Chapter Six

Verdyllion

Gwynnifer Croft Sykes

Western Sublands

Ten days after Xishlon

Gwynn’s stunned gaze rivets onto the Icaral Elf staring at her. Wynter Eirrlyn’s hair is like newly fallen snow, her sleek black wings fanned out, her eyes alight with silver fire, a translucent Watcher perched on her shoulder.

A Smaragdalfar army surrounds the Icaral, about a hundred strong, but Gwynn’s shock is so great, the martial threat and the green-geode Subland world surrounding them seem to blur into pure, verdant light.

Gwynn focuses on the glowing Wand of Myth in Wynter’s pale hand—the Wand the glamoured pyrr-demons so desperately want. A familiar image flashes into the back of Gwynn’s mind—the Wand of Myth superimposed over a Great Ironwood Tree made of multihued starlight.

Heart thrumming, Gwynn meets the Icaral’s gaze once more, and a riot of prismatic light energy detonates in Gwynn’s vision, an echoing energy spangling across the Icaral’s eyes. Chromatic threads of lightning burst to life through Wynter’s wings and around the Wand in her hand, both her wings and the Wand spitting sparks of energy toward Gwynn that her lines spit back, as if their magics are calling to each other.

As if the Wand of Myth is calling them to each other . . .

A harsh, Subland-rattling BOOM shakes the earth beneath them and their magic-thrall breaks, Bloom’ilya’s grip tightening on Gwynn’s hand while Ee’vee lets out a terrified shriek against Mavrik’s shoulder.

“We’ve got a Mage army and glamoured pyrr-demons on our tail!”

Mavrik yells to Wynter and the Subland army. “We’ve got to get these children to the East!”

Gwynn’s gaze snaps to Mavrik, and she’s stunned by how unintimidated he seems by all the blades leveled at them. Urgency burns in Mavrik’s eyes, one hand tight around his wand, his other arm hugging a whimpering Ee’vee close to his chest.

As the Smaragdalfar Elves take in the children’s cropped ears, Gwynnifer sees their expressions heat to outrage, which immediately slips Gwynn into alliance with them, weapons be damned.

“The demons are after the Wand!”

Gywnn blurts out, pointing at it emphatically as the trapped light magic in her lines strains toward it. “We can’t let them get hold of it!”

A severe-looking Smaragdalfar soldier with a half-shaved head and glowing emerald Varg runes marking half her face thrusts up a palm and barks out a command in the Subland Elf tongue. Her flinty tone is one of military authority, her merciless silver eyes pinned on Gwynn with withering force.

All the blades leveled at them lower as one, and the soldiers leap into action, along with the Icaral. Close to half of them run toward the tunnel Gwynn and her companions emerged from, one of several tunnels that empty into this geode-cavern. The soldiers fan out in front of the tunnel’s mouth to form a line of defense, then drop to one knee and aim their weapons, Wynter Eirllyn in the center of their line, the Wand of Myth raised.

Another, closer BOOM sounds, and Gwynn startles, her heartbeat accelerating as she realizes Mavrik’s last barrier has fallen and the pyrr-demons and Mages are barreling toward them.

Toward the Wand.

A powerful bolt of silver energy blasts from the Wand of Myth, and Gwynn flinches. Lines of emerald energy erupt from the soldiers’ Varg blades, and the combined power quickly forms a thick pane of translucent, rippling green to wall off the tunnel, a huge silver Alfsigr rune forming in the pane’s center, flashing color at its edges.

A CRACK hits the shield, the sound knifing through Gwynn’s ears, and Bloom’ilya cries out in terror. Mavrik darts in front of her and raises his wand, the shield raying out green and silver light as Wynter and the soldiers continue to feed lines of power into it.

A more powerful, bone-shuddering BOOM sounds, and Gwynn reflexively hugs a shivering Bloom’ilya, Wynter’s huge silver rune pulsing an ominous gray.

“The demons,”

Gwynn calls out, voice tight with dread, “they’re here.”

She exchanges a dire look with Mavrik, her magic leaping toward him, before Mavrik pivots toward the cavern’s other side, where more Subland soldiers are guarding what appear to be three runic portals.

Noi military portals, Gwynn surmises, recognizing the runes from the countless grimoires she’s pilfered from her father’s armory. From eavesdropping on her father’s hushed military conversations, she’s certain that these Noi portals are part of an underground Resistance network of portals and corridors the Mages have only recently discovered.

