46. Advanced Volcanology
Ciarán would be done with Ferrin’s body soon. Blue fire flared overhead where Mom was already trying to draw his attention away from us, but it would be futile. We may’ve had less Skal where we cradled Orla on the ice, but we were easier to reach for the rotsbane.
Orla was in no condition to move, and I knew Iseult would never leave her. I didn’t want to leave her either, but we couldn’t do nothing.
“Iseult, I need a weapon,” I said. Cold resolve settled in my stomach, and my throat tightened. “Any weapon.”
“My Skal will burn you.”
“I know.”
“Any weapon?” Silver light flared in her hand.
I smirked at the flail she passed me. Even with my sleeve pulled down around my hand, the handle seared into my palm.
Iseult reached across Orla to put a hand on my shoulder. Her gray eyes met mine, steely and steadfast.
She knew a Skal weapon was useless against a rotsbane but in one regard. To her credit, she didn’t try to dissuade me.
“Seal my grandmother,” I grunted through the burning pain of the magick. “Escape to Keldori. I’ll buy as much time as I can, but you’ll have to be fast.”
“Wren—!” Orla rasped, but I was already running.
I held the flail overhead as I sprinted. Iseult’s silver magick felt fitting, like I was Galahad’s Nightmare again and wielding his Skal.
My time in Skalterra would end how it started.
The mountain peaks ahead bled with a hazy glow as the sunrise dyed their ash plumes red. I watched them as I ran, imagining the life I’d wanted for myself.
Von Leer felt more than a world away. I missed when college had been what I wanted more than anything. Now I would’ve been happy just to have one more day with my friends.
I passed over Ciarán’s shredded clothes as I ran, and I stooped to grab his discarded metal scythe with my free hand.
Mom’s voice tore at my back, screaming my name, but I continued towards the shore, wondering how far I could get before Ciarán was on top of me in his chase after my glowing silver flail.
The ice shuddered beneath me, and tears streamed down my cheeks as I braced for Ciarán. I let the connection between us snap into place so that his view overlaid my own.
I saw myself running ahead of him. He was gaining quick, and my hand holding his scythe tightened around the handle. Ciarán’s screaming subsided, and deep gratitude sang in harmony with fathomless sorrow along the tether.
“Aim for the mouth,” Ciarán’s gentle voice sounded in my head. “Aim for the mouth, Blue.”
I let go of the flail and spun around just as he leapt, my borrowed scythe at the ready.
Fana, far in the distance now, screamed my name.
A light flickered at the Rift, and then burst.
I only had a half-moment to try to shield my eyes from Fana’s attack. The light, brighter than the sun itself, filtered through my fingers, and the force of the explosion threw me backwards.
I landed hard on my back, and the air went out of my lungs.
Blind, unable to breath, and perfectly vulnerable, I gasped at the sky. Spots burst in my vision. Ringing in my ears drowned out all sound.
I waited for Ciarán to tear into me the way he had Ferrin, but the claws didn’t come.
The world shifted as it came back into focus, and I rolled onto my stomach, trying to gather my bearings.
Behind me, the ice had opened up to reveal dark waters that separated us from the Rift. The ice Mom had put up to protect the doorway had been blasted apart by Fana’s magick, and Skal surged on the air that billowed over the bay.
It electrified the surface of my skin and filled my lungs with every labored breath I took.
Up ahead, a dark mass writhed on what was left of the ice beneath us. Ciarán shuddered and shrieked, his four claws grasping at the air, like a dying spider.
Rotsbane couldn’t survive in the daylight, I remembered. They were creatures of hunger and shadow, and Fana’s magick had built the sun.
“Wren…” Ciarán gasped in my head. “Please…”
My grip tightened on the scythe, and I blinked, still trying to clear my vision as I stepped closer.
The shadows that clung to the rotsbane rolled like steam, revealing the mishappen skeleton that lay beneath.
“My Grimguard,” I whispered. “My Ciarán.”
Hesitating was selfish. Ciarán was in agony. The sun would rise soon, and his pain would increase. There was nowhere to hide from its light on the ice.
But maybe I deserved a moment to be selfish after everything, after seeing what Ciarán had been reduced to.
I tightened my grip on the scythe and raised it over my head.
Entropy was the theory of chaos. The universe was falling into disorder because disorder took less energy. Less magick.
It was why heat dispersed in a cold room. It was why metal left in the rain rusted. It was why Skal turned Magicians and Nightmares inside out, and it was why Skal now rushed from Keldori into Skalterra.
The higher the entropy, the harder it was to reverse what had been done, because chaos was the natural order of the universe.
