Chapter 15

Dravyn

"This place reeks," Valas grumbled, "of elves and something even more rotten."

"Do me a favor," I replied, hacking an overgrown vine from our path, "and complain more, why don't you?"

"I'm only trying to make conversation."

"Silence is golden, my mother used to say."

"In here it's just eerie," Valas countered. "Why do all of these plants give off such a hostile, dark energy? It's strange. Cursed, it feels like."

It's because this place isn't meant for gods , I thought. But I made my way to a clearer path and continued walking without comment.

We'd spent hours hovering on the outskirts of this wild forest after parting ways with Karys. Tense, excruciating hours with nothing to do but wait and hope she returned to us in one piece before the day was over—until, finally, Valas and I had both reached our limit and decided to move.

We'd ventured well-beyond our previously agreed-upon boundary, and we now found ourselves deep in the Hollowlands. How deep the lands ultimately stretched, I couldn't even guess at.

It was a foreign feeling, that uncertainty; ever since my ascension, there were few places I did not feel comfortable walking in, and fewer still where I didn't feel like I had some measure of control and dominance. The upper-god I served was the one who had imposed order and knowledge over the world, after all.

But this place…

I wasn't convinced the upper-gods had truly been involved in its creation in any way.

We soon came to a threshold of sorts; the path widened up ahead before branching in several directions, but before that crossroads was a nearly-invisible wall of magic. It glistened in the twilight, giving off a sinister, pulling energy, like the sea rolling away from the shore and trying to take my balance with it.

"A barrier," Valas commented, summoning a tumbling ball of ice and shaping it into a small knife. He threw the knife casually toward said barrier. It collided with a violent spark of white light before it disintegrated completely, leaving little more than a faint shimmer behind. "And suddenly, this place feels even less inviting."

I started to head off in search of a different path, but stopped as I caught sight of a small gash in the trunk of a nearby tree—a claw mark.

"…She passed this way."

"You can sense her?" Valas asked. "That weird connection between you two again?"

"No need for that," I said, pointing. "She's marked the trees."

"Ah. Clever."

We pushed through the barrier, through an immense pressure that gave me the brief, mad desire to shed my human form in an attempt to deal with the discomfort of it.

"What the fuck is this ward even made of?" Valas growled.

"I don't know, but let's just keep moving. Maybe the pull will subside once we put some distance between ourselves and it."

"It feels like it's trying to latch onto my magic and rip it out. How did Karys stand this?"

I didn't answer, because I didn't know—and I didn't want to think about her suffering the way we were currently suffering. Maybe her elvish ties protected her somehow, or maybe the spells Mairu and Zachar had laid upon her were better at countering this hellish attack…

Hopefully.

We reoriented ourselves as best we could and picked up our pace, committed to our plan, even though it was feeling more and more like a bad idea.

I thought of being pulled out to sea again—except this time I was wading willingly into it, deeper and deeper, ignoring how close the waves were to crashing over my head. I ignored the sick feeling in my stomach, too—along with the uneasy chatter of birds overhead, the foliage that seemed to be alive and closing in around us, the briars that caught at my hair and clothing.

Pain sliced through my hand, sudden and sharp.

I peered down, expecting to see the evidence of brambles catching, digging in and scraping their way over my knuckles…

Nothing was there.

My fingers were unmarred, yet the pain lingered, unmistakably real. A surge of emotion soon followed it—fear. Panic. I'd been catching flickers of similar things for the past hour; glimpses of what I assumed were the feelings Karys was experiencing, though the barriers between us made it difficult to see what was causing them.

Did this pain in my hand belong to her as well?

Had something happened to her?

I pushed my own fear down and focused on action. The pain felt clearer than anything yet—which hopefully meant we were getting closer to one another.

I paused, bracing myself against the closest tree as I tried to reach for her, to feel the familiar beat of her among the hostile energies and thick, suffocating air of this hellish landscape.

An urge to move soon overcame me, pulling me back the way we'd come. As if we'd missed her somehow. Months ago, I would have thought it was foolish to even think of obeying this instinct.

Now, I followed the inexplicable pull with little hesitation.

Valas trailed closely at my heels. We ran for no less than a mile, until I felt another, equally strong and equally unexplainable urge to change direction. Following this pull had us veering from the clear path, battling our way through thicker forest as the scent of blood and burning things grew more and more prominent.

Finally, we cut our way through a cluster of vines and made our way into a small clearing where Karys was kneeling, surrounded by a circle of burned vegetation.

The spell that had changed her appearance had faded away. Ribbons of fire surrounded her. Her head was bowed, eyes fluttering open and shut, as though she was meditating, concentrating on not letting her fiery walls fall.

I stepped through the fire and knelt in front of her. She didn't seem startled or surprised by my sudden appearance; she'd likely felt me approaching.

"What happened?" I demanded. "Are you hurt?" I answered my own question as soon as I asked it, reaching for her hand only to draw back when I noticed it was covered in blood. There was dried blood on her other hand, as well, but it didn't smell like hers.

