The only reason they were still able to move in relative ease, unchallenged, was because Grobitzsnak had not realized they were there.

Considering he’d found them pretty quickly in the forest, she wasn’t sure how he hadn’t noticed them wandering about his castle, but perhaps the encounter in the forest had been blind luck. Less than an hour had passed since the jailbreak and, as far as she could tell, there had been no magical signal that told him his prisoners were free, and no sudden alarm that the demon dragging Nales hadn’t returned. By Nales’ own concession, he had been a gift for the demon to torture, a reward for something the minion had done well. The demon hadn’t been expected to return that night.

Their distraction, the giant magical bird they’d set loose, could also be seen as a coincidence rather than something intentional. The seal they’d broken had been slapdash, hurried. New. And it was more than plausible that a shot from the gate flare that had obliterated Caracel’s glamour spell earlier could have loosened the seal enough for the bird to break through.

The castle lay calm and still. Quiet, now that they had left the section with the bird in it. Yena’s senses had sent them upward, and, with the bird in the far distance, she’d taken the risk, re-applied the glamour spell, and they’d slunk through the many, many hallways like a band of ghosts.

Gods, this place was big.

Finally, though, they appeared to select the correct hall—one that shifted away from the dwarf-like carved stonework of the inner mountain with the cave surface rippling in the shadows between support arches and shifted into a hand-carried masonic style that reminded her more of the older caverns under the Raidt.

The hall was quiet. Subdued. As if each bump and scrape sent a ripple like water shivering through the air. The ceiling was lower here, the walls more close-knit, cast in bright crystal light that shivered and undulated.

After five minutes, the hall stopped and dead-ended into a small chamber. Catrin sidled against the wall and leaned out, checking it over. A hushed presence at her side announced that Yena had decided to join her. The priestess’ small hand lifted to rest on Catrin’s bracers, fingers curving over the leather heedless of the blood.

“It’s up ahead,” Yena said. “I can feel it.”

Catrin took another look at the corridor, following Yena’s focused gaze. The walls cupped into a staircase on the left, one side going up, the other leading down. She risked opening her woodcraft just a sliver, cringing as pressure crashed down through her head and her mental image of the walls began to slide. Power pulsed above then, low and gentle. She caught a mental image of an ocean glimmering under sunlight, its waters wrinkled like an un-ironed sheet.

Was this the orb of destruction?

It didn’t feel very destructive. But it did feel familiar—like the floating crystals they’d passed.

Pushing her woodcraft aside with a mental blink, she followed the arch of the ceiling. It curved upward to the left, following the stairs.

A tower?

With the shape of the staircase—circular, and tight in its curve—and the way the ceiling sloped up into a point over the supporting arches, that was her best guess. If the fortress had folded back into the mountain again, she expected they would have simply drilled back. Solid rock was stronger and more easily maintained than the cubes of weathered stonework around her. Why waste the protection?

She eyed the tight stairs. Single file only. It would really suck to be caught up there.

Yena nodded upward toward the orb.

“There’s someone up there. Magic user. You should let me deal with him.” She hesitated, her head tilting to the side, like a bird when it’s trying to see something. “He knows I’m here.”

Fantastic.

“Will Grobitzsnak know we’re here, once we take the orb?”

“Yes.” The response was immediate, accompanied by a short nod. “It’s feeding him power.”

Even more fantastic.

Her back molars ground together. Catrin hadn’t felt anything, but she did not doubt the fey. Their senses, especially magical, were better than hers. She sighed, and looked back down the corridor. It was the only exit. If it filled with soldiers, she wasn’t sure how well any glamour spell would hide them.

A demon had already seen through it once, which meant it wasn’t infallible.

“We’ll need to be quick. Doneil, you bring up the rear with Matteo. I’ll be ahead of you. We’ll let the fey go first.” She cringed at her word use—one didn’t let the fey do anything; they simply did it, much like some princes she knew—and turned to Nales. “You, stick with me.”

His eyes sparked, and the quick tug of his mouth told her he hadn’t missed the order—and that the rnari tonic was still affecting him. But when they moved, he fell in behind her. Caracel slipped past, and she felt the glamour spell buzz against her skin with proximity.

She unsheathed a blade and followed the fey.

The second she stepped foot on the stairs, she knew there was power.

It had felt like an ocean before—and, in a way, it still was. But now, instead of the light, wrinkled sea she’d seen before, the very stones around her seemed to hum with a swell.

Less than three feet of water would knock the average elf of their feet if it had a current. This felt like fathoms.

