13. Maxim
Chapter Thirteen
Maxim
Iassess the danger in the space of a breath.
While a pulse of energy sweeps like an icy-blue blade toward me, behind it, a snowstorm churns ice across the landscape as far north, east, and west as I can see.
Directly ahead of me, between the broken towers, the storm forms an intense whirlwind, the concentrated body of ice picking up chunks of stone and debris, turning into a fucking avalanche that’s rising like a wave.
If it crashes across my land, it will flow over one of the major inlets into the underground city, where my people are going about their daily lives, undoubtedly currently oblivious.
A snowstorm is threat enough, but if the main entrance or any of the city’s ventilation shafts were to flood with an avalanche of bone-shattering frost, the underground could become a near-instant tomb.
I have no fucking place for the rage that rises up to fill my heart as I stare down the death coming for me and my people.
First, the pulse of icy-blue energy tearing through anything solid in its path, then the snowstorm sweeping up the debris, and now the avalanche that will flow directly across the underground city.
All while that vengeful roar shudders through my hearing.
All of this, I assess within heartbeats, even as my body is already reacting, my instincts on fire, my feet pounding the dunes as I break into a run.
Straight ahead toward the danger.
I focus first on the destructive energy sweeping toward me, the deadly scythe seconds away from cutting through me.
I have to stop it.
I tell myself I can.
My feet fly, my arms pump, and my breath tears out of my chest as I race right toward the danger.
The edge of the icy-blue scythe becomes clearer, so sharp that it glints and gleams like a weapon.
A fucking winter blade.
In the split second before the scythe reaches me, I dig deep for my fire.
Controlling my power is the hard part. Releasing the heat is as simple as exhaling.
I welcome the fire. A fucking relief to unclamp the mental vise with which I attempt to constrain myself. A cage that fails more often than it succeeds.
Flames scream along my arms and burst from my chest just as the winter blade collides with my outstretched hands and cuts across my chest.
My world explodes in fire and pain.
Heat meets ice with a boom that shatters my consciousness and sends me flying backward.
I’m airborne, flung like debris, unable to process the contact, aware of every fine detail all at once, including the flare of unnatural golden energy amidst my flames, and Thyra…
Thyra?
I see her for the smallest impossible moment, as if she were right in front of me.
She’s freezing, lying across Stellen’s chest, surrounded by snow and blood. Her arm trembles as she reaches for me, my name on her lips, her fading voice calling me, and then, just as quickly, she’s gone.
My true surroundings reappear with a vengeance.
Flames shoot around me. Sharp shards of ice scatter in all directions.
A chunk of stone burning so hot that it’s turning into lava, soars past me on my right.
Then another chunk of stone, and another, debris on fire as it crashes past me, hitting the sand when I do, every stone half-melted and half-frozen.
Thump-thump-thump…
For a dizzying moment, I lie on my back, blinking up at the sky.
I’m certain I destroyed the scythe. Neutralized it.
Probably.
I can’t seem to lift myself up to check, although there’s no ripple of energy in the sky swinging across the air above me like there would have been if I hadn’t succeeded.
I’m not certain now that I saw Thyra because my head is buzzing and for all I know, I fucking hallucinated her.
Liquid runs down the side of my neck from each of my ears. I can’t hear the roar anymore, but that could be because my eardrums have burst.
Whatever physical damage I’ve suffered, however many bones I’ve broken, I trust my fire to heal me. It’s the only truly good thing about my power.
Already, flames sizzle across my torso and through my right arm, which lies at a weird angle on the sand. Along with my left leg. And…fuck…my ribs, several of which protrude from my side where…fucking fuck…it appears my torso might have caved in.
Probably lucky I wasn’t cut in half.
I want to believe my fire is rushing to heal me right now, but I’ve never felt so cold.
I tell myself to get up. Even if I destroyed the ripple of energy, I don’t think I stopped the avalanche behind it. And I highly doubt I put a dent in the broader snowstorm.
As a snowflake drifts past me, and then another, I take a moment to focus on the sun gleaming in the sky above me, asking myself one of the most important questions of my life…
Is the sun as cold as I am?
Thyra told me not to come for her until the sun turns bitterly cold and the sand bleeds iron.
