Chapter Thirty Seven
HIMMEL
Himmel swirled around the exterior of the Hall of the Sky, trying to contain her panic. Everything fell apart.
No! she cried.
While the Rosenvatten raced away, borne on a current Draven must have conjured, the entire mountain disintegrated.
Stones cracked in half, shaving to the sea.
Rock sheets descended as the behemoth split into sections.
Gigantic crashes petaled on all sides, and resulting waves ribboned through the sea.
She attempted to buffer the violent destruction with windy gusts, but her paltry efforts died in the raw arcane power shredding itself.
Himmel increased her winds, diverting the dangerous, arcane-propelled boulders away from the Rosenvatten. Deflected by her force, they rotated mid air, swirling in a slow-moving funnel around the tumbling mountainsides, instead of pummeling Pedr’s ship.
All her focus directed to protecting the retreating Rosenvatten until the top of the mountain cracked, spraying outward in an eruption that rocked the air.
A chain of percussive booms thundered in a repeating pattern as the stone dissolved from the inside out.
Projectiles blasted in an expanding wreath.
Faster! Himmel cried, granting the sky arcane greater speed.
Fragments thickened the air. Desperation and terror fueled her abilities, the emotions sharp and poisonous to her concentration, until another wind tangled with hers.
The funnel she worked to maintain slowed, yet it remained a developing typhoon that skittered closer to the Rosenvatten.
Onskar! she called, whirling in a circle to seek him. I take responsibility for them breaching my Hall. This is my fault!
She found him near the still-there door. It remained a lone, stalwart figure amongst the unbridled sky chaos. She regarded the altered landscape with deep despair. No other human would ever access the Hall of the Sky again.
A scent stirred, drawing her attention. She drew it deep into her lungs.
Earth?
But . . . how?
Onskar’s terrible amusement ballooned toward her, drawing her attention away. Himmel, he growled in the winds. Oh, sweet, stupid Himmel. I already know it was your fault. You have set yourself against me, and there is no return to grace.
As the smell of soil thickened, Himmel understood. Jordaire gathered near her in the stones. He came to help.
She wrenched her human form together, gathering not far from Onskar’s presence as a distraction. If Onskar focused on her, perhaps he wouldn’t notice Jordaire. Or he’d discount the Arcanist of Land’s presence as part of the disintegrating mountain.
A chasm of open air lay between Himmel and Onskar as the final stone ridges bubbled into the gigantic ocean.
Chipped boulders remained airborne in her zephyr.
Debris flung into the higher atmosphere now fell like rain, a final testament to the standing monolith.
These last sprinkles hid a thin stream of rock and soil fragments that raced toward her and stopped mid air.
A familiar voice hastily spoke from them. Himmel, I found something! Jordaire’s gasping words gave little opportunity to react before he continued. There is another entrance within the Hall of the Land—apart from the main one. A single door hidden deep in the earth. The soil has seen it.
Her still heart awoke for a single moment.
Just like her Hall.
Onskar loured at Himmel, both foul and gleeful. Visible now, his voice shook the earth as he spoke with his physical form.
“You have made an enemy of me, Himmel.”
Jordaire spoke frantically at the same time as Onskar, making it difficult to understand. There is another soul, aside from Onskar, who walks through an underground labyrinth to enter the Halls.
Hope pounded through Himmel.
Another soul?
But . . . who?
A human, Jordaire hissed. A human walks between Onskar’s Halls. She is why humans are allowed, I believe. The soil has met her.
“Oh, Himmel,” Onskar called. She stiffened, staring right at him. “Are you ignoring me? You and I have been such good friends. It’s a pity you have chosen to betray me now.”
To Jordaire, she hissed, Who? through the wind.
I see only a woman’s form when the dirt reconstructs her. That’s all I know.
From Himmel’s mind tumbled memories of Pedr on the sea weeks ago, the waves thrashing, Onskar attacking. While Jordaire rummaged through the earth to locate the diasvard, Pedr had shouted a name at Onskar.
What was it?
“Paralyzed by fear, are you?” Onskar drawled.
Yes, Himmel thought. Yes, let’s go with that. I’m paralyzed by fear.
Onskar floated closer, coattails flapping and eyes dark and cold. “It’s no fun if you don’t fight back, Himmel.”
The game bought her a few more milliseconds to comprehend the memory. Clara, she relayed to Jordaire. Her name is Clara.
I will ask the soil!
While Jordaire departed, Onskar beckoned to Himmel with a wave of his hand. She resisted, but only lightly. An air current curled around her shoulders and tugged her closer. She shook her head, as if weakened by fear.
