Move,” Pyraz commanded.
They all stayed still. The elf in red was inches in front of them; he had stayed in the elevator while his soldiers went onward. Suddenly at Eris’ side the woman with blue eyes yelled in pain. Across her neck was a swell of blood, a blade drawn across it—yet no blade was nearby. Eris still did not move, but she gasped as a spray of hot gore hit her face, and when she blinked again the woman was not at her side but again across the corridor, back at the forcefield where Pyraz had once stood, and standing over her dead body was a Custodian.
She hadn’t blinked until it was too late.
The elf turned to see the party. His face contorted in surprise to see these prisoners know a spell of the Seekers. He drew his sword and raised a hand to cast a spell—
“Now!” Pyraz said. He shook his companions away, freeing them from his grasp, and met the elf’s blade.
Marjara was behind him. The tiger-man grabbed the elf’s extended hand and tore at it with his claws, breaking his fingers. Then he and Pyraz together dueled the elf. He parried every one of Pyraz’s blows, then kept the tiger at bay with incredible speed. But Pyraz took a moment to disengage, and he cast a spell:
He seemed to shake in space. Shimmering in the dim light of the dungeon. Then—he split in three, two exact copies of himself appearing at his sides, and all three Pyrazes jumped forward to engage the elf. Soon he was overwhelmed, unable to tell which Pyraz was real and which was a mirror image, and Marjara managed to grab him by the helmet and tug him into the elevator.
The steel was wrenched off his head. His neck was snapped by two orange-furred hands of unbelievable power. Then claws dug into his throat and pulled.
There was no time for gore. The elf’s body disintegrated instantly, nothing but his armor left behind.
“Into the elevator!” Eris commanded. Then to Lukon: “Take us to the surface!”
Lukon stared blankly for a moment, then went to the elevator’s control panel with a nod.
Two versions of Pyraz ran forward to engage the Cult Custodians while one fell back. “Wait!” he yelled. “Not the surface! To the top! The very top of the Tower! As high as we can go!”
Eris stared at Pyraz. At first she didn’t understand, but then she did. Higher up—more mana. It was dangerous, yet not so dangerous as fighting out through the city’s streets. “Yes. As high as we can go. Take us!”
The Custodians in the rear of the column had turned by now. They yelled at the party to stop and ran forward, seeing through the mirror images as if they weren’t there, but they were too slow in their armor. The elevator began its ascent—and the guards were left below.
----------------------------------------
Through the open shaft of the elevator they saw the Tower erupting in a frenzy. Confusion in the atriums. In the entrance hall, where stood great statues of Magisters gone by and waterfalls and fountains and hung chandeliers that levitated in the air, the doors had been locked—sealed shut, as if no doors were there at all. Huge arcane protectors and dozens of Cult Custodians stood waiting for the elevator to arrive, yet their faces showed shock when it continued past them.
A woman with a Seeker’s tabard saw Lukon and stared in horror.
Then they were on to the libraries, up past the dorms, through areas where guards were deployed and golems stood watch, where students fled to lockdown and more Custodians descended from the upper levels. This elevator was one reserved for the Magisters and their agents, with access to every level on the Tower, and they saw others go by them as they zoomed toward the top.
Up and up and up they went. Marjara and Pyraz conversed in Ganarajyan, no doubt praising each other’s skill. They passed an open-air area where the city below was visible, then soon the place where Eris had arrived through the portal, going higher still. Soon the shaft around them closed again, as if they were descending underground. The only sign they moved at all was the sensation of eventual deceleration underfoot.
And the strengthening of the aether. The mana in the air ticked ever upward like humidity as a thunderstorm approached. Eris felt it against her skin. In her mouth. Soon it was like moving through something solid, like being in a downpour of warm rain on a cold day. It was intoxicating.
“I will use Mass Recall,” Pyraz said. “Decide where you are to go.”
The party had been recovering from the overflow of adrenaline, coming to terms with their escape. Eris shook her head.
