My arms were buried in ice and the Valkyrie at my side was coated in a fine later of frost, just barely visible in the dark, but nonetheless I was sweating.
After being fired up a superheated geyser’s spout, like a bullet through a gun, I’d feared that our ride would end in a sudden, sharp catastrophe; a blockage too big for our ice-platform to squeak past, or a twist that dumped us out into a boiling subterranean lake or magma flow. With the way my luck was, I would even have believed it if we ended up back in that same Formorian hive I woke up under after Grand Chasm.
As the trip went on, seconds had passed into minutes, and that fear had eased. Instead, my worry became how long I could maintain our ride.
Berenike and I were separated from the raging, superheated waters driving us upwards by a plug of ice, which was constantly melting even as my magic re-froze it. I had easily enough energy to outlast the geyser – or even freeze the entire tower of water solid – but that would and strand us both. It could even kill Berenike.
I couldn’t spare her more than worried looks, but what I saw was troubling. Her eyes had closed, and her breathing was slow.
But let up my magic too much and instead of freezing everything, our platform would break up.
I’d never had to both project and restrain my mana at once like this, on a large scale and in real time. Even with all my experience and my improving control, it was shockingly hard, but my friend’s life depended on my success.
Each time I overbalanced one way, the ice on Berenike’s feathers grew a little faster, and whenever I tipped the other direction I felt a little more of our platform eroding away.
My salvation came in the form of a dim, distant glow, shining against the frozen gravel under me.
I doubted that any other human’s eyes could even have detected it… but it brightened rapidly. The colors weren’t neon either, nor the lazy, tired reds of magma. It was impossible to say what time it might be on the surface, but I dared to hope that I was seeing daylight.
It brightened steadily, until all at once there was a rush of air and a dazzling white flash that seemed to come from all directions at once.
I felt about me for some sign of the demonic solar Skidbladnir which had so recently assaulted me with similar blasts of painful radiation, or for some other Pharyes weapon. I felt nothing in my immediate vicinity. Not even the trickling energies of plants or the flowing energized water in the walls.
I felt strangely light too, and the heat of the water under us seemed to be dissipating, spreading out all about.
Blinking, I made out something colossal above me. My eyes, recovered from the initial shock, were baffled by the endless expanse of green and brown, spread about a huge set of jaws in the ceiling. Water was moving up there, flowing on the cave roof somehow, pouring in waterfalls from the tooth-like stalactites but then flowing back again, upwards against gravity, pooling in steaming reservoirs lit by the brilliant lights below me.
I looked down, and I saw the source of that stunning radiance.
Endless sapphire blue sky stretched out under my feet, more beautiful than any gem.
In the middle of the cloudless expanse there hung a flaming sunstone.
Not the false star of the Underworld, but the real thing, impossibly far away yet warming everything with its gentle light.
The surface world was so much bigger and brighter than I remembered, and infinitely more wonderful, the vibrant colors a match even for the washing neon glows of the Underworld.
But it was also accelerating towards me, ground rushing up with alarming alacrity as I fell, upended amid a shower of steam and boiling rain.
Berenike was still out very cold, and I pulled her into my arms.
Kicking off the air, I righted myself, and then anchored my feet in place.
Shedding a lot of momentum at once wasn’t good for my friend, but I did my best to stop her slowly with the motion of my arms, and to support her head as the unconscious Valkyrie effectively fell atop me.
Hearing no bones break, I judged the tactic a success. Bruises I could treat once we were down safely. She would also need warming up, but the humid air and hot sun would help with that.
Hopping down as if using invisible steps in the sky, I looked about for a good spot to set down. I picked a place a little way off from the giant gash in the landscape, and the surrounding pools and raining hot water, to keep Berenike out of harm’s way.
The location was a patch of rocky ground, just between the trees and undergrowth and the magnificent desolation about the geysers themselves. Touching down I found it surprisingly warm to the touch.
I laid the Valkyrie on her back and wing-muscles.
