Ophidia nodded, finishing her own series of glyphs and speaking with a pinched voice. “May this be our final attempt.”
One by one, the demons of the encampment lifted their voices, singing directly into the gap between the columns, strumming and beating their makeshift instruments, blowing on obsidian flutes. The chatterboxes offered their voices, too, their monotones shifting to something uncharacteristically sweet, a high-pitched piping whistle.
Bones did the same on his half of the Heirloom, plucking the strings just so to match the wordless song. Elyssandra and Warren did their best with their own voices, while silently — and as expected — Elder Bahul looked on with his arms crossed.
Augustin waited with his eyes closed, a finger by his ear, like a conductor listening to his orchestra. A moment later, he executed complex gestures with his hands, conjuring a breeze to blow through the arches, miraculously matching the same tone throughout.
It was exactly as the wizard had told him that morning. Together, they could accomplish anything.
Valefour locked eyes with Braiden even as the song left his lips. He gave one firm, final nod.
Braiden strummed his fingers along his half of the Heirloom, casting the greatest swath of fabric he’d ever conjured in his life, as wide as a barn, as long as a river.
He watched with eyes as big as dinner plates as the golden ream of cloth extended through the portal and seemingly into forever, a golden road, a silken bridge between worlds.
Elyssandra never stopped singing, but fixed him with emerald eyes that sparkled with admiration. Braiden already knew that this was going straight into her journal of heroes.
Braiden plucked at still more of the Heirloom’s strings, weaving over and under, warp against weft, when suddenly great threads and ribbons erupted from its frame, reaching lovingly toward the portal, a rush of waves in all the colors of the rainbow.
Am I actually doing this?he thought, mouth agape in amazement. It hardly felt as though he was expending any of his own magical essence. That was what arcane tools were for, after all, a way to focus, amplify, and magnify a caster’s own talents.
But gods, what a magnification this was.
The last of the threads finally broke free of the Heirloom, the entire mass moving as if bestowed with its own intelligence, a great murmuration of starlings. They stretched themselves taut across the portal’s hollow archway in a familiar configuration: a spiral of thread and ribbon that covered the entirety of the portal’s opening.
Every note sung, every trill, toot, and beat of a demon instrument made the strings quiver and dance, like the ripple of sails on the mast, like a bride’s veil lifting with her every excited breath on her wedding day.
“It’s working!” Newt cried above the music. “Different from before, but it’s actually working!”
The spiral of threads began to spin inward, sucked into the portal like fibers twisting into thread at the end of a spinning wheel, pulled harder, faster, and ever onward into the other side of the portal.
The huge golden swath formed by the silk rippled, then faded, seemingly fusing into the ground itself. Somehow, Braiden understood that the weaving magic had quite literally paved a road between worlds.
He licked his lips, waiting for the invisible spinning wheel to finish unleashing its great thread, to see what lay beyond the portal.
But the first thing he noticed — louder than even their voices and the music — was the baying of hounds.
Braiden distinctly heard Elyssandra and Warren stop singing, but the demons and the others carried on. Again came the howling of great beasts, this time louder, as if they had drawn even closer to the portal.
Braiden frowned at Newt. “What was that? Are we supposed to stop?”
“No, no, keep going,” Newt said, throwing uncertain glances at Valefour and Ophidia. “Um, I think.”
Braiden frowned harder. “What do you mean, you think?”
Valefour scratched the top of his head and gave Braiden an apologetic shrug. “So — we haven’t been completely honest with you.”
Another howl, this time even closer to the portal, and worse, accompanied by snarling. That, and the snapping of teeth that only came from creatures with powerful jaws meant for cracking bone and tearing flesh.
Braiden stared angrily from the Heirloom to Valefour, unsure of what to do with his hands, terrified that letting go would sever the connection to this specific hell.
What if they couldn’t open the way for the demons again later? Then again, what if he let those things through? Whatwerethose things to begin with?
Augustin leaned into the conversation. “You have one minute to explain yourselves. Perhaps less. What is coming through?”
The three demons glanced uncertainly at each other.
“Tell us now,” Braiden said, “or I snap the strings on the Heirloom. Have you been lying to us this whole time?”