“Where can you send us?” she said.
“From here?” He craned his head around the confines of the dark elevator. “Anywhere. Anywhere I can remember, that I’ve been to myself.”
Rook had hesitated. Now he looked to Pyraz. “Why do you say ‘you?’”
There was a long hesitation. Eris knew the answer before it came, yet still to hear it was like a cut from a glaive. “I’m not coming with you,” Pyraz said.
“What?” Aletheia exclaimed.
“I’m returning to Seneria, as was always my desire. Like I said I would.”
“Then we’ll come with you!” she said.
“…I would prefer you did not.”
The girl looked terribly wounded. Tears swelled in her eyes. “Why?” she whispered. “You can’t go.”
Eris had no particular love for Pyraz, but he was an extraordinarily powerful combatant, a potent magician, and a useful ally. She did like him. But that was not all. “You have many spells left to teach me,” she said. “Your departure seems premature.”
“I can’t stand to delay it any longer. My life’s purpose is not to be your father,” he said. He leaned down to Aletheia and embraced her. “I intend to visit the place this world ended. You will be great someday, but have much left to learn. I am old. Very old. And I…do not plan to return from this expedition. If we survive, Marjara and I will continue to Ganarajya. But if not…we met our ends at the heart of Esenia. That is why I do not want you to come. It is too dangerous, for any of you.”
The girl cried. Eris rolled her eyes, yet it was a gesture that did not sit well with her. This man was her oldest companion after Rook. He had travelled with her since their first expedition to the Spire three years ago. Losing him seemed almost like losing a piece of herself.
“You’re the best dog I ever had,” Rook said with a sad smile.
Pyraz took Rook’s hand. “It was easier to be a dog.”
“…does it have to be now?” Aletheia said. “Can’t we have more time to say goodbye?”
“Yes,” Pyraz said. “It must be now. I will only be able to Recall us vast distances at a place like this. Nowhere else in the world. Time is of the essence. I’m sorry.”
Then he looked to Eris. He put a hand on her shoulder and looked into her eyes. She wasn’t certain why at first, but then she felt his Essence open to hers as he imparted unto her the imprint of a new spell. A piece of himself transferred into her.
“So you never need levitate again,” he said. “You will need to master it yourself.”
Eris blinked. She felt a hole in her gut for a moment, like her body was recongealing around itself, but then she was back to normal—
And she knew the workings of a new spell.
Blink.
“Thank you,” she said. “There is so much left to ask you—for you to teach me—but…”
“You understand what it feels like to need to leave.”
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
Rook wrapped his arm around her waist. “But you aren’t leaving, are you? Not this time?”
She stared into his eyes. Blue eyes. She didn’t cringe away. She was very happy to feel his touch. “No,” she whispered. “Not this time.”
“You must make a decision,” Pyraz said.
Rook sighed. “We’ll be forever on the run. The Magisters won’t ever stop hunting us now.”
“Our case agent has been lost, however,” Eris said, glancing to Lukon. “It may take them time to reacquaint themselves with who we truly are. I saw we seize on that advantage and visit Jason in Katharos. He will have the funds we need to sponsor a journey elsewhere. It will be dangerous, but then…”
Rook completed her sentence, “Adventuring always is.” He closed his eyes and sighed. He knew something she did not.
“What?” she said.
“Jason betrayed us. He told Lukon where to find us. That’s how he knew we had the forgestone, to wait for us at the Spire, about Pyraz—everything.”
Eris clenched her jaw. That miserable bastard. She looked to Lukon. “Is this true?”
“Jason of Katharos was interrogated until he divulged all relevant information.”
“And he did so?”
“He complied willingly when offered a bribe.”
Aletheia hung her head. Rook shrugged. “What was he to do? Die for us?”
“He might have turned down the bribe,” Eris said.
“In any case, it doesn’t matter. There’s nothing for us in Katharos.”