My hand was already reaching for her forehead as I chanted the words to submerge her once more in the Water of Life.
Another sound rose over my voice and the din of the geysers, an awful and alien shriek at my back that sounded like nothing alive. It shook the air with vibrating, tortured essence.
Breaking, the scream cracked like lightning, and then a shrill note tore through the air towards me.
Stone cracked too, breaking underfoot as I leapt to evade the attack.
Too late.
Tensed for the impact it was jarring to feel no blow. Instead something sharp and intensely hot raked my back and shoulder, then tore at my calf as I passed over it.
Panic cut into me too. It was the magma beneath Vitrgraf, and the dreadful Kajatora lurking in those depths, somehow chasing me all the way to the surface world.
But as I twisted over the bulk of the attack and turned, I saw no vast titan of corrupted obsidian and rage. No lakes of molten rock and metal.
What faced me was a figure, the shape of a humanoid, glowing with arcing, rippling energy that rose from their body like an armor of dazzling liquid flames.
Beneath the veils of rolling energy and heat I saw a face, an older woman, her face just starting to show the weathered wrinkles that marked a life of work out in the elements. Her skin was brown, and her features refined, even noble, but her expression gave away nothing; no fear or enmity, just focus.
Focus on attacking me.
There was an immense bloom of essence emerging from her body and channeling into the glowing gauntlets she wore. They were a different metal to the armor she wore, and from their fingers trailed arcs of white, rippling power. Instantly I understood what she’d hit me with – like the kajatora before her, she was a wielder of supernatural plasma.
She had mana to rival a kajatora too; an astonishing density of energy was packed into her unassuming form. I couldn’t draw a meaningful comparison with my own neigh-infinite yet barely-controlled reserves, but she was calling up more magical power than anyone else I’d met besides Aellope.
All that I gleaned in the moments between my leap and my landing, but it told me nothing of who this person was, or why she was in the mountains attacking me.
There was also no chance for me to act on my observations – she was already hurling another blinding loop of energy.
“Stop!” I called out, raising my hands.
Plasma spread out, flowing and tearing at the air and my ears alike with a dreadful noise.
That light and sound helped conceal the other projectiles until it was almost too late.
Arrows from all sides glanced off my skin and tore at the already-shredded remnants of Patch’s clothes. With how ruined they already were I wouldn’t have minded that, but among the weaker shots were some packed with deadly levels of essence, even what seemed like formed and complete magic.
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Dodging too slow, one gouged into my forearm and lodged there.
Spreading out my attention, synthesizing information from my eyes and the flowing energies around me, I picked out three clusters of foes, spread out. There were more than just those firing on me too, but at least for the moment they were hanging back.
I could also hear the chatter back and forth, names and curt instructions being called to one another in what sounded like the language of the adventurers I’d met so long ago now. But even if I could hear and comprehend their words, there was no time to try to make sense of all those voices.
It seemed impossible, but I’d fallen straight into an ambush.
An entire posse of humanoids I’d never seen or heard anything from before, waiting here to kill me.
My immediate thought was to run – whoever they were, if they were willing to fight me, and prepared for the battle, it was foolish to accept a confrontation on their terms. But there was no way I could escape and protect Berenike at the same time, and the poor Valkyrie was still unconscious and injured. She needed healing right away in fact.
The best I could do was to lead the fight away from her.
Plasma-woman and the hidden archers were willing to oblige, the former pursuing me at range as the latter maintained their fire at my person.
From the voices directed at her, I gleaned that the former was ‘Jalera’, but the name meant nothing to me. I’d never done anything to a woman called ‘Jalera’ – I’d never even left the Cyclopean Bones after my initial awakening in the Bloodsucking Forest!
Jumping over another dazzling band of her shrieking, popping plasma, I touched down a few yards from the treeline, where one of the groups was lurking.
The figures were a mixture of humanoids of various species, wrapped in armor and sheltering behind the trees and bushes. They probably thought they were hidden from me.
