Vortex Chronicles: The Complete Series

by Kova, Elise

  “What did you do?” Deneya asked.

  “I don’t know.” Vi shook her head and took another step forward. This time, there were no other pulses of magic.

  “Well, now we have some light, at least.” Fiera gave a slow turn. “It’s large enough to fit a palace in here…”

  Now that she could see properly, Vi assessed the Caverns. A pathway had been cut through the center—perhaps it had been made that way from the beginning—leading to another smaller archway. The ceiling was so high above them that it was merely a hazy blue, motes of Yargen’s magic falling toward them like snowflakes.

  “A palace of death,” Deneya muttered.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you feel it?” Deneya asked Fiera. Vi could. “This place… it’s wrong.”

  “Wrong or right… let’s set up this barrier.” Vi turned to Fiera. The faster they could get out of here, the better. Perhaps, if they moved quickly enough, they could get out of sight before the Knights arrived and there would be time yet to return Fiera to the West. Vi’s heart skipped a beat, nearly tripping her on hope.

  “Let’s go farther in.” Fiera pointed to the inner archway. “I need a smaller opening to attach the barrier to. I can’t just make it in the air and the main entrance is too large.”

  “All right,” Vi agreed, solely to buy herself time to think. She needed to protect the Caverns—to prevent people from entering entirely. If Fiera needed something to attach the barrier to, then perhaps she could use juth calt to collapse the archway? If she did that, then—

  “What’s that?” Deneya asked, taking a few hasty steps forward.

  They’d crossed into another antechamber, smaller, but the crystals were larger here. They felt older. Their power ran even deeper below the earth, to a realm beyond Vi’s perceptions.

  Deneya squeezed through the center of two massive stone doors, barely pulled open.

  “What’s in there?” Vi called.

  “I don’t know,” Deneya’s voice echoed back.

  Vi and Fiera shared a look before they proceeded up a few stone stairs and into the final chamber of the Crystal Caverns.

  Here, crystals spiraled outward from a center point. They were embedded into the stone and glowed faintly, a dull thrum of power brightening and dulling with every step Vi took around the perimeter. The stones at the edge of the area were three times the size of her, brought to wickedly sharp tips.

  She walked to the center of the room, crouching down and running her fingertips over the ground where all the magic seemed to pool together. Deep below the stone, encased in a place that was only partly anchored in this world, was an evil she knew by name. Vi slowly stood, backing away from that deep and rumbling pulse that made her tremble.

  “The doors will do,” she declared. “This is the source of it all. This is where the true power lies.” She looked to Deneya. “This is where Raspian is trapped and where no man must reach.”

  “Raspian?” Fiera repeated, understandably confused.

  “A dark god,” Vi answered, starting for the doors once more. She didn’t want to linger longer than necessary. It felt as if any moment the ground would crack and Raspian would reach through the mantle of the earth to consume her and all of Yargen’s power whole. “The one thing we must ensure is never set free.”

  Fiera narrowed her eyes slightly at her. Out of everything, this was what made her skeptical. Vi finally found the limits of what Fiera’s mind was willing to accept.

  “Let’s close the doors to this room and seal them.” Vi wondered if the doors had been sealed once before. Perhaps King Jadar had been the one to find a way to open them with his captive Windwalkers. “Denja, help me?”

  “What about the other crystals? Those out here?”

  “I think… the Crystal Caverns were originally just this room and, over time, the magic spread to take over the whole cave,” Vi mused. “The crystals are older and older the further we go back. But the crux of it all is here. This is what we have to protect.”

  Back in the second antechamber, Vi and Deneya faced the doors.

  “Kot, at the same time, then?” Deneya asked.

  Vi nodded.

  Together, they uttered, “Kot sidee.” It felt as though someone pulled a rope through her chest as the magic came toward her. Vi took a step backward, watching her glyph crash against the other side of the door in tandem with Deneya’s. The heavy stone groaned loudly, and closed with a heavy thud.

  “Will this work for your barrier?” Vi asked Fiera.

