That is, until the light clears, faster than the times before, and I crash to my hands and knees on a muddy surface. I look up, only to be hit with a ferocious gust of wind that beats at my back, driving me down toward the dirt.
I try to breathe, but the air is plucked from my throat, and I barely manage to hold on to Koda as the storm rages around us. Our surroundings are dark, but it’s the kind of gloom right before dawn. Debris hurls through the air, twigs and leaves raking across my cheeks, before I fling my free arm protectively across my face, squinting at our surroundings.
Panicked, I search for Roman and my father, finally locating their silhouettes a short distance away.
“Where are we?” I try to scream to them over the sound of the wind. I didn’t spend a lot of time in Mortem, but a storm this wild is nothing like what I expected to encounter.
Ahead of us, Roman is gesturing wildly, pointing to our right. In the next moment, his voice sounds through the communicator rune behind my left ear and relief courses through me to be able to hear him.
“The damage to Mortem’s Balance is already far greater than I feared,” he says. “We’ve landed in the middle of an energy storm. I sense multiple fissures in this location and it’s too much energy for the environment to handle. The temple’s ruins are over there, on your right. We need to get to them and find shelter. Follow my path. You don’t want to step into a fissure.”
Squeezing Koda’s hand, I point to our right, where I can just make out a structure that looks as if it’s made of stone. I try to harness my demon energy to see more clearly, but it doesn’t help. ‘Energy storm’ doesn’t even begin to describe the volatility of the magic we’re experiencing in this storm.
Koda gives my hand an answering squeeze, and we let go of each other to crawl as fast as we can toward Roman and then to follow him to the stones, fighting against the push and pull of the wind with every inch.
The temple’s ruins rise up like a behemoth above us, enormous stones perched precariously on each other. A corridor still exists in front of us, but it’s collapsed in places, and it’s only because I can make out Roman’s figure moving farther into the structure that I dare to crawl in without fear that the whole thing will fall on me.
The wind drops and silence descends halfway along the corridor, and I groan out my relief. Roman and Jareth are now sitting with their backs against stones on opposite sides of the corridor. They’re both catching their breath, as Koda and I also need to do.
Jareth, in particular, appears paler than before and I can only imagine how draining the energy storm must be to him, without his soul and power, given how quickly it exhausted the rest of us.
Once I can breathe again, I say, “Is there any way Crone could have detected our arrival in that energy storm?”
“None,” Roman says before he thumps Angelus Lux against his chest and the weapon disappears.
“Silver lining,” I murmur. “But how far does the storm extend?”
“Far enough to be a benefit and a problem,” Roman replies. “I sense that it extends a short way into the Wilds, but farther across the city, near to the prison. I will mask the king’s journey, but he shouldn’t try to go alone. There are dangers in a storm like this without his power to protect him.”
Roman is giving Jareth a hard stare, as if he’s expecting Jareth to argue.
“I’m stronger if I take my demon form,” Jareth rumbles. “I can make it on my own that way.”
Roman is definitive in his disagreement. “The storm poses too great a threat of draining the power you have left, and there are too many fissures within it. We can’t risk you being swept into one of them. We don’t know where they would lead or how we would find you.” He rises to his feet, but the corridor is low, and he has to hunch his shoulders so he doesn’t bang his head. “We must go together.”
I don’t disagree. I check Koda’s reaction where he sits opposite me.
“So much for planning,” he says with a shrug as he slides up the wall, watching the height of the precarious rock ceiling and stopping before he bumps his head on it.
I’m the only one who can stand without hitting the ceiling—although the top of my head brushes it as I shuffle carefully back toward the entrance. I stop right before the spot where the wind starts howling again.
“Is there any rune magic you can use to deal with this storm?” I ask Roman when he draws level with me.
He shakes his head while the storm’s energy whistles through the cracks in the ruins in front of us. “Using our powers within the storm—or trying to tame it—will only add to its energy. We need to use other means to make sure we don’t lose each other.”
A rune flares across his chest and a bundle of thick rope appears in his arms. “A simple rope,” he says. “We need to tie ourselves to each other until we reach the other side.”
If he could use a rune, I’m sure Roman would have created some sort of magical thread to connect us, but as it is, the rope seems to be our best option.
After securing it around his own waist, he wraps the next section around mine, knotting it so it won’t strangle me, before he moves on to Jareth, and finally to Koda. At a touch on each of our shoulders, our armor morphs up over our faces to provide us with a mesh covering to protect against debris and dust.
“Whatever you do,” he says to me and Koda, “don’t use your power. Trust your physical strength.”
Koda gives Roman a wolfish grin. “Like old times, then.”
In some ways, Koda is more equipped to deal with this situation than I am. He’s lived without power nearly all of his life and learned to survive without calling on any kind of magic or ability to shift.
I calm my wolf and shut down my power while Roman takes a moment to double-check the rope and the knots.
