Daybreak Storms Over Keldori

1. Geological Climatology I

The storm tasted like iron, and the metallic sting in my mouth made me think my stomach ulcers were bleeding again.

But the sharp pains in my abdomen were gone, as were the aches in my ribs, and though the sky roiled in a thick mess of clouds, sleet, and lightning, I felt better than I had in weeks.

Which was all well and good, but I had no idea where I was. I fought to see through fast-falling sleet and curtains of snow thrown up by the raging winds, and through the angry gloom, jagged ice formations cut the ground.

Thunder clapped directly overhead, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Blue lightning sliced through the storm, striking the ice some fifty yards away. Frozen fragments sprayed into the air, and the blitz of shards sent me careening to the shaking ground.

“Blue hair, Wren?” A woman’s voice, strained but exasperated, sounded behind me. “Your Nightmare form has blue hair?”

I flipped onto my hands and knees, gawking at the woman. I wasn’t too familiar with this version of her, with her gossamer dress that whipped around her calves, or the young, smooth face that radiated power and magick as she sustained the raging storm.

No, the Gams I knew was wrinkled from decades of laughter and wore paint-stained shirts and kept her gray hair short. That Gams wasn’t a Magician. That Gams wasn’t the closest thing the magick-fueled world where I was trapped had to a god.

But it didn’t matter that I didn’t know this version of her as well. She was still my grandmother, and I needed her. I needed to make sure she was okay.

“Gams!” I tried to crawl closer, but her wind was too strong, and the ice beneath me was coarse, as if it had been broken and thawed, and then refrozen, over and over. “Gams, are you—”

“The hair, Wren!” she said again through gritted teeth. “It’s blue!”

The last we’d been together, we’d been held at sword-point and ripped apart from each other as our world collapsed around us, and she wanted to make fun of my hair?

“I didn’t choose it!”

“Of course you did. That’s how Nightmares work. Don’t let Sarah see. She’ll never let me hear the end of it.” She broke off in a labored grunt, and blue lightning flashed in the dark clouds overhead.

“Nightmares?” I looked at my hands where they pressed against the ice in a bid to keep me steady in the storm. Blue hair whipped in and out of my vision as it caught on Gams’s wind. That’s why I couldn’t feel my injuries. That’s why I had blue hair again. “I'm a Nightmare? You summoned me?”

There wasn’t much left of the icy cavern where I’d said goodbye to Grams a week ago.

The cave roof and walls were gone, and an array of colossal ice shards rose up behind Gams to replace what had once been a smooth-walled tunnel of ice connecting Skalterra to the world I called home.

A new tunnel nestled at the base of the shards directly behind Gams’s tensed and ready figure, glowing a gentle blue.

“Of course I summoned you. How else could you be here? No one gets past my storm.” Behind her thin-rimmed spectacles, my grandmother’s eyes glinted the same electric blue as the sparks of Skalmagick that arched between her fingers.

“The Rift between Skalterra and Keldori is open. I’m doing what I can to keep those leeches on the shore from getting through. ”

“We know! We’re working on a plan to get past the armies so we can refreeze you and reseal the Rift.

” My heart broke at the thought of refreezing Gams back in her glacier, but if we did, maybe things could be normal again.

The Gams I knew would return, even if it was just as a Nightmare.

She might even bring Liam back. I could go back to focusing on getting into Von Leer University.

There was no hope for me this year, but next—

“You can’t reseal me.”

“Yes! We can! Sorcha—I mean, Sarah says you have about three months before you burn out. We’re hiding in the foothills—”

“Get out of the foothills!” Gams barked. “Wren, you need to get everyone south of the mountains.”

Lightning and thunder crashed overhead, and I threw my arms over my head to protect myself from the storm. When I lowered them, Gams was looking at me with something new playing across her face.

Something like pity.

“We’re coming! Soon!” I had to shout to hear myself over her gale. “Me and the others, we’re going to fix this. I’m going to fix this.”

Gams shook her head.

“Nothing gets past my storm. Not Ferrin Quillguard’s army. Not the Baron’s troops. Not you.”

“But the Rift—”

“Will be sealed.” Gams pressed her too-young lips together, and I thought I saw her chin quiver before she continued. “There is a reason the Bay of Teeth is surrounded by volcanoes. With the Rift open, they’ll be waking up, like we designed them to do.”

I tried to make sense of what she was telling me, but it wasn’t quite computing.

