Crystal Caged (Air Awakens: Vortex Chronicles Book 5)

by Elise Kova

  “Well, he must be smart and not stupid, because I think you’re advanced in your magic, too.”

  “You do?” Arwin slowly lifted her gaze to meet Vi’s.

  “I do. Which is why I want you to try again.”

  Arwin did as Vi bid. Time and again. That day, the next day, and in the coming weeks.

  The girl worked tirelessly for three months as Vi watched silently.

  She felt every pulse of magic, absorbing it into her as she had the power of the scythe. Cyphers of sorcery had been given to her in a tongue she couldn’t read but somehow understood. Vi saw the glyphs behind her eyelids as she slept. She felt the knowledge they imparted to her in every action.

  Day after day, that knowledge assured her of one thing: You can do this.

  At first Vi thought the resounding confidence related to Arwin, and being patient enough to see the crown made. But day by day that theory waned. Her fingers began to itch as she watched Arwin work. Her magic reached out between Arwin’s pulses. Vi learned the secrets of the shift not through direct teaching, but by watching one day after the next, until, finally…

  “Do it again, but slower.”

  “What?” Arwin’s head jerked up from the crown she held. It was the fourth one Deneya had made. The girl had succeeded in changing the crown from steel to a faint blue glass.

  “Slower, this time,” Vi said again.

  “All right.” Arwin was clearly uncertain, but she wrapped her fingers around the crown anyway. At the first pulse of magic, Vi reached across the table and wrapped her hands around Arwin’s. “Wha—”

  “Keep going,” she said without taking her eyes off the crown.

  Another pulse of magic.

  The first pulse was always connecting with the item. The second was learning it, inside and out. Vi understood what Arwin was doing in the same way she’d come to understand the crystals.

  When she manipulated Yargen’s magic, she first collected the power, learning it. Then, she envisioned what she wanted to be made. The shift was taking the raw essence of something, unraveling it, and then tightening it back in a new shape.

  The thought brought them to the third pulse—unraveling.

  Vi watched with keen eyes as the crown unraveled between fast pulses of magic. They were too quick for normal eyes to see. But Vi’s eyes weren’t normal. They were goddess-given, forged by Yargen between worlds.

  Fourth pulse—remaking.

  She tightened her fingers over Arwin’s and pushed her magic through the girl. Vi’s brows knotted with focus. The blue glass hardened further and reshaped slightly. When they pulled their hands away, there was a nearly identical replica of the crown Vi had made in shape. All it lacked was the glow and swirl of magic crystals held.

  “You just…” Arwin pushed her chair away from the table, but didn’t seem to trust herself to stand. “You’re a human. You can’t use the shift.”

  “I am the Champion, and magic is magic,” Vi said with unfounded confidence. “If it doesn’t obliterate, it is of Yargen. And it’s merely a matter of learning how to use a new set of powers.”

  Arwin bit her lip, clearly debating the accuracy of this. Vi couldn’t blame her. She knew what Taavin had said about the morphi and how their power was viewed as deriving from Raspian.

  Mortals and their misinformation. Vi’s heart ached at the sentiment.

  “Will you teach me?” Vi said.

  “Teach you what?”

  “Everything you know about the shift.”

  Arwin stared at her and gripped her seat with white knuckles. Vi feared if the girl let her chair go, she might topple over.

  Despite her rigidity, Arwin managed a nod.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Time passed effortlessly.

  Vi took her young tutor’s lessons on the shift to heart. She studied Arwin’s hand motions and listened intently to her words. But what the girl didn’t say was the best teacher. Vi felt every pulse, every pull and tug on the threads of magic and life that made up each and every object within the world.

  Taavin had said Yargen’s magic was life. But it was so much more. Yargen’s magic was existence itself. It was the world, cut from the chaos that Raspian sought to reap. Every mortal magic was a different way to understand and interact with the raw essence of life itself.

  Her understanding helped Vi learn the shift—something she was certain she couldn’t have done a world away, or even in this world, a few years ago. But that understanding didn’t replace time, patience, and practice.