I dropped the scythe to my side, and Ciarán whimpered in my head.
Entropic reactions were hard to reverse. It would be near impossible.
But I’d managed worse odds than that before.
Skal was powered by sheer will. I was the most stubborn person I knew, and if the people of Skalterra believed me to be a god, then I would show them a deity.
I would force the universe and its laws of entropy and chaos to bend.
My magick had made this world, after all.
Maybe that was why it was so easy to siphon the magick flowing on the air out of Keldori now. It flurried around me, turning the morning twilight bright as it poured into Skalterra.
Ciarán’s rotsbane croaked feebly at the magick.
Quill, when he’d been experimenting in the strath, had found a way to purify Skal. Gams said he’d used himself as a conduit to change it, to make it so entropic transformations of human into rotsbane were no longer possible.
If he could prevent that, then surely I could reverse it as well.
All that Skal swirling across the ice, in the sky, lighting the atmosphere, poured into me all at one.
Ciarán disappeared. So did the ice, the shore, the mountains, and the sky as I stepped into a strange, liminal space.
The worlds stretched out ahead of me like a butterfly pinned against black velvet, every delicate vein of its wings on display. Each wing was its own world and I the fragile insect that held them together.
And both worlds would bend to my will because the Skal surging between them, the Skal that surged into me, was mine.
But it hurt. It burned at every fiber, every neuron, every atom of my being, and I could feel it stripping me away.
I held on. I didn’t care how much of me had to burn to save Ciarán. Because I would do it.
My screams were lost to the slippery rush of Skal. The sound and the fire were all that existed in this liminal space until—
“Wren?” A hand grabbed mine, and the burning lessened. Mom frowned next to me, her blonde hair hanging loose and nearly white in the glow of the rushing Skal. “My beautiful, stubborn girl. What are we doing here?”
“I have to save him.”
“That’s never been done before, my dear.” Gams took my hand on my other side, and again, the Skal’s toll lessened. “It may be impossible.”
“Gams.” I squeezed my eyes shut, and hot tears streamed down my cheeks. “You’re alive?”
“Alive enough to meet you here.”
My hand shook in hers. This strange, rushing place did not hold our real bodies, but Gams and Mom—
I’d waited so long to be with them again, and here we were at the center of converging Skal.
“Where is here?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” Gams admitted. “It exists outside our worlds, and it’s where I came with the other Sovereigns when we made Skalterra.”
I did not care if saving Ciarán was impossible. I had the best chance right here, between the two best women.
The magick rushed from Keldori, ripping through me, my mother, and grandmother, and I let it build. Impossibly cold, white hot, unbearably heavy, airy and light—
I would take every bit of Skal I needed to save Ciarán.
The last of the Skal sucked into my vacuum, and the magick pressed against everything that made me. Mom and Gams both tightened their hands in mine, and then I let go to step forward out of that strange space between worlds and onto the ice.
I knelt at Ciarán’s mangled, rotsbane body, now in its final throes.
My hands emitted heat and light when I pressed through the shadows of his shape.
All the magick escaped at once.
Ciarán’s rotsbane shrieked, and the sound was needles in my ears and a knife in my gut. Skal shredded me as it burst free, but my magick remade my flesh, bones, and sinew as fast as it was ripped apart. Ice cracked around us like cannon fire, then echoed against the surrounding hills and glaciers.
I screwed my eyes shut against the light, and shadow solidified beneath my hands.
Silence, except for the ringing in my ears, fell. I kept my eyes closed, and pressed my fingers against the familiar ridges of Ciarán’s ribs, scars, and muscles.
His chest rose beneath my touch, and I opened my eyes.
He lay on his back on the ice. The scars and bruises left from the summer painted a tapestry of where we’d been, and I stared at it through a film of tears.
His body, against all odds, was back.
I dared to lift my eyes to his face.
The pale skin of his cheeks was pallid, and his dark hair heavy with sweat, but his eyelids fluttered half-open to amber eyes. Tears traced the side of his face to fall into his hair.
“Wren.” A faint rasp scratched at Ciarán’s throat.
“Ciarán!” I pulled my cloak from my shoulders to throw over his naked body, worried he might be cold, then fell on top of him, holding him close as sobs of relief and exhaustion racked my body.
“You’re terrible at listening,” he croaked. “You’re supposed to aim for the mouth.”
“I’ve been told I have terrible aim.” I was trying to make a joke, but the words came out in embarrassing sobs.
“Thank Skal for that.” He raised a shaking hand to my face to wipe at my wet cheeks with his thumb.
I laughed through my tears, held him tighter, and pressed my lips against his.
We’d done it. We’d—