We were all looking at devastation. Something that my grandmother created to drive out the orcs, and it worked, just like it did in the caverns and mines of the others.
“She drained it,” Nova said quietly. “Or at least disrupted its balance enough that it couldn’t sustain itself.”
I could hear the despair in her voice.
Stella followed, her gaze moving slowly across the land.
“But it’s still holding on,” she said. “You can feel it.”
“I can,” I said, though the sensation was faint, like something trying not to disappear completely.
It killed me. There were no words to sum up this kind of wicked destruction.
Keegan stepped up beside me, his presence steadying, and for a moment, I let myself lean into that, just slightly.
“It’s not what it should be,” he said.
“No,” I agreed. “But it’s still something. We’ll be able to fix this.”
“Not everything is fixable,” he whispered.
“Well, this is.”
“Maeve, do you ever lose hope?” Keegan’s question surprised me.
“Seldom.”
A smile touched his lips as Twobble climbed up onto a small rock nearby, his expression more serious than I’d seen in a while. “The orcs weren’t exaggerating.”
“No,” Nova said. “They weren’t.”
I straightened slowly, my gaze moving further out, deeper into the marsh where the land grew darker, where the light didn’t reach quite as easily, where the water either pooled too deeply or not at all.
And then I felt it.
That pull.
It was stronger now, but it didn’t tug at me.
It didn’t drag me forward.
It simply… waited.
I took a step and another.
“Maeve,” Keegan said softly.
“I know,” I replied, though I didn’t turn back. “I’ll be careful.”
The ground shifted beneath my feet as I moved further in, the soft earth giving way to patches of drier ground, then back again, uneven, unpredictable.
With each step forward, the distance between us grew.
“I said we needed to be quick,” Nova called.
“I am,” I said, though my voice didn’t carry as far as I expected.
The air changed as I moved deeper. It was cooler and quieter as the others' sounds softened behind me, replaced by something else.
