by K T Munson
Ignoring her, Thea gently rolled Kirill onto his back. He was burning up. “Kirill,” she said, turning his face toward her. His eyes were closed.
Getting a good look at him, Thea gasped softly. Blue cracks in his skin were spider-webbing up his neck from under his collar. Thea’s heart clenched and she gritted her teeth.
“Fitzu!” she screamed. “Get Kirill out of here!”
From her knees, Thea spun toward the woman and lifted a stream of lava nearby. With one quick gesture, she tightly wrapped it once around the woman’s waist, pinning her arms to her sides so she couldn’t maneuver any elements. The woman screamed in rage, and some of the lava pools erupted with the sound of it.
Time. Time. Time. Thea just needed to buy Fitzu time to get Kirill to safety.
The woman struggled to escape, but Thea’s arms were stretched out far to her sides, holding the lava stream as tightly as she’d ever held her magic. She pressed her arms outward so forcefully that they trembled with the effort. She imagined the lava stream cutting the woman in half at the waist, which allowed her to keep such a firm hold.
From the corner of her eye, she saw an orange ring of fire start to burn in the stone around Kirill. As soon as Fitzu stepped into it, he crouched down, pressing his palm to Kirill’s body. A narrow stream of lava erupted from under the stone, forcing the slab they were both on to rise all the way toward the rim of the volcano. Finally, Fitzu’s magic vanished from sight, and she knew they were both safe.
With a final scream, the woman managed to touch a fingertip the stream of lava, which gave her instant control over it. She unraveled the lava current and arced it back behind her for a strike. Thea stood quickly and took up a battle stance, lighting up both her hands with fire magic, and waited.
The woman glared at her. “You’re going to pay for that,” she growled.
Thea didn’t doubt that for one instant. “Well, come on.”
Frost: Chapter Thirty-Five
Feeling dazed and exhausted, Kirill opened his eyes. The world was too bright, until a shadow leaned over him. When the sunlight stopped burning his eyes, everything came into focus and he could see Aradel’s smiling face.
“Wake up sleepyhead,” she said with that same playful smile she used to have as a child.
“I’m tired,” he said, his tongue feeling heavy. The room looked vaguely like his bedroom at their home outside of Axion. He hadn’t been there since his father died. The memories had been too painful, so he had stayed away.
“You’ve slept long enough,” she insisted, tilting her head. “Nearly the whole day through.”
He tried to stare directly at her, but the light around her was too bright. He tried to put his hand up to block it, but it didn’t seem to help. The light was everywhere, and seemed to be getting brighter.
“What happened?” he asked. Aradel’s hair seemed to shimmer. He didn’t remember it being so silvery, but nothing seemed exactly right. It was like he was grasping at smoke trying to recollect the world.
“You’ve fallen asleep, and now it is time for you to get up,” she insisted. She leaned closer to him. “Kirill, you need to get up.”
Suddenly it wasn’t Aradel’s voice speaking. It was a male, and Kirill shrunk away from it. Aradel’s eyes were suddenly very stern and harsh as she took hold of his hands. He tried to pull away, but she held fast. He stared down at their hands and watched hers shrivel and turn old in his grip. Looking up again, he saw Queen Vesna’s face.
“Wake up,” she said before giving him a sweet smile. “It isn’t your time.”
Water splashed on his face. Kirill woke up, gasping, and immediately groaned. Every inch of his body hurt and burned. Yet it was the parts he couldn’t feel that worried him more. Fitzu helped him sit up, and had to hold him up when Kirill tried to lie back down. Fitzu barely burned him. Kirill immediately knew his body temperature had to be dangerously warm for that to occur.
“We need to go,” Fitzu said as he thrust the water canteen in his hands. “Drink.”
For once he didn’t argue, and guzzled the water until every drop was consumed, and the canteen left empty. Shaking his head to get the last of the water off his hair, Kirill rested his arms on his knees. He focused on letting the water within his body expand and heal the wounds that had been caused by the steam.
When he had absorbed all the water he could, Kirill glanced around, trying to reorient himself, and saw the rim of the volcano behind him. Not trusting his legs yet, he crawled over to it and looked down. Thea was far below dodging and ducking around the strange woman’s powerful magic.
