Page 82 of The Dryad Storm

As conflict knifes through her, they all soldier on, rounding bend after bend of opal-veined tunnel while Gwynn is increasingly swept up in the sense that she’s forever cast out of the Ancient One’s favor, not only for so egregiously betraying her fasting, but for wresting hold of the Magedom’s most sacred of spells and wrestling them into submission.

Going up against the Ancient One Himself.

And now... she’s following an Alfsigr Icaral wielding the Ancient One’s Wand toward the Subland roots of Oo’na’s Tree to tap into the Great Tree’s vast elemental power. It’s such a roiling ball of blasphemy upon blasphemy, Gwynn can feel herself skidding straight toward every last one of the Ancient One’s punishing hells.

Her tortuous thoughts break off as they round another bend, spill into a larger opal cavern and come to an abrupt halt.

The underground river slowly streams in front of them, a dark opal bridge spanning it. Beyond the bridge, there’s a broad area of flat stone with a line of huge, forest green Dryad runes suspended above it. A translucent, shimmering green wall emanates from the runes, flowing upward through their multihued Subland barrier above and downward through the cavern’s stone floor below, a larger, vividly emerald Varg rune hovering before the Dryad barrier.

They cross the bridge, and Mynx and Cael step toward the Varg rune. Mynx touches the air around it, her nails clinking against an invisible, glass-like barrier.

“This is a primordial Varg’plith’nile rune,” Mynx says, her tone awestruck as she reaches up to press her index finger’s tip to the center of the rune. Green light rays out from her touch, illuminating both her and Cael beside her, their hands interlaced, and Gwynn is struck once more by how the two of them have stubbornly decided to display their feelings for each other despite the fierce censure Yyzz’ra,Valkyr, and Gavryyl continue to throw their way.

“It is a Varg’uuth’nile,” Yyzz’ra sharply affirms, with a cutting look toward Cael. “To protect Oo’na’s Sacred Subland Rooting fromVarg’plith.”

Sunland heathen filth.Gwynn inwardly flinches in response to the Smaragdalfar slur, and Mynx’lia’luure’s silver eyes fill with outrage.

Gwynn recalls how the termVarg’plithis spoken about in the Smaragdalfar’s Holy Texts. Heathen filth that, in primordial times, let loose a Shadow pollution to crawl all over Erthia’s surface, throwing the world off-balance, the Righteous Children of Oo’na called to rise up against the Evil Shadowed Ones. To cleanse the Blessed Sublands of their unholy taint.

Gwynn is clear, from Yyzz’ra’s condemning glare, that Varg’plith includes not only Mynx and Cael, but herself, Mavrik, Wynter, Valasca, Rhys, and Sparrow. Gwynn tenses, finding it jarring to be cast as an Evil One in someone else’s religious story, the uncomforable questions ringing out, refusing to be silenced—

Who are the true Evil Ones?

Which religious story is true?

Mavrik draws close to the Varg’uuth’nile rune and studies it along with Mynx as Gwynn wonders, uneasily, what will happen when they reach the Great Tree’s roots with such clashing religious beliefs at play amongst their small group. She glances at Yyzz’ra, remembering the conversation she overheard when Yyzz’ra outlined her desire to wrest the Verdyllion from Wynter once they arrived at “Oo’na’s Roots.”

Are they about to go to war with each other?

“Are you able to cut a path through this Varg wardage?” Mavrik asks Yyzz’ra.

Yyzz’ra shoots him another glare and shakes her head. “The magic is densely layered and impenetrable.”

“Gwynnifer,” Wynter murmurs, and Gwynn turns to find Wynter holding the Verdyllion out to her.

Gwynn’s disquiet intensifies. Swallowing, she reaches out and takes hold of the Verdyllion.

A shockingly potent sizzle of color flashes from the Verdyllion and courses through her and Mavrik’s twinned power. Gwynn stiffens, their magic giving a taut pull toward each other.

“Shall we have a go at it?” Mavrik gently prods as she meets his intent gaze.

Gwynn nods stiffly and forcibly presses back her rising pull toward him. She and Mavrik draw nearer to the primordial rune. There’s a metallic tang of sorceryemanating from it—sorcery she can taste on the back of her tongue. Tracing the tip of the Verdyllion over the rune, Gwynn murmurs the Varg structure spell.

A translucent echo of the rune’s imprint telescopes toward her, an astonished breath escaping quiet Sparrow. Gwynn’s eyes remain pinned on the rune as she takes in each component, her mind separating them into their interlocking elemental building blocks.

“It’s an ancient version of a barrier rune woven into three different magic-repelling runes,” she states, tracing the Verdyllion’s tip over the emerald lines. “We need to locate the place they’re locked together.”

“Right here,” Mavrik says, pointing toward one of the rune’s sections, his hand brushing against hers.

Gwynn’s pulse leaps, and sparks race over her skin as power sizzles through her lines. Rattled, she jerks her hand away from his touch. Mavrik shoots her an intense look, and a flash of unsettled indigo shudders through their twinned power.

Gwynn confers stiltedly with Mavrik, careful not to touch him again as they plot out their magical approach. Struggling to keep her bucking magic from breaking loose to embrace his, she raises the Verdyllion at the same time that he raises his Varg-marked wand, the two of them murmuring a Varg spell in unison.

Streams of emerald light bolt from their wands, the bolts colliding with two different runic sections in an explosion of gem-green sparks, the locked sections bulging out almost to the point of breaking.

But it’s not enough power, and the locked sections spring back into place, refusing to give.

Gwynn and Mavrik work straight through the night and the next day, the two of them soon encircled by a suspended rainstorm of amplification runes from every runic system on Erthia. But still, the primordial Varg barrier rune refuses to give way, their every combined magical effort repelled.

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