“Ready?” Alyss said as the knights charged for them.
Olivin grabbed Eira’s hand. Eira glanced up at him with a nod and a slight smile. One he returned. Somehow this felt like both the end and the beginning. If they survived this, nothing would be the same for any of them.
“Now!”
Right as the knights were upon them, they all dodged. The knights went to turn their horses, but the ground underneath cracked and gave way with a unified pulse of Alyss’s and Ducot’s magic. As if they were on a ramp made of gravel, the horsescouldn’t find traction. All remaining ten plummeted down into the mines, falling a distance no one could survive.
Still, Eira crawled over to the ledge to verify. If they were alive, then they’d need to get down there quickly to keep the knights from attacking Cullen and Noelle. Fortunately, there was nothing left of the knights but carnage and rubble.
Eira slowly rolled back, ready to find her feet. There were still more that had come from the woods on their way. They needed to?—
An explosion that felt like it shook the earth to its core knocked the wind from her.
40
Her ears rang with a deafening pitch. Eira slowly reached her hands up to them, touching the sides of her face, half expecting to feel blood dribbling from them. Her vision was blurry; smoke crashed over her, carrying ash that clotted her throat. Everything burned from heat, from the glass-like scraps of the flash shale that battered her, sliced her skin with burning edges and pockmarked tiny explosions on impact. She forced herself to breathe through the agony. To recover and stand on shaky feet.
What had happened? What had gone wrong?
Eira blinked through the haze, willing her eyes to focus. Her heart was in her throat.
Noelle had known the risks. She knew to be careful and was too good with her magic to have allowed it to get out of control. Unless Cullen fueling her fire had thrown her off?
Cullen. Eira’s chest grew even tighter. She croaked, wordless as she stared down into the mine that was an inferno. Cinder and smoke continued to pour out, obscuring her vision further and making her eyes water.
“Noelle!” Ducot screamed. Her name had become the sound of a bone breaking. Of the world shattering. Agony incarnate setfree with two syllables. “Tell me…tell me she’s all right. I can’t sense her.I can’t sense her.” He was shaking Alyss. “What do you see. What do you see?”
“It’s just…fire.” Alyss’s words were weak. They were all slowly recovering, crawling and stumbling toward the edge of the mines.
Cullen… Noelle… Everything seemed like it was happening very far away. This couldn’t be—they couldn’t be?—
“There!” Yonlin shouted, nearly throwing himself over the railing of his vantage in the tower. Somehow it hadn’t been toppled, but it looked far more precarious than Eira remembered. He pointed, squinting. They all followed his finger.
Far, far below, in the heart of the blaze, the flame moved unnaturally to form a small bubble. It was barely visible. But Eira could see Cullen and Noelle, back-to-back, holding the fire at bay. The air he had used to fuel it, he now was using to try to snuff it—to carve a hollow spot for them. Noelle took a step forward, sweeping her arms to make a tunnel. They stumbled and staggered, movements strained. But even though their wounds must’ve been far worse than the rest of them had endured, neither Cullen nor Noelle was giving up.
“We have to help make a path for them!” Eira shouted.
“I’m on it!” Alyss reached out, magic thin and wavering.
They were all at their limit. Eira included. She could either help batter back the flames or widen someone’s channel. There wasn’t enough strength left in her to do both. But the flames made the choice for her—the moisture in the air and earth had evaporated. Dredging up more would take a level of power she no longer had.
So Eira reached out to Alyss, wrapping her magic around her friend’s and prying open her channel once more. Eira poured all the last vestiges of her strength into the effort. Cullen and Noelle were too far for Eira to open their channels confidently,especially with the magic-fueled blaze. But Alyss… She would give her enough power that Alyss would be able to do anything.
Two walls of stone rose on either side of Cullen and Noelle. Then one behind. The first two elongated up the crumbling ramps and smoldering remnants of the mines.
Cullen’s magic shifted to snuff out the remaining flames and cool the stone enough for them to move. Eira debated if she should change to focus on his power instead of Alyss’s once he was in reach. But Noelle was assisting him as well. The two of them moved as easily as Eira and Cullen had together. Their magic natural complements for each other.
“What’s happening?” Ducot pleaded, his face rife with worry. “There’s too much magic, I can’t make sense of it.”
“They’re coming up. Alyss is making a path…” Olivin shifted closer to give Ducot the full explanation of what was happening. “CullenandNoelle are working together. But the stone is cracking…”
Olivin spared no details. His words underscored the desperation of their circumstances. They highlighted every explosion that burst from tunnels to the left of Cullen and Noelle, battering Alyss’s walls, as the fire that Noelle had triggered ran rampant through the veins of flash shale throughout the mines. The fire formed deep trenches as whole pieces of earth slid off, collapsing into the inferno. Eira wondered just how much of the path Noelle and Cullen were walking on was supported by Alyss.
“We need to move from the ledge.” Yonlin was halfway down the ladder that reached up to the watchtower deck. “This whole area might go. Who knows how deep the tracts of flash shale run, and those other knights from the woods are nearly halfway here.”
He was right. Eira knew it. But they had all come in together. They were all leaving together.
“We have to hurry.” Olivin’s words dripped with worry.