And are methodically searching out and destroying.

“Portal these children East,”

Mavrik yells to the guards. “Now!”

Ee’vee lets out a howl of protest, her skinny arms tightening around Mavrik’s neck as a willowy female Smaragdalfar soldier with long emerald hair rushes toward them. She’s armed with a Varg-marked bow and quiver and several Varg blades. The two Alfsigr Elf archers run over with her, and Gwynn notices that the taller Alfsigr soldier with the intense stare bears a striking resemblance to Wynter Eirllyn. The second man is slender with a quiet, compassionate air, his silver eyes taking in the terrified children with an expression of great concern.

“We’ll portal them to the East,”

the willowy woman promises.

Gwynn latches on to the kindness in the woman’s melodic voice as she struggles against her light magery’s hypnotic pull toward the mesmerizing emerald pattern of the woman’s skin. The Subland woman and the slender Alfsigr male reach out to take the children in hand.

A tenuous trust crystallizes in Gwynn. “Go with them,”

she encourages the girls, desperate to get Bloom’ilya and Ee’vee away from the incoming battle’s front line.

Ee’vee screams and scrabbles to keep hold of Mavrik while he gently but firmly pries off her grasping fingers, murmuring comfortingly to her, “Shhh, it’s all right. Ee’vee, look at me. Look at me, love.”

Another floor-shaking BOOM slams against the shield as Wynter and the Smaragdalfar blast more power into it.

Choking back sobs, Ee’vee stops fighting and meets Mavrik’s intense gaze, still clutching hold of him and her threadbare fawn toy for dear life.

“Do you trust me?”

he asks, his demeanor so solid, so sure in this moment that Gwynn’s throat knots against an unbidden upswell of emotion, her power sparking even more intensely toward him.

Ee’vee gives Mavrik one, quick nod.

Seizing his chance, Mavrik assures Ee’vee, “Mynx and Rhys will keep you safe, love,”

before quickly handing her off to the willowy Smaragdalfar woman.

“Are you and your friend ready to take a portal ride?”

the woman, Mynx, asks Ee’vee, forcing brightness into her tone and smiling as she hugs the child close.

Weeping, Ee’vee burrows her head against Mynx’s chest. The Subland woman briefly meets the intense silver gaze of the tall Alfsigr archer, and Gwynn catches the impassioned look that crosses his chiseled features, the bow gripped in his pale hand at the ready.

The slender Alfsigr archer, Rhys, holds his hand out to Bloom’ilya. “We will not hurt you, child.”

Breaking into heaving sobs, Bloom’ilya gives in and takes Rhys’s hand, Watchers briefly shimmering to life on both girls’ shoulders as they’re guided to the geode-cavern’s far end. Bloom’ilya turns to give Gwynn one last, heartbreaking look, and Gwynn’s own heart twists as she takes in the glimmering gold interiors of the three sapphire-rune-bracketed portals.

A fierce reluctance to send the girls into an unknown world rises in Gwynn, chokingly tight, but she holds fast against it as they’re passed to two female Subland soldiers. Gwynn’s breath catches as the children and the soldiers disappear into the portals’ golden depths, her conflict soon overtaken by a tenuous surge of relief.

They’re free of Gardneria, she assures herself. And once they clear the portal lag, they’ll be in the East. Gwynn blinks back tears, instinctively sure that these Smaragdalfar Elves she’s been taught to hate and fear her whole life are Bloom’ilya and Ee’vee’s best shot at survival.

A soldier runs to Mavrik. The two of them exchange a few words in rapid-fire Smaragdalfarin, and surprise darts through Gwynn over Mavrik’s fluency. The soldier hands Mavrik a Varg-rune-marked charging stone that Mavrik places on his Varg wand’s faintly glowing runes. The runes instantly brighten.

Another cave jostling BOOM detonates, but Wynter’s rune holds fast this time, its brightness undimmed, the shield secure.

“When are we portaling East?”

Gwynn asks Mavrik. Before he can answer, a woman’s distant voice yells something in Smaragdalfarin, her voice echoing out from a separate, unshielded tunnel to the right of the tunnel they arrived through.

In her mind, Gwynn briskly rifles through the Smaragdalfarin translation dictionary she embedded there, along with multiple other language dictionaries, thankful again that her light magery, even trapped as it is, gives her the ability to remember in exacting detail anything she sees. She quickly parses out some of the meaning.

