I grimaced and told him, while keeping my eye on the rising lava, “The river rock won’t hold indefinitely against a volcanic eruption.”
“Maybe not long enough for them to finish the spell?”
“Yeah.”
“Evira, get clear!” Vaxan yelled over at us. He peered down at the gateway below, and his right hand was shaking as he called his vibrational resonance to that hand again as well and thrust it through.
“That interruption cost you,” Ketheron spoke.
“Cost him? How?” Zayn asked.
“I need to be on the ground down there now. The process is… stuck. I’m going to try to see to it. I’ll know in a few moments if it’s possible.”
“Oh fuck, you’re not going in there alone,” Zayn cried. “Ruxnoth is still down there.”
All that panic surged when a red blast of power erupted.
“That was Sylas,” Ketheron told us. “He’s mass-teleported the necromancers out. They’re now on the mortal plane with him.”
“And Winter is with them?”
“No,” Ambrose said. “He’s resisted. And he’s also still in the Veil.”
“He’s what?” I cried, panic taking me too now, despite how hard I was fighting to check it, all of it. “No. No. No.”
“Go,” I said, looking at Zayn and Vaxan.
“What? Really?” Zayn questioned.
“Yes. Pull Winter out. Vaxan will finish the material destruction faster down there. Ambrose can hold off Ruxnoth if you’re attacked.”
“And you?”
The question answered itself in the next second as the eruption surged, lava blasting out high into the chamber like a tidal wave.
I burst forward, my glacial magic streaming violently as I thrust my palms at the lava and worked on cutting into it, freezing it, wrecking its structural integrity.
“Holy shit,” Zayn exclaimed as I managed to push it back, my boots finding purchase on the ground steadily.
It wasn’t enough, though.
I had to give it everything.
“Hurry, pass through now,” Ketheron told Vaxan and Zayn. “See to the material decimation, Vaxan. Zayn, shock Winter awake with your power. I’ll message Sylas and he’ll lock onto his necromantic link to Winter and send that through your magic. Then, when you shock Winter, they’ll be necromantic, which will be needed to yank him forcibly from the Veil. Until he wakes, he’s vulnerable to Ruxnoth, and Ambrose will need to keep flooding the construct beyond what was required of him.”
Vaxan and Zayn looked back at me, not wanting to leave me.
I smiled. “Trust in me, my boys.”
A whimper came from Zayn, a disgruntled hiss from Vaxan that it had come to this.
And then he grasped Zayn’s shoulder, wrapped him up in his magic, and dropped them down through the gateway.
I unleashed a torrent of my ice and frost, screaming as the immense potency of it tore through me, as I used every ounce of power and might that I had against the lava.
My ice rushed through it, cutting into it deeply, all over, until blistering heat became null. Until the vibrant red and orange hues gave way to pale-blue ice.
Until every drop of lava turned to ice.