  The woman was in a daze, staring blankly at the room they’d just been in. She took a step forward and, for one second, Vi thought she was about to ask them to open it once more. Vi saw the same hunger in her eyes that she’d seen in Tiberus: hunger for power.

  “Can you make a barrier over the doors?” Vi asked again, gently resting her hand on Fiera’s shoulder.

  “Wh—oh, yes, I think I can.” Fiera blinked several times, as though the world was coming back into focus.

  “Show me how to do it.”

  “I usually have the sword for it…” Fiera started uncertainly. After they’d sprinted across half of the continent, now was not the time to hesitate.

  “There are a lot of crystals here. Perhaps you can show me the motions using the magic of those instead.” Vi encouraged her to continue.

  “With the sword, I imagined the power imbuing the stone the Groundbreakers had built. It knotted with their magic and reinforced it. As though the sword was the pin holding every magical chain together.”

  Vi could imagine it. But imagining something and putting it to practice were two very different things. And there were obvious gaps in Fiera’s summary.

  “How did you do it?” Vi pressed.

  “It’s hard to explain. Magic… appeared in my mind. Something I can’t make sense of—like a Crone speaking in tongues. But the sword was what helped me make sense of it all.”

  Crossing over, Vi took the woman’s hand in hers, giving it a squeeze.

  “The sword isn’t here now. But I am, and I will help you,” Vi vowed. “I know this magic, too. In a different way from you. But together, we can do this.”

  Fiera opened her mouth in hesitation, then gave a small nod, abandoning any protest.

  Together, they strode up to the door, standing at its right side. Fiera timidly rested her hand on one of the large crystals. Vi mirrored the motion, closing her eyes, and allowing herself to feel the magic within.

  “Come to me,” Fiera whispered, her voice thin and almost afraid. “Mother, come to me.”

  Vi tried to feel the magic seeping up from her marrow as she’d practiced, meeting the crystal under her palm. She drew on the crystal, allowing it to fill her, allowing it to be a catalyst. Yargen was within her. If Fiera had faith in the goddess, then so would Vi. She would entrust her mind and her actions into Yargen’s hands.

  The stone drew her closer and Vi breathed, “Thrumsana,” her lips nearly touching the smooth crystal as though she had been subconsciously about to kiss it.

  Magic flooded her. It swelled up from the crystal and ripped through her. Vi was helpless to the currents and allowed herself to be pulled along them. There was sound, but not of the same sort the first time she’d used the word. This was not the chaos that had assaulted Taavin.

  A thrumming disturbed her thoughts. Vi opened her eyes once more to find Fiera drawing lines of flame along the door. But rather than burning orange, they burned blue.

  “Fiera…” Vi whispered in awe.

  The woman held out her left pinkie, swirling it through the air, as though she were a spinner drawing magic onto the spool. With the index finger of her right hand, she drew across the door. Lines and circles, interconnecting. The flames burned low and bright, lingering long after she finished them.

  Vi quickly stepped around to Fiera’s other side. She grabbed one crystal with her left hand and took Fiera’s magic spinning hand with her right. Fiera looked at her a moment, her t
rance-like state startled.

  “Keep going,” Vi encouraged. “Let me be a catalyst for you.”

  Fiera nodded and then turned back to the door as though she was facing off against a great opponent. She took a deep breath, and threw herself back into her countless lines of flame. Vi drew out the crystal’s powers just as she had practiced all those nights with the sword. But when Vi had extracted the crystal’s magic before, she hadn’t known what to do with it. Fiera did. So she funneled the magic through her and into Fiera.

  The woman’s flames began to harden, condensing into crystal. Fiera worked faster—every motion more decisive, every line wrought with fierce determination.

  She slumped, nearly falling back. Vi caught her only because she’d already been holding the woman’s hand.

  “I’m fine,” Fiera said before Vi could ask. “I must finish this… I must.”

  Fiera continued with her determined fervor. Blue fire illuminated the room as much as crystals did. But every wild motion of Fiera’s hand seemed to throw her off-balance. Her cheeks were gaunt, her eyes dull.

