Chapter 32
Chapter Thirty-Two
The fall was…grueling. Like setting my skin on fire and diving into the heart of a storm, unsure which way was up but feeling the hot agony swallow me. I waited for it to boil my blood, to melt my flesh until I was nothing but scraps of bone and the lingering drafts of a tainted curse.
Flames. There were so many flames. Blinding flashes of orange and red and yellow. Heat licked up my limbs. I thought I screamed, but any echo of my voice faded into the roar of the volcano. Embers singed holes in my leathers, leaving blisters on my flesh in their wake.
This heat was like living in the heart of a star.
In the distance below, a blue glow emanated.
It was a speck from this height, barely visible through the tears streaking into the air around me.
My eyes stung, the sweet-smelling smoke turning putrid again, but I would not close them.
Despite the pain, I wanted to see every moment of this pivotal experience.
My heart tumbled through my chest, knowing that growing blue speck would be the hottest point of the volcano. The central stage of the fire that created this monstrous show.
The descent felt endless, the cavernous rock walls around me streaking past in flashes of gray and brown etched with veins of fire. Like the volcano was a living thing, the flame its blood. And that made me its foolish meal.
Though I had little concept of time, it seemed that minutes stretched. I thought of the height of the exterior and panicked. The structure was high, but the fall at this speed should not have taken so long. Had something gone wrong?
With a wave of doubt, I thought back to the night Damien appeared in my room.
His words flashed through my mind in a rush, all blending together, nearly indiscernible from one another.
The task ahead will try thy spirit. Not once did he explicitly claim the Undertaking as that task.
Oh, for the love of the Angels, had I misinterpreted his Spirits-damned message?
Had that ass of a First Warrior not thought to stop me from a grave mistake?
If after the brutal journey I put my friends through, I was not supposed to complete the Undertaking after all, I’d kill that Angel.
The heat around me matched my anger at the thought that I had foolishly—willingly—given myself over to the Spirit Volcano.
That I sacrificed myself to a ritual that had somehow malfunctioned.
I had a sickening feeling that this jump would be the end of me.
Oh, Spirits. This was what had happened to Malakai, wasn’t it? The Undertaking was faulty, a fatal flaw claiming any warrior who attempted it. And I dove headfirst into that death like a reckless fool.
A plume of smoke rose up around me, and I choked on the soot. I coughed over the ash in my lungs, my chest seizing while the organs worked feverishly to dispel the poison. I continued to plummet through the air. This was it. This was the end. I’d curse Damien if I saw him in the afterlife.
The blue pool grew larger, its light radiating around me.
I would land in it, and I would die at the heart of the flame.
The irony of my death at the hands of the Undertaking—the future I was never afraid of—when I carried a deadly Curse in my blood was not lost on me.
I’d made my peace with that fate days ago, but I hated that this was how it occurred.
All I could do was tick off the list of goodbyes, sending each out into the universe with one final burst of love. My sister, my friends, my parents—
A flash of mist soared past me. Not the smoke I fell through, but a white cloud.
It circled around me again, and I tried to follow it, but it was too quick.
Then, solid braces caught my body, cradling my back and legs. My head snapped back at the contact, but it didn’t hurt. None of it did, beyond the welts on my body. Whatever caught me had cushioned my impact.
I was tipped onto my feet, nearly toppling over at the vertigo from the sudden stop.
I looked above me. The mouth of the volcano was so high up, the space I was in now as large as my family’s estate in Palerman.
My head spun as I took in the cavern, thick pillars of rock supporting the walls.
To my right, the blue-white pool of flame flared, flowing in a quiet whirlpool, tendrils shooting high into the air.
It was so much larger with my feet on the ground; it swallowed up a quarter of the cavern, molten white lava flowing into and out of the stone floor, dripping down the walls.
Everything flickered—beckoning me—heightening my vertigo.
I fell to my knees and vomited up black smoke and ash.
When my body stopped heaving, I rose to my feet, wiping my mouth on my torn leathers. Before me stood three beings—no, they did not stand.
They floated.
Their feet hovered inches above the ground, and those feet—their entire bodies—were made of mist. Tinted white as if the color was being leached out of them, they were a stark contrast to the rock, fire, and smoke.
My jaw dropped, for as often as I had imagined this, I had never truly known what to expect when I came face-to-face with Spirits.
“Hello, Ophelia,” the largest one greeted me, floating in the center of their formation. The edges of his misty-white form were rimmed with gold. “We have been waiting for you.”