She struggled to breathe. The air turned to syrup, energy buzzing against her teeth like the fey’s glamour spell. She could feel it in her bones. Parts of her skin had gone numb. It felt like her eyes were going to buzz right out of her skull. She resisted the urge to squint as the sensation rolled over her.

By her side, Nales tripped once, his sword making a sharp chink sound where it struck the stone with its point. He held it the same way the demon in the library had, on the backhand with the point trailing low to the ground like the tip of a walking stick.

The fey walked ahead, Caracel leading with Yena following softly in his footsteps. Past them, light appeared on the stone, dancing like water. She was reminded of the crystal they’d passed earlier, the way its light had flickered and danced, utterly silent, caressing the shivering wrinkles of the small pool beneath it.

A shadow crossed it once.

She tensed as a low, harsh voice spoke, its grating words hissing into High Fey.

“Come in, star born. Sate an old man his due.”

Gods, it was hard to understand. The words were old, and an odd energy shivered through the air as they came, folding over them like old paper. She caught the smell of hot copper and stale, clotted blood like when she had her monthly bleed. She bared her teeth and wrinkled her nose, the smell overpowering.

In front of her, Yena tensed.

Then, with what looked like great difficulty, the small fey forced herself to relax her shoulders.

“Good morrow, Dark Father.”

The tone was light, lilting. Polite.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

It had an undertone of steel that drove down into her spine.

Magic shivered, cold as ice. Her runes prickled. Yena sped up, ducking past Caracel. When she got to the top of the stairs, she lifted up her hands, pushed through a wall of magic, and attacked.

Magic cracked through the air like a thunderstroke. Catrin jumped, one hand going to her ears. Sulfur and another smell, dark and shivery, like thick air in a dark cave, choked the air. Energy warred, snapping like the explosive lights the Teilanni set off for summer fêtes.

A second wave of magic rolled over her like electricity. Her muscles numbed in a wave. She staggered into Nales, felt his sword clunk against the wall again.

For a second, she forgot to breathe.

Then, between one heartbeat and the next, one magic started to win.

Reeling from the power, Catrin gritted her teeth and put one foot in front of the other, fighting against the energy that beat at her like the pressure of a thousand thunderheads.

The tower opened into a small, square room. She caught a brief glimpse of the space—gray stone walls, tools and herbs and weapons at the sides, orb in the center, floating over a stone dais—before her attention was drawn irrevocably to the magic fight taking place to her direct left.

She wasn’t sure what the demon had been expecting when he’d sensed Yena on the floor below, but she doubted it had been ‘bloodlined fey high priestess.’ Yena had the creature flattened to the tower’s old bricks, crackles of magic billowing from their encounter. The thing was a quadruped, with long, gaunt limbs that ended in digits that looked more like tree roots than anything mammalian. Desiccated skin hung in wrinkled lumps, a series of nasty sores running along the undersides of his arms and at his knees, chest, and elbow. A bald head revealed a stark, scabbed face with a sharp nose and a mouth full of ugly, triangular teeth.

He might have been human, once. Or elf. But that had been a long time ago, and evil had twisted his bones since.

In front of him, Yena’s face was a snarl, the long fingers of her hands flexed into claws, the tattoos on her skin shivering with power—as if she existed in two places at once. Caracel stood at her back, tense, guarding her.

“I may not be able to fix the world,” she said, her voice deadly calm. Anger fluttered at its edges. “But you, Dark Father? You, I have power over.”

She made a violent gesture with her leading arm, and swiped down.

The creature screamed. Magic snapped and broke, fractured like a split rock.

He crumpled to the floor and sagged. Bone snapped, then cracked, and his head curled under, eyes closing, and a gauntness appearing at his temples. A cacophony of crunching bone rang through the room as Yena’s magic crumpled him into a small, fleshy ball.

Slowly, the magic dissipated. In a few seconds, the pressure in the room eased off.

Catrin could breathe again.

She sucked in a breath. It felt as though her entire chest had been kicked—from the inside.

“What was that?”

“A Void Wraith. A creature of the between. Very rarely do they cross into Tir Na n’Og.”

Behind her, Doneil’s eyebrows shot into his forehead. “I can see why.”

“I have limited combat magic, but a void wraith is special.” Yena flexed her fingers, then turned to regard the orb. “This, too, I can be helpful with.” She made a gesture. “You see the reflecting mechanism?”

Now that the magic battle wasn’t beating her brain senseless, she could examine the orb better. It was smaller than she’d thought it would be, about the size of an apple, and floated softly in the air, a storm of light rushing silently within, with a small, star-shaped pool that rippled like quicksilver beneath it. Her mind flashed, reminded of the floating crystal she’d seen earlier, the way their light had pulsed and jerked like crackling fire.

