It just stopped.
“Breathe, dammit!”
Someone hit my chest and yelled at me to breathe again. I sucked in as much air as I could and grabbed their hand.
Snapping my eyes open, I found Mistress Neves hovering above me with a look of complete relief on her face. She sank to the ground next to me.
Mistress Ophelia had a hand on her chest. “That was a lot of power.”
Blinking a few times, I realized I was still looking at everyone and everything drenched in magic. I put the walls back up as fast as I could and started hyperventilating in the next instant.
“No, breathe, damn it,” Mistress Neves yelled at me. “Breathe through that. Come on, Kimber. Control!”
I let myself just suck in the air a few times, and then grabbed control of my breathing on the next inhale. It took me nearly two minutes to get myself back in charge, but I did it.
I flopped backward and stared up at the ceiling again.
“Ouch.”
A trickle of a laugh escaped Mistress Ophelia, and I heard Mistress Neves join her a moment later. The two of them were rolling in laughter in just a moment.
It was part relief and part hysterical mania.
“All right, all right,” I said, finally calming my own laughter. “We have to get up and see what happened to everyone else. There are going to be people who need help.”
With a sage nod, Mistress Ophelia stood from where she had been leaning and giggling. “You’re absolutely right. Let’s go. There’s going to be plenty of rescues to be done.”
Mistress Neves laid a hand on my arm. “Well done, child. You need more practice with subtle control, but you’ve got it in you. Sona and I will work with you on the minutiae.”
I bowed my head, grateful.
We headed up the stairs. It was going to be a long day.
* * *
My apartments were empty when I finally returned home nearly six hours later.
I had hoped Elex would be back. Whatever was happening at the university had to be serious if he’d been gone all that time.
The temple masters—myself included in that, despite how awkward it felt—spent the day helping the civil forces search and rescue people who had been caught in any collapses.
There weren’t many, thankfully. Even though I felt it had taken me entirely too long to stop the mountain…deal with the weirdness of that in a bit. The damage to S’Kir was minimal. A few collapsed warehouses, a few of the more significant buildings had leaned. It was a huge relief to find out there was no loss of life.
Still wracked with guilt, I should have been able to stop the tremors sooner.
That was my reason for existing, wasn’t it?
While I respected and was even coming to like both Mistresses Ophelia and Neves, I needed someone who was stronger than both of them to really teach me how to use my magic.
Lighting a candle, even stopping a sword, took a certain amount of skill.
Stopping the mountain from tumbling to the ground before it was time was a different set of skills entirely. I needed someone who was confident—no,cockyenough to handle that kind of power.
There was only one temple master who could do that.
The ancient bastard.
Master Dorian.