She stood without answering me. Her movements were mechanical—slow but determined. She looked ready to collapse against me as I moved closer, but fought the urge with a shake of her head, then started to walk away only to pause and look over her shoulder.

Her gaze narrowed on a distant spot of forest. Her lips parted as if she'd spotted something horrifying, but when I looked, all I saw were thin, rickety tree trunks clacking and swaying in the breeze.

"You look like you've seen a ghost," Valas said. "What the hell went on back there?"

It seemed to take a moment for the question to register. She looked to him, briefly, and in a low, brittle voice she said, "My nightmares were right. My sister, the blood, the destruction, all of it. I…" She trailed off, fists clenching, her expression caught somewhere between utter grief and painful fury.

I moved to her side once more, taking a closer look at her hand, gently feeling my way along the wound underneath all of the blood. Most of that blood was fresh—still flowing freely enough to rapidly coat my fingers. The airs of this place seemed to be affecting her divine ability to heal.

"Your sister did this to you?"

She shook her head vehemently. She started to explain what had truly happened, but Valas cut her off.

"Perhaps now is not the time for this conversation," he said, gaze jumping to the same spot Karys had been staring at a moment ago. "Sounds like we have company."

I looked to that spot again just as an elven soldier broke through the trees, immediately followed by two more.

One of them tossed a shining ball toward our feet. As it hit the ground, it shattered, filling the air with a bitter-scented powder.

Breathing in the bitterness made my throat instantly, unbearably dry. The trees spun around us. My eyes watered. I wiped away tears, and through my blurred vision I saw eight more soldiers emerging.

"We aren't far from the barrier we passed through," Valas said under his breath. "We'll be able to make a clean getaway easily enough on the other side of it. Running would be wiser."

"It would," I agreed.

But I was staring at the blood on my hands as I said it, and thinking of the blood that had covered Karys when I'd carried her away from that mortal river and into the Tower of Ascension…

I unsheathed my sword.

Valas sighed but followed my lead. "Let's make this quick," he muttered, waving away a lingering cloud of the bitter powder. "Every breath I take is making me feel more sluggish and stupid."

I didn't have time to reply—the enemy was already advancing.

The same one who'd thrown the bitter-scented bomb lunged toward me first, a curved blade drawn and prepared to swing.

I shoved Karys behind me and met him with my own blade in a single-handed parry that sent him flying backwards.

He looked momentarily startled—as though he'd expected his bomb to have rendered me entirely useless.

He'd miscalculated.

Badly.

I gripped my sword more tightly in my bloodstained hand, moving without mercy to finish him off before he could regain his balance. My blade plunged so deeply into his chest that it was difficult to draw it back out again.

A second soldier rushed me from behind. I dislodged my weapon at the last moment, and in the same smooth, uninterrupted motion I twisted around and swung, slicing into his neck.

A single gasp turned into a choke, then into silence. Blood spurted, showering me before I could avoid it. The soldier dropped as though made of stone, his body sounding a heavy twhump as it hit the ground.

I spun around, looking for my next target.

My pulse quickened as I saw how many more had joined the original eleven.

Valas backed toward me, surveying the increasing number as well. Karys had moved to the edge of the battle—far enough outside the concentration of bomb powder that she'd been able to summon more fire to shield herself with. It was a weak spell, but it seemed to be keeping our enemies away from her for the moment.

Valas's words rang through my head.

Running would be wiser .

"That powdery shit is making magic even more difficult to draw upon," he said.

"It doesn't matter," I replied, rage tightening my voice as I wiped the blood from my hands. "They can die by the sword just as easily as by fire or ice."

It was more satisfying than magic, too—the feel of my blade sinking in, the crunch of bone as I slammed its hilt into skulls, the spurts of blood as I struck precisely the right places.

Line after line of soldiers advanced upon us. We cut them down, over and over again. They didn't seem to care how fast they were falling; more simply appeared to take the fallen's place. The air grew thick with the scent of blood and sweat and other bodily fluids, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew this would do nothing to diffuse the wars that were building, threatening the stability of our realms.

The ones littering the ground would serve as proof that the gods were merciless beasts. Maybe they had even been sent as intentional sacrifices to further enrage and rally others to their cause.

Several minutes and too many bodies later, the dryness in my throat and the dizziness from the powder was starting to truly get to me. I felt the first tinge of exhaustion creeping in. A moment later, I stumbled, righting myself just in time to see a soldier racing toward me with his sword at the ready.

I staggered back and tried to rebalance my own weapon in time to block.

I was too slow.

A flash of steel flew in from my left, impaling the soldier in the stomach and driving him back just before his blade met my chest.

Karys.

I hadn't even sensed her moving. She'd taken a sword from one of the fallen elves, and now she clutched it in her hands as though it was her last tether to reality.