Children . . . portals . . . Alfsigr soldiers . . .

The woman’s urgent words continue to echo off the tunnel’s stone along with what sounds like a strengthening sea of thudding bootheels shot through with children’s scattered cries.

An elderly Smaragdalfar woman bursts from the tunnel and runs toward them, an emerald-glowing rune stylus gripped in her hand. There’s a battle-hardened expression on her weathered, emerald-patterned face. A large number of terrified-looking Smaragdalfar children rush in behind her in panicked flight, three younger, heavily armed Smaragdalfar women bringing up the rear.

A little boy, not more than five years old, shrieks in horror and skids to a halt when he catches sight of Gwynn and Mavrik as well as Wynter, Rhys, and the taller Alfsigr Elf male. The elderly runic sorceress scoops up the child and gives Mavrik and the Alfsigr Elves grim nods that they return. Gesturing toward them, the elderly woman calls out to the children a string of words in Smaragdalfarin that Gwynn recognizes as friends and will not hurt you. Other Smaragdalfar soldiers close in around the children and usher them and their caretakers toward the portals.

“Where are these children from?”

Gwynn asks Mavrik, a sick guilt over their fear clenching her gut as translucent Watchers flash into view once more, a single Watcher perched on each child’s shoulder.

“They’re escapees from the Alfsigr lumenstone mines,”

Mavrik explains.

Shock overtakes Gwynn, and she meets his gaze. The eye contact triggers a stronger pull on her lines toward him that she knows he feels too as they both shiver against it, but even the mind-scattering effect of their magical draw isn’t enough to distract from this horror.

Mavrik’s brow knots, his gaze turning searching, as if he recognizes something in her that he’s felt himself. “Gwynn,”

he says, “the Smaragdalfar people have been imprisoned in the Sublands by the Alfsigr military for decades, adults and children alike. All of it abetted by the Mage Council and military.”

Gwynn’s gut heaves and she fears she might retch. She’s heard of the lumenstone mines, but she had no idea the Alfsigr were imprisoning people who are not depraved criminals there, much less children.

The elderly Smaragdalfar sorceress yells something to Mavrik, too fast for Gwynn to translate, the woman motioning toward the tunnel the children ran in from.

Mavrik nods at the woman before turning back to Gwynn. “Now that my wand is fully charged, I’m going to help them wall off the open tunnels while the children and others evacuate.”

He glances toward the large crowd of children bottlenecked in front of the three portals. “In a matter of moments, we’re going to break down the West’s entire underground network of Noi military portals so that the Mages and the Alfsigr military can’t make use of them.”

Their magical pull surges, and Mavrik hesitates, his jaw flexing as if he’s fighting to concentrate around their mutual thrall as Gwynn fights off the almost gravitational urge to move toward him.

“There’s only so much charge in those portals, and they’re slow to recharge,”

he forces out, then swallows, his gaze softening into something akin to real affection. “You should go with them, Gwynnifer. Your work for us is done.”

Gwynn pulls in a shaky breath, her heart inexplicably tightening due to the intimate tone he’s wrapped around her name. Reluctance to be parted from him rises.

“My light magery gives me a perfect memory of any image I’ve ever seen,”

she confides, her voice quavering as her magic strains toward his. “And I’ve read multitudes of high-level military grimoires from my father’s armory. Which means I have an encyclopedia of spells in my mind that you might have need of, including knowledge of primordial Shadow magic from a demonic grimoire. I want to stay and help you fight the Magedom.”

“No,”

Mavrik counters. He sounds firm, but the word is tight in his throat, as if refuting her is going against his every magical instinct. “The Mages and the Alfsigr will likely find a way to attack while we’re holding the line. Gwynn, you’ve done your part, just go.”

The pained look overtaking his expression steals Gwynn’s breath. She knows—just knows from the intensity of that look—that if she touched him right now, she’d find his Level Five magic straining as relentlessly toward her lines as her trapped light magic is flashing toward his.

The image of the Great Tree pulses in the back of Gwynn’s mind, and she’s overwhelmed by a sense of life-altering crossroads dividing before her. Her choice in this moment will be irrevocable.

“I’m staying,”

she states. She glances toward the rapidly diminishing bottleneck of children being led through the portals, the will to fight for them—and for the Wand—intensifying as she meets Mavrik’s gaze once more. “I’m staying, and I’m going East with you.”