“Just the contrary, this is all the more reason to pay Jason a visit. Perhaps I will show him what ‘interrogation’ really means.”
“Eris,” Rook said, “there’s nothing to be done for it.”
“His cooperation with this idiot nearly saw all of us killed! Were it not for Pyraz, this betrayal from Jason would have been a death sentence. You are not upset about this?”
“Of course I am!” Rook almost shouted this. Then more quietly, “Of course I am. But what should we do? Go get vengeance?”
“Yes!”
“Vengeance is pointless. Especially against old friends. We stand to gain nothing from it.”
“Sitting in our private rooms, drinking wine and having sex all day, was also pointless; yet you and I did it anyway. Because it was fun!” Eris said. Rook frowned at how candid she was. Eris continued, “And there is something for you in Katharos. Or have you forgot your uncle already?”
“Of course not.”
“With my assistance, we can see him dealt with,” she said. “And with a position in the court of the Archon restored, we may be able to deter the Magisters—and we will not need to flee.” Now she was working him over, she said the ideas as they came to her, yet they made sense. He nodded cautiously.
“She’s right,” Aletheia said. “We have to go see him. He must be able to explain. He wouldn’t betray us unless he had to.”
Eris didn’t believe that at all. Jason was just like her, very treacherous and utterly self-serving. In truth she couldn’t hold it against him, but that didn’t mean inflicting retribution wouldn’t be enjoyable. But just as Rook opened his mouth, the elevator came to a stop.
----------------------------------------
The air itself was pink. Eris could see it, like walking through something solid, yet she met no physical resistance to her step. Marjara and Rook saw it too, even though they were not magicians; their heads craned about in wonder at the place they found themselves.
“Lock the elevator,” Eris said. Lukon did so. A temporary solution, but it would give them some time.
The hallway forward was wide and open-plan with windows to its sides, wide arches in black that revealed the sky before them, and out through them the party saw…
No sky at all. Nothing but flickering lights. A rainbow. A cloud of colors. No sign of the ground. A thin bubble of teal enveloped them, surrounding the exterior of the Tower like a projected field.
The air was very thin here and very cold. Eris did not know where they were. She breathed in pure mana. Her skin was becoming numb to it. She felt like she could do anything. Cast any spell—or invent any spell.
“What is this place?” she asked Lukon.
“The Chamber of the Gray Council,” he replied.
“And you have access?”
“The Seekers are their most trusted agents.”
“How many Seekers are there?” Rook asked.
“There are twelve Seekers.”
“Two for each Councilor,” Eris said. She raised her staff and mana arced from the air to its top. She laughed as the impossible revelation came to her. “We are no longer in the realm of mortals. This is the aether.”
“That was easy,” Rook said.
“Look!” Aletheia said. She pointed out toward the bubble.
Through the windows Eris saw a shape streak past. Not the light of the aethereal aurora, but an orange line, almost in the shape of a wyrm…
“Another!” Rook said. He pointed to a streak in red.
This she caught more clearly, the glowing, flickering shape of a demon like that one she encountered with Robur in the tower in Ewsos. She took one step closer to the window, and looking past the bubble saw spots of black hanging around her, like microscopic clouds or leaves suspended in the air.
Within each ignited pairs of green eyes. Like emerald manacrystals glowing with fire, they formed dark and featureless faces all around them.
“Every enchantment in this Tower,” Eris said. “Every spell. Every machine. It is powered by the conduits here, in this place, connecting us to the immaterial world where we now stand. That barrier—” she pointed toward the bubble, “is all that keeps its denizens without of the Earth.”
“If we’re in their world,” Rook said, “aren’t we the demons?”
“…quite possibly so.” She turned back to Rook. “We will never return to a place like this. I—we must look around.”
“Can you use Mass Recall now?” Rook said to Pyraz.
“Yes,” Pyraz said. “Easily.”
“I don’t want to stay here,” Aletheia said.
“Lukon,” Eris had other thoughts on her mind, “what is here?”
