Chapter 19 The Collapse #2
Another explosion rocked the tower, closer this time. Through the windows, Lark glimpsed the festival square below as she ran. Chaos reigned at the ground level as citizens fled, and soldiers mobilized. A dark shadow passed overhead. White Eye was circling the Keep.
Lark ran harder, her bound wrists hampering her balance as she navigated the corridors. Twice she had to duck into recesses to avoid guards rushing toward the upper levels. The third time, she wasn’t fast enough.
“Stop right there!” A squad of four guards blocked her path, their weapons drawn.
Lark didn’t slow. Instead, she accelerated, catching them by surprise.
At the last moment, she dropped into a slide, passing between two of them before they could react.
As she came up behind them, she slammed her shoulder into the back of one guard’s knees, sending him tumbling into his companions.
The fourth guard lunged, managing to grab her bound wrists. Lark twisted, using his grip as leverage to swing her legs up and around his neck. They fell together, the guard cushioning her impact as they hit the stone floor.
Lark rolled clear, winded but uninjured. The guards were already recovering, shouting for reinforcements. She had seconds, not minutes.
Two more flights of stairs and she would reach the level where her cell, the gateway chamber, was located. Lark took the stairs three at a time, nearly falling headlong when another explosion shook the tower. Dust and small fragments of stone rained down from the ceiling.
White Eye is targeting the tower itself, she realized. He’s trying to bring it down to reach me.
Finally, she reached the familiar corridor. Two guards stood outside her cell door, already alert from the alarms echoing through the Keep. They raised their weapons as she appeared at the end of the hallway.
“Stop right there, Heartfell,” one shouted.
Lark had no intention of stopping. She charged directly at them, feinting left before cutting sharply right at the last moment.
The first guard’s sword slashed through empty air where she should have been.
The second managed to grab a handful of her shirt, but Lark’s momentum carried them both into the wall.
As they struggled, Lark heard the pounding of boots. Reinforcements were coming from both directions. She would be surrounded in moments.
The guard struck her across the face, the blow jarring her teeth and splitting her lip. Lark tasted blood, but the pain only sharpened her focus. She drove her knee up into the guard’s stomach, then used her bound hands to strike him in the throat.
As he fell back, gasping, Lark lunged for the keys at his belt. Her fingers closed around them just as the reinforcements reached the corridor’s end.
“There she is!” someone shouted. “Stop her!”
Lark fumbled with the keys, trying each one in the cell door’s locks.
The third key turned with a satisfying click.
Lark shoved the door open and threw herself inside, slamming it shut behind her.
The final two locks wouldn’t engage from the inside, but the door would hold for a few precious moments.
She turned to the chamber walls, eyes scanning the runes she’d studied earlier.
Already she could hear the guards gathering outside.
“Someone get a dragon over here now,” one yelled.
“Bring a Paragon, a Knight, ash, anyone with brismil,” another called.
“We’re going to bust this down the old-fashioned way, brute force and a battering ram,” another said.
Now or never, she thought, closing her eyes.
Focusing all her concentration, Lark reached for her bonds.
This time, she didn’t try to be subtle. She pulled hard on both connections, drawing energy from White Eye and Nix simultaneously.
The pendant at her chest flared with heat, and Lark felt a rush of power unlike anything she’d experienced before.
The runes on the walls blazed to life, green and silver light filling the chamber. Where the energies met, that same purple luminescence formed, growing brighter with each passing second.
Outside, the guards began ramming the door. The blockade groaned under the assault, the hinges straining.
“Hurry,” Lark urged, pressing her palms against the wall where the runic patterns converged most densely. The stone felt hot beneath her touch, nearly burning.
The power built within her, these dual energies no longer fighting for dominance but merging to become something new. Lark guided it into the runes, feeling them respond to her control.
At the center of the chamber, the air began to shimmer. A disc of light formed, its edges pulsed with that same purple energy. Through it, Lark caught glimpses of a landscape unlike anything in Sataran, trees with crystalline leaves, a sky painted in colors she had no names for.
The door splintered at the edges as the battering ram struck again.
Almost there, Lark thought, pouring more energy into the gateway. But something was wrong. The portal was forming too rapidly, growing unstable. The edges flickered, the view beyond blurring.
“What’s happening?” she whispered, feeling the energy beginning to spiral beyond her control.
The pendant against her chest grew painfully hot. In a flash of flame, Nix materialized beside her, her form stronger than before.