Stepping into the tainted air had made most of her fiery shield disintegrate, save for a few stray embers that reflected hauntingly in her eyes. The green of those eyes seemed darker, almost black, clearly mirroring the fire swirling in and around her.

Did she even realize there was fresh blood covering her skin? The one she just killed…was it someone she'd known before today?

Protecting her suddenly seemed more important than avenging her.

"Come on," I said, wiping the blood from my sword as quickly as I could before sheathing it. "Let's get to clearer air so we can leave this realm."

She snapped out of the trance that had overtaken her and nodded, still holding tightly to her stolen sword as she hurried off in the direction of the barrier we needed to cross through.

We were close, as Valas had assessed. But as we started to brace ourselves for passing through that barrier, a familiar voice reached us, imploring us to wait .

"Let's keep going," Valas urged.

I looked to Karys. She'd slowed down, though her eyes were still on our escape route. Her face barely hinted at the war raging inside of her, but I could feel it as clearly as I'd felt her pain slicing through my hand.

I glanced back.

Some of the soldiers we hadn't killed had caught up to us. There were new reinforcements, as well, and each one of them carried what looked to be bombs similar to the first one thrown at us.

All of these things were concerning, but I didn't give a shit about any of them.

Because my vision had tunneled toward the one standing in the center of them all—Andrel.

I turned to face him more fully, all thoughts of running away momentarily forgotten.

He wasn't looking at me; he only seemed to be aware of Karys. He was studying her, his stare far too intimate for my liking.

My fingers twitched as I thought of how satisfying it would feel to carve his eyes out with the knife I had strapped to my ankle.

"So it's as I suspected," he called, stepping forward while motioning for his soldiers to remain at ease. "You really thought you could trick us with some ridiculous magical disguise?"

I started forward too, but Karys stopped me, placing a hand on my chest. She took a deep breath, concentrating. Heat bled into the space around us. I met it with my own, pouring as much into her as I could manage after breathing in so much toxic, anti-divine powder.

Her fingers clenched into my shirt as she balanced herself. Looking down, the depth of the wounds on her fingers became more obvious than ever.

"Did he do that to you?" I demanded.

Again, she shook her head.

Nevertheless, I was calculating how many more I would have to kill to get to him when Karys suddenly stepped away from me, turned around, and strode directly toward our enemies herself.

She stopped several feet away from Andrel. Valas and I both moved closer, hands gripped tensely on our weapons, eyes scanning the restless soldiers all around us.

"How low we've sunk," Andrel continued, still only focusing on Karys, "that you feel the need to employ tricks, to creep around in my presence rather than meeting me face-to-face. There was a time when we didn't hide anything from one another. Do you even remember that? Or have these beasts taken that from you as well, along with your sense of self-respect?"

Karys stiffened, but kept her head up and her voice level as she replied. "I'm not hiding, now, am I?"

"No. Though it's arguably worse, what you're doing. The company you're keeping."

"I've kept far worse company than this," said Karys.

He considered the statement for a moment before chuckling darkly. "Are congratulations in order, then?" he sneered. "I suppose I'm meant to cheer for you, now that you've become a filthy servant of the divine? Will you also be changing your name? How should I address you going forward? A servant of the—"

"She is no servant of mine," I interrupted. "She is my equal. And you may address her as Goddess or not at all."

Andrel finally turned his head toward me.

The entire circle of soldiers seemed to be looking at me as well, all of a sudden.

I fed off their glares, forgetting myself for a moment, letting chains of fire whip outward from my body. The ground beneath me heated to the point that little fissures began to spread out from under my feet.

All of it was subdued by the poisons they'd filled the air with, but there was still enough flame and fury in the display to make Andrel flinch—though he quickly recovered and hid the movement with a smile and said, "Well, I'll be sure to start building a temple to her, in that case."

Molten fire filled one of the cracks in the ground, pouring toward him. It moved more sluggishly than it would have under normal circumstances—the only reason he was able to dance back and out of the way before it swallowed him up in a violent, deadly rush.

I reached for my sword instead, but a hand clamped down on my shoulder, preventing me from drawing it. A cold breeze stirred, snaking around me before weaving into the streams of fire I'd unleashed, cooling them back into relatively solid ground.

"We were heading for clearer air," Valas reminded me in a low voice.

I shrugged free of his grip.

He was relentless, stepping more fully into my line of vision and jerking his head in Karys's direction. He didn't say another word, but his meaning was clear enough.

We should get her out of here .

Somehow, I managed to pull my hand away from my sword.

He took the lead, grabbing Karys's hand and dragging her toward the barrier.

I moved more slowly, watching our enemies crowding in, daring any of them to try and stop us from leaving. Once Karys and Valas had crossed back over the barrier—and I felt their magic building as they prepared to transport themselves—I finally relaxed enough to turn toward the exit point myself. I fixed one final glare in Andrel's direction before walking away.

"We aren't finished," I promised him.

He gave a slight bow. "Until next time, then."