She nodded. In her peripheral vision, the others slipped into the room, their faces lit up by the orb’s flickering light.

“It’s part of an old network we used to use. Energy transfer. Now, if my guess is right…” Yena pulled the sleeves of her cloak up to her shoulder, revealing slender arms of taut musculature and tattoos that wound an old, angular alphabet into the more recognizable mercari, and reached into the pool below.

It wasn’t water. It was more viscous than that, coating Yena’s skin like a covering of smooth, metallic mud when she pulled back. To Catrin’s surprise, her tattoos seemed to repel it, leaving a chaotic imprint cut through the mud that glowed a faint blue at its core.

The priestess felt around for something, her expression unreadable. Then, disgust crossed her face.

She pulled back, clutching a beating heart in her hand. The liquid oozed off as she held it up, her thumb pressed in an indent between ventricles.

Slowly, light became visible. Tiny fragments of white crystal, stitching across the heart like constellations.

“An Ilmari entrapment spell. He bound the orb to himself.”

Catrin watched the thing beat, entranced. “Is that his heart?”

“I do not know.” Yena tilted her head, the light reflecting in her black eyes. “Let’s find out.”

Her thumb pressed sharply inward, its claw gouging deep into the heart’s flesh.

Magic crushed the air. Once again, she felt that sensation—like a thunderstorm pressed in on her mind and body. A scraping roar raged up from the bowels of the castle, pained and loud. Angry. Filled with power. Blood spurted, thick and red, dribbling over Yena’s fingers in a slick ooze.

She crushed it with the rest of her fingers, claws cutting deep. Magic thrashed, energy cracking like a horsewhip. Catrin flinched. Crackles and arcs of electricity crawled over Yena’s hand like tiny feet, biting into the flexing tendons.

Then, the crystals burst with the sound of cracking glass. Light flared briefly.

The heart collapsed in on itself.

Yena held onto it for a few seconds more, her face twisted as she kept her claws in the thing. Sulfur sputtered into the air as smoke from its surface, and more thick blood choked out of it as the thing shrunk and convulsed.

Then, finally, it sagged.

With a look of disgust, Yena set it on the stone edge of the dais and wiped her hand off.

“No,” she said. “Not his. This was a stand-in. Probably carved from some poor soul. It looks a little small. Oh, well.”

Acid touched the back of Catrin’s throat. She stared at the lump of flesh.

A little small.

It still flinched occasionally. The smell of sulfur hung in the air, along with something else. She’d smelled it before, in a tannery.

The heart twitched, and something dropped in her stomach.

Right there, she decided that she wanted nothing to do with the more serious, darker magics.

She’d stick to summoning spells. And kimbic, if the mercari equivalents wouldn’t work anymore.

Magic zipped. The light shifted. With a jolt, she realized that she’d been so engrossed in the disgusting, flaccid lump of the dead heart that she’d missed whatever Yena had been saying about the orb. When she looked up, the fey was lifting it out of the air the same way she would lift a ball off a shelf. A small imprint of the orb’s former position lay curved in the air like a soft frost.

At once, the thick, humming sensation in the walls went still.

The energy diminished. Like removing a ray of sunshine from a castle window.

The walls seemed to dim. Frozen back into regular, solid rock, rather than the awareness she’d felt earlier.

“It is done,” Yena said.

As if on cue, another roar boiled up from deep within the castle—loud and solid, furious, full of hate.

And magic. She couldn’t miss the magic.

“I thought you said he’d be weakened,” she said dryly.

“He is. He can no longer draw power from the orb.”

Catrin waited, but the fey didn’t continue. Instead, she tucked the orb into a pouch at her waist. Its light vanished from the room, and Catrin squinted to blink the orb’s after-image from her eyes. When her eyes adjusted, Yena had stepped back to Caracel’s side, a hand resting on his arm for protection.

“And that means…?” Catrin prompted.

“He can’t destroy the world anymore, but he’s still going to be a mean fight,” Nales said.

In the explosive crash of magic, she’d forgotten he was there. He stood at her flank, his face shadowed and grim. This close, she could smell him, blood and sweat, his presence quiet but solid at her side.

The greater demon roared again, louder, full of snarl and teeth. The walls shook with it, and she felt the floor vibrate under her feet.

It sounded closer.

Her mind envisioned the tight, curled stairs behind them. Their only exit.

She unsheathed her daggers. “We should go. Keep the gate closed until we need it. Let’s see if we can avoid him. Can you still use glamour?”

“Yes,” Yena responded. “The orb will give me a boost.”

“Good.” She turned to the stairs. “We’re going to need it.”