Page 214 of Burn of the Everflame

I sank to my knees. My heart thundered in my ears as my hands closed around a long, metallic object and the severed leather belt it hung from.

The empty scabbard for Diem’s sword.

And it was covered in blood.

48

DIEM

First came the pain.

It was like my bones had been replaced with shattered glass. Even the tiniest movement was excruciating agony. My lungs burned for air as every tortured breath in was instantly gasped out.

Next came the spinning. As I struggled to distinguish up from down, the world rocked in a rhythmic, almost peaceful way.

“The venom’s wearing off,” a gruff voice said.

“I warned you it wouldn’t last long,” a woman answered. She sounded strained—scared, perhaps.

“So give her more.”

“Those snakes live on land. We’re in the middle of the sea.”

“Figure it out. If she wakes up, she’s gonna kill you first.”

The woman whimpered. “There’s nothing in range of my magic that’s strong enough to bite through Descended skin.”

I heard a growl, then a huff. The world swayed more violently, and pain lanced through my scalp as a hand gripped my hair and harshly yanked me up.

Fight, my godhood warned. Its voice was faint, still drained to meager levels, but there was an urgency to it I couldn’t ignore. I forced my eyelids open, immediately blinded by the blazing sun.

“What are you doing?” a third voice called out, sounding strangely familiar.

“I’ll handle this the mortal way.”

“Wait, don’t hurt h⁠—”

Pain exploded through my skull, and consciousness blinked away.

A child was crying.

A woman was pleading.

And my godhood was roaring.

Fight, it shouted as burgeoning magic bubbled in my veins. Fight. Fight.

My eyelids cracked open to fire-speckled night. Voices chatted around me in easy, upbeat tones, while embers swirled into the air as people tossed objects into the flames to build them higher.

Campfires, I thought groggily. Someone must have found me and brought me back to camp.

My skull radiated with pain, made worse by the suffocating weight of a powerful nearby aura. I reached to rub my throbbing temples, but my arm wouldn’t seem to lift, as if my sleeve had caught on something behind me. Both sleeves, in fact.

Fight, my godhood yelled again.

“Fight what?” I mumbled. I managed to roll upright and blinked to clear my fuzzy vision, squinting through the darkness⁠—

My Sophos magic stirred. My last glimpses of consciousness replayed in crisp detail in my mind: A Descended woman, and snakes sinking fangs into my skin. Then, a boat—the same woman and two men. And daylight.