“The gateway is unstable,” Nix shouted over the rising whine of magical energy. “The bonds are too strong. We need to—”
The door crashed inward. Guards spilled into the chamber. Behind them, Lark saw the Archmagus, his eyes widening at the sight of the portal taking shape.
“Stop her!” he commanded, raising his hands to cast a counterspell.
Everything seemed to slow. Lark saw the guards rushing toward her, the Archmagus’ spell forming at his fingertips, the gateway fluctuating wildly before her.
It’s now or never, she thought.
With a final surge of will, Lark channeled everything she had into the gateway. The runes flared blindingly bright, and the portal stabilized for a single heartbeat.
Lark didn’t hesitate. As the guards reached for her, as the Archmagus’ spell shot toward her, she launched herself forward into the swirling purple light.
The gateway closed behind her with a thunderclap of discharged energy, cutting off the shouts and the chaos of the Vermillion Keep.
For a timeless moment, Lark felt herself falling through nothingness, tumbling through a void where reality itself seemed fluid. Colors she had never seen before washed over her, sounds that had no source echoed in her mind.
Then, with jarring suddenness, she hit solid ground.
Lark lay still, her breath knocked from her lungs, every nerve in her body tingling painfully as if she’d been struck by lightning.
When she finally managed to open her eyes, she found herself staring up at an alien sky.
Deep purples and blues swirled overhead, peppered with streaks of luminous silver where stars should have been.
Slowly, painfully, she pushed herself to a sitting position. The shackles that had bound her wrists were gone, dissolved in the passage between realms. Around her stretched a landscape both beautiful and unsettling.
Crystalline trees rose in the distance, their translucent leaves catching light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The ground beneath her was covered in what looked like grass, but each blade shimmered with its own inner light, changing color subtly as she moved.
“We made it,” came Nix’s voice from beside her.
Lark turned to see the fire fae standing tall and vibrant. Here, in her own realm, Nix’s flame burned brighter than Lark had ever seen it, her dress and hair rippling with red, orange, and gold energies that cast dancing shadows on the luminous ground.
“The fae realm,” Lark breathed, struggling to take it all in. “We’re actually here.”
“Yes,” Nix said, her expression a mixture of joy and concern. “But we have a problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“The gateway collapsed behind us. It was unstable, formed too quickly.” Nix gestured to the empty air where they had emerged. “I don’t know how to get us back to Sataran.”
Lark stared at her, the implications sinking in. They had escaped the Vermillion Keep, yes, but at what cost? They were now trapped in an alien realm, with no clear way home.
She reached for her bond with White Eye, and felt it, but it was stretched impossibly thin, like a thread drawn across an entire ocean. He was still there, still connected to her, but communicating with him would be nearly impossible across the barrier between realms.
As the shock began to fade, Lark remembered the critical information she’d learned just before their escape. Venrick was alive but suffering from the King’s corruption spell. And the Flashover would begin in just three days.
“We need to find a way back,” Lark said, forcing herself to her feet despite the lingering pain. “Quickly. There’s too much at stake to be stranded here.”
“I know,” Nix agreed. “But first, we need to be careful. The fae realm has its own dangers, its own politics.” She gazed toward the crystal forest. “Things have changed since you were here last.”
In the distance, Lark could now make out structures rising above the treeline. Glistening spires that seemed to float untethered to the ground, connected by bridges of light and shadow.
“Is that where we’re going?” she asked, pointing.
Nix nodded. “The Summer Court. If anyone can help us return to Sataran, it will be them.” She hesitated, then added, “But remember, Lark, the fae don’t think like humans.
Or even like dragons who have bonded with riders.
Time moves differently here. Alliances shift like the wind.
And power,” she gestured to landscape around them. “Power is everything.”
Lark straightened her shoulders, looking down at her tattered clothes, still marked with blood from her captivity in the Vermillion Keep. She was hardly an impressive sight.
Yet she had done what no one else had managed in centuries, bridged the gap between realms without the aid of a Flashover. She had performed magic that combined dragon and fae power in perfect harmony.
Perhaps that would be enough to earn the Summer Court’s respect and their help.
“Lead the way,” Lark said, taking a step toward the crystal forest.
As they walked, Lark couldn’t help but glance back once more at where the gateway had been.
Somewhere on the other side, Venrick was fighting the King’s corruption.
White Eye was battling the Keep’s forces.
Their allies were risking everything based on information that now was known to be incomplete.
And the clock was ticking, with only three days until the Flashover began.
“We’ll find a way back,” she promised herself quietly. “Whatever it takes.”
The alien grass shifted colors beneath her feet, responding to her determination as she walked deeper into the fae realm.