Shattering Earth: An Urban Fantasy Adventure (Magic of Nasci Book 4)

by DM Fike

  As my boots hit the other side, a sharp wind kicked up sand. It stung my eyes, and I spit particles out of my mouth. Lumbering over the top of the first ridge, I took in 180 degrees of dunes. I fully expected to find at least a few vehicles spinning around, enjoying an early June jaunt.

  But the dunes were empty. Straining my ears, I could no longer hear any engines buzzing. The ominous dark clouds on the horizon indicated why. A storm brewed above the ocean, heading this way.

  “Great,” I muttered. All I needed was to waste air and water pith keeping myself dry as I stumbled about the dunes looking for someone who might not even be here.

  I strode halfway across the next dune toward a far line of trees when the sand suddenly shifted beneath my feet. My left foot sank up to the ankle. At first, I wrote it off as a fluke, but when I took two more steps and the same thing happened on my right, it aroused my suspicion. Freeing my leg, I crouched down on one knee and shoved a palm into the sand.

  That’s when I really felt the vibrations. They were faint but steady, rippling underneath the ground in mini-waves. I determined that they originated past the grove and glanced in that direction.

  An explosion nearly knocked me over.

  A burst of sand shot upward, tens of feet taller than the stubby trees themselves, creating a fan-like plume in the sky. Sand rained down on me like glitter, embedding in my hair. The tremors increased, no longer subtle, creating visible sand waves as the shock rippled outward.

  I dashed forward, palms extended to absorb as much air pith as I could before facing whatever had detonated the sand. But I knew, even as I plowed up the slippery slope and emerged on the other side, that Rafe would be there.

  I was not disappointed.

  Rafe stood poised over the apex of a small hill, arms outstretched like a conductor leading an orchestra. His hands twirled in a complex sigil pattern. The dune itself swarmed to build a giant humanoid figure with clear limbs but no hands or feet. The last thing to appear was its empty eyes and mouth, chasms of shadow created by black particles.

  Rafe had created a sand golem.

  “Rafe!” I cried.

  Startled, Rafe turned to face me. Even though he had become as pale as sea foam, he flashed a triumphant smile.

  “Ina!” he greeted. “Despite the odds, I knew you would come.”

  Next to him, the golem hunched its shoulders and grimaced as if to roar, but only a high-pitched scraping sound emitted from its throat. It made my skin crawl.

  I took a step back from both of them. “Rafe,” I swallowed. “What have you done?”

  “I’m aiding Nasci,” he rasped. “Can’t you see?”

  I threw a hand up at the hulking sand demon. “But that’s a golem!”

  “Yes, the last golem. And it just needs one more touch before it’s complete. You.”

  Rafe drew an unfamiliar sigil, and the sand golem lurched forward, closing the distance between us in two long strides. I barely had time to turn around before it caught me.

  The golem’s body engulfed mine. Gasping in surprise, I inhaled dust into my nostrils and lungs. My lungs buckled as I suffocated. I struggled to move my fingers, but they were trapped in sand. Every slight movement of my muscles only confined me further. I was trapped inside a living prison that would kill me if I couldn’t find a way out.

  Without the ability to draw sigils, I only had one maneuver left to me: absorption. I opened up my pithways, raking in the golem’s awful earth pith. Like the gyascutus, it clogged my veins with a glue-like sludge. With Rafe’s bracelet at my elbow, though, I could at least reroute it into the earth charm. It hurt, but I wouldn’t die.

  I had no idea if what I was doing had any effect on the golem, and the lack of oxygen didn’t help me think clearly. Still, I soldiered on, my mind threatening to slip out of consciousness as I absorbed earth pith. The world blinked in and out of existence.

  Then, right before I passed out for good, a fresh breeze hit my face. I gulped air and pushed my torso toward its cool relief. The sand that had encased my face trickled away harmlessly. I emerged out of the golem’s sand, continuing to fill the charm until the last vestiges of its awful pith vanished.

  It disappeared with a pop. Then I collapsed.

