9. Environmental Physiology
Darkness rushed past, and consciousness collided with my newly formed Nightmare body.
The pain in my stomach and ribs dissipated, replaced by strength and power I hadn’t felt in weeks.
Orange sparks and magick that felt distinctly of Ciarán coursed through my fingertips, and I sighed, relishing the feeling of being in an unbroken body.
Then the world opened beneath me, and blue hair whipped around my face as I fell backwards off the face of the mountain.
A black-clad hand shot out and grabbed me by the black leather armor strapped across my chest, and I managed to keep a grip on the cliff with the toe of my boot.
“Stay on the mountain, please.” Ciarán’s cloak billowed in the wind behind him, and he heaved me back onto the ledge where he and Orla crouched beneath an opening in the stone cliff.
Orla craned her neck to get a better view through the carved window, but her eyes flitted to meet mine. An intrepid smile worked its way across her face. “There you are, Just-Wren. Exactly how I remember you, blue hair and all. Are you ready?”
“Are you?”
Her smile slipped away as quickly as it had appeared.
“No. But it’s alright.” Orla took a swig of Skal and returned the bottle to her belt. “Right. Stay close.”
She swung her leg up through the window and dropped out of sight on the other side.
Ciarán hesitated before following her, looking me up and down. He’d summoned me in armor similar in color and style to what he and Sabrina typically wore, and when I placed a searching hand to my neck, I found the folds of a face cowl identical to his.
“I’ll admit. I forgot just how blue you are like this.” Ciarán’s eyebrow quirked. “After you, my Lady.”
“Yeah, well, you look—” My retort died on my lips. He looked paler than usual, and his pallid skin glistened with sweat. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Now get in the mountain.”
“You don’t look fine.”
“Are you guys coming?” Orla hissed from the other side of the window.
Ciarán nodded for me to follow her. I scowled, pulled the cowl over my chin and nose, and climbed into the open mountain.
A wave of warmth pressed over me as I passed through the window, and the wind that had pulled at my hair just a moment ago cut, leaving me in the dark, still confines of a high-ceilinged corridor.
Ciarán heaved himself after me, dropping to the floor with less grace than I was used to seeing him move with.
“The windows are enchanted,” Orla explained when she caught me staring at the night sky through the openings. “There’s a barrier that keeps the warmth in and the wind out.”
“Clever.” Ciarán stuck his hand back through the window and twisted his fingers in the outside wind. “That’s advanced Skalmagick.”
“We have good Magicians.” Orla flexed her hands and turned to the open corridor ahead of us. “Luckily, most of those Magicians should be asleep, and these upper floors are mostly observation decks. If we stick to the back stairwells, we should make it to the prison suite unseen.”
“Oh, good. More stairs.” Ciarán rubbed at his temple but pushed himself to his feet to follow Orla with faltering steps.
“And if there are guards?” I asked.
“There shouldn’t be,” Orla explained. “We have no need for guards inside the city because no one knows the city exists. There will likely be one outside Iseult’s prison cell, but we can handle that when we get there.”
Ciarán paused and braced himself against the wall of the corridor in the shadow between two moonbeams.
“Are you sure you’re good?” I asked him through our tether.
“Ask again, Blue, and I’ll dissolve you and finish this job without you.” He forced himself to straighten up and immediately doubled over before hissing out loud, “Dammit, why is it so hard to breathe?”
“Probably the altitude,” I said. “We’re too high up, and there’s less oxygen. And you did just climb a mountain.”
He glared at me through bits of dark hair that hung loose from his bun. “But she’s fine! And you!”
“Orla’s from here. Her body is used to it. And I’m not a real body.” I shifted my weight from foot to foot as Orla crept down the hall without us. “Can I help somehow? What if I held your hand, or—”
“I’m good.” Ciarán staggered after Orla, but his shoulders heaved with breaths that I knew weren’t delivering enough oxygen.
Orla kept the windows to our left until we came to an off-shooting corridor, and she ducked into its shadows. Flickering green light glowed somewhere around a corner, but Orla led us into a twisting stairwell before we could find its source.
The walls pressed on either side of us and the stairs spiraled so tightly that they were nearly unclimbable, but each step was a tiny triumph.
I could take on these stairs. We would rescue Iseult.
We would escape the Second Sentinel. We would find our way back to Keel Watch Harbor, and everything would go back to normal.
Except that where each step was a victory for me and my wholly-made body, they appeared to be a hard-fought battle for Ciarán. He pulled his cowl down to better catch his breath as we climbed.
“Up there.” Orla leaned against the wall at the top of the stairs to wipe sweat from her brow as she pointed.
