He blinked. The grey film over his eyes cleared for a second, replaced by a flash of warm, frantic brown.
You... take the high ground,he mumbled, the thought confused.
"There is no high ground!" I yelled, slapping his snout. "You are the ground! Be the ground, Thane!"
The mud surged again, trying to cover his nose, to silence his breath.
A roar built in his chest. But it wasn't a roar of grief this time. It was a roar of rejection.
No.
The word was a tectonic plate snapping.
NO.
Thane slammed his front paws down, not onto where the ground should be, but onto theconceptof the ground. Heimposed his will on the liquefied reality. He used his Titan-blood not to sink, but to solidify.
Turn to stone,he commanded the Void.
A pulse of earth magic explosively expanded from his center.
CRACK.
The mud instantly calcified. It turned from soup to granite in a heartbeat, trapping him, but stopping the descent.
He heaved. A sound of tearing rock filled the air as he shattered the stone he had just created, ripping his massive body upward. He climbed out of his own grave, claw over claw, dragging the confusing reality of the Underworld with him.
He surged up, shaking the debris from his coat, and stumbled onto a patch of the ridge that Kaelen had scorched solid.
He collapsed there, panting, his breath coming in jagged gasps that steamed in the cold air.
I slid off his back, my legs shaking so hard I could barely stand. I fell against his side, burying my face in his flank.
"You idiot," I whispered, my voice trembling. "You absolute idiot."
The fog swirled angrily around us, the faces of the dead gibbering in static, furious that their meal had escaped.
Thane lifted his head. He looked at the dissolving face of Sergeant Keller.
"I failed you," Thane rumbled aloud, his voice rough with tears. "I failed all of you."
The Sergeant's face stuttered, half of it gone.
Thane lowered his head, his nose touching my hair.
"But I will not fail her," the Bear Prince growled. "Not today."
He turned his back on the ghosts. It was the hardest thing I had ever seen him do. He turned away from his penance and chose his present.
Move,Thane projected to the group.Before I change my mind.
"Go," I ordered Kaelen. "Get us out of the fog."
We ran. We scrambled over the phantom ruins of the fortress, slipping on the half-formed stones, running away from the static screams of the un-dead. We didn't stop until the grey mist thinned and the crushing weight of the Ridge finally lifted, leaving us back on the silent, desolate plains of the void.
But as we walked, I noticed Thane kept his shoulder pressed against mine, harder than strictly necessary. He wasn't just guarding me. He was leaning on me.
And for the first time, the massive, unmovable Bear Prince felt trembling-light.
