Page 190 of Flame and Sparrow

After heaving up essentially everything I’d eaten for the past day—which wasn’t much, for better or worse—I crawled for a few feet and tried to focus on making sense of my new surroundings.

I no longer smelled campfire smoke.

I no longer heard pounding hooves, or shouting voices, and the crackling, booming energy of the anti-divine weapons was muted at first…and soon the unsettling sounds stopped entirely. Everything was strangely quiet. Each of my rattling breaths seemed to echo.

Had I really managed to cross back into the divine realm?

I lifted my head and gazed upon miles and miles of parched, cracked ground that I didn’t recognize.

Where the hell was I?

Why had I jumped so recklessly into this?

Fear wrapped around me like a heavy chain, threatening to hold me in place. But I knew staying here wouldn’t do me any good, so I got to my feet, double-checked that the bag I carried was still secure, that its contents were safe, and then I started to walk.

The ground was mercifully flat and smooth, but seemingly never-ending. The only disruptions of the desolate landscape were strange, low-lying black clouds that were scattered about. A stench of sulfur surrounded them, and Moth let out a low growl every time one drifted too close to us.

We walked on and on, and nothing seemed to change—until a jagged tower took shape in the distance, its dark spires reaching up in a pattern that seemed familiar even to my exhausted and slightly dazed mind.

I slowed to a stop, Moth hovering anxiously alongside me. “Is that…the Tower of Ascension?”

The griffin turned a few loops in the air in response.

And I realized—with sudden, horrifying clarity—where I was. What I was walking through.

The ocean of the Death Marr’s magic.

Except the ocean of magic was gone. In its place was this new wasteland, completely empty of the power that was supposed to help keep dangerous, destructive things from crossing over.

Those clouds of darkness, the foul stench surrounding them…

Were they more signs of the weapons my kind were using to attack the veil?

I looked back in the direction I’d traveled from. The barrier between worlds continued to shiver and flash with cracks of pale light. Though it remained mostly silent—the sound apparently unable to travel through whatever divine energies remained here—the ongoing attack was apparent. It looked just as it had the day Dravyn and I stood together on the shore near the tower…

Only now it was ten times as active.

I started to jog, and then to run, chased by increasingly vivid thoughts of the ground beneath me collapsing.

But even if I got away from this wasteland, what then? It would take at least a day to walk all the way back to Dravyn’s palace on my own two feet, and by then, it might be too late.

I kept running anyway, eyes frantically scanning my surroundings for help. The gods came and went so easily throughout this realm—Dravyn could be here in an instant, if only I could catch his attention. I pressed a hand against the dried blood on my mark, and I looked to the sky, hoping against hope that I might see wings of fire appearing just as the wisps in the mortal realm had.

It was not fire that answered my silent pleas.

It was lightning.

Not the faint cracks of light I’d seen destabilizing the veil, but a hot, jagged bolt that struck from above, hitting the ground directly in front of me, searing a black scar of no less than thirty feet into the dry dirt. I tripped as I scrambled backward, flailing to avoid the sizzling destruction, and landed hard on my backside.

Gasping, I looked again to the sky, trying to see where the attack had originated from.

I saw no more bolts of lightning, only flashes of white and blue energy similar to what I’d seen the first night I’d stayed in Dravyn’s room. He had said they were signs of unrest in the upper heavens—but this was closer than any conflict that might have been happening between the Moraki in Valla; the very air around me sizzled with electricity. And a haze of different energies filled the sky directly above me, gathering into a thick cloud with a sick, yellowish color.

Something was happening in the skies ofthisheaven, above that cloud—a battle I couldn’t see.

Moth soared down beside me, grabbing my sleeve and tugging anxiously.

I fought my way to my feet and started to run once more, keeping an eye out for anything I might be able to shelter underneath in case of more errant lightning.

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