Page 73 of The Dryad Storm

Seizing their chance, Gwynn and Mavrik leap toward their wands, grab them, and race toward each other as Vogel rights himself with a hissing growl and thrusts his Wand up toward the Shadow tree.

Another colossal root cage barrels down toward Gwynn and Mavrik as they reach each other and touch their wands’ tips to each other’s smoking fastlines, murmuring the Noi weaving spell in unison.

The root cage slams down with killing force just as gold light rays out of their fastlines and their twinned power blasts through their fastmarks.

The scene around them shatters, Vogel’s snarling cry reverberating straight through Gwynn as the obsidian Subland cave reappears around them. Mavrik is crouched beside her, both of them breathing hard and clutching each other’s wrists.

Dizzy with vertigo, Gwynn lifts her hand and gasps as she takes in her newly gold-glowing fastlines. Looking rattled, Mavrik holds up his hand beside hers, the tendriling Shadowgone, their designs completely altered. No longer do they have different looping black designs—their fastings are now identical golden lightning-bolt patterns limned with iridescentcolor.

Astounded, Gwynn meets Mavrik’s intent gaze. “Do you think it worked?” she asks, barely able to get the words out.

“I think it just might have.” He huffs out a stunned breath and shakes his head as they both rise to their feet on unsteady legs. “To my knowledge,” he says, “no one’s ever tried to flow Issani twinning magic through a wandfasting spell... I didn’t fully expect it to be able to infiltrate it.”

“Do you suppose that’s how Vogel took over Elloren Gardner Grey’s fastlines?” Gwynn presses, heart pattering hummingbird-fast. “Using Shadow-corrupted twinning magic?”

Mavrik’s eyes narrow, riveted on hers. “It’s a distinct possibility. It’s the strongest sorcerer-linking spell there is.”

“He might have used this route to link Shadow power to the Alfsigr Zalyn’or necklaces, as well,” Gwynn postulates, the words coming out in a breathless rush.

Mavrik grows very still and Gwynn can feel the contained, prismatic tempest forming in his magic. “Do you realize, Gwynnifer,” he says, his words low and measured, “that if what you say is true, we might have just found a way to break into not only Vogel’s fasting tether to his bound Mage soldiers... but into the magic that could bind all of Alfsigroth through their Zalyn’or necklaces?”

Tension sparks in the air between them as Gwynn slowly nods. She swallows, considering their hands again, studying the identical lightning marks now emblazoned on them both.

“Mavrik...” she says, her awareness of what this means, not just on an Erthia level, but on a personal level, consolidating. “Do you think... that we’re truly fasted to each other?”

He blinks at her before taking hold of her hand and placing his wand’s tip to the luminous fasting designs marked there, then murmurs spells.

Ah... clever, Gwynn thinks as her light magery stirs, a shiver of intellectual appreciation coursing through her over howsmarthe is, as he draws on her light power to cast a suspended Noi linkage-detection rune combined with an Alfsigr linkage-breaking rune just over their hands, then connects both runes to their fastlines via slim sapphire and silver lines.

Their fastlines flash sapphire, then a stinging silver, before settling back into luminous gold, the Noi and Alfsigr runes disappearing.

Mavrik’s eyes widen as he stares at their fastlines, seeming stunned anew. “I think we’ve taken true hold of the fasting spell,” he rasps. He meets her astonished gaze. “Gwynn, I think we might be truly fasted.”

“Moving that spell... manipulating it...” Gwynn stutters.

“...is the first step in figuring out how to destroy it,” he finishes for her.

“Do you know how many ‘unbreakable’ spells are based on the same spell segments as the fasting spell?” she asks, her tone awed over what they’ve wrought.

He nods tightly, swallowing as the ramifications bear down more intensely. “All,” he responds. “All the higher-level Mage spells. And all the higher-level Alfsigr spells, as well... and so many of Erthia’s other magical systems... their strongest spells are all based in similar primordial magic...”

Gwynn ceases to hear him as her eyes fixate on her wrist then his, and she realizes, in a sudden, throat-tightening wave of dread, that their fastlines might be transformed to golden streaks of lightning...

... but the Sealing lines around their wrists are still black.

A frisson of urgency breaks through.

“We need to own the entire spell,” she breathes, lifting her gaze to Mavrik’s. “Mavrik... ourwrists.”

He pales. “Ancient One...”

Gwynn freezes as the forbidden idea grips hold.

“There’s only one way to fully overtake a fasting spell,” she forces out, an uncomfortable flush heating her face. “Only one way to completely lay claim to it.”

She watches him furtively as he stills, a flush pinking his skin as well, the pieces falling into place in his mind.

“Seal it, you mean,” Mavrik says, and they regard each other soberly.

---