Page 131 of The Princesses of Ruin
This will work.
We jog back to the line of safety and jump over the runes Liliana has drawn in the rubble. When we all cross the threshold, she raises the stone, creating a thick barrier to protect the front lines. Zane carves Eng runes along the reconstructed walls, adding an additional layer of security to our cover.
I turn my gaze back to the center, to Ashai. The crystals throb with Reina’s power, begging to be unleashed. I can feel the ipsain threatening to detonate, even in this cold. I pull its temperature down another measure as we await the word from on high.
My hands tremble as I clutch the detonators. Left for the ipsain, right for the flask. I should’ve given them to Alyse…
The air parts, snowflakes and mist condensing into a thick dome around the goddess.
“Now!”
I press the trigger on the flask detonator.
The ice is spattered with pale-green acid from the inside and evaporates instantly. The ground smokes, sending tendrils of putridity curling around the statue’s legs. The goddess’s chest cracks and black mist oozes from the point like blood from a wound. The arms snap, moving in jerky, unnatural ways. Her neck twists with a deep crackle, and her eyes lock on me.
Black glass explodes from her body, sending shrapnel sailing toward the wall protecting us. I duck behind the window made in the stone. My heart hammers as my left hand clutches the detonator for the ipsain bombs.
“Hold,”Alyse projects.“She’s not here yet.”
An unholy wail pierces the air and shakes the ground. The Spiders waiting in the emptied moat clutch each other’s hands, whisper prayers, and puke their guts out. I hold onto the detonator for my life, thumb poised over the trigger as I look through the window once more.
A burst of shadow darkens the world from under her feet. It shoots into the sky and turns the clouds deep blue. The wind curls around them into a storm that spits back to the ground in a whipping tornado. It encases the goddess, obscuring her from view.
The figures around her move, their black-encased bodies animating without shedding their obelisk skin. They move toward the ipsain crystals, groping at them with their rigid arms.
They’re trying to remove them.
Sweat gathers on my brow under my goggles. Every pull of frigid air into my lungs feels like tiny knives spearing my thundering heart. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to help.
The blue dragon flies past the storm, and the air thickens with electricity. Ions tickle the exposed skin on my face. The lightning strikes the tornado, whipping through the mist and hitting each of the animated statues. Their casings shatter and their bodies grow, monsters expanding into the world where men once stood.
The tornado snaps with blue lightning again and again, a chain reaction of magic set off within it. Another ethereal scream rocks me to the core as the very fabric of the air seems to tear.
A gaping void ripples into view, but it’s not empty at all. I can’t comprehend what my eyes are telling me. It is everything, and nothing at all, an empty well, a swollen ocean. Maybe this is infinity.
A whisper of gold slides behind my eyes like a knife, and my thumb moves of its own accord. The world pauses with a flash of brilliance. Silence falls in my blindness. I’m pulled away from the wall and tucked into someone’s chest. It smells of the forest, and black powder. Like my huntress.
A sonic boom slams into us, my ears aching from the force of it. Heat upon heat swells, burning away the snow beneath our feet. Emillia holds me harder. The wall cracks and fire licks through the runes. The Spiders in the trench maintain their shields, but only just.
Time restarts. The wave of flames gutters and dies, but not before leaving us singed and smoking. Emillia releases me, and I turn to the blackened window.
A puddle of black pools at the bottom of the crater. Above it hangs the rip in the world, slowly pouring more mist into our realm. It trickles now, until the last drop falls into the pool. The liquid shivers, fingertips of it reaching up into the world on the final ripple.
I wait for any word from Alyse, for anything else to move, to know my fate…
All of Gaien is holding its breath.
The blue dragon streaks through the sky, a ball of lightning coiled in his throat. He opens his mouth in a roar, unleashing a powerful attack on the puddle of black ooze.
The lightning explodes before impact, forking legs shooting off into the land around it. The pit sizzles and glows red-hot.
The darkness moves.
The portal to the infinite abyss shimmers.
“We didn’t kill her,”Alyse whispers.
My heart plummets through my gut.
