“Syan, go!” Ellarion screamed. We were coming up on the wall now, closer and closer, and I could see the bloodmages start to look our way, to notice the tiny craft barreling toward them. “Make the Cut!”
“I can’t!” Syan yelled back. Her zaryas hovered in front of the ship, twitching, streaking in messy lines. “I need to get closer!”
The craft beneath us shook, tipping one way and the other. I hated this, hated this. My nails dug into Zell’s palm. We’d flown across most of the meadow now, almost up to the wall, where the bloodmages were pointing and shouting. At the front of the ship, Syan’s brow had the deepest furrows I’d ever seen, sweat streaking down her cheek, the blue streaks in her hair burning like Luminae.
A horn of alarm blared from the wall, and one of the bloodmages raised his hands overhead. A ball of flame appeared above him, a scorching red mass, and with a roar he flared his hands out and sent it hurtling toward us, a blazing meteor cutting through the night. “Fireball!” I screamed, because what else could I do?
“On it!” Lyriana replied and jerked her own hands up, fingers contorting into intricate shapes. A viscous purple membrane rippled out of her palms, like water hanging in the air, enveloping us in a protective bubble. A Shield. And not a moment too soon. The ball of flame slammed into it, shattering into dozens of blazing streaks that slid along the surface. Our ship lurched hard from the blast, and I let out a scream as I slammed into the side. Aeron moved fast, jerking his fists up, stabilizing us and keeping us going.
And that was just the beginning. The Shield kept us safe but it also drew a whole lot of attention our way, turning us into a luminescent purple bubble flying right into the city. More horns blared with increased urgency, and I could see the bloodmages on the wall scrambling to the front, charging up with magical energy. The Southlanders’ distraction had gotten us this far, but we were rapidly becoming target number one.
“Syan! The Shield won’t hold off all of them!” Lyriana yelled. Her voice bounced around the Shield’s bubble with an intense echo that only made it seem more urgent. “You need to get us in, now!”
“I can’t quite line it up from here!” Syan replied, and she was full-on panting at this point. Her zaryas flitted back and forth with a manic intensity, but never quite formed that X. “If I make the Cut without focusing on exactly the right spot, I’ll kill us all!”
That much was definitely true. During the two days we’d spent prepping, I’d watched Ellarion try to learn to Cut, attempting to move an apple from one stump to another. It had only resulted in cleaving it down the middle and fusing half of it with a nearby rock. I was very much not interested in dying like that.
“Faster!” Ellarion turned to Aeron. “Get us in before they can fire the volley!”
“Trying!” Aeron yelled back, and our little bubbled ship shot forward. I hung on to the bench with both hands as it jostled, the metal vibrating beneath me like it was going to come apart any second. I felt like my heart was going to explode in my chest, like the world was growing fuzzy at the borders. Zell closed his eyes, chanting a prayer. Ellarion’s hands clutched the sides of the ship so hard they actually started to dent it. We were almost at the wall now, about to sail right over the line of bloodmages. I could see at least three fireballs forming, could see a bloodmage surrounded by pulsing yellow electricity, could see two of them forming what looked like a giant lance of ice.
We weren’t going to make it.
We were going to die.
“I’ve got it,” Syan said through gritted teeth, and her zaryas were glowing now, radiant blue stars dancing in the air. “I’ve got the sight. Lyriana, drop the Shield.”
“What?” Lyriana demanded.
“Now! I can’t pull us through while it’s up!” Syan screamed.
“But—”
Then Syan looked back at Lyriana and their eyes met and even here, in a rickety metal ship fifty stories in the air, tossed to and fro, under attack by dozens of bloodmages, there was a sudden wonderful calm. “Trust me,” Syan said.
Lyriana nodded and closed her hands.
The Shield vanished.
The bloodmages flared out their palms, and the fireballs shot toward us, the lightning hissed through the air, the lance of ice flew like a spear.
Syan’s zaryas shot across each other, forming a perfect glowing X of white light, an X that cut through the skin of the world, an X that wrenched us in like water to a whirlpool.
The world bent and twisted, pulled out like a fun-house mirror.
And then we were inside.