Hearing their back and forth confirmed that I really was their target. It also confirmed their language was indeed the same one used by the human explorers I’d met in the forest. ‘Hronan’, the harpies called it.
But why would they be here, deep in the mountains, within the Harpy Empire? For a fearful moment I wondered if the Empire had fallen entirely somehow, but it seemed too fast for humans to be here already. That also couldn’t explain why they were here specifically for me.
A tear welled up in the corner of each eye as I realized that once again I’d escaped near certain death into the arms of an ambush from total strangers. If I ever found him, I was going to make Myr pay for this.
If I lived that long.
“Please stop! I don’t want to fight you!” I called out as I dodged their shots and ducked under another blinding loop of white energy.
“Whatever I did, I’m sorry!”
Distracted so, I felt the snap and the twisting of essence underfoot just a moment too late.
The ground beneath me gave way, and my leg sank into it, roots and rocks under me seeming to flow and part, then close tight like quicksand.
Pulling myself out would be easy, but my weight was on that leg, and so for a moment at least I could only fall sideways, until I anchored myself.
Of course that meant that for a moment I couldn’t dodge.
A clap of intense energy tore into the side of my neck and head, and I convulsed in helpless shock and agony.
Boiling blood evaporated into a haze as the wound crackled and steamed, and I clutched my throat, fearing the worst.
The seared puncture was small, but with its location it was bleeding fast.
Jalera hadn’t even attacked me – it was another figure, emerging from the tree line, holding out a staff that hissed as spray from the geysers dusted it. Her face was vaguely familiar, but it was that distinctive staff and the longsword in her other hand that gave her away to me.
There was no way I could forget that disastrous first encounter.
“Lyanna?!”
She reacted as I called the name, as did several others around her.
My neck was throbbing with pain and my head was spinning. How could the adventurers who’d attacked me mere days after I arrived in this world be back, now, here of all places?
And what possible reason could they have to want to kill me?!
But the familiar arrow that followed her lightning bolt was the final proof.
Seeing it coming, and still off balance, I tore up one of the tree-roots that had somehow entangled my trapped leg.
The other arrows embedded themselves in the thick wood, but Dolm’s flashed through it like tissue, to drive itself into my shoulder and lodge there.
Hissing in pain, frustration and anxiety, I struggled to maintain composure and think.
My situation was grim, far worse than I’d imagined – I was outnumbered near thirty to one, and my attackers were coordinated. Many of them couldn’t harm me even if they hit, but they were still distractions – an arrow that might bounce off my skin would still draw attention away from the one which could run me through.
Words came to me, and I began an incantation. The best answer was the same spell I’d used in Grand Chasm, a vortex of wind to deflect all incoming attacks.
The same figures I had been about to attack didn’t wait for me, however.
While I was distracted, chanting, a hailstorm of metal splinters flashed in the sunlight.
They were aimed right at my face. My hand batted them away from my eyes like so many flies, and the rest pricked at me with no more harm than rolling in needlegrass.
In the wake of the gesture I saw more movement; an older human, small but wiry, who lunged forwards at me. He moved in with surprising alacrity and clutched an oily dagger.
The man’s top speed was still slow to me. I balled my fist to meet him.
As I looked into his eyes I saw not just resolve, but terror.
My hand froze.
The spell died on my lips as I took in the sight of my enemy.
These were real people, living, breathing, thinking and feeling, not even guarded by a Skidbladnir or dehumanized by alien horror like the Formorians.
I opened my fist, to try to grab instead of strike him.
“Adrick!” Jalera barked.
Too late I realized that the man’s eyes had closed at her words. He had stopped his charge a step short of reaching me, a mere distraction.
An arc of plasma howled between us.
I tried to pull my arm back, but I succeeded only in wasting my own attack as it tore into my forearm, evaporating the lodged arrow instantly and scoring a blackened welt in my skin. It was a deep burn, and the sizzling sounds of my own injury were nauseating, but there were gasps from around me, as if they’d expected me to lose a limb entirely.