  At first, she helped Arwin adjust the shift. Then, the girl began teaching Vi how to do it on her own. How to draw out the power and change an object from what it was to what it could be.

  The weeks pulsed into months without Vi so much as realizing.

  “How much longer do you think it will take?” Taavin asked her from where he sat on the couch in the center of the room. A common space was located between their room and Deneya’s in the guest wing they occupied.

  “Not much longer.” Vi leaned against the arm of one of the chairs opposite. She’d only just returned from working with Arwin and could still feel the magic under her hands. “I’m nearly there.”

  “Good, we’ll need to return to the Dark Isle.”

  “Not before Deneya has uncovered a link to Adela.”

  “We don’t need Adela to get back.” Vi heard the frown in his voice before she even turned to look at him. “We have a vessel.”

  “It’s been a year. Do you really think it’s still in the cove where we left it?” Vi asked with an arch of her eyebrows. Then, before he could speak, “Even if it is, do you think it’ll be seaworthy?”

  “I don’t like the idea of working with Adela.”

  “I know you don’t.” Vi sighed, turning away. She grew more and more weary of this conversation. “But we’ll need the strength and speed of her ship to get the flame… and to get to the isle of the elfin’ra.”

  “That’s if—”

  “It’s happening at sunset,” Deneya interrupted, barging in. “Sorry to interrupt, I know you both usually have your date this evening but—”

  “But it’s important.” Vi straightened away from the chair. “Tell me what you’ve learned.”

  “Fallor will be meeting with an actual member of Adela’s crew at sunset on the southwest ridge just outside of the forest.”

  Vi and Taavin shared a look. They’d been tracking Fallor’s movements in secret. Messages had moved in and out of the city through merchants Fallor was working with as a page in the city guard. The Stormfrost had been spotted not far from Toris—confirmed through scouting done by Noct’s eldest daughter.

  “I’ll go ahead and let you both know how it goes.” Vi held up her right hand. She wore a silver ring on her middle finger that matched an identical one on Deneya’s hand. The woman had given the token to Vi as a gift, imprinted with her communication mark should they ever be separated.

  “You’ll go alone?” Taavin was on his feet as well.

  “There’s no way I’ll be able to get on the Stormfrost if all three of us go together. Adela needs to feel confident that she can overpower me.”

  “What if something goes wrong and she actually does overpower you?”

  “She won’t.” Vi gave him an assured smile.

  “You’ve seen Vi in the training grounds,” Deneya said in her defense. “She can handle herself better than any of us… And has three times the strength,” she mumbled the last part.

  “This is Adela we’re talking about.” Taavin’s face was as stormy as the sea he’d pulled her from all those years ago. Vi stepped over to him and grabbed his shoulder gently. “I do trust you, you know that, right? But I—”

  “Worry,” Vi finished for him with a small smile. “I worry for you too, more than you can know.”

  “Not to break up the moment, but if you’re going to go, you should go now.”

  “I know.” Vi gave a solemn nod to Deneya. “You two should pack
up while I’m gone. We’ll be leaving this place once I get Adela to agree to help us.”

  “Leaving?” Taavin repeated with surprise. “I thought you said you were nearly there with the crown. We can’t leave until we have a replica.”

  “No, I just said I was nearly there. Nothing about the crown.” She gave him a somewhat sheepish grin. “We have the replica. It’s in the workshop.”

  “What?”

  Deneya followed her into the hall. “If you’ve had the replica this whole time—”

  “I haven’t had it the whole time,” Vi interjected. “Just for the past ten weeks or so.”

  “Fine. If you’ve had the replica for the past ten weeks,” Deneya rephrased her words with frustration, “what have you been working on?”

  “I’ll show you later,” Vi called over her shoulder with a grin. “Follow behind me and I’ll see you both on the Stormfrost.”

  Down and out the estate, Vi moved quickly in the twilight. She knew Fallor’s rounds, likely better than he knew them himself. She’d long since mapped out the young man’s movements just like she had mapped out the whole city that was the Twilight Kingdom. Even when he thought he was wandering at random to lose any people who might be tracking him, he wandered in consistent circles.