The ship wasn’t flying anymore, but it was still moving, our momentum sliding us across a shimmersteel floor like the world’s fastest sled. My breath was trapped in my chest, my hands clenching the bench, as my brain struggled to make sense of where we were. A wide chamber. Inlaid Luminae. Shimmersteel walls. Cathedral ceiling. Figures streaked by, soldiers, their faces hidden in helmets, their voices a chorus of shouts and screams.
“Hang on!” Zell yelled, and I looked up to see the chamber’s wall coming fast. A single Western soldier, a brawny fighter with a face covered in tattoos, looked up to see us just as our ship’s prow slammed into his chest. We lifted him off his feet, drove him backward, and then smashed hard into the wall, plunging the ship clean through him, impaling him to the front of the ship like a bloody reverse-masthead. We all flew forward, tumbling onto each other, hurtling toward the front. I landed right on Zell, right in front of that poor sod of a soldier. And finally, finally, we were still.
I pushed my head up, air rushing into my lungs. The good news was, Syan had successfully gotten us into the Godsblade. The bad news was that we were definitely not in the chamber of the Heartstone. No, this was two stories below it, in the massive hall where the King held court. I could see the shimmersteel throne at the end of the room, empty, grand, bright, and sparkling. And between it and us, I could see two dozen Western soldiers.
We stared at them. They stared at us. One endless second of confusion hung still in the air.
Then the closest Western soldier let out a roar and charged, his ax raised high overhead.
Even here, after what we’d just been through, my khel zhan training kicked in. I leaned over the ship’s edge with one hand, drew Muriel with the other, and thrust her out, point first, right into the soldier’s chest, running him through before he even had a chance to swing. He let out a choked gasp, glaring down at me, and then his ax fell from his hands and he fell back and lay still.
Fifty-nine.
The second the man’s back hit the ground, the room exploded into chaos. The other soldiers rushed forward, coming in at us from all sides, but my companions were up and fighting. I felt a hand press down on my back as Zell bounded over me and caught the next soldier in the chest with his knee, dropping the two to the ground as he delivered a brutal knuckleblade punch to the side of his throat. Blood sprayed out, dark and red, and Zell was already bounding off him, drawing his swords from his back. The nightglass blades sparkled yellow and blue in the light of the Luminae, and cut dazzling streaks as Zell whirled into the crowd. Another group of soldiers were charging us from the other side, but our mages had it covered. Aeron threw out his palm, shooting a gust of wind that knocked the soldiers down, and then Lyriana flared out her hands, lifting them up and slamming them together, tossing them around like dolls. But even as they dropped, there was another wave coming, and another, and another.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. We should’ve been in the tight chamber of the Heartstone. We should’ve had the chance to do this clean. But we were here now and there was only one way out. Fight or die.
With a roar of my own, I hopped over the side of the ship and charged forward, across the room, into the fray. Halos of light glistened on the shimmersteel floor under my feet. Muriel swung light and easy in my hands, cutting through the air, clanging against armor, sinking into flesh. Bodies collided. Blades struck and sparked. The room pulsed thick with magic, with sc
orching tendrils of flame and howling gusts of wind. Syan’s zaryas whistled like bladed hummingbirds, tearing open throats and punching holes through chests. Rivulets of crimson lashed through the air like paint off a brush, splattering the walls. I screamed and slashed, rolled and stabbed. I felt warm blood splash across my face and didn’t even flinch. In that chaos, I was not a person. I was an instrument of death, a tool of war, forged by my father’s betrayal, hardened by Zell’s instruction, set to purpose against the men who’d stolen this Kingdom. I was the hammer and the nail, the scythe and the flame. I was a pounding heart, a clenched fist, a howl of righteous fury.
Sixty.
Sixty-one.
Sixty-two.
Sixty-three.
One soldier came at me, swinging a mace. I dodged to the side and put Muriel through his cheek. Sixty-four. Another swung at me from behind, clipping my side with his dagger, and I grabbed his wrist and pulled him forward, onto my blade. Sixty-five. Poor Aeron went down, an ax in his back, and I avenged him by hurling Muriel like a knife, right into his killer’s chest. Sixty-six.