The tension in Mavrik’s expression doesn’t lessen. “If we survive holding this line, we’re not portaling to the East,”

he warns. “We’re portaling to the Northern Forest. To take down the Black Witch.”

Thrown, Gwynn gives him a questioning look.

“Elloren Gardner Grey used to possess Wynter’s Wand of Power,”

Mavrik explains. “Because of that, Wynter can sense her location through it. Right now, Elloren’s caught in a Dryad portal lag. The portal’s trajectory is set for the Northern Forest, so we’re going to portal there and use the Wand to break through the forest’s Dryad warding and get to Elloren before Vogel does.”

Mavrik’s expression turns steely. “Then we’re going to strike her down.”

Gwynn gapes at him, acid-yellow alarm blazing through her lines. “You should be portaling that Wand to the East right now,”

she protests. “You need to get it as far away from Vogel as you possibly can. There’s a reason he and his demons are after it. You can’t let them get hold of it!”

“It’s a risk we have to take,”

Mavrik shoots back. “The Northern Forest’s wards have stood unbroken for generations.”

He glances at Wynter. “That Wand of Power can break through locks and wards like nothing I’ve ever seen.”

Gwynn’s alarm turns incandescent as she levels her finger toward the Wand in Wynter’s hand. “If Vogel gets hold of that Wand and the Shadow Wand both . . .”

Gwynn casts about for a way to express the vast danger that she can sense, deep in her core, as the image of the Wand pulses hard against her mind, a renewed line-tugging draw toward Wynter taking hold as the last of the children disappear through the portals’ golden depths.

Her decision to remain here set, Gwynn meets Wynter’s silver-fire gaze. The graceful Icaral lowers the Wand and strides toward her with an air of purpose, as if Wynter is swept up in the same pull toward Gwynnifer, the Wand of Myth casting the Icaral’s pale form in a penumbra of green light.

The crystalline cavern seems to contract around them both as Wynter stops before her.

“I am Wynter Eirllyn, Ealaiontora Empath of Alfsigroth,”

Wynter states, her black wings drawing in behind her, threads of silvery lightning crackling through them. Her pale hand glows with the Wand’s verdant light as she lifts it. “I saw your face in my dreams, fellow Bearer of the Verdyllion.”

Gwynn pulls in a deep breath, the Wand of Myth’s true name resonating through her, a stronger draw to both the Verdyllion and to this Elfin Icaral tugging on her trapped power—on her very soul—Bearer to Bearer.

A vision overtakes Gwynn’s mind—branches twining out from the Verdyllion Wand of Myth to form a Great Ironwood Tree wreathed in verdant mist, the Tree filling this entire geode-cavern. Watchers shiver into being, perched all over the Great Tree’s branches, one appearing on Wynter’s shoulder.

A flash of prismatic shimmer sparkles through both the Tree and Gwynn’s lines, every color flashing through her gaze as her confusing pull toward Mavrik intensifies, as well. Gwynn looks at him and knows, from his equally thrown expression and tense stance, that he’s also aware of their strange, mounting draw toward each other’s power. A pull that the Verdyllion seems to be amplifying.

Gwynn turns back to Wynter, everything impressed on her in church cast into upheaval, the Sacred Wand in the hands of a “Cursed Winged One.”

But Wynter Eirllyn radiates the very opposite of evil. Her silvery eyes gleam with compassion, and all the Watchers, including the one on Wynter’s shoulder, keep their starlight eyes trained on Gwynnifer.

Waiting.

Decided, Gwynn surrenders to the Wand’s pull, hurtling recklessly toward alliance not only with Mavrik, but with this Icaral Wand Bearer.

The Tree-vision dissipates, save for the single Watcher perched on Wynter’s shoulder.

“I saw the Verdyllion in dreams,”

Gwynn shakily tells Wynter. “And a vision just hit me . . . a vision I’ve seen again and again. A Great Tree wreathed in green mist and filled with multihued light. And . . .”

She glances pointedly at the Watcher on Wynter’s shoulder.

Wynter gives her a knowing look, and as the Watcher shivers out of sight, Gwynn can tell that Wynter sees them, as well.

“The Verdyllion,”

Gwynn says, her eyes flicking toward the Wand, “it’s still linked to me. I can feel it.”

Wynter nods in solemn agreement. “The Verdyllion is calling on all of its Bearers to unite. To fight the Shadow with light power. I’ve seen visions of us gathered around the Verdyllion.”