Stars winked beyond the lip of the low ceiling.
The mountain’s inside rim bordered the splash of night sky, and I could just barely make out the path carved into the stone there.
Green fires in stone lanterns dotted the rock, illuminating the network of stairs and walkways that crisscrossed over the far side of the hollow mountain.
“That’s the prison suite,” Orla said. “At the very top.”
“I thought prisons were usually in the basement,” I said.
“Our Skalspring is down there,” Orla explained. “Best to keep prisoners as far from our magick source as possible.”
I nodded. I remembered the pool of Skal at the bottom of the well-shaped city. While we couldn’t see it from our vantage point here, the soft glow of Skal emanated from the depths of the mountain to accent the far walkways in gentle blue hues.
“How do we get up there?” Ciarán asked.
Orla pointed at the ornate stairs carved out of the mountain. They wrapped up around the center of the city in plain view of anyone who looked that direction.
“How are we supposed to sneak up that?” I hissed. “The entire mountain will see us!”
“I figured your Grimguard is pretty sneaky.” Orla shrugged. “He did a good job tracking us across Skalterra anyway. I’m sure he can get us up there without being spotted.”
“Tracking and sneaking are two different things.” Ciarán slumped against the wall, looking all the more sick in the ambient green light of the city. “But I can do it.”
“I think you need a break, actually.” I grimaced. The only time I’d seen Ciarán looking this worse for wear had been when Orla and I had found him dying of an infection in an alleyway.
Ciarán grunted but was otherwise unable to argue.
“Fine.” Orla crossed her arms and looked at me. “Then we send Wren.”
“What?” I put my hands up. “Shouldn’t it be you? You’re from here. Any guard on duty up there probably knows you!”
“And they know I’m not supposed to be here right now.”
“Pretty sure they’ll all know the blue-haired Nightmare is also not supposed to be here.”
“Not if you hide your blue hair.”
“A hood isn’t going to cut it,” Ciarán said, but my stomach tightened as I realized what Orla was suggesting.
“Wren can change her appearance when she’s a Nightmare,” she explained to Ciarán. “She did it once, in Vanderfall. Remember, Wren? You made yourself look like that blond boy to get away from the Baron’s guard.”
Heat rose in my cheeks, and I pressed my lips together, refusing to look at Ciarán. There were millions of blond boys. He had no way to know it had been Liam—him—I’d disguised myself as.
“Blond boy?” Ciarán straightened up, and a playful eyebrow quirk lifted his face. “Care to elaborate, my Lady?”
“Shut up,” I growled back.
“Wouldn’t be anyone I’d recognize, would it?”
“A random blond kid is still going to draw attention,” I said, ignoring Ciarán. “And it takes up a lot of energy to transform. It might hurt Ciarán.”
“I’m not suggesting you go up as a random kid.” Orla’s mouth pressed into a thin line, and her posture turned rigid.
Unease knotted my stomach, and my heart dropped as her plan became apparent.
It was smart, and it would probably work. It was the exact type of ploy only a lucid Nightmare would be able to pull off.
But I didn’t want to do it.
“It’ll be fine,” Orla promised. “It’s our best bet at getting Iseult out of here fast, and I’m not sure how much longer Ciarán will last up here.”
She grimaced at Ciarán, who was still struggling to pretend to be fine.
“Right,” I sighed. She was right. It was the easiest way forward, as unpleasant as it would be. “Let me know if I mess him up.”
I covered my face with my hands and focused on my hair first. It turned to dust on my shoulders, leaving a short hairstyle that swooped upwards like a cockatoo’s head feathers.
The fabric of my clothes and armor shifted and snaked against my body as I altered them to better fit the typical Second Sentinel fashion.
The bone beneath my Skal-made skin rippled, and my cheeks shifted beneath my palms. Bristly beard pushed against my fingers, and the itchy feeling made me drop my hands.
Both Ciarán and Orla grimaced at me.
“Do I look alright?” I winced at the sound of Ferrin’s voice coming out of my mouth and raised a hand to my throat. “Oh, I hate that.”
“You can’t hate it more than I do.” Ciarán turned away to look back towards the prison suite.
“You’re fine,” Orla insisted, but her wide eyes and hunched shoulders suggested different. “You even got his clothes right.”
I looked down at the leather vest and white tunic that had replaced the black clothes Ciarán had summoned me in.
“Let’s get this over with, Blue.” He still refused to look at me. “Get up there, get the girl, and let’s leave.”
Orla nodded at me, and I nodded back, tugging on the hem of my vest.
“Right,” Ferrin’s voice replied from my throat. “Easy.”