“The Divination Room,” Lukon said.
“And what is that?”
“The Divination Room.”
She would get no useful answers from him. “I will go there myself. Lukon: I have one task for you. You must find my remaining phylacteries and destroy them. Ensure that the Magisters have no way to track me. Is that understood? Destroy my phylacteries at any cost. Go at once!”
“Yes,” Lukon said lifelessly. He turned toward the elevator.
“He may be captured,” Pyraz said.
“He is a lifeless drone. Let him be captured.”
“He has overheard our plans. He might divulge our locations.”
Eris swore. She hadn’t thought of that. Idiot—to tell Rook where she wanted to go before this Servitor. But she shook her head. “It is worth the risk. Destroying my phylacteries is necessary if I am ever to be free. He has access to the facilities for now; he has a good chance at accomplishing this goal.”
Lukon stepped inside the elevator. He looked back at them, no emotion in his eyes.
“Tell the Magisters nothing!” Eris yelled. But then he was gone.
She sighed. She felt at once like she had made a terrible mistake. But there was no way for her to ever locate or destroy that way for the Seekers to track her; was there any other choice? She would dwell on such fears later. For now…
She turned toward the Divination Room.
“Eris!” Rook said as she walked from his side.
“We have made eternal enemies of the Magisters today,” she said. “If we are to find some way to defeat them, it will be here, in their most secret chamber.”
The blond man showed reason in his demeanor for a change, for he desisted. So the party followed after her, through the halls, then to a great open archway. Through it they found an open chamber with a high domed roof. Tubes and pipes and mana circuitry ran up and down the walls, piping energy to the lower levels, pulsing with every color of the aether. The air seemed to writhe in its pink hue, like they were walking at the bottom of the ocean and the tides rolled around them.
At the center of the chamber was a triangular table of pure white. It had six thrones; beside each were two smaller chairs, to create eighteen seats in total. All were empty. They approached, looking around, but nothing else was here except windows in the roof that offered another glimpse into the roiling dark aether beyond, where countless more burning eyes stared down at them.
“You say they can’t get to us,” Rook said.
“If they could, they would,” Eris said. “I think…”
A long moment passed. Then the air began to move. Like being caught in a whirlwind, intangible dust around them swirled. At first the pink had been uniform and dispersed evenly in the air but now it blew past their eyes. Eris was overwhelmed by the sensation of so much mana, yet she still felt something different, something like a spell prickling around her, and then she saw the pink above the table.
The air trailed toward a single point in the center of the room. Above the triangle. Slowly, over the course of a minute, the hue of the room became normal, and particle by particle there congealed a colossal immaterial shape from the miasma of magic.
A demon.
They had been standing in it. Walking in it. Breathing it in. Now it formed a figure they could recognize as a sapient being. It gave itself a dozen lambent blue eyes up and down a head in an amoebic square, above a body that was roughly in the proportion of a body—with no limbs. It regarded them.
Everyone drew their swords. “What is this?” Rook hissed at Eris. “What—Pyraz!”
“Wait!” Eris said. She stepped forward to address the demon—it made no hostile gestures, yet Pyraz was ahead of her. He ignored her command and began casting Mass Recall, a white circle forming in the air around her, Rook, and Aletheia. She knew how dangerous it could be to step out from this spell—it was not so simple as canceling it. She swore. “You idiot!
The demon loomed over them. Its pink form, translucent and radiant like clouds lit by the sun at setting, billowed upward. A word slipped through her mind in a language that wasn’t a language—she didn’t understand it, it meant nothing to her, and yet somehow she was certain it was speech. She was certain it meant something.
The white light descended. And…
The pink disappeared. A dark sky slid into place overhead. A dozen firefly lights above her. A bustle of people. The smell of fish and water. She was dizzy, but only for a second, as she looked around herself—and saw that she stood on a wharf of Katharos.
Pyraz and Marjara were nowhere to be seen.