Fitzu crouched beside Kirill and shook his head. “She commanded we leave.”
A yell brought Kirill’s attention to back down below. A blast of ice hit Thea in the shoulder and sent her sprawling. She was barely able to lift a wall of lava in front of her to melt another assault from the woman’s ice magic. Clenching his teeth, Kirill began to stand. His legs wobbled a bit, but they held. It wouldn’t be long before the water he drank would reinforce him.
Kirill rolled his shoulders and cracked his neck before looking Fitzu straight in the eye. “Go tell our Queens what happened. Warn them,” he said, and pushed his damp hair back from his face to better gain his bearings.
Fitzu shook his head again and took a step forward. “She told me to take you with me.”
Kirill put his ice shield back up around him. Thea was holding her own now, but Kirill knew that she was no match for both fire and ice. She needed him.
“Get to the boats,” Kirill insisted more firmly. “I’m not leaving her alone.” He put his hand out. A circular shield-shaped piece of ice formed in his palm, and he jumped over the side, dropping back down into the tremendous heat of the volcano.
Fitzu yelled his name, but Kirill ignored him and placed the under his feet to control his flight. The smoke and steam hissed against his shield, but he barely noticed. He felt stronger now.
Focused on their battle, the two women didn’t notice as he descended. Everything was happening so quickly he could hardly process it. Thea spun out of the way of a ball of snow, while raising another wall of lava in front of her, to protect herself from a second ball of snow that Freya shot in her direction.
Kirill’s eyes widened when Freya suddenly formed a wicked spear like icicle. Just as Thea dropped her wall of lava to make another attack, the woman shot it at her.
Kirill watched, as if in slow motion, as the spear impaled Thea’s left side. The impact lifted her right off her feet and pinned her to the wall of the volcano with a loud crunch of rock and bone. Kirill stared in wide-eyed horror. Sound and sight seemed to fade from his senses at once, like a tunnel was closing in around him. All he could hear, was Thea’s sharp inhale that, to Kirill, seemed to echo around the entire volcano. All he could see, was the look of shock on her face, followed by one of agony as her eyes closed. She slowly reached up and took hold of the icicle, which was painful in itself as her skin turned to stone.
Everything snapped back to normal, and Kirill looked back at Freya. She was smiling, watching Thea struggle helplessly against the wall. The curl of the woman’s lips could have frozen fire.
As he neared the bottom, the disk beneath his feet began to break apart from the heat. He let it disintegrate and hit the ground, landing on one knee among the rocks. He hardly gave himself time to recover before he focused on the remains of the iceberg that still survived in this burning heat. Freya lifted her hands to attack Thea again, but before she could get a shot off, Kirill’s hands swept down at an angle, loosening a large section of the iceberg, and he buried her under a massive amount of snow and ice. She gave a startled cry and fell to the ground, but it was quickly muffled by the avalanche that accumulated on top of her. She wasn’t the only one who could control the iceberg.
He formed a second outer ice shield as he rushed to Thea. Her movements were already weak as she tried to pull herself free, the area around her wound was stone already. Kirill became concer
ned right away at the lack of blood on the ice piercing her.
“Kirill,” she gasped.
Reaching her, he saw blood begin to trickle down her chin. He was no healer, but every soldier knew that usually meant her lung had been pierced and was filling with blood. Fear clutched at his chest as he touched the edge of the spear turning it to water. When it splashed away, she crumpled to the ground. Kirill dropped his outer shield and thinned out the inner shield around his skin so he didn’t burn her. Grabbing her clothes in his fist, keeping his cold away from her as much as he could, Kirill lifted her and sat her up against the wall. He tugged at her collar to get a better look at her injury.
“I ordered you to go,” she panted.
Kirill could hear the thick liquid gurgling deep in her lungs. Getting impatient, he finally ripped a hole in her clothes to see the sizeable wound in her chest. It had turned to stone and it was staying stone.
He forced a playful, toothy grin on his face. “When have I ever listened to your orders?”
It appeared she was going to cry, but she laughed slightly instead. “Never.”