  “Fiera, stop this,” Vi whispered.

  “What you said… it told me, I have to finish this. I heard it. I heard what must be done.”

  Thrumsana… Taavin had told her never to use a word of power unless she fully understood what it did. This was the second time she’d used it on instinct. Just like the first, someone was suffering for her carelessness, trapped by the magic thrumsana unleashed.

  “Fiera—”

  “It’s nearly finished.”

  “Vi,” Deneya gasped. Her shock was so apparent that she didn’t even think to use the name Yullia in front of Fiera. “It’s a glyph. It’s a word of Yargen.”

  Fiera pressed her palm into the center of the flames. Everything erupted at once. Fiera was thrown back, Vi with her. They tumbled and Deneya rushed forward, catching them both on an arm and easing their fall.

  Vi looked from Fiera, slumped in Deneya’s arm, body limp and eyes closed, to the symbol on the door.

  Just like with Sehra’s book, sounds filled her ears. The fire crystalized, cementing itself as fragile crystals on the door. In it, Vi saw a glyph of Yargen. A word that Vi had never heard or seen before.

  “Rohko,” Vi breathed.

  The chorus in her mind snapped into harmony. Everything came together at once as the thin crystal lines Fiera had made spiderwebbed out, growing as though time was progressing at twice its normal speed.

  In less than a minute, the doors were covered by faintly glowing stone. And the innermost chamber of the Crystal Caverns—Raspian’s tomb—was sealed.

  Chapter Thirty

  “Fiera, Fiera,” Vi said, shaking the woman. Deneya had laid her down carefully on the walkway, murmuring halleth over her again and again.

  “There’s something strange about her.” Deneya’s head jerked up, her eyes worried. “I can’t describe it. Her magic—Yargen’s magic… There’s something in her now, something that wasn’t there before.”

  “Crystal taint,” Vi whispered in knowing horror. “Because their powers are fractured, the affinities on this continent can be tainted by Yargen’s magic. She’d avoided it with the sword now and I dared to think…” Vi cursed under her breath. She’d been the one to pump Fiera’s body with power from the crystals. “I don’t have time to explain it properly—we just have to get her out of here. She’ll be fine if we can get her away from the crystals.”

  “Then let’s go.” Deneya shifted and slid her arms underneath Fiera, lifting the woman with ease.

  “Are all elfin so unnaturally strong?” Vi asked. She’d seen Deneya carry Fiera like that to leave the castle. The woman didn’t even grunt with the exertion. And Fiera was no small woman.

  “I make it a point to train regularly.” Deneya gave her a smug grin, then turned her head further, looking back at the door that was now sealed. “What happened? And that word you used, it made her create the glyph in flame…”

  “It’s one Yargen gave me,” Vi affirmed.

  “What does it do?”

  “Excellent question…” Vi reflected once more on the past two times she’d used it as they walked through the archway and back into the main chamber of the Crystal Caverns. “I think it awakens some kind of knowledge or awareness in someone?”

  “Like samasha to a Lightspinner just beginning?”

  “Perhaps something like that.” It felt like a lifetime ago that Vi had samasha used on her and she had to work to remember what Taavin had said the word meant. “But for more than just the words of Yargen. I think to some greater truth or purpose.”

  “I’m surprised Taavin hasn’t told you not to use words until you’re certain of what they mean. In this time, that’s a standard warning from the Voice.”

  “Oh, he did… But perhaps Yargen gave me that one because of my recklessness.” Vi wondered what Taavin would think when she told him of how the word had been used again. After all she’d done, Vi doubted he’d be surprised.

  Movement at the entrance of the cave caught Vi’s eye. In the time it took for her to look, the archer had already loosed his arrow. She opened her mouth, but no sound came. The projectile moved faster than thought, faster than she could react.

  For those brief moments, they’d felt victorious. The world had been hopeful. And Vi had almost dared to feel safe.