I reached down to grab another sword, leaving myself open for half a second. Not a long time, but long enough for a tall thin soldier to charge me with a spear. He would’ve gotten me too, if Zell hadn’t swooped in, leaping from the side to ram his sword into the man’s ribs. Our eyes met. Zell’s face was slick with blood, his hair wet, his knuckles dripping. But he was alive and I was alive and we smiled at each other, the half-crazed wide-eyed smiles you can only have on a battlefield.
Then he sprang up as two more soldiers rushed at us, fancy-vested royal guard. Bloodmages. They flared out their hands in unison and flickering yellow-blue bursts of lightning shot out, streaking toward us, and then blasting apart as they struck the shimmering purple membrane of a Shield that had materialized right in front of our faces. “I’ve got you!” Lyriana shouted, and then Ellarion’s hands were in the air, whirling wildly, catching the ribbons of lightning and sending them right back into the bloodmages who’d cast them, tearing clean through them and leaving little more than fluttering scraps of cloth.
And with their deaths, the room was quiet again.
I slumped to my knees, panting. My eyes still scanned instinctively, searching for the next attacker, the next swinging ax, the next slashing blade. But none came. The soldiers were dead. All of them. Their bodies, so many of them, littered the floor like fallen leaves. There was so much blood, you couldn’t even see the shimmersteel, except for subtle halos of light that glowed around the corpses. The burned ashy residue of magic hung stagnant in the air, and a half-dozen tiny fires smoldered.
My body abruptly become a body again, not a weapon, and with that came a whole lot of pain. My muscles burned, and my lungs throbbed. The cut in my side stung badly, as did a gash on the back of my calf that I didn’t even remember getting. Looking around, I saw my friends were in the same shape: blood-soaked and bleeding, bruised and stumbling, but alive. Alive!
“We did it.” Ellarion staggered forward. His hands fell limp to the ground, and he looked around the room with a stunned, disbelieving smile. “We actually d—”
But he didn’t get to finish that sentence, because a jagged lance of gnarled stone burst out through his stomach.
I screamed and fell back, scrambling for a sword. Ellarion stood there, trembling, blood bubbling out through his quivering lips, and then keeled over. A figure moved behind him, emerging from the shadows, a tall gaunt man cloaked in darkness, with serpentine tendrils of smoke flaring behind him like wings made of dusk.
Archmagus Jacobi.
We all moved at once, leaping up, drawing blades, but it was too late. He’d waited the whole time for this moment, for the second when he’d have an advantage, and he moved with impossible speed and precision. His sunken black eyes darted around the room, taking us all in. His long elegant fingers whirled and contorted, as his wrists spun and his hands flared.
One of those tendrils shot at me, a striking viper, and tore through the side of my leg, and then it was like I’d been filled with ice. My leg went numb and stiff, and I crashed down to the ground. My whole body was frozen, locked, cold. I pushed as hard as I could, begged it to move, to crawl, to fight, but I just lay there, limp and useless. Lyriana flared out her palms, hurling a ball of flame his way, but Jacobi twisted a hand at it, blowing it up just an inch in front of her and sending her slamming into a wall. She bounced off it hard, hit the ground, and lay still. Syan’s zaryas whistled toward him, but he raised another hand, and they hurtled off uselessly to the side, and then he lashed her with one of those tendrils too, driving it through her arm and sending her crumbling down.
That just left Zell. Zell, who was racing across the room like a blur, Zell with a blade in each hand and death in his eyes. He ran at Jacobi’s back and leaped through the air, his nightglass swords drawn back to deliver a cutting blow. But Jacobi craned his head back to him, and cut a harsh line with a hand, and Zell froze midair, suspended like a marionette.
“Pathetic,” Jacobi sneered, and clenched his fist. Zell’s left arm jerked back and with a horrible brittle crack it shattered just between the wrist and the elbow, white bone bursting through the skin like a knife through leather. I screamed, my eyes blurry, and even though my whole body still felt frozen, I crawled forward, dragging myself by my nails. A sword. All I needed was a sword.
“Let him go,” a voice choked out. It was Ellarion, slumped against a wall, his whole front soaked red. That gnarled stone lance had caught him just below the ribs, running him clean through. He looked bad, real bad. The color had drained from his face, and his eyes were glassy and distant. With every breath, he spat blood, and his wrists lay limp by his side.
