Chapter 15
Aeson
THE AIR GONDOLA LANDS IN the royal sector of the travel station.
Ogdan and Sondar escort me toward the jump portal, and Sondar gives the waiting sorcai the coordinates to our destination.
The Span Crafters hurry to manipulate their magic, linking the focus stones of the arch here with the stones that were recently activated in the northwest corner of The Scorch.
I haven’t set foot in the new camp Herm and Blay have been organizing for the last few days.
I was headed there this morning when the summons from the Conclave arrived.
I look up through the glass ceiling of the station and realize I was sitting in that meeting longer than I thought.
It felt like minutes, but it’s afternoon already.
The loam hounds were released in the new sector this morning, and the last I heard, things were looking promising.
However, promising is a tricky asshole that’s played me for a fool one too many times.
I’d like to see less promise and more progress, because fuck trying to find a needle in a haystack—this hunt is more like trying to find a drop of water in the ocean.
“Ready, Scion,” one of the sorcai declares, signaling to me and my Wing that we’re all clear.
The arch before me now frames a bright blue sky and an endless span of black sand.
I give myself another second to enjoy the cool temperatures of Four Tiers, and then, with a resigned exhale, I follow Sondar into the wall of magic with Ogdan at my back.
There’s barely enough time to register the tingling sensation of the sorcai cast and the pull of the portal before we’re stepping out into a solar flare masquerading as a desert.
The heat is suffocating to the point of immediate misery, and I’m not the only one that groans when we’re once again at its mercy.
Instantly my sour mood ferments into overheated agitation.
My affinity does its best to regulate my temperature and soothe my skin from the sun’s sudden onslaught, but it’s a battle that can’t be won in a wretched place like this.
I survey our surroundings, noting the camp was thankfully set up within the shade of a long ridge that’s too big to be called a hill and too small to be considered a mountain.
Opposite the ridge is a sea of churning black sand, and there, in the middle of it all, is the triangle of towering dunes that called me here.
We start to pick our way through the camp, and a trickle of unease crawls through me when I don’t find the rest of my Wing anywhere.
The loam hounds have been placed back in their pastures, and their dwarven handlers are all lounging around their section of tents, like they’re on vacation instead of here to do a job.
Anger begins to simmer in my gut, and I search for the pavilion that marks our command center.
Finally spotting it, I stomp toward its entrance, getting more pissed with each stride when it sounds as though my Wing is just standing around and chatting.
The front panels of the tent are wide open when I storm in allowing the perfect view of the three large sand dunes that are the reason we’re here.
“Commander!” Chastain crows excitedly when I come into view. The others turn to greet me, equally as buoyant, and I stop in my tracks.
What the fuck is going on?
Days ago, my Wing looked just as frustrated and fed up with this Source-forsaken desert as I am.
Now, they’re grinning and?.?.?. it hits me like a punishing slap across my cheek.
Frantically I look around for any indication that my suspicion is real, but there’s no conniving Syphon strapped to a chair, or a map with a giant X marking her location.
There’s only my Wing staring at me with bright, eager eyes and wide smirks.
“Did you find her?” I demand, the question hemorrhaging both shock and desperation.
“We think so,” Karis answers.
For a second, my vision tunnels and all I can hear is a sharp ringing in my ears. I stare at the colossal Thrasher, suddenly worried he’s nothing more than a mirage and none of this is real. I shake my head in an effort to reboot my brain. “Say that again,” I murmur.
Tove steps forward and raises her hand to stop Karis from answering. “We don’t know exactly what we’ve found, but we did find something ?.?.?. look.” Tove points at the holoscreen everyone is gathered around. “We just isolated the feeds and were discussing a plan of action.”
A map appears on the large, glowing screen, and Tove points to a rendering of a shaft that starts at the edge of the three sand dunes, runs through the open expanse of sand, and then tunnels under the ridges shading our camp.
“The loam hounds found this,” Tove explains, pointing to the extensive solitary tunnel.
“And the drones mapped this,” she goes on, directing my attention to the dunes themselves, which apparently hide structures within.
“There’s no signs of life in either the structures or the tunnel itself,” Blay announces, and the exhilaration blooming in my chest wilts.