  The arrow lodged itself through Fiera’s neck and into Deneya’s shoulder. Deneya dropped to her knees with a shout. Vi stared at the crimson tide pouring from them both.

  So much blood. How did Fiera still have blood left to bleed? The macabre thought was the only one Vi could wrap her head around.

  “Vi!” Deneya snarled, snapping off the fletching of the arrow and sliding Fiera off of it. The woman was limp on the ground, as dead as Zira had been.

  Halleth. Her mind placed the word on her tongue. But Vi was silent. There was no word to bring back the dead.

  Vi slowly lifted her gaze. The world was fuzzy. The haze of the crystals had never been so bright or thick. She felt drunk, and everything seemed to have a nauseating tilt. Her motions and thoughts had a sluggish delay.

  She saw the men running toward them. The archer nocking another arrow.

  “Juth calt,” the words slipped through someone else’s lips. They couldn’t be hers. Everything had gone numb. The archer seized and fell. Vi wrought her wrath next on the man running through the opening of the cave. Again, she repeated, “juth calt.”

  Kill them all.

  Clearly that was the simplest solution. She should’ve done it from the start. Holding back was a fool’s decision.

  She was the agent of the goddess, a traveler between worlds. What good was humanity to her now?

  The Knights of Jadar had been an enemy of her family. In every world, they rallied against Solaris. In every world, they resulted in the death of Vi’s grandmother and left her father motherless. It had been her vision to break that cycle.

  A vision that was now tunneled.

  “Juth calt.” Another body fell, and fire exploded in front of her face.

  Vi was tackled off to the side, a heavy body on top of her. “Wein,” she heard Deneya say in her ear. Magic engulfed them and another burst of flame charred the woman’s barrier but left her unharmed.

  “Get off of me,” Vi demanded. “Get off of me!” she roared. “I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them all!”

  Vi pushed on the stump of the arrow, still in Deneya’s shoulder. The woman howled and reared back. Vi launched to her feet.

  “Keep her at bay!” Twintle shouted and more flames erupted around Vi.

  “Do you think you can hurt me with your fractured magic?” Vi asked as she stepped through the fire, emerging on the other side. “I am part goddess. What do you think your flames will do?”

  A Waterrunner was the response to her question as ice formed around her feet. Vi tugged against it, allowing her spark to roar, echoing the chaos in her mind. The ice turned to vapor as Vi gla
red at Twintle.

  “I should’ve done this months ago,” she snarled. “Juth calt.”

  His body limply meeting the floor was the sweetest sound she’d heard in ages.

  “Watch out! Wein!” Deneya shouted, stepping in front of Vi, her body acting as a shield. An arrow bounced harmlessly off of the protective barrier her word of power formed over Deneya’s skin. “There’s too many of them, we have to get out of here.”

  “We can take them.” Vi motioned to the bodies on the ground. With two words, she’d killed four men. “They’re nothing compared to us.”

  “I will not twist Yargen’s words in that way.” Deneya grabbed her wrist. “How you are using juth is the work of elfin’ra.”

  “It’s the work of the Champion,” Vi countered.

  “What sorcery is this?” a voice echoed from within the antechamber, distracting them both. He very clearly wasn’t talking about their magic. “It won’t open.” Vi rushed toward the center aisle once more, looking back at the Knights who fought against the barrier of crystal that covered the doors.

  They slammed the sword of Jadar against it again and again. But the barrier held. Vi reached out for one of the pointed crystals protruding from the floor at her side. She forced her power into the stone, exerting her will and feeling it rush from crystal to crystal, maintaining the barrier at the door. The sword wasn’t even chipping it. The fools had no idea how to wield the power of Yargen.

  “What have you done?” the nameless Knight shouted at her.

  Vi merely smiled. She smiled like a madman, baring her teeth, even as an arrow punctured her arm that was grabbing the crystal.

  “Flee,” Deneya yelled at them, her voice echoing off the high rooftop of the Caverns. “Run, as quickly as you can. Hide back under the rock you crawled from and never show your face again. Fiera’s blood lives on and will guard these Caverns until the end of time.”