by Erin Hoffman
In the distance, a flash of unnatural lightning that came from near the ground revealed the location of one of the seridi that had flooded out of the gate, wreaking havoc wherever they passed.
“Why are they doing this?” Vidarian asked, his throat dry from the altitude.
“They're mad,” Isri replied. “For every year that my people remained trapped with the Starhunter, it seemed one of us lost the battle to retain our sanity. Her massive and chaotic mind eroded our own.”
“Why would you give yourselves to such a thing?”
“We didn't know we would survive the passage into the gate,” she said. “When we lured her through, we thought it was to certain death. None had ever survived passing into the gate when a destination had not been opened on the other side. The Starhunter kept us alive-we were her bargaining chip if she were to ever be released again.”
“And I fell into her hands,” he said, remembering Ariadel's silence like a knife between his ribs. “The gryphons and magic-users here insisted that the gate should be sealed, not opened.”
She turned to him, her pupils pinning like a gryphon's with shock. “And leave us trapped there for eternity, all condemned to the slow descent into madness?” When he didn't answer, she said, “You have set us free. Whatever paths lay ahead of you, you must know that you have the gratitude of an entire race, trapped for untold time between worlds.”
For the first time since the awakening of his magic-and it now felt to be wholly his magic, as it never had-the weight of the Starhunter was lifted from his mind. A hollowness he felt in the world itself said that she was there-her ambiguity, her truth-but she was no longer his alone to bear. And he wondered if it was this relief he had sought all along. Had he really opened the gate for Ariadel? Had the Starhunter herself contaminated his thoughts?
In the quiet that had settled on his mind, he knew the singularity of purpose that had filled his being for that one moment. It was Ariadel's life that had compelled him, for good and for ill. And he knew that if it were left to him again, he would again release chaos into the world if it meant correcting an imbalance that he'd known in his heart threaded reality itself without her.
“It's beautiful,” Isri said, looking out at the sunset spilling light and brilliance across the distant ocean far below and to the west. She closed her eyes, and the gentle wind lifted the feathers around her face.
The future was nebulous-two thousand powerful magic-wielders released into the world, the disruption of healing magic, ships that could fly-but suspended as he was among the clouds, the deep blue sky filled with fire and light, the richness of a new land spread beneath them…in that moment, at least, Vidarian agreed.
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