“But there will be mudslides,” I said stupidly. “Maybe lava.”

“Yes, Wren.”

The ensuing calamity would take care of the armies outside, and would at the very least make the Rift near-impossible to access. But Gams…Sealing her in a pyroclastic flow would not be the same as sealing her in frozen Skal.

“But you would…”

I didn’t want to say the word. It didn’t take the degree in volcanology I so badly wanted to know that Gams would not survive a volcanic eruption.

“I’ve been alive for four hundred years, dear. It’s about time my turn came around.”

No. No, I refused.

“How long before they erupt?”

“A month at most. Maybe less, depending on…” She paused to chew on her lip, thinking. “Depending on outside factors.”

“There has to be a way!” I insisted. I wouldn’t let my grandmother be destroyed by a volcano. Not to save the world. Not for anyone. “Tell me how to save you!”

She shook her head. “There’s no way.”

She was lying. She’d lied to me my entire life about who she was and about who I was. I wouldn’t believe her lies any longer, not when her life was on the line.

“Mom’s still back at home,” I said. “And I’m in Skalterra. I’ll never see her again if you don’t tell me how to save you.”

“Talk to Gladys. She’ll summon her as a Nightmare. It’ll be fine.”

“It’s not the same!” I yelled. “And I know it’s not the same because I spent a month as a Nightmare in a world you didn’t tell me existed for eighteen years! I want my real mom, and I want to save you, so tell me how, dammit!”

“Wren Warrender!” Gams scowled. “You don’t speak to your grandmother that way!”

“Then don’t lie to me!” Blue magick, the same shade as Gams’s electricity, sparked in my hands.

Gams held my gaze, shaking with either the effort of fueling her storm or of holding back all the things I knew she didn’t have the time to say to me.

“The Lyrians will help you get to your mother,” she finally said. “When this is over, find a Lyrian, but Wren. It’s dangerous.”

A Lyrian. I could find a Lyrian.

“I don’t care.”

“Don’t do anything you don’t have to. I called you here to warn you about the volcanoes. Please, get everyone to safety. And if you want to return to your mother, find a Lyrian.”

I tried to crawl along the ice to get closer to Gams, but her winds buffeted me backwards.

“I’m going to save you,” I promised her. Her somber face told me she wasn’t so sure.

“I would never ask that of you, my darling. I’ve loved the eighteen years I got to spend as your grandmother.” A tear traced her cheek, and my heart dropped.

She was saying goodbye.

Why was she saying goodbye?

“Stop it,” I begged, but I wasn’t sure she could hear me over the storm.

“Be a good girl for your mother.”

“Stop it!” I yelled the words this time.

I spun to my feet, putting Gams and the glowing tunnel behind her at my back. Her storm made it impossible to see all the way to the shores of the frozen bay where we stood, but I knew Ferrin was out there with his army.

If I could reach him, I could end this tonight.

Pain shot through my forearms as four shards of bone erupted through my muscles at my bidding. Dark blood stained their serrated edges, then turned to dust as it dripped off the blades.

“Wren!” Gams shouted a warning. “You’ll be ashed—”

“Then clear me a path!”

“I’m afraid you have a severe misunderstanding regarding how storms work. No one is making it through that!”

“I can!” My voice was a feral growl, and my bones splintered and elongated as I pulled at my grandmother’s Magick to bolster my Nightmare form with muscle and claws.

I would finish this now. I would see my grandmother again. I would not let her die.

“Look at me, Wren! Let me say goodbye to my granddaughter!” The desperation and finality in her tone felt like a betrayal somehow. This was not and would not be goodbye, and the idea that she could even suggest this might be our last meeting was vile.

I refused to look back at her. That wasn’t really my Grandmother after all. Those weren’t the arms that had comforted me so many times. Those weren’t the hands that had wiped away so many tears.

Uneven sheets of ice passed beneath my feet as I hurtled over the frozen bay. Gams’s voice, too young to be hers, chased after me, but I was too fast and her storm was too loud for me to make out what it was she said.

Sleet tore at my skin, and one, then two, of the bone spikes I’d armed myself with snapped off in the onslaught of hail.

I kept going.

I would prove Gams wrong. I would make it through the storm. I would save Skalterra. I would save Keldori. I would save my grandma.

The hair on the back of my neck stood straight up, azure lightning flashed, and heat and pain ripped me open from the inside out as the bay burst in an explosion of fire and electric Skal.