  Croaking like a frog and sand stuck in my eyelashes, a vague figure bent over me. It yanked at my arm. The bracelet at my elbow snapped off. I rolled over flat onto my back as the shape stood back up, holding a broken chain in its hand.

  Rafe had retrieved his now full earth charm.

  He latched his new prize on a simple chain around his neck. The other three charms that hung there exuded pith from the previous golems I’d defeated.

  “You did it, Ina,” Rafe breathed in awe.

  “Did what?” I spat out sand.

  “You cleansed all the vaettur pith for me.” He lovingly rubbed each metal slat hanging from his neck as if sampling precious jewels. “My necklace holds more pith than anything even Sipho could forge.”

  Weak from the fight with the golem, my muscles nevertheless seized up tight at the mention of my forger friend. “How do you know Sipho’s name?”

  “The same way I know about everything else, Ina. The breaches. The golems. Shepherd life. I’ve walked your path, Ina. It was once my purpose too.”

  That’s when my half-witted brain finally made the connection. Rafe must be a bound shepherd. He knew intimate details not only of shepherds in general but the Talol Wilds in particular.

  “You’re Guntram’s former eyas,” I breathed.

  Rafe’s face contorted in rage at the mention of my augur. “He’s not in charge of me anymore!”

  Rafe drew a set of square sigils so fast that it wasn’t until the sand opened up beneath me that I recognized them as the same ones Guntram used during our earth prison training. Flailing, I fell, trapped in a sand dune. Only my shoulders and neck remained above the surface. My fingers were useless, unable to move.

  “Let me out!” I yelled up at him. “You murderer!”

  Rafe’s sneakers came so close to my face that I thought he might kick me. But he squatted down over me instead. “And why do you care about people so much, Ina? All they do is destroy Nasci’s creatures and suck away her lifeblood. And for what? Throwaway garbage and toys that they then use to kill other creatures? They must be stopped.”

  “Even by absorbing pith from Letum?”

  “If that’s the only way.” Rafe gave a mirthless chuckle. “I appreciate the irony, I really do. By closing off Nasci’s pithways, Guntram left me no choice but to seek out her natural enemy. Letum’s pith harms me, but it’s my only option for protecting her. And sadly, tracking down vaetturs is time consuming at best. So, I decided to save myself the trouble. I found a way to create my own portals.”

  My eyes bulged at this confession. “You made all those weirdo breaches?”

  “Not everything I told you was a lie. Humans really do create thin walls between this world and Letum’s with their pollution, their deforestation, their ‘progress.’” He lifted his hands in sarcastic air quotes for that last bit. “And when that happens, it only takes someone with my abilities a bit of vaettur pith to open the pathway for Letum’s base creatures. Then I can suck the new vaettur victim for precious pith.”

  “You mean, you’d already drained the vaetturs we’ve been fighting of pith? The khalkotauroi, the boobrie…”

  “…the afanc, and the gyascutus,” he finished. “Yes, of course, you stupid girl. Why else would they act so strangely?”

  “Then you should have kept milking them.” I hated how right he was about my naiveté. “Why have me run around reabsorbing your vile little golems?”

  “Because you are a cleanser of pith, dear shepherd! Vaettur pith hurts like a living hell, but filtering it through a shepherd like you strengthens it.” He tugged at the necklace around his throat. “The charms you filled for me are now neither Nasci’s nor Letum’s energy but something new. Not only does this pith mixture cause me a fractio
n of the harm, it’s also ten times as powerful as one of Sipho’s little toy charms. You’ve given me vast access to earth, fire, air, and water in a highly concentrated form.”

  My face drained of color. “No.”

  “Oh yes.” I couldn’t believe I’d ever found Rafe handsome. Ugly hate was etched in his every smirk. “With this pith, I can defeat the other shepherds and access the real prize: Nasci’s lifeblood, through the lava dome. And with that, I can finally destroy that scourge of a ‘resort’ that Wonderland wants to tattoo on Nasci’s sacred mountain.”

  But Rafe’s plan had some obvious flaws. “You can’t control lava. Nasci’s direct essence will destroy you from the inside out.”

