“I’m going to hope that Yargen already gave me something I can use.” Vi looked up at the large stone wall that encased the fortress. “She gave me a word for making and removing barriers, and this wall was made by Groundbreakers, which are a fracture of her magic.”
“All right, I see your logic. But if this doesn’t work?”
“Then we force our way in withjuth calt.” Vi shrugged. “It’ll be louder and more chaotic. But we’re invisible, so we’ll slip in through the fray.”
“Tactful.”
“We’re in ‘making this up as we go’ territory, remember?”
“Unfortunately.” He sighed, though a grin pulled at his lips. If Vi didn’t know better, she’d daresay he was enjoying this. Going off script was the slightest bit thrilling—if they ignored the fate of the world that hung in the balance.
They walked through the darkness toward a back section of the Imperial army where soldier’s tents were fewer and siege weapons were in greater numbers. It meant there were less people here to take notice of them.
In the darkness, she and Taavin approached the wall. Vi ran her palm along the smooth stone. Normal workmen and tools couldn’t create something this perfect. It was a wall fashioned entirely with magic.
Closing her eyes, Vi sent small pulses of her own power through the wall. She tried to understand it, much like she would a crystal. She stood there for several long minutes, breathing and feeling.
“Rohko,” she whispered, imagining the barrier that was the earthen wall peeling back like a curtain. There was a soft groan and the sound of stone grating on stone. Vi opened her eyes, shocked to find an opening, much like she imagined. “Let’s go, quickly!”
Archers patrolled the walls, so Vi had no doubt one of them would soon notice the break in defense. They rushed across a narrow flat area, void of anything, to a secondary inner wall. Vi repeated the process, “Rohko,” and the wall opened for them, easier than the last.
She said a mental thanks to Yargen and pulled Taavin through. They emerged on the other side of one of the great trees of Soricium. Vi looked up. She never thought she’d be so glad to see the familiar branches. After spending years trying to concoct ways to escape from under these boughs, seeing them above her made her eyes prickle with tears.
“We should keep going,” Taavin reminded her softly.
“You’re right.” Vi shook the nostalgia from her eyes and pressed on into the fortress.
She knew the pathways and stairs like old friends. Not much had changed between this world and her own. Perhaps Soricium was one eternal constant, built hundreds of years before rebuilding a world in rewound time even became a thought to Yargen. This one place stood, and would always stand. Or so she hoped.
Still, the Emperor torching it all still seemed a too-viable possibility.
They crossed a bridge and Vi paused. She stared down over the rope rail to the masses huddled below. Everyone who was able had retreated into the fortress before they erected the walls and the Empire closed in. Half the city was cramped together, living in squalor. But they lived.
Vi gripped the rail.
“If we truly succeed in seeing this world continue on… No more war for this continent,” Vi whispered into the cool night air, speaking more to Yargen than Taavin. “Too much has been lost on this earth already.”
Taavin didn’t reply. He merely stood as witness to her quiet, idealistic vow, waiting until she was ready to proceed forward once more.
Up and up they spun on staircases, crossed bridges, and ascended into the heights of the canopy. Vi remembered the quarters Sehra had occupied before her mother died and she became Chieftain. They were the same quarters Ellene occupied after. She paused on the landing, raising a finger.
“That’s where my rooms were,” she whispered into Taavin’s ear so she didn’t alert the guard that patrolled the bridge between where they were and Vi’s old chambers.
“I’ve never seen it before.” His breath was hot on her ear as he whispered in reply. “I can imagine you here.”
“Can you?”
“After all the stories you’ve told me, yes.”
There was no time for further conversation, however pleasant the reprieve. Without hesitation, Vi allowed herself into Sehra’s room.
She moved through the archways of woven branches into a side hall that connected to a balcony. That balcony flowed into a room that only had three walls. Curtains of flowers gave privacy to the room’s occupant and reminded Vi distinctly of the Twilight Kingdom.
There, sitting upright on the bed, green eyes shining in the dim light, was Sehra. Vi released Taavin’s hand and stepped out from the glyph. From Sehra’s point of view, she appeared from thin air, and the girl’s expression showed the fact.
“I’m not here to hurt you,” Vi said in the old tongue of the North. The accents were familiar to her, no power of Yargen needed.
“Who are you?” she asked, sliding to the edge of her bed.
