My boisterous command sends a titanic fist punching up at the ceiling. Cracks through like the shell of an egg, tossing bits of rock thatrain …falling from a jagged hatch to the blustering storm beyond.
Inviting itin.
Snowy, cyclonic winds spiral down; such contrast to the hot stone beneath us.
Rygun bungs into the hole and begins to muscle through, packing the cavern with his immense, huffing presence to the harrowed screams ofthe caustic crowd. Folk who’ve come to feast off the suffering of others. OfKaan.
My bloodlust salivates.
I bolster my neck muscles, sharpen my tongue, and lash another series of snarled words. My igneous apparitions churn, swiping at the balconies, snatching the screaming horde like they’re mere bugs on a sill.
One by one, the screams extinguish, but the rage within me continues toroar.
Rygun finally breaks through. Crusted in ice, he looks like he’s wearing armor—any visible scales so matte they seem to absorb the light. Though I only get a split moment to take him in before the Creators heed my plea to saturate him with big slops of magma.
He releases a thunderous roar.
Now dripping molten stone, he gouges his talons into the hot, mushy walls and clambers around the internal façade, wings splayed, dragging his belly through the melt. Like a pestle, slowly grinding around the edges of a deep-dipped mortar. As he moves, he pours into the carnage, mauling the remaining folk that still have something to stand on, yet to siphon through the over-clogged exits.
He doesn’t feast. Just gnashes them like he’s stuffing his face in a bowl of meat, then flicks his head, expelling what’s left. Offering them a similar end as the ones they came to watch battle for the right to live in this callous fucking pit.
All the while, I sing to Bulder and Ignos, Kaan’s grip on me tightening. I think he might be speaking to me—yelling, even—but I can’t hear anything over the heaving throb in my ears.
The rest of the world tightens into insignificance as I urge the Creators on with commands that begin burning me from the inside out, bursting with the gluttonous need to scrape every last bit of Arkyn’s filthy fucking essence from beneath this heavy mountain. Like tearing out a caustic heart, its arteries dangling from the charred organ withering in my clawed hand. That’s what I picture as I sing.
Sing.
SING—
We’re herded to a jagged exit that’s gasping snowy breaths of frigid wind. A snowstorm like I’ve never seen. Unfortunately, Uno doesn’t hesitate before launching into the churn, immediately lost to it.
Shit—
I whip around, glaring at the Fate Herder. “This can’t possibly be right!”
He drops low and snarls, shoulders bunched with the threat to pounce.
I shake my head, lips pinched as I hastily tuck Raeve’s cloak around Kyzari, pulling the hood up over her head. Another warning growl has me reciprocating the sound before I step out into the dark and howling onslaught, powering through the cakey snow.
All but blind.
Nauseatingly disoriented.
Fucking freezing.
Though I can’t hear Rayne or Clode, I get the sense that something’soff.Feel it in the messy blows that cut through my garb, my lungs chafing with each chattered inhale.
We won’t survive long out here. Already, my fingers and toes burn from the cold, limbs shaking so much that every step through the blustery dredge feels like a battle won. And I’m wearing boots. A long-sleeved shirt. Pants that are runed to beat back the worst of the cold. The little miskunn, however …
“UNO! WHERE ARE YOU?”
A screaming plea, lost to the wind’s holler. But the roar of a distant dragon cuts through.
A burst of orange luminosity catches my gaze somewhere ahead. Like a lid just flicked back on a boot-sized fire weald. Though something tells me it only appears that size because it’s far away.
The battle pits?
Another snowy gust breaks my view, and the Fate Herder nudges his dense head between my shoulder blades. Hard. Urging me forward with such might I almost catapult into the snow.