“But there’s more,” Gatlin interjects, and I feel like I’m on a literal emotional roller coaster as my heart rate zooms right back to racing.
“We breached the tunnel here,” Tove explains, pointing at a green X that appears on the screen.
“But the loam hounds stopped and refused to go any farther when we were fifty feet out from the shaft’s end.
Gatlin, Karis, and I continued on our own, but there’s a barrier of some sort at the cutoff point that doesn’t let you see anything beyond it. ”
Hope soars through me, but before I can even process the magnitude of what’s been discovered so far, Chastain pulls up an image on his com and transfers it to the holoscreen, making the map disappear.
“Then we discovered this,” Chastain eagerly announces, and the vid feed starts to play.
It’s a recording of Chastain standing fifty feet out from the mysterious dunes.
He raises his hands, and a cyclone rapidly forms and begins to suck sand into its vortex.
It grows larger as Chastain feeds air into it, and then he directs the dust devil toward the dunes.
I hold my breath as I watch the Channeler command his creation, and just when it looks as though the whirlwind will slip easily between the massive black mounds, it suddenly explodes and sand goes flying everywhere.
I reel back, stunned. “What the fuck was that?” I bark, drawing closer to the holoscreen as though my proximity will help make sense of what just happened.
“We don’t know, but check this out,” Chastain exclaims as he zooms in on the exploding vortex and replays it at half speed.
My eyes are glued to the screen as the dust devil once again hits what appears to be an invisible barrier. It detonates slowly, and then sand begins to rain down?.?.?. but wait?.?.?.
“Fuck the Fae,” I utter, completely dumbfounded. “How?” I whisper, but no one answers.
When the sand falls, the grains don’t drop to the ground.
Instead, they hit some kind of barrier. It’s a massive dome of some sort.
Maybe a shield or ward—it’s hard to say because the silhouette is only visible for a split second.
Then the sand disappears altogether and, once more, it looks as though there’s nothing there.
Chastain rewinds the vid feed again and pauses at the exact moment the outline of the dome appears.
“What is that?” Ogdan murmurs, sounding both astounded and impressed.
“That’s where our Syphon’s been hiding,” I answer, and then I whirl from the screen and take in the target through the open tent flaps. My eyes tell me there’s nothing aside from the three onyx dunes and the empty gully at their base. But it’s a lie.
Like a fire that’s gotten its first taste of oxygen, triumph whooshes through me in an all-consuming blaze.
I want to bellow my victory and storm in to claim my prize, but I stop myself.
We may have found her—and, from the look of things, found other Syphons that Ever refused to admit existed—but we still need to get to them in order to end this cat-and-mouse shit once and for all.
I batten down my shock and lock up the predatory aggression that’s singing in my veins. I can’t get ahead of myself; Ever has proven too tricky to think this is a done deal. I pull in a deep breath to calm myself and slip easily into my role as commander.
“I want nets in that tunnel, and at least two of you guarding the far end at all times,” I order, recalling the map onto the holoscreen and gesturing to the shaft the hounds discovered that looks like a perfectly planned escape route.
“Gatlin, Jori,” Ogdan assigns, and both drakes nod and then promptly head out.
“Herm, Sondar, get me a perimeter around those dunes that’s so sensitive, if an ant farts within twenty feet of it, we’ll know.”
“On it,” Herm chirps, and then he and Sondar leave.
“You want to go at that barrier with a scalpel or a grenade?” Ogdan asks, and I consider the options.
I could get some readings, try to identify the magic or tech at play here, and take it down, or I could just let a dragon rip it apart with their bare claws.
I look over at Chastain, who’s quietly chanting, “Grenade, grenade, grenade” like it’s his Naming Day and he’s hoping to manifest his most anticipated present.
I can’t fight my smile for another second, and its appearance sends a ripple of eager anticipation through my remaining Wing. “Let’s send a dragon in to investigate.”
Chastain’s arms shoot up in the air in victory. “I volunteer!” he shouts, and then Tove clips him upside the head.
“That’s a job for a Thrasher, wind for brains,” she scolds. “You know, the ones with impenetrable armor, uncanny powers of perception, and an unhealthy addiction to adrenaline.”
All eyes drift to Karis, and a slow smile stretches across the Thrasher’s face. “Count me in.”