He gently tilted her forward to see the hole in her back that was bleeding just slightly. He knew then that he had heard right. The lack of blood from either wound meant it was all seeping into her lung. Kirill gently sat her back against the wall.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” She wheezed, then tried to take a deep breath, but failed.
Kirill’s heart sank. “Put pressure here,” he said, letting a little bit of his affection for her seep into his expression as he lifted her hand to her injury. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
Suddenly Kirill heard an angry yell from behind him. He turned to find Freya pushing herself out of the mount of snow. She crawled out and looked over at him just an instant before the snow exploded off her in every direction, and then disappeared into little puffs of steam before they could hit the ground again.
“You are really starting to annoy me.”
Her hair was now pushed back severely away from her face. Kirill stood as both fire and ice began to crackle around her. She reminded him of a cat with an arched back, one about to hiss at him. Worse, she seemed somehow familiar to him. He couldn’t place how, but he recognized her for some reason.
“You don’t have to do this,” Kirill said, and she paused.
“Fight you?” Freya asked. Her face hardened suddenly, “Oh trust me, I want to.”
“I meant, you don’t have to destroy the world,” Kirill said.
“You want me to stop?” Freya asked, astonished. “Why would I stop?”
“You’ve proven your point,” Kirill said. She lifted her hand and fire danced in her fingers. “We are no longer fighting. The Fire Nation and the Frost Nation are no longer divided. You’ve succeeded.”
Surprise flickered in her eyes and she hesitated. But then she lifted her other hand and a ball of ice formed in it. She glanced down at each as though she couldn’t decide which one to attack him with.
Normally Kirill wouldn’t have tried to reason with such an enemy. But something in his gut was compelling him to try to help this young woman, to save her somehow.
“I don’t think I’ve proven anything.” Freya’s voice was hard and bitter. “Until I’ve brought this entire world to its knees, I won’t stop. I want hope to die in every person’s heart, so they can know what it is like. So everyone knows what true hopelessness feels like.”
Kirill put his hand up and cried out desperately, “Give Queen Vesna the chance you only gave to Queen Berselis all those years ago!” The woman paused again. “Let her accept you as she accepted the Fire Nation,” he said more gently.
“All Queens are the same,” she hissed, but it sounded more angry then sure.
Abruptly Kirill realized she was holding on to her bitterness. That she was blinded by it. No matter what Kirill said or did, she wouldn’t listen, and that meant there was only one way out of this.
He shifted his body into a fighting stance, with his shield out in front of him, and he formed a sharp ice sword in his other hand.
A smirk touched Freya’s lips as her fire and frost magic started to swirl together, in and around her hands, never touching, just twisting together in a blue and orange dance.
“Finally!” she exclaimed and then shot her hands out, sending the tornado of ice and fire toward him.
Fire: Chapter Thirty-Six
With all her heart, Thea wanted to run and fight by Kirill’s side, but she couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. She closed her eyes and then opened them, trying to focus. She inhaled as deeply as she thought she could, but her lungs never fully filled with the air she so desperately needed, and thick blood came out when she exhaled. She was dying, and now Kirill was about to die with her. Which meant everyone was going to die. Well, at least she wouldn’t have to wait long to see her family again.
But no. That wasn’t right. Giving up? She never gave up!
Thea forced air into her lungs and brought her body forward onto her elbows. She then forced her legs to shift and move, until those, too, were underneath her so she could crawl.
She wouldn’t give up. She was still alive. She crawled with nothing but desperation driving her toward Kirill and the woman.
Thea watched as the blue and orange tornado rushed toward him. Lifting both hands, Kirill suddenly took control of the blue ice of the storm, and it overwhelmed the orange, sucking it into a vortex of blue. The fire of Freya’s attack was extinguished. Kirill then charged her with his shield up and his ice sword in hand. The woman lifted a wall of lava, but his sword cut right through it, forcing Freya to duck. Thea nearly grinned when he pulled it out and it was still fully intact.
She just had to get to Kirill. He couldn’t face both elements alone. He was going to need her. She didn’t know how yet, but he was going to need her. She knew it with every ounce of her being. It would be her last act in this life, saving her friend, and she was fine with that.