  “It does for ordinary shepherds. But not me.” His face went a little blank, as if seeing something beyond me. “Guntram closed my pithways, and since then I’ve been experimenting with my limitations. Ironically, the bind closes off my access to pith, but it increased my capacity to store it. I estimate I can wield more concentrated pith than ten Talol shepherds. Her blood will be no problem for me.”

  “You plan to waltz up to Mt. Hood and attack the Oracle and a decent chunk of the Talol Wilds shepherds? They’ll kick your ass.”

  “Will they? Because I’ve been observing your little friends on the mountain, sending smaller golems after them in waves. They think they’ve bested me every time, but it’s only given me more knowledge. I know how long it takes them to disperse my golems, where their weak spots are, and how many constructs it will take to defeat them.”

  My mouth went dry, but I refused to believe it could be that simple. “They’re more powerful than you!”

  “I’m afraid not, dear Ina.” Rafe patted the necklace. “And it’s all thanks to you and this final charm you gave me.”

  He then executed several rapid air and earth sigils I didn’t recognize, directing them to the sand around me. I closed my eyes, waiting to die, but when nothing happened, I slowly opened my eyes.

  “Ha!” I yelled at him, wriggling my arms in the sand a little. “It didn’t work. It—”

  But the sand around me suddenly shifted. I sank a few more inches. Gasping, I went motionless again.

  Rafe laughed. “It worked just fine. You’re in quite the dilemma. Move, and you’ll slowly shift the air pockets I’ve created around you. The sand will swallow you, and no one will even know you’d ever been there. But stay here and wait for me”—he bent over to tousle my hair—“and I might let you live.”

  I gritted my teeth to keep myself from struggling and entangling further into Rafe’s trap. “And why would you do that?”

  “Because you might be useful to me. You have access to energy that I want.”

  “You mean lightning?” I sneered up at him. “You can’t control that.”

  “But you can.”

  I couldn’t stand the hubris of this bastard. “You think I’m going to follow you after you kill a ton of people I care about?”

  He squatted down beside my neck and lifted my chin up. For an awful moment, I thought he might do something really creepy, like kiss me, but instead he said, “You don’t really care about them, Ina. I’ve heard all your justifiable grievances against them. In the end, your spirit will win out. It’s brighter than all those other traditional know-it-alls combined. You’ll continue to protect Nasci no matter what happens, and with a little time to reflect, you’ll realize that I’ll be the only one left to guide you.”

  He leaned forward. He really was going to try to kiss me. And worse, he believed deep-down I’d like it. I couldn’t escape, so I resorted to the only weapon I had left.

  I spit in his face.

  For the longest moment of my life, the world stood still. Rafe wiped away my saliva running down his cheek. His exposed skin turning red with fury. I figured I’d signed my death warrant as he raised his hands.

  Instead of drawing more sigils, though, he simply slapped me. Hard. Twice. I saw stars.

  Then he yanked my own charm necklace from my body. As the world stopped spinning, he tossed it into the air and used a wind gust to throw it far away into the dunes, lost to me.

  “You’re so righteous, just like the others,” he fumed. “I could crush you right now, but you might yet come around. Think about it, Ina. I’m doing the job of protecting Nasci where shepherds won’t. The only way you live is to serve me when this is all said and done. But if you choose theatrics, then I gladly leave you rope to hang yourself along with your idealistic comrades.”

  My blood ran cold as he stood to stalk away. “Rafe, stop! You can’t do this!”

  But he strode into the tree line, leaving me buried on the dune as angry rain clouds swirled overhead.

  CHAPTER 18

  I’D REALLY SCREWED things up this time.

  And worse, I couldn’t do anything about it stuck neck-deep in sand. Rafe hadn’t been kidding about needing to stay still. Even wriggling my fingers caused sand to shift around me. Not enough to make me sink at first, but the particles flowed downward to a series of air pockets he’d created underneath me. Too much wriggling, and I’d settle another centimeter or two. Once my mouth and nose were covered in sand, I’d be finished.

  When you’re trapped in a prison of your own making and have perfect hindsight, it’s easy to throw yourself a pity party. I cursed myself upside down and sideways. Maybe the other shepherds shouldn’t have kept me in the dark so long, but I bore my weight of the blame. Guntram, the Oracle, and even Tabitha had been right about me all along.