She told me I must earn what I desire.
Not half an hour ago, the sand bled iron. Crimson oil carrying iron dust ran like rivers across my towers, my sand, and my warriors.
One half of her conditions have been met.
Yet…
The sun continues to burn hot, an orange orb in the midday sky, not even remotely cold despite the frosty air.
Again, I tell myself to get the fuck up.
The avalanche of snow and rock is coming for my people and I have to stop it.
Pushing at the sand, I roar with agony as my fire is slow to heal my broken bones, the icy air no doubt impeding my power now that I’ve expended so much heat already.
I make it halfway up, far enough to see that the avalanche has risen above the towers, a wave pulling higher before it will crash down only a few hundred paces away.
The air is now shatteringly cold, and I fight it with every breath I take, my power keeping me alive.
I hobble forward, only to collapse on my broken leg, my eyes watering and teeth clenching as I concentrate my flames down that damaged limb. Mentally shouting at myself to heal.
Fucking…heal!
I don’t have time to wait, dragging myself forward through the cold sand, my damaged leg gouging a turret at my side.
The air is now thick with snowflakes.
Stopping on a patch of sand, the granules caving slightly beneath my weight, I extend my arms and tell myself to breathe despite the wave of snow coming for me.
This storm wants to destroy me.
I can feel it in my bones.
The roaring vibration may be gone, but a brutal song has taken its place, a melody, a whisper, maybe even a shout—who can fucking tell—but I can hear it, and the message is clear: my death is imminent.
As I reach for the hottest flames within my heart, I pray that Kaiba and my aunt and Aeliana and even Riven are safe.
The wave of ice rises up and up, far above me, and my heart pounds and my heat flows as I hold on for another heartbeat.
Another breath.
Wait for it…
The wave reaches its pinnacle and the brutal song in the air wrenches at my body, trying to shatter me as the avalanche descends.
I let go of my control again, knowing my only chance is to cut through the wave before it reaches me.
Flames explode around me. Fire spears along my arms into my outstretched hands, forming twin plumes that blaze forward, driving into the avalanche, my beams of fire widening as I draw upon every shred of rage in my soul.
I’m roaring with effort as my fire cuts through chunks of stone and rips across the body of the oncoming wave, its core collapsing, snow melting into rivers of ice mingling with the lava swirling around my feet.
It isn’t enough.
A second later, I’m smashed within the blizzard’s currents, fighting to draw my arms and legs inward, balling up to try to prevent the force ripping off my limbs.
At some point, I start holding my breath and now, I hold it even longer.
Closing my eyes, I let my heat build, drawing on it as slowly as I dare, even though I’m tumbling wildly within the blizzard and my instincts are yelling at me to fight back. Now.
The snow and debris grow even icier, a mind-numbing, flesh-shattering freeze. The sounds within the avalanche become louder, that faint song of destruction intensifying until it’s a command in my ears: die.
Fuck that.
Fire explodes from my body.
Flames rage outward, ripping through the snow, swirling in the wind, surrounding me in amber light that gleams and sparkles and rushes in a whirlwind.
My feet hit the ground. My boots and clothing have already burned away and my toes crunch in the frozen sand, a strange sensation of ice where the gritty granules would normally turn to lava.
The air above me clears momentarily, revealing a startlingly clear patch of sky.
I make out the circular sun in the sky.
Well. Fuck me.
Rays of icy-blue sunlight gleam across my body, glinting like diamonds.
Finally, the sun is cold.
Bitterly cold, just like the Oracle said, because it’s too. Fucking. Late.
That song in the air wants me dead, and it won’t stop.
My heat builds as I dig my feet into the frozen sand and push both of my arms forward again, fighting the relentless frost, burning and burning through the oncoming storm until streams of lava and icy water churn around my feet, a growing river that reaches my calves.
As fast as I can burn through ice, more gathers, deadly shards closing in around me. Closer and closer.
As hard as I fight, I’m losing.
A useless roar leaves my lips as the wall of white engulfs me on both sides, snow pressing in around me.
I can’t stop it.
Whirling shards of ice cut across my skin like knives, the force of frost snaps my bones, and the clear patch of air…my hope…disappears.
The tempest swallows me.