Page 57 of Ash and Feather

But this place…

I wasn’t convinced the upper-gods had truly been involved in its creation in any way.

We soon came to a threshold of sorts; the path widened up ahead before branching in several directions, but before that crossroads was a nearly-invisible wall of magic. It glistened in the twilight, giving off a sinister, pulling energy, like the sea rolling away from the shore and trying to take my balance with it.

“A barrier,” Valas commented, summoning a tumbling ball of ice and shaping it into a small knife. He threw the knife casually toward said barrier. It collided with a violent spark of white light before it disintegrated completely, leaving little more than a faint shimmer behind. “And suddenly, this place feels evenlessinviting.”

I started to head off in search of a different path, but stopped as I caught sight of a small gash in the trunk of a nearby tree—a claw mark.

“…She passed this way.”

“You can sense her?” Valas asked. “That weird connection between you two again?”

“No need for that,” I said, pointing. “She’s marked the trees.”

“Ah. Clever.”

We pushed through the barrier, through an immense pressure that gave me the brief, mad desire to shed my human form in an attempt to deal with the discomfort of it.

“What the fuck is this ward even made of?” Valas growled.

“I don’t know, but let’s just keep moving. Maybe the pull will subside once we put some distance between ourselves and it.”

“It feels like it’s trying to latch onto my magic and rip it out. How did Karys stand this?”

I didn’t answer, because I didn’t know—and I didn’t want to think about her suffering the way we were currently suffering. Maybe her elvish ties protected her somehow, or maybe the spells Mairu and Zachar had laid upon her were better at countering this hellish attack…

Hopefully.

We reoriented ourselves as best we could and picked up our pace, committed to our plan, even though it was feeling more and more like a bad idea.

I thought of being pulled out to sea again—except this time I was wading willingly into it, deeper and deeper, ignoring how close the waves were to crashing over my head. I ignored the sick feeling in my stomach, too—along with the uneasy chatter of birds overhead, the foliage that seemed to be alive and closing in around us, the briars that caught at my hair and clothing.

Pain sliced through my hand, sudden and sharp.

I peered down, expecting to see the evidence of brambles catching, digging in and scraping their way over my knuckles…

Nothing was there.

My fingers were unmarred, yet the pain lingered, unmistakably real. A surge of emotion soon followed it—fear. Panic. I’d been catching flickers of similar things for the past hour; glimpses of what I assumed were the feelings Karys was experiencing, though the barriers between us made it difficult to see what was causing them.

Did this pain in my hand belong to her as well?

Had something happened to her?

I pushed my own fear down and focused on action. The pain felt clearer than anything yet—which hopefully meant we were getting closer to one another.

I paused, bracing myself against the closest tree as I tried to reach for her, to feel the familiar beat of her among the hostile energies and thick, suffocating air of this hellish landscape.

An urge to move soon overcame me, pulling me back the way we’d come. As if we’d missed her somehow. Months ago, I would have thought it was foolish to even think of obeying this instinct.

Now,I followed the inexplicable pull with little hesitation.

Valas trailed closely at my heels. We ran for no less than a mile, until I felt another, equally strong and equally unexplainable urge to change direction. Following this pull had us veering from the clear path, battling our way through thicker forest as the scent of blood and burning things grew more and more prominent.

Finally, we cut our way through a cluster of vines and made our way into a small clearing where Karys was kneeling, surrounded by a circle of burned vegetation.

The spell that had changed her appearance had faded away. Ribbons of fire surrounded her. Her head was bowed, eyes fluttering open and shut, as though she was meditating, concentrating on not letting her fiery walls fall.

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