  When she found him, he was finishing up a conversation with a merchant. Vi couldn’t hear what they said, but the merchant gave him a token and disappeared into the shadows of an alleyway.

  Vi ignored the merchant, focusing only on Fallor as he walked up the quiet residential street. He headed right, and Vi followed in parallel through an alley. She twisted between rubbish bins and around opening doors to step back out onto the main street.

  Fallor had pulled his hood. He was trying to lose himself among the crowd. But Vi followed twenty paces behind easily. He looked around nervously from time to time, and Vi would side step—always just beyond the edge of his periphery. He’d recognize her if he got a good look. Fallor had seen her and Arwin working together enough times.

  So she lingered at the edge of the city, leaning in a doorway, watching as he walked up the rise to the gateway of the kingdom. The moment Fallor passed through the swirling, fog-like magic, Vi sprinted up behind him.

  “Champion, would you—” Ruie attempted to say as she passed. The young woman was on guard duty for the night.

  “No time.” Vi gave her a short wave and plunged herself into the haze that surrounded the Twilight Kingdom.

  She pushed magic out around her in a quick pulse. It cocooned and stabilized her in the between space. Another pulse of magic, and Vi felt her powers running like a bridge between the city where she had been, and the forest where she was headed. With a third pulse, Vi pushed herself along the pathway.

  Reemerging in the real world outside of the Twilight Kingdom left her off-balance. Pinwheeling her arms, Vi grabbed onto a tree. It wasn’t exactly a smooth landing, but it worked.

  It worked.

  A grin spread across her face as she sprinted through the trees. When the muscles of her legs began to grow tired, she felt a barely-perceptible shift. Yargen’s magic was in her bones. It was her flesh. The essence of the goddess was woven within her just as the power of the scythe was.

  The trees were a blur and Vi was hardly breathless. She focused solely on heading to the southwest ridge as Deneya described. Vi skidded to a stop before she lurched through the treeline just east of Toris. Pressing herself against one of the tall trees, she crouched low, the leaves of the forest floor settling around her.

  Vi squinted into the setting sun, focusing on the woman and young man speaking at the crest of one of the rolling hills that cascaded down to the humble fishing town. The woman sat on a rock, talking as much with her hands as her mouth, though Vi couldn’t make out the words. The sun glistened off the jewelry she wore, sparking in the light. Two large hoops pulled down her pointed ears. They were no doubt communication tokens, if the Adela of this world was anything like the Adela of Vi’s. The woman removed an earring and passed it to Fallor.

  Vi scanned the surrounding hills.

  The lone woman was high up—visible for a wide distance. Others were watching her, they had to be. But wherever her fellow pirates were hiding, Vi couldn’t see them.

  Fallor talked with her for about an hour. At the end of their conversation, he tried to pass the token back to the pirate, but she refused with a sickeningly sweet smile. Anger flashed across Vi’s chest, bouncing between her ribs, making her breath hot. But she promptly squelched the feeling. This wasn’t her fight. She wasn’t here to help him.

  She was here to get to Adela.

  Yet… Vi saw someone else in Fallor. A young Jayme, impressionable and filled with hurt that Adela would fan into rage.

  Fallor took to the skies with a pulse of magic. The woman watched the eagle, ignorant that someone else was watching her. Vi slid up the tree in tandem.

  The pirate wasn’t a morphi, which meant she had to walk back to Adela. That meant there was a skiff somewhere nearby. Vi stepped from the trees and at the same time said, “Loft dorh.”

  Immobilize.

  The glyph that sparked at the tip of her pointed finger was no longer the bright white-yellow it had been. Now it was tinted with blue on the edges, glowing nearly the same color as crystals. Vi felt a surge of magic at her left. She could almost hear the inhale of a man emerging from his hiding place.

  “Juth mariy.” An audible crack filled the air as she destroyed the Lightspinner’s magic. There was one other pirate, at least. Vi began running toward the woman she had under her command.