I wanted to ask them just what I’d done to deserve any of this.
Some part of me remembered the curse I carried, and the terrible violence and suffering I’d unleashed in the raid. To that I could add the despicable thoughts that lingered at the back of my mind even then, and a long, painful litany of failures, inadequacies and personal deficiencies.
Perhaps they might have a good reason.
But I wasn’t going to accept death, whatever I might have done.
I renewed my chanting, ignoring the multiple forms of pain.
Adrick threw his dagger, aiming at my wounded neck.
Even striking at my gouged throat it couldn’t cut any deeper, but it hurt like hell, and my concentration unraveled once again.
The impact left a sharp, tingling ache where the blade smeared its residue; surely some sort of poison. There was no way that would work on me, but I wasn’t going to let Adrick away with trying to kill me and getting me burned, any more than I was going to roll over and die.
I stepped in to pummel the man with my good arm, aiming at his gut instead of his exposed head and shoulders – hopefully if I misjudged the force he might at least still be healed afterwards.
But once more I hesitated.
In my mind all I could see was the formorian titan, horrendously wounded, mutilated by my attack and fleeing… past hundreds of its fallen brethren.
All that blood would stain my hands for the rest of my days.
Mind blank, I had no idea I’d stopped in place until an impact against my back made me stagger.
A blade of some sort raked across my skin, while arrow shots struck like punches.
For just an instant I thought someone else had closed into melee range with me, but the object seemed to fall back all on its own; some sort of thrown weapon.
That was enough of a distraction for Adrick to unfurl his palm and blow a cloud of sharp, glimmering dust into my face. Stinging my eyes and making them weep. I cursed aloud as I tried to blink away the mess.
I kept moving of course – I could feel even if I couldn’t see – but strange, sharp shapes bit at my feet, and collapsed or turned over as my weight rested on them. I realized as I felt the painful pricks of their needles that I was walking on caltrops, scattered all about in preparation of my coming.
They couldn’t even break my skin, but they destroyed my balance.
Adrick was gone before my blind reaching could catch him.
I could feel him and the others ahead retreating. He’d just been buying a moment for his group to fall back, probably scattering more caltrops as they went. They had no real intention of taking me on at all.
Jalera, however, seemed more than willing. With my sight temporarily blocked, I had to feel the huge arc of energy that she sent rolling along the ground towards me. I leapt to the side, my legs hurling up a wave of rock and dirt with the force, and caught myself by digging my throbbing right arm into the ground to arrest my motion.
That let me focus my essence on anchoring my feet, and kicking off with all my might, not needing to worry about the softness of stone ruining my footing.
Jalera had just enough time for her eyes to widen as I shot directly at her.
Her teams of archers and magical attackers couldn’t hit me if they couldn’t keep up with me. It was the same tactic that had gotten me through the defenses at Northastr, and if my speed and durability could overcome thousands of golems and hundreds of Varangians, then a few dozen thugs ambushing me in the mountains shouldn’t stand a chance, even if they did have the element of surprise.
As I moved I was chanting too, calling on my own elemental weapons, but that would come later; I was upon Jalera in a fraction of a second.
Much as I’d have liked to kick her into the stratosphere with a single supersonic blow, I wasn’t about to splatter someone across the mountains.
I didn’t want to see that carnage ever again, especially wrought by my own hands.
I restrained myself to a light punch.
Even so, it was a powerful blow, enough to pulverize rock or send a Varangian flying.
Jalera twisted around it with absurd ease. She began moving even before I threw my fist, as though she could see what I was going to do even before I knew myself.
I had to anchor myself to avoid flying past her.
There was a faint, oddly familiar smile on her lips as she saw my shock at her impossible reaction speed.
Intoning more magical words, she focused a huge amount of mana into her gauntlets. I could have tried to decipher the spell, but I focused on incanting my own instead as I struck with my other fist.