Gwynn’s astonished mind spins as a memory hits from when she was thirteen years old—giving Sagellyn Gaffney the Verdyllion Wand that fateful, blue-lit morning in Valgard, so that the Wand could escape to Halfix and be hidden from the Mages and glamoured pyrr-demons . . .

“Sagellyn . . .”

Gwynn stammers, “she was a Bearer of the Verdyllion. Do you think she’s feeling this call, as well?”

“I do,”

Wynter responds, and the Wand’s glow takes on a beckoning, chromatic pulse. “We are the Blessed Bearers spoken about in my people’s Elliontorin holy book. To the Noi, we’re known as the Vhion, and to the Smaragdalfar as the Oo’nour’iel—Oo’na’s Seven Light Bearers. Our light power, amplified by the Verdyllion, is a weapon against the Shadow.”

A memory of the pyrr-demon’s words assaults Gwynn’s mind—

KILL HER! BEFORE SHE CAN JOIN WITH THE OTHER LIGHT BEARERS!

Gwynn’s brow furrows. “But . . . I have no access to my light power. I’m a Level One Mage—”

Running boot steps sound from a small, unshielded tunnel near their side, cutting into Gwynn’s turbulent thoughts, a woman’s urgent shouting in the Common Tongue drawing everyone’s attention.

“Incoming storm spiders!”

Wynter and Mavrik raise their wands and slide protectively in front of Gwynn as a contingent of soldiers level weapons at the tunnel.

A young woman with the tattoos of the Amaz surges out of it with a slender, lavender-hued Urisk woman tight on her heels, both of them dressed incongruously in Mage-soldier garb. The Amaz woman is gray-hued with short, spiky black hair, a barely charged Varg blade raised in her hand, a look of urgency burning in her dark eyes.

“Valasca!”

both Mavrik and Wynter exclaim as one, stepping forward.

The Amaz woman—Valasca—snaps her gaze to them, her eyes widening with a look of recognition before she regains her air of ferocity. “Portal out of here now!”

she growls.

“We can’t!”

the commanding Smaragdalfar woman with the Varg-rune-marked face and half-shaved head growls back at her, the woman’s runic sword flashing a threatening emerald light. “We’re recharging these portals and recalibrating their trajectory to the Northern Forest!”

Valasca curses, jabbing her thumb toward the tunnel behind her. “Fallon Bane is on our tail! And she’s sent a swarm of corrupted storm spiders ahead of her! They’ll throw cyclones that will smash right through any barriers you can conjure, as well as your portals!”

“We can take out storm spiders,”

Mavrik snarls.

Valasca’s gaze pierces into him. “Not ones corrupted with Shadow and covered in deflection runes, you can’t!”

Now it’s Mavrik’s turn to curse before his gaze turns unfocused, as if he’s rooting through his mind for some magical option. Gwynn battles back a spike of terror. Everything she’s read about storm spiders and deflection runes in the armory’s grimoires flashes through her mind, along with images of detailed ink renderings of the horrifying beasts.

“How long till they get here?”

Mavrik demands as the Smaragdalfar woman orders her army to form a defensive line in front of the portals.

“Not long,”

Valasca answers. She holds up her blade. “I threw up a few barriers before I exhausted most of my weapon’s charge. But my shields aren’t strong enough to hold off those spiders and Fallon for long.”

Gwynn’s light mage mind swiftly riffles through all the runes in a huge Alfsigr military grimoire she scanned over a year ago and zeroes in on an obscure silver rune, one of the few that can defend against storm spiders.

“There’s an Alfsigr arachnid-defense rune,”

she blurts out, just as Mavrik’s eyes glint with what looks like an idea.

“And an Alfsigr storm-shield rune,”

he adds, eyes meeting hers in a flash of such intense urgency, a frisson of tingling energy shoots through her lines. Both of them eagerly look to Wynter.

Because Gwynn and Mavrik might not be able to create Alfsigr runes, but the Alfsigr Icaral runic sorceress before them can.

Unspoken agreement lighting her gaze, Wynter holds out the Verdyllion to them. “Concentrate on the defensive runes and touch my hand,”

she prods. “I’ll empathically read your combined knowledge and create the runes with the Verdyllion.”

