Three ominous words had her magic rising as Eira charged into the darkness. Soon, the light of Noelle’s flame merged with an orange haze. Smoke plumed up along the ceiling of the tunnel. Eira stalled, reduced to a coughing fit.
Raising his hands, Cullen banished the smoke. Wind teased her hair, tangling it hopelessly. But Eira kept onward all the same. She pushed as fast as she could into the wall of heat. Into the orange-tinted nightmare that awaited her.
“No,” Eira breathed as she came to a stop in the main passage.
Bodies littered the ground, charred, stabbed, mutilated. The key Arwin had given her slipped between Eira’s fingers, clanging against the ground. The door to the Court of Shadows with its mighty, ancient lock had been blown clean off its hinges.
31
How?
How could… How did…
Her brain wasn’t functioning. She blinked, several times, forcing her mind to start working again. As cohesive thoughts returned, so too did the sensations of heat, and smoke, and screams. They rose up from within the Court of Shadows as a chorus of agony.
“We have to put out the fires!” Eira shouted to her friends over the chaos. “Cullen, you help clear the smoke. There has to be some kind of venting.” She was guessing, but it made sense. She’d seen fires in the Court of Shadows before. The smoke had to go somewhere. “Noelle—”
“Already on it.” Noelle lifted her hands. Her fingers were rigid and claw-like. Fire of her own making swirled around her feet. It shot off her fingers like darts, mingling with the flames and granting Noelle control. The woman was the embodiment of fire and power, the orange glow highlighting her dark skin and black hair in striking detail. As she drew her fingers into fists, the flames around the entrance snuffed and Eira rushed forward.
Half of her power remained focused on herself. She wouldn’t help anyone if she was burnt to a crisp. Steam billowed off her shoulders like wings as Eira pressed onward into the inferno.
The other half of her power was given to the first person she saw. It was a woman, pinned to the wall. Barely alive. But conscious enough to raise her head when she saw Eira. Drawing an arc around the woman, ice fought upward, keeping the fire at bay.
“Noelle! Over here.”
“Over here? Over everywhere!” Noelle griped as she stepped into the inferno of the caverns.
Lightspinning glyphs flared in the tunnel leading to the Specters’ war room. Someone was still alive back there. Eira resisted the urge to charge ahead. They had to take this slowly.
At the shadow’s side, Eira crouched down, cooling her wounds with ice and water. The woman stared at her in a daze. Burns covered half of her body. The other half was coated in what looked like some kind of oil.
“They… They came… They… It’s gone. It’s over…” the woman murmured.
“You’re all right.” It was likely a lie. Eira was no healer, but she’d worked with enough of them and seen enough people on the verge of death to know what it looked like when life was leaving someone’s eyes. “Stay alive. I have to go look for other survivors.”
As Eira stood, Noelle shouted, “It’s too much, there’s no way I can get all of it under control.” She still had her hands out, but sweat beaded down her face and neck. Not from heat—Firebearers couldn’t feel heat in the same way other people did—but from the exertion. Noelle was nearly at her limit and they’d only carved out a small portion of the room.
“I have an idea,” Cullen shouted over the flames. “But it’s risky.”
“Now seems like a pretty great time for risky,” Noelle said.
“What is it?” Eira had rejoined them.
“Fire needs air as fuel… I can suck it all up to the ceiling. That should take enough power from the blaze that both of you should be able to get a handle on the majority.”
“Air is also important for breathing,” Noelle snapped.
“I said it was risky, you have a better idea?”
“We should do it,” Eira decided for the three of them. There was no way they’d get the blaze under control if they didn’t take the risk. And there were still flashes of Lightspinning down on the far end of the cavern. Taking the air might impair the combatants. But at least it would impair them all equally—shadows and Pillars alike.
“On three, be ready—hold your breath,” Cullen said, a look of intense focus overtaking his features. “One.”
Noelle widened her stance, holding out her arms.
“Two.”
Eira crouched low, ready to sprint forward. She inhaled deeply at the same time as Noelle.