  She remembered holding Fallor with loft dorh. It had been a nearly impossible act. She’d keenly felt his every struggle against her magic tethers. But her grip now was so tight, the only thing Vi could feel was the woman’s panicked heartbeat under her grip.

  A pulse of magic shot across the field.

  The first pirate was a Lightspinner. The other was a morphi. Adela was nothing if not prepared.

  Vi stopped her forward momentum, bracing herself as the morphi’s magic disruption washed over her. She focused on her glyphs. They wavered; the woman moved for a second as Vi’s control flickered. The pirate collapsed with a cry, but was then held in stasis again as Vi’s glyph sustained the shift.

  Now, it was Vi’s heart that was racing. Her left hand burned with power from the glyph. Her bones singed against her muscles. She could feel Yargen within her, seeking release, seeking to be whole again, as Vi drew on the goddess’s essence.

  “Get away from her!” a man shouted.

  Vi didn’t give him a chance to say anything else, levying another “Juth mariy” in reply. There was another pulse of magic, and Vi’s glyphs nearly flickered out of existence. But they held enough for her to make it to the kneeling woman.

  Ruthlessly, Vi grabbed the woman’s hooped ear and jerked her face forward. Loft dorh faded. The woman was held in total shock of Vi standing over her. To the pirate’s eyes, Vi was a human who wielded Lightspinning that couldn’t be broken by the shift.

  “Narro hath,” Vi uttered, almost with a sinister note.

  She felt the magic spring to life, her suspicions confirmed. All their waiting and watching had paid off. Vi had finally tracked down the elusive pirate Adela.

  No, more than that, she had initiated a direct communication with her.

  “Adela,” Vi said sweetly, feeling the magic pull taut. “I have your crew. And while I know you don’t care all that much for their lives, I will tell you that I have something much, much better. Something that will make you rich beyond compare. Something that will ensure your name is uttered in fear and wonder by every child for thousands of years to come.

  “Let me on Stormfrost to parlay with you, and you’ll know what it is.”

  Silence. Vi didn’t even hear the wind moving over the grasses or the other pirates readying their next attacks as she waited.

  “And who are you?” Adela’s chilling voice was recognizable anywh
ere. Vi hated that it was as known to her as her own mother’s.

  “Yargen’s Champion.” Vi smirked. “The one who broke your magic in Oparium.” Another pause. The other pirates stilled, some form of communication happening on the side. “Well? Don’t test my patience, pirate queen.”

  “You intrigue me, Champion. Come aboard, if you dare.”

  Vi released the woman’s face and her glyph vanished. The pirate collapsed at her feet, gasping for air and scrambling away. Vi looked down at her, magic surging from a font that would never run dry. It filled her to the point of being overwhelming.

  “Take me to Adela, and you may live.”

  Chapter Twenty

  A surreal sense of familiarity crept up on Vi as she stepped foot on the Stormfrost for a second time that felt like the hundredth. Much like the first time in her own world, the crew had gathered on the main deck. Adela was among them, identical to how Vi had first seen her, down to her icy cane.

  Vi stood, motionless. The crew around her rigidly maintained their positions. They were the string of an invisible bow that Adela held in her frigid grip. One word, and they would lunge to strike clean through her heart.

  Adela, for her part, wore a slightly amused smile. She stared at Vi and Vi at her. They waited each other out in the stillness, waited to see who gave first.

  Vi knew it wouldn’t be her. Time was one of the many things she had on her side. Time had made her very patient.

  “You claim to be the one who broke my magic in Oparium.” Adela’s tone and look told Vi that she sincerely doubted that fact. “I thought the claim insanity. Perhaps just as much as your claim of being Yargen’s Champion returned. Or maybe the real insanity is you willingly coming to the Stormfrost like a sheep to slaughter.”

  Adela smirked and the flash of blades being drawn caught Vi’s eye. The crew looked at her like a prime cut of meat.

  “I did not come here for slaughter,” Vi said calmly. “I came to strike a deal with you.”

  “Yes, so you claim. Get to the striking, girl.”

  Vi was discovering one of the greatest annoyances of her current state was perpetually looking like she was eighteen. “Not among your crew.”