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It was Calanthe who answered. “Spirit Terra is exactly the same size as the Terra we know.”
Great. This could literally take years, which was why they were banking on her pointing them in the right direction.
The snap of a bone under her boot caused her to look down.
There were veins of lilac running through the ground, webbing out in all directions. Tiny bubbles that reminded her of soda floated through them, but they looked firm to the touch, and when the sole of her boot settled down on one of the forks of purple, it held firm, briefly flaring a brighter shade until the moment she took her next step.
“What are these?” she asked.
No one answered.
The longer they walked, the more lines appeared. So many of them, they reminded her of overlapping spiderwebs or tree roots. Klay was close to her side, looking at the lines as well, though he didn’t appear to be interested in what he was seeing.
She whispered, “Do you know what these are?”
His answer was low and flat. “Channels.” Gray eyes sharpened into focus to assess the veins. “They carry magic from the Eye.”
Loren gazed out at the stormy horizon. “The anima mundi?”
“I would assume so.”
The anima mundi was the source of all magic that bound the universe together. It powered their cars, lit their homes, generated forcefields over the many cities throughout Terra. It was even responsible for cell reception and the internet. Without it, their world would function very differently. Loren supposed she shouldn’t be surprised that the anima mundi would be here as well, but she’d never seen anything like these veins running through their own world.
And the veins in this area, the ones beneath her feet, were various shades of purple. Just purple, not a single other color.
“What is the Eye?”
“It is the centre of the spirit realm. The core of the earth.”
“Does anything live in here?”
“Live?” Klay looked ahead, wary gaze scanning the land. “I wouldn’t call them living beings, but there are sentient ones.”
“Can they hurt us?”
His head turned toward her almost imperceptibly, but his eyes remained straight ahead. “Yes.”
“That’s why you were nervous when we were first coming here.”
His mouth tilted down at one edge. “I wasn’t nervous.”
“You don’t need to be ashamed to admit it,” she said. “Any sane person would be afraid of this place.”
His eyes found hers. “Think your Darkslayer would be afraid?”
“Not many things scare him.” She glanced around. “But I think this place would unsettle just about anyone.”
The crunch of dry ground beneath their feet carried through the area, and cool mist wrapped around Loren’s limbs, its chill somehow managing to seep through the bodysuit, where it wormed into the marrow of her bones.
“Can these weapons protect us?” She gestured subtly to the men and women surrounding them. Their automatic weapons were made of a glasslike material, ribbons of color pulsing through the cartridges.
Klay chewed on his lip. “Hopefully. We’ve been lucky enough not to have to test that theory yet.”
She hoped they would stay lucky for the whole time she was required to be in here.
“What’s that over there?” Loren asked, gesturing to a wall of shimmering black way off in the distance, nearly identical to the one they’d just walked through to get into Spirit Terra, only this one didn’t seem to have a beginning or an end. It stretched on to the left and the right for as far as she could see. If she tipped her head back, it disappeared all the way up into the sky. In front of that wall was a pillar as big as the Control Tower, identical in appearance to the two she’d seen out front of the entrance into Spirit. The pillar looked small from this distance, its size deceiving.
Something about it made Loren not want to get any closer.