A laugh surged from Onskar’s thin, terrible lips. He bought the act, drinking in her terror like wind to a flare.
Himmel knew how this ended. She would lose this battle. Of course she would. But she wouldn’t lose until she sent this new information to Einar, and only she could send it. Jordaire would have no access to Einar while Einar sailed, and Pedr no longer commanded the sea.
Onskar’s elegant coat stretched his shoulders too wide as he appeared directly in front of her.
In a different light, he might have been handsome, but time turned him too callous.
Greed angled his features, and his short hair barely stirred.
Prestige and might were reflected in his disturbing smile.
“Come, my pet,” he chided. “You cannot resist the arcane that I command, and I have caught you. You shall be my prize to lure Mila into my trap, because I know where they’re heading. I know what they’re doing.”
Sorrow flushed her. Nearly five hundred years riding these air currents, understanding the world from a vantage few could appreciate.
Her end began here, in the middle of the sky, with fragments of earth spiraling about her in a relentless wind.
Not all that different from the end of her human life.
How appropriate.
She attempted to race away, but tried too late. Onskar blocked her in with a devastatingly strong current. His arcane rebuffed hers with pathetic simplicity. She didn’t waste her time trying to escape again.
Onskar hovered close enough to touch. They kept a wide silence, staring at each other. She didn’t fill it with words yet. To speak would condemn. Not that it mattered. As the superior being, he would enact whatever will he desired.
Delay was her only hope.
She called, “It doesn’t fit, Onskar.”
Puzzled, he asked, “What doesn’t fit?”
“The arcane.”
He turned a finger in a circle.
“Go on.”
Warming to her idea, she said, “When I first presented to you, you said you allow Arcanists five hundred years before they retire to the After, if they are found worthy. Jordaire has lived far longer.”
His black pupils tightened. Lips compressed.
“You claimed that Arcanists cannot cross domains, but we have done so. You prevented Arcanists from entering the individual Halls, yet you allow Clara free rein.”
The arcane force that slapped her sent Himmel tumbling head over heels backward. “Never speak her name!” he thundered. “What has Pedr told you? What foul lies are you believing, Himmel?”
Dazed, Himmel barely managed to right herself in the air. Struck mute, unsure of what happened, she removed her human form and slid into the safety of unembodiment. Only there did her thoughts piece together.
“You can’t hide!” Onskar roared.
Loam thickened the air by her, still riddled with the rocks she supported, and so faint she may have imagined it.
The soils confirms, Jordaire breathed in Himmel’s ear, issuing from the specks of dirt dancing close to her face. She is Onskar’s lackey, known as The Forbidden of the Realm. The soil speaks of her reluctantly. None should know about her. He jealously guards her.
Himmel wrapped his words in the wind and sent them to Einar. The arcane-bound gust swooped behind her and wheeled southwest as Onskar bore down.
Get out of there! Jordaire hissed.
The airborne soil exploded into flames. Noxious smoke billowed as they streaked to the sea.
“Thirteen years left,” Onskar whispered, reaching for her arcane presence with his own, “and you choked at the ending. Now I will obliterate you.”
The thought of obliteration in this moment wrapped her throat in a heavy weight. So quickly? The snuffing of a life centuries long, focused on doing good for others, particularly women, could end in moments? She could barely fathom it, though she doubted a lack of existence would hurt.
Only the memory of what could have been.
“My only regret,” he tsked, shaking his head, “is that it takes so long to destroy a soul. You will have seven days, Himmel, just like Pedr. The arcane has rules, and unfortunately, I don’t control most of them.”
Dread filled her from nape to toes. Himmel lifted her chin and issued one final jab.
“I can only assume you didn’t control any of them, Onskar.”
He roared.
So simple, this ending. Invisible, too. No one would know she left Elestra. Who would care? All the goodbyes she hadn’t said lingered in her mind. There were precious few humans that she cared for. She’d tracked many from her sky perch, invisible and silent in their lives.
As the wind whipped across the land, mournful and full, she’d watched children grow to adults, bear their own progeny, advance to a ripe age, and depart. Their metamorphosis had been fascinating, determined, relentless.
They didn’t know her.
Tightening pressure pressed her arcane form together until she ached. She didn’t waste her energy on resistance. The fight would please Onskar, a reminder that he held greater might. She couldn’t change that.
Pedr, she thought. Show them the way. Don’t let us down.
The winds ceased, the air disappeared out beneath her, and Himmel plummeted into a bottomless, waiting gray with a silent scream.