Chapter XXIV. Ellery
XXIV
ELLERY
WINTER
Instantly, Ellery and Domenic broke apart and scrambled to the door. As soon as Ellery threw it open, they both cringed as the alarm pierced their eardrums. Shouts cried out down the halls. Magicians barreled past, combat boots pounding, wands raised. Ellery wrenched Iskarius from its sheath.
“Are we under attack?” Domenic asked. Even beside him, Ellery could barely hear him over the siren’s blare.
“I don’t know,” she yelled. “Let’s go—”
BOOM!
Somewhere beyond the barracks, sound exploded. The ground shook, and Ellery and Domenic caught themselves against the wall. Then both the siren and the lights cut out, plunging them into blackness.
They hastily lit their wands and bolted after the flood of magicians, careening through the hallways until they burst through an emergency exit.
They were greeted by a winterscurge of horrendous proportions.
Cold lanced through Ellery’s skin, and although it didn’t harm her, she could still feel its bite.
Winds howled, and an oppressive darkness descended upon the compound.
The more distant buildings were invisible to her, swallowed by the storm.
This was already a category four. At least.
To their right, fire poured through a warehouse’s windows, engulfing the roof in an inferno that glowed a terrible beacon against the scurge.
She turned to the nearest magician and demanded, “What happened? What building is that?”
“It’s the generator,” squeaked the magician. She rapidly yanked on layers of gear, her pale fingers already violet from the cold. “It’s supposed to be scurgeproof, but as soon as the storm descended, it blew up.” Then she balked as she took in Domenic and Ellery. “Uh, ma’am, sir.”
She stiffened as she stared at Ellery, who was suddenly hyper-aware of her and Domenic’s swollen lips, their mussed clothes. A pink mark bloomed on his neck, scattered amongst his freckles.
“The generator?” Domenic choked. “But they … They couldn’t have…”
Rather than finish, he caught Ellery’s gaze, and she knew they were thinking the same thing: it was no coincidence to attack the one building that would make the entire compound vulnerable. It was strategy.
“What are we supposed to do?” the magician blubbered. “I-I’m just a volunteer. I only just got here, and I…” Her words became gasps. She clutched her training wand to her chest—she was a hedge magician.
Ellery and Domenic didn’t have time to linger, but Ellery said anyway: “We’re here to protect you. You’ll be okay. We’ll make sure of it.”
The woman nodded, but she didn’t meet Ellery’s eyes.
“Listen to me,” Domenic told her. “If you go find the nearest NDC soldiers, they’ll know the protocols, even if you don’t.”
At his voice, strained but steady, her expression changed—fear shifting into hope.
“A-all right.” Her gaze flickered once more to Ellery, then Iskarius. But Ellery shook it off as the woman rushed away. There was no time to dwell.
“I don’t understand. There hasn’t been a scurge in weeks,” Ellery hissed to Domenic. “And the same day we get to the border, there’s an attack?”
“Even if a bunch of ghasts—I don’t know—planned this somehow, we fortified the alban network. How did they break through?”
“Maybe there are just too many of them.”
Domenic sucked in a shallow breath.
Even in the brief time they’d spent comforting the hedge magician, the wind had intensified.
Strands of Ellery’s hair whipped across her forehead, then froze there.
All around them, people ran—some fleeing indoors, others distributing supplies and readying for battle.
NDC soldiers strapped on goggles and secured their hoods.
Yet with each passing second, darkness encroached further, until even those closest to Ellery and Domenic appeared as little more than silhouettes.
“We could get to the edge of the compound,” she hollered to Domenic above the wind. “Try to defend it.”
“No, the NDC probably had sentries guarding the compound already.” Determination steeled across his features. “You remember how I told you that in Oldermere, I found the scurge’s eye?”
Ellery did. “You think we should try to stop the storm from its center?”
“Yeah, together.”
They took off through the compound, following the storm’s magic to where the cold was most intense, the pressure crushing. But they’d barely made it across a single courtyard before whirling fractals coalesced into a shape several yards ahead.
The winterghast was hideous, and although it was not nearly as gigantic or eerily humanoid as the Dire Three, it was far more fearsome than the one in Mercester Square.
Dirt and blood crusted its ice-sculpted body; a writhing mass of tentacles unfurled as it heaved closer to them. Its lone eye gleamed a haunting blue.
Instantly, Ellery and Domenic attacked.
With a burst of frost, she pinned it in place. Its body contorted grotesquely, and a screech emanated from deep within it. But she held it effortlessly while Valmordion’s flames burned it in a blaze of gold.
It screeched again, then exploded into a spatter of ice.
But as its screech faded, another rose nearby. Then another, and another. Cries echoed across the storm in a terrible chorus.
Ellery thrust Iskarius into the air. Its silver light speared through the darkness.
Winterghasts swarmed everywhere, at least two dozen, maybe more. They were an army, a blight upon the compound. And each of their azure eyes were trained directly on her and Domenic.
Ellery had seen such an army once before, during the fall of Nordmere. She remembered peering through her dirty apartment windows, petrified. The ghasts rampaging through the streets.
Her memories devolved after that. Scrambling for her training wand.
Her parents; a smear, a blur. Fleeing from what she’d done, running into the maelstrom outside.