Crawl. Just a little further. Her arms trembled and blood drops fell steadily from her chin, lightly plinking down onto the rocks. One lung was not functioning she quickly realized. She coughed, and blood exploded from her mouth, splattering the stone in front of her.
Crawl! she commanded herself.
Gritting her teeth and gasping for air, she continued to crawl, though the edges of her vision were starting to go dark.
The woman shot fireballs at him in rapid sequence. It was so fast that Kirill was forced behind his ice shield. The constant drumming sounded like vibrations, and Thea couldn’t help but be impressed. That was very difficult magic to master. Shifting her eyes back to Kirill, she saw his outer shield start to melt.
Thea’s teeth clenched and she started panting, her shoulders moving up and down heavily with every breath. “Kirill!” she screamed as strongly as if both of her lungs were working.
From behind the shield, he met her eyes. A communication passed between them that didn’t require words. All they did was see each other’s eyes. Soldier to soldier, and friend to friend, they shared an idea without speaking a word.
Thea pushed herself onto her knees, despite every part of her body protesting, and fixed her determined glare on the scattered lava canals throughout the crater of the volcano. She concentrated on them, feeling their swirling heat as if each one was a part of her own body, like extra limbs. Panting, she began to raise her arms. It seemed like nothing happened for a moment, until the low roar of rushing liquid could be heard in the distance. Thea waited, watched.
Freya noticed the rumbling, which caused her to stop her assault on Kirill and look around, wondering where the disturbance was coming from. “What the…” Her voice trailed off when she spotted Thea. “You!” Thea’s eyes shifted toward her. “I thought I killed you already!”
Thea knew she shouldn’t try to talk—she knew she only had one lung—but she couldn’t resist. “Not yet.”
Suddenly the cavern started to brighten, forcing the
woman to look behind her. There, she saw a half-mile-high tidal wave of lava moving toward her. The woman’s jaw dropped. It wasn’t moving as fast as an actual tidal wave because Thea was in complete control of its movement.
The woman looked at Thea hatefully. “I’m fireproof, you moron!” she said.
“I know,” Thea murmured, too softly for her to hear.
The lava crashed down on top of the woman, drowning her in an ocean of molten rock. She screamed in frustration and thrashed, moving the lava with her own magic as she tried to wade her way through, back to Thea. Thea kept rolling the lava in her path until she was completely consumed by it. That’s when the sound of a rushing wind filled the volcano. Thea’s skin stiffened from the freezing cold of Kirill’s magic as he turned the entire lava ocean into a solid gray stone prison with Freya deep inside. He used so much magic that frost and icicles started to form over the rock, though they gave off steam in the extreme heat.
As soon as Thea ceased using her powers, the whole area started to spin, and she was falling to the stone. She felt her arms hit first but hardly noticed when the rest followed. It was done. She was done. It was time to go now.
“Thea!” she heard Kirill shout.
She couldn’t move. It was over. Kirill was alive and safe. He could go home. She could sleep.
She felt Kirill start to pick her up in his arms. She didn’t even feel his cold burning her as he cradled her to his chest. She vaguely wondered what he was doing. A sound came to her ears. She wasn’t sure what it was, so she listened. It was soft at first, but eventually she recognized it as Kirill’s voice. He was talking to her.
“Hold on, Thea. Hold on. Just hold on.”
Thea’s eyes started to close. It was time to rest.
“Hold on. Hold on.”
The next thing she was aware of was a rapid wind tearing at her. Her curiosity forced her to open her eyes and glance around. Her vision blurred intermittently so she couldn’t process much, only flashes of information. She was still in Kirill’s arms. She thought she detected them trembling. He had to be exhausted, too. The rock walls of the crater were speeding past her. He was lifting her out. Looking down, she saw an ice platform under his feet, and the bottom of the crater got farther and farther away. Her head lulled back, hitting his shoulder, and her eyes closed again. When she opened them next, she was gazing into the volcano once more, and noticed that the stone prison she and Kirill had created was now glowing orange. Freya was burning her way out.