Chapter 17

The ledge we perched on was barely wide enough for my boots. The enormous obsidian spikes had pierced through both the parapet and the mountainside overhead, leaving piles of tumbled rock for us to crawl over. There was no hint of an entrance, no sign of life. I slid my boots along the rock shelf and sent a shower of rock tumbling down.

I winced at the echo rippling across the cavernous space.

We might as well have shouted our announcement up into those dark clouds.

"I don't see a way inside." Zor didn't feel the same necessity for silence as he clawed out loose stone between the gleaming pillars, sending debris bouncing down the mountainside. "Are we in the right place?"

"This was the entrance to Zephryn's den, but the obsidian spikes were still…growing when we left. Those stones were nowhere near this big." Torin stepped up and flattened her palms against the stones, shuddering before she snatched her hands back, her face contorted in pain.

"They're full of foul magic. Like iron bars on a prison cell, so I can't tell if Zephryn's inside."

I mimicked her pose and laid my palms against the glass-like stone, cold biting into my skin with a flash of bone-chilling pain.

Ancient, cruel magic, the kind that devoured until nothing was left. But I was no stranger to death, and my own power rose up to counter the foul darkness. Out of instinct I shoved back, cracks spiderwebbing beneath my palms before the obsidian pillar shattered with an earsplitting crack.

Razor-sharp splinters exploded around me, blowing me away from the stones and my feet off the narrow ledge. I plunged straight down the mountainside, Zor's shouted warning trailing behind me as I tumbled over loose stone, losing fingernails and skin as I fought to find a handhold, anything to slow my plummet toward those sharp, unforgiving rocks below.

Debris rocketed down the incline alongside me from the exploded pillar, chunks of black stone shattering into smaller, deadlier projectiles.

Even my leathers couldn't stand up to the abrasive rock, the skin beneath shredding, none of my training or magic or skill doing me a fucking bit of good as I tumbled over and down some more, the world a tangled mess of spinning darkness.

I reached for my magic, but something about the soul sucking nature of this place made my magic elusive. I bounced off a jagged rock, narrowly missing caving in my skull.

Finally—fucking finally—my torn-up hand caught an outcropping, my body swinging out over a vast emptiness, tearing two more fingernails off in the process, but I wasn't dying.

Not immediately, anyhow.

No, I'd just hang here like a ham drying in the summer sun.

I stared up at Zor's, Simon's, and Torin's pale faces outlined against the mountain's dark silhouette and peering down at me in shock. And no wonder. One of the pillars was completely gone, the ground beneath me littered with gleaming glass-like shards, each and every one sharp enough to carve flesh from bone.

Fuck, if any of us fell, we'd be ripped apart.

I was gathering enough magic to dematerialize when I glimpsed the creature dropping down behind Zorander onto the ledge. "Zorander, look out." The wind ripped the warning from my mouth.

Crafted out of darkness and evil, the thing sank its teeth into the side of Zor's throat and sending his foot skidding off the ledge. I threw my arm over my face as obsidian slivers, sharper than razors, hurtled toward me.

"Fuck." I swung my body to the side, using the momentum to lunge with my other hand and catch another jutting stone. Only when I'd stabilized myself did I gather enough magic to fling myself through space, moving through time like it was second nature.

I landed badly, arms pinwheeling to catch my balance.

Torin and a snarling Simon were to my right, pinned down by two creatures, Zor on my left, slicing the thing's hideously snapping head from its muscular body in one clean sweep.

They were made for rocky terrain, with five long, dexterous fingers, each terminating in a sharp talon, and lean dark gray bodies with powerful limbs made for climbing and navigating the sheer faces of the cliffs. Large, opaque eyes, perfect for the misty dim, and double rows of sharp, shredding teeth, meant to rip and tear.

"Fucking do something," Simon shouted, catching one around the throat as it lunged at Torin.

I launched a blade of my own—made from blue-black magic—straight into those gray chests, blowing the two creatures off the mountain and out into open air. "Should have grown wings, you little fuckers," I muttered as their shrill cries echoed through the crater.

The entire mountain went quiet,the last echoing howls dying away, the creatures' crumpled forms broken on the rocks below.

Zor mopped blood from his neck, the gaping wound already closing. I spooled my magic back in, keeping a shimmering wall in place around us, eyes peeled for another attack. But my magic was diminishing by the minute.

"There's a hole, big enough I can see inside." Torin leaned between the splintered pillars. "But I'm the only one small enough to fit through."

"There is no fucking way you're going in there first," Simon told her shortly, scanning her face then the looming, silent darkness within. "Raziel, can you break the other pillar? If you could widen the opening, I'll go down there instead."

"This place is siphoning off my magic faster than it can replenish," I explained. "We have to get your friend out of there and off this fucking island."

"I feel the drain, too," Torin admitted. "I can fit. Let me go down there."

"But you can't get Zeph out, Tor," Simon argued. "We've got to expand that opening. And I'm going in with you; that's not up for discussion."

Zor and I used our boots to clear off the ledge, the dull echoes of tumbling stone reverberating around the crater like the beating of a thousand wings. When the crashing stopped, I caught the sound I knew I'd hear from the moment that first creature attacked.

The skittering of a thousand feet across rock, coming at us from all directions.

"Anytime now, Raz. Preferably before they get here." Zor set his own magic free, shadows writhing in the misty darkness, tangling with mine, sending a zap of renewed power through me as soon as they touched.

Zor shot me a crooked smile. "Figured I'd give you a boost, seeing as you're the one doing all the work."

"Stay back and cover your eyes," I warned, flexing my hands before I laid them against the freezing surface again, bracing myself for the impact. The magic's effect was every bit as hideous as before, that creeping chill that sank into my very being contaminating me with its foulness.

Death. Sure, swift, consuming death.

The true taste of the Oracle's magic.

A warning of what would happen to this world if we did not stop her.

The second the others found shelter behind the other pillars, I shoved our combined magic into the stone, forcing power through the dense black glass like lightning crackling through a thundercloud. Then I vanished when the obsidian spike ruptured with a deafening crack.

When I reformed on the ledge, the pillar was cleaved into pieces, leaving a big enough hole for us all to lean in and peer down into the darkness. Then, as one, we took a healthy step back when a deep, thunderous growl echoed out from the pit.