That one one she had no chance to dodge, but she threw herself backwards as the blow came, reducing the power even before I struck her armor of plasma.
Incredibly hot and dense, the barrier scorched my skin and robbed my fist of an amazing proportion of energy, but it couldn’t negate it all. She took it with her shoulder, and Jalera was knocked back and set spinning by the glancing impact.
But there was no sensation of breaking, and while her face contorted in pain, she didn’t even stop her chanting.
This was nothing like my battles in the Underworld – the foes there had been terrifyingly powerful, able to match or even overwhelm me in strength and sheer damage, backed up by massive numbers. A team of just a few dozen ordinary people should have been a triviality to me.
Abruptly I realized who Jalera reminded me of.
Karlya.
Fighting this human was just like fighting a Valkyrie; they too were focused and determined, able to take a hit and strike back, and skilled in reducing or negating damage from attacks which couldn’t be avoided.
Of course, I thought. They weren’t monsters, or Pharyes relying on their machines for battle. They were fighters, adventurers, mercenaries or something of that sort. They had probably spent decades honing their skills, practicing to fight the very overpowering, yet unskilled menaces I had taken on with brute force, using their skill and judgment.
Jalera landed on her feet, falling to one knee but facing me, gauntlets outstretched. Between her hands was a mesh of plasma, arcing from finger to finger, ready to catch me should I press the attack. I’d seen through that trap at least.
It wasn’t that Jalera or the others were incredibly fast. They were just doing exactly what Arawn and Karlya had; seeing through my straightforward, simplistic movements, reading my posture, the lines of my sight and the tensing clusters of muscles behind my overly-honest attacks and reacting before the blow ever fell.
I was tempted to just unleash a tidal wave on the lot of them, but while I knew I could crush this ambush with such a spell, that would hit Berenike too, as would any other area-attack. No, the answer here was to do just as Berenike herself would. The Underworld had spoiled me, playing to my strengths far too often and allowing me to muddle through, despite being a novice to fighting. Now I was facing real experts, with frightful coordination and every intention, it seemed, of striking me down.
Victory here would come from focus and awareness as much as strength. I couldn’t let them juggle me between various ranged attackers. I had to feel plasma, arrows, shrapnel and more before it hit.
Dodging another volley of metal barbs from Adrick’s retreating group, I moved instead towards Lyanna’s.
Her lightning flashed out, moving impossibly fast, but I enjoyed the look of shock on her face as I wove between the accompanying arrows, and caught it bare handed.
I hadn’t suffered through the horrors of the Underworld without learning a few tricks.
The energy crackled over my body, guided by my own mana, within my spell, and it emerged from my other hand to leap out towards Dolm in the trees just behind her.
He had thrown himself down before the shot ever released, as if anticipating something of the sort, but the crackling, waving tongues of unfocused energy were too diffuse and uncontrolled to dodge just by reading my movement.
Electricity raked through the leaves and branches, and I heard the screams of the archer and the others in his group.
Scattered out as it was, the attack shouldn’t have killed anyone, but it certainly stopped the arrows for a while.
That opening let me charge unimpeded at Lyanna, giving her no time to conjure up more bolts.
A bent knife like a kukri hummed through the air towards my head, but I ducked under it easily as it arced past.
Something was strange below me too, I realized. I felt a strand of essence break against my skin, then the ground started to give way and pull at my foot. That was what had trapped me before, fighting Adrick, but this time I understood what was happening; tree-roots seemed to be coming alive and binding around me.
Yanking myself away before I could be ensnared, I escaped the trap thanks to my heightened attentiveness.
Lyanna was quick to punish me for that moment of self-satisfaction, stepping in as Adrick had done.
But where the slight, fearful man had just bluffed me, Lyanna meant to fight for real. Her sword was glowing with a blue aura, crackling and fluorescing at the edges. The energy even reached up her arm, as if electricity was moving within her flesh.
At my back, Jalera was closing in too.