  Maybe it would be better if I gave up.

  Even as that defeatist attitude washed over me, I knew I couldn’t sit here. Either I warned them of Rafe’s coming, or I would die trying.

  That’s when my probing fingers rubbed against something hard. I realized my left hand was pinned right on top of my hoodie’s kangaroo pouch, which held Vincent’s phone. Rubbing along its smooth edges, I could just make out the power button. I had no idea if it still functioned, given I’d soaked it in the lodge pool, but I didn’t have anything to lose. I pushed down hard on the button, at first feeling nothing. But then, after a brief pause, the phone vibrated. Elation surged through me at having turned it on until I realized it was useless stuck in my hoodie pouch.

  Ah, well. Maybe I could use it to call for help if I could get partially unstuck.

  Having accomplished that gave me motivation to keep going. I considered my options. I had access to plenty of earth pith while surrounded by sand but only a little air and whatever water I could absorb from the humidity. I couldn’t create much new fire stores from that. A shepherd with a decent mastery of earth could wriggle themselves free, but I’d failed miserably at that time and time again. The only other option was to leverage a blast of air pith under my palm. It should rocket my arm out of the sand so I could anchor myself from sinking farther.

  The air burst idea seemed like my best bet. The sand, at least, had more give than dirt, so I felt reasonably confident I’d be able to draw a simple blast sigil. I spent several minutes pumping myself up to execute this drastic maneuver, hoping I wasn’t making a fatal mistake.

  I couldn’t put it off forever, though. It was now or never.

  I pooled all of my air pith in one palm, ready to aim it underneath me. My muscles strained as I pushed outward in the sand, giving my fingers enough space to write a sigil. I drew a beautiful sideways S and then let pith tear out my palm in a violent torrent.

  My hand shot upward as I’d hoped. For a glorious second, I thought my plan had worked, as it broke through the surface.

  “Yes!” I exclaimed, clutching for anything to grab onto.

  Only, sand isn’t known for its leverage. The reeds that grew on top of the sand were also too flimsy to provide any real support.

  And that wasn’t the worst of it. I hadn’t accounted for Rafe’s air bubbles collapsing, the explosion shifting the sand underneath me to great new voids that particles rushed to fill. I stood on top of a sinking hour glass, and though I fou
ght desperately against the flow swirling beneath me, it pulled me slowly, inevitably downward. Even digging my free elbow into the sand didn’t help, as the ground beneath that also gave way. In a finger’s snap, I was up over my chin, my mouth, even my eyes.

  I’d become completely buried under the dune.

  All my senses dulled, leaving only the furious beating of my heart and the relentless scratching of sand sucking me downward. I strained and wriggled, but no amount of physical movement would get me out of this. I had minutes at most before I’d suffocate. I took a few precious seconds to recall the advice Guntram had given me about freeing myself from earth.

  Calm yourself. Work with the earth to find a way out.

  But how? I scribbled a few sigils that allowed me to stick to earth, but that didn’t help me crawl back up to the surface. In fact, it only added weight to the sand, dragging me down farther.

  That’s when Darby’s voice rang out in my head. She’d given me some advice when the gyascutus had attacked.

  Let your earth pith settle inside your body, like sand falling through a jar of stones.

  It seemed counterintuitive, given my tenuous position, but I had nothing left to lose. I relaxed as best as I could, pulling on tendrils of air pith to suck in one last breath of oxygen. Then I focused all the earth pith both inside myself and the surrounding sand. Instead of pooling it into my hand, I shook it gently loose and let it drift wherever it wanted to go in my pithways.

  Then use that flow to force the soil away from your fingers and write a sigil to open the earth.

  Maybe I was half delirious from being buried alive, but the earth pith flowed out of me without much resistance, as if by magical osmosis. In doing so, the sand drifted away from me, the scratchy sensation fading as it created a bubble around me. I had the space around me to write the open earth sigil, but my brain stalled on my first few attempts. I could not for the life of me get the square proportions right on all the strokes, so the sand crept back, almost hemming me in.