A booming sound echoes across the heavens, long seconds behind the flash of light.
“Roiven!” Aria calls sharply. I look to find her far above us, on a wide landing at the caldera’s rim. In the overwhelm of arrivingearlier today, I managed to miss the narrow stairs carved up one of the basin’s sides: they emerge seamlessly from the same rock, easy to overlook. But now other witches race up those same steps toward Aria.
Roiven sprints for the stairs after them. I follow more slowly, until I’m at the back of the group.
“What have they done?”
“Whatisthat?”
“By all the gods, please…”
There’s a column of blue light, rising to the sky and glazing the underside of a billowing cloud. In the darkness I can’t tell how far away it is, but from the height it could be far back on the horizon. The column fades to dark until all that’s left is the blue cloud. An explosion the size of which I’ve never seen.
When I was still part of the military, there was no Hellion capable of that much destruction. I stare open-mouthed.
“Lusern. That’s due west,” Aria says in a shaking voice.
“What was that?” Roiven asks. His eyes cut through the crowd to find me. And suddenly all the witches are staring at me, a mix of horror and anger in their eyes.
“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” I whisper. “Some… some kind of Hellion weapon, from the color and the burn, but…” None of the Hellions have that kind of power. Rancor’s weapons aren’t even a fraction that large. I was only on the Bluff for two years. Could they build something that big, that fast?
Could a single blast of enchantment destroy an entire island?
“You must know more,” Torain says. I hear the raw edge of desperation in his voice.
I just keep staring at the billowing blue cloud in silence as dread weights my limbs. I don’t know what it is, or what they did, or what remains of Lusern. But there is one thing I’m certain of. That was a display of more power than I have ever seen a Hellion use, by an order of magnitudes.
How many Enchanted did they drain to create the blue light now fading from the sky? The brightness of the explosions lingers in my eyes. Hundreds, at a minimum. A ship’s worth of sacrifices.
Every accusation the Empire leveled at the witches held the truth about what we were doing ourselves. Draining life. Killing innocents. Immense sacrifice, for unholy power.
This is the power that Harfor was seeking, when she brought Roiven in bondage to the Bluff, and arranged for everybody there to die.
Wind stirs my hair as the witches all stare in silence at the fading light.
“Let’s go,” Roiven says. His voice is thick with emotion. I feel the rage in him.
“There? You can’t be…” one of the male witches, one I haven’t met, starts.
“There could be survivors,” Roiven says grimly.
“Ofthat?” the man asks.
“Is your suggestion that we abandon them without checking?”
“We could run,” the man suggests quietly. Roiven opens his mouth to answer, but Aria cuts in.
“We have no ships. The hatchlings can’t fly, and the adult dragons can carry perhaps three dozen between them. What, then, do you suggest we do with the other four thousand of our people?”
Four thousand people? There’s a lot more of this island I have yet to see, then.
And yet, at the same time, it’s such a small number in comparison to the Empire. The fleet of Hellions alone carries nearly that many people.
“They made Roiven tell them where the Tower is, but they don’t know all our hideouts,” one of the woman witches responds. “If we hide…”
Made Roiven.Gods, the enchantment. Harfor must havecommanded him. That’s how they learned about the Tower. I draw a shuddering breath, my heart aching for him.
“I am not going to hide and hope that thing doesn’t find us,” Roiven says, pointing in the direction the attack came. “We have nowhere to run, and we can’t hide forever. Either we fight, or we die rolling over. Imili’s unit, mount up. Savasaeirn and I will fly alone.”