Wasting no time, they grab Wynter’s hand, Mavrik’s fingers wrapping around Gwynn’s hand, as well. An explosion of invisible sparks sizzles out from Mavrik’s touch as the tips of Gwynn’s and Mavrik’s fingers slide forward over Wynter’s hand and they both make contact with the Verdyllion.

The Great Tree image bursts through Gwynn’s vision, raying out prismatic light of every hue as Gwynn’s lines pull hard toward Mavrik’s and abruptly open.

Gwynn gasps as she’s filled with the sudden, line-expanding sense of Mavrik’s every Level Five line—fire, air, wind and earth—a shudder passing through them both as their eyes lock in a burst of snapping energy and Gwynn’s light magery burgeons to life. It’s like a floodgate being blasted wide-open, Gwynn’s power coursing, flashing and sparking, toward Mavrik’s lines, their magic melding into what feels like one Balanced system of interconnected lines channeling all five elemental powers.

Wynter lifts the Verdyllion, and they follow her motion as Wynter moves its tip in a sweeping arc to form two huge, bright silver Alfsigr runes in the air between them and the tunnel Valasca and her Urisk companion ran through. One rune is the arachnid-defense rune Gwynn is struggling to hold in the forefront of her mind, and the other is Mavrik’s storm-shield rune.

A chorus of loud clacks sounds through the tunnel, followed by a tinny, echoing insectile shriek that sends a powerful chill through Gwynnifer’s veins. She, Mavrik, and Wynter keep tight hold of the Verdyllion.

A giant spider scuttles into view, big as a horse, and terror crackles down Gwynn’s spine as more spiders swarm in behind the creature, chittering and clacking and gnashing chitinous jaws. For several seconds, Gwynn can’t breathe, the spiders’ nightmarish heads distorted with a multitude of glowing gray eyes, and their rune-marked thoraxes fitted with two raised holes just behind their heads, seemingly endless numbers of them scuttling into the cavern . . .

It’s not enough, Gwynn’s thoughts and heart pound out. Our two runes are not enough for an attack this large.

Forcing herself to focus, Gwynn sends her thoughts flying desperately through grimoires and swiftly locates a possible spell.

“What is this rune you’ve found?”

Wynter asks, gaze stark as she empathically senses Gwynn’s thoughts.

“An Issani multiplication spell!”

Gwynn cries. “But you can’t cast it, and neither can Mavrik—it’s not an Alfsigr or Mage spell!”

“But you can,”

Wynter fiercely returns.

Gwynn’s eyes widen, what Wynter is insinuating explosively clear—Light Mages are able to cast runic spells from every magical system, not just their own. And Gwynn’s light magery is now unblocked.

Gwynn murmurs the spell, and Mavrik’s hand tightens around both hers and Wynter’s, Gwynn’s heart thundering against her chest.

As her light magery breaks free.

It rushes through Mavrik’s power with such intensity that her lungs contract and her vision sparks Issani gold, her magic shimmering through his wand hand and into the Verdyllion.

Gilded light bursts from the Wand and rays through the suspended runes before them.

The silver runes flash gold then miraculously multiply, countless identical silver runes springing out from them to form a huge interlocking barrier wall just as the spiders rear back and blast out bolts of roaring gray storm from their raised thorax holes, dark Shadow lightning arcing through it.

The Shadow storm slams into their silvery runic barrier, the sheer force of the Shadow assault driving their barrier back a few paces as the Subland soldiers closing in around their sides fire uncharged arrows and blades through the runic shield, the insects’ furious shrieks echoing against the cavern’s crystalline walls as they’re struck.

A flash of sapphire light rays out from the portals behind them, and a Subland soldier yells something in Smaragdalfarin, too fast for Gwynn to translate. She looks at Mavrik in urgent question as the Alfsigr runes continue to multiply, Gwynn’s light magery rushing through the Verdyllion and into the thickening runic barrier, the magic in her lines and Wynter’s rapidly depleting.

“Only a few minutes before the portals are charged,”

Mavrik translates.

Relief surges through Gwynn but it’s immediately punched down as another echoing, earsplitting shriek rattles the cave. A gigantic, insectile mass squeezes into the geode-cavern, its upper head covered with a riot of gray-glowing eyes. The creature pushes the rest of its body into the cavern and unfolds into a barn-size spider. Black, chitinous half-moon horns rise from its head, and Shadow-tainted Mage deflection runes are marked all over its body. Four extra pairs of legs made of what looks like dark lightning bolts sizzle out over its eight limbs.