And the ghast, looming over a panicked crowd of people rushing to evacuate.
She scarcely recalled what the monster looked like.
Just its awful roar and the distant sound of her scream and the blood matted in her hair and her reflection in its body, her own eyes too bright, too blue.
Now, Ellery tightened her grip on Iskarius.
“If we want to get to the eye…” she started.
Domenic white-knuckled Valmordion. “We’ve gotta get through the swarm.”
As the first of the winterghasts charged toward them—a creature with tusks that scissored and flayed out into countless points—Ellery pressed her back to Domenic’s.
Together, they raised their wands and struck.
The NDC joined them, combating the initial wave of ghasts in squadrons of three or four, hurling coordinated barrages of nature magic.
Ellery fought as if a scurge unto herself, summoning a gale of frost that swept toward the winterghasts. Some fell prone. Others shattered. Behind her, Domenic’s fire spiraled out in a vortex, impervious even to the winds.
The winterghasts shrieked as the flames consumed them, their forms sagging into even more gruesome shapes as they melted. Still, none compared to Decibel’s power. But the monsters made up for it in sheer numbers, streaming endlessly through the compound as though conjured by the night itself.
Around them, magicians began to fall. Squadrons splintered and fled, until only Domenic and Ellery endured.
In some ways, it was a relief to be separate. Unburdened by the fear of collateral damage, they unleashed a tempest of magic. Domenic’s very shape glowed with a halo so bright it hurt even to squint at him. Ellery’s shadow elongated and spilled outward in a sea of darkness.
Their fight could’ve lasted minutes. It could’ve lasted hours. Until the final winterghast was slain. Steam hissed as its body melted into broken hunks of ice.
“You okay?” Domenic braced his free hand on his knee.
Ellery panted, “Alive. You?”
“Pretty much.”
As she gathered herself, dimly, she realized a crowd of magicians had thronged around them. Many of them cheered, applauding, embracing. But not all. At least a third backed away, pointing with trembling hands.
Not at the carnage before them.
At her.
Ellery knew why: frost drifted from her every exhale; her blue eyes beamed like spotlights; her shadow coiled at her feet, eddying and shifting.
Yet as she moved to sheathe Iskarius, she felt a heartbeat, echoing beside her own.
Just like she’d felt Decibel’s.
Whatever the other magicians saw, whatever they thought, she kept hold of Iskarius. She had no choice.
“Dom,” she said hoarsely. “One of the Dire Three. It’s here.”
Domenic’s eyes widened, then he spun to face the crowd.
He yelled something at them, but not even Ellery could hear it as strange cobalt lightning detonated overhead.
But rather than reach toward the earth, it stretched horizontally, as if a lattice of shattered glass covering the storm from edge to edge.
People scattered, screaming, as the lightning receded, each bolt drawing back toward a center. Then, in a cyclone of whirling snow and cloud, a giant shape loomed over them. Its icy body was as large as any building in the compound.
“It’s Thundersnow!” Domenic shouted to her, horrified.
Before Ellery could even nod, above them, the lightning gathered to specific points: a twin set of eyes in a humanoid face; a crackling network of antlers. Its body was studded with debris, entire trees frozen within its torso.
Its heartbeat boomed. It rattled her rib cage. It chattered her teeth. And a name rose in her, erupting like thunder.
“No, Kythion,” she corrected frantically. “Its name is Kythion.”
Domenic gawked. Yet he didn’t question how she possibly knew that. “But that sounds like…”
“Like a wand,” she finished.
“Shit.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “Shit. Well, if it has a name, what about the other two?”
“I didn’t hear anything when we fought Decibel.
But they must, right? The Dire Three aren’t like other ghasts.
And when one of them’s close, like this…
” Ellery stared up at the monster again.
The storm swirled around its body, traveling with each of its tremendous, creaking steps.
“I understand how this sounds. But I know them somehow. They feel … significant.”
Domenic froze, and Ellery swallowed, aware of just how unnerving her statement was. Aware of their remaining onlookers.
“Targath. Syarthis. Ravfiri,” he said gravely.
Ellery blinked. “What?”
“Everything you just said about those ghasts, that they’re different, significant, that’s how I feel about those wands. And there’s three of them, the most powerful of each class of magic. El, that can’t be a coincidence.”
“So you think they’re, what, counterparts to these things?
You think wands are … are monsters?” Ellery’s voice grew higher, shriller.
“That’s not … That can’t be…” She trailed off as a figure detached from the darkness and jogged toward them.
Ellery squinted at their unseasonal shorts, their utter lack of gear. Peak.
Domenic followed her gaze, then cursed. “You and me, we’ll figure this out later.”
“Y-yeah.”
Finally, Ellery dared to examine the wand she had created, its silver core and icy tip, its thorn-studded vines.
Ellery had used Iskarius to fling open her bedroom curtains and find spare pairs of shoes.
She’d used it to fortify an ancient network of trees.
She’d used it to slay the monsters she believed she’d been born to fight.
And not once had she asked herself where such tremendous power had truly come from.
“But Dom, if what you’re saying is true, then what the fuck are Val and Izzy?”
Hauntedly, Domenic glanced at Valmordion. Its golden heart seemed to blaze within his eyes.
“Later,” he repeated, a promise, a plea.