Jacobi waved a hand dismissively, sending Zell hurtling into a pillar, and then spun around to face Ellarion. “Now this…this is curious,” he said, his voice a cruel purr. With measured footsteps he paced toward Ellarion, stepping over the corpses of his soldiers. His tendrils drew back, hanging at attention, a mass of tense vipers. “At last I meet my predecessor. The great Archmagus Ellarion.” I wanted so badly to fight, to stab, to bite his worthless throat, but my body wasn’t letting me. “It’s a shame, really, what happened to you. If you weren’t so broken, you might actually have made a worthy adversary.”
“I would’ve wiped the floor with you,” Ellarion growled through bloody teeth. I don’t know what he was doing. Distracting him? Drawing him away? Just talking shit?
“A bold claim.” Jacobi cocked his narrow head to the side, and he smiled, a mean tight little smile that pissed me off like none other. But even as he talked and honed in on Ellarion, there was something happening behind him, something he didn’t notice. Two small bronze shapes lifted off the floor, slowly, carefully, rising up with a silent precision.
Ellarion’s hands.
“This is what I don’t understand.” Jacobi gestured in the air, conjuring another gnarled lance out of nothingness. “The others are all skilled fighters and mages, clearly. But you? You’re nothing. A shadow of a mage. A sad, broken wreck. Why would they possibly bring you all along?”
Even with a lance through his stomach, bleeding out on a cold floor, Ellarion laughed. His floating hands were now up above Jacobi’s shoulders, tensed, with the pointer and middle fingers extended.
The bloodmage still hadn’t noticed. “See something amusing?”
“Yeah, actually,” Ellarion replied, and his eyes blazed like the heart of the sun. “The very last asshole dumb enough to underestimate me.”
Jacobi’s eyes widened and he spun around, gasping as he realized the threat. Ellarion’s hands jerked down in an X, crossing fast, Cutting through the skin of the world with glowing light.
For one moment, nothing seemed to happen. Jacobi just stood there, rigid, back to us, arms drawn out. Then he turned around, and I saw the mess that he’d become. The Cut hadn’t taken him, not quite, but it had taken enough. It was like someone had reached down with a gi
ant spoon and scooped a big hunk out of his front. His face was gone, leaving just an oozing wet cavity in the front of his head, and most of his chest was gone, too. His body wobbled and fell back onto the ground. I was about to wonder where the rest of him had gone, and then I heard a wet splat from the far side of the room. Fair enough.
That cold numbness vanished instantly, and my body returned to me. With a gasp I jerked myself up, onto my hands and knees, feeling the rush of sensation return. Everything was tingling, pins and needles, but it didn’t matter because I could feel again. I could see the others moving, too: Syan rising to her feet, Lyriana on her knees, Zell slumped against a pillar, cradling his broken arm.
But Ellarion didn’t rise or move. He just lay there, sprawled out, his eyes struggling to focus even as a look of satisfied pride lit up his face. “Cousin!” Lyriana yelled and ran over to his side. She pressed her hands to his wound, and her Rings glowed a vibrant green. “Hey. Hey! Stay with me!”
“I’m with you,” he said, head lolling back. His hands fluttered gently to the ground, settling in repose by Jacobi’s messy corpse. “But let’s skip the whole ‘I can heal you, no you can’t’ thing, okay?” He gestured weakly with a wrist at the lance running him through. “I’m not walking away from this.”
A heavy knot tightened in my chest. I couldn’t watch. I’d been slashed and stabbed and run through with magic, but this hurt so much worse. I couldn’t lose anyone else. I couldn’t.
“It didn’t hit anything major,” Lyriana insisted, barely able to get the words out. “I can heal this. I really can.”
“Maybe. But not here. Not now.” Ellarion shifted up, and I wish he hadn’t because it made me see just how much blood he’d lost. “There’s a door behind the throne that leads to the royal chambers. There’s a flight of stairs at the end straight to the Heartstone. Miles’ll be there. I’m sure of it.” He closed his eyes. “You have to go. Finish the mission. End this war.” A hand reached down and squeezed my shoulder. Zell. I looked up at him and saw the pain in his lowered gaze, the somber look on his face.
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