“Goddess help us,”

Valasca murmurs from beside them. “Fallon bound a queen.”

The queen spider slams its lightning legs onto the floor with a thunderous CRACK.

Dark lightning buzzes out over the floor’s flat expanse and forks toward and against their runic barrier, the barrier’s runes whirring into a solid silvery blur that spits reactive threads of lightning.

“My light magery,”

Gwynn rasps to Mavrik and Wynter as the magic flowing out of her sputters. “I can feel it depleting . . .”

A tide of dark mist billows from the queen spider’s underside and slithers toward their barrier and then over its expanse, their barrier’s silver coloration pulsing away in strobing fits of storm gray.

Mavrik yanks his hand from theirs, and Gwynn’s light magic contracts into its trapped state with such slingshot force that she sways on her feet, her hand dropping from Wynter’s.

Drawing his Varg-marked wand, Mavrik grits out a spell and throws a bolt of glowing emerald energy that quickly expands into a huge half-orb shield of shimmering, emerald light in front of them, walling off their side of the geode-cavern, the soldiers beside them blasting their emerald magic into it.

The queen spider lunges forward, the very air gaining a stinging charge as the beast hurls out a prone, whirling tornado.

The tornado slams into their original rune shield and shatters it in an explosion of bright silver light, the spider’s storm rushing forward to pummel against Mavrik’s green orb barrier.

Gwynn’s heart slams against her ribs as another flash of sapphire light rays out from behind them.

“The portals are charged!”

a woman’s voice rings out in the Common Tongue, her words barely cutting through the roar of the attacking storm as Mavrik feeds power into his half-dome barrier, leaning into it but skidding back alarmingly as the Subland soldiers make for the charged portals.

Mavrik grunts, muscles tensing as he jabs his wand arm harder toward his orb shield, slapping his free hand around his wrist to steady his wand hand, the bolt of power he’s feeding into his shield brightening its forest green glow as Shadow wind gusts and dark lightning cracks against it. The queen spider lets out a floor-rattling shriek and intensifies her onslaught of storm.

“Go! Go!”

Mavrik urges Gwynn and Wynter, Valasca and the purple Urisk woman hugging Valasca’s side as he keeps tenuous hold of his orb shield. “Get that Wand out of here!”

Valasca grips both the purple woman’s and Wynter’s arms and tugs them into motion. Wynter casts Mavrik a tortured look before the three of them sprint toward the charged portal while Gwynn finds herself frozen as she realizes what Mavrik is doing.

Sacrificing himself so they can escape.

The image of Mavrik’s look of horror when he took in Bloom’ilya’s and Ee’vee’s cropped ears burns through Gwynn’s mind. He’s the only Mage she’s ever encountered, in her closed Styvian Mage world, who actually cared.

Who saw the cruelty and responded with full-on rebellion.

A visceral panic strikes through her, over the possibility of losing both their confusing magical connection and him.

Through Mavrik’s green orb shield, Gwynn can just make out a new swarm of spiders pouring into the geode-cavern, scuttling over and clinging to every surface, their queen’s dark lightning scything into Mavrik’s weakening shield with mounting force. The air grows more charged, all the spiders’ bodies seeming to swell and take on a steely glow. A static sting courses through the air, setting Gwynn’s teeth on edge, her hair lifting along her scalp as her terror rises.

“Mavrik!”

she cries.

He turns and spots her, and his eyes ignite with fury. Snarling out an epithet, he launches himself toward her, the urgency in his gaze sending a bolt of resolve straight through Gwynn’s center, static rising in the air.

Mavrik grabs her arms and tries to push her toward the portal, and an explosion of multicolored sparks races through her lines from the contact. She grabs hold of his wrists in turn, the skin-to-skin contact abruptly unblocking the remaining shreds of her light power. Her magic rushes into his lines, and their eyes meet in a flash of intensity as they’re hit by a violent blast of energy.

A fiery, forking sting assaults Gwynn’s sides, and she cries out in pain as Mavrik’s body is blasted against hers and they’re blown straight across the cavern’s floor toward the portal’s golden maw, a chill sweeping over her skin.

Fallon Bane sweeps into the cavern, ice shimmering over the cave’s stone. Her wand is raised, her vicious gaze pinned on Gwynn.

Fallon’s cry of “Nooooo!”

is the last thing Gwynn hears before she and Mavrik are blasted into the portal’s golden depths.