I’ve never seen one of the larger rifts up close before. It’s incredible—a flaming portal to another world, thirty feet high and wide. Blue Stratan sky shimmers through it, the light bright and garishly yellow compared to Infernum. The dark shadow of demon forces pours through it. It should be a familiar sight, except from here on the ground, yards from the action, it feels totally different from watching from the city walls.
I can see every expression on their faces as they dive through the rift to safety: determination, exhaustion, pain, fear. Infernum’s forces barrel through the opening, many barely managing to pull their wings up in time before they collide with the city buildings. A few do actually crash, hitting low rooftops and rolling across them in a tumble of limbs and armor as Malicite civilians rise up to lift them from where they’ve fallen. Some soldiers even stumble through the rift on foot, carrying injured comrades or dragging limping kelaryn, unwilling to abandon their steeds. Healersand helpers whisk the most badly injured away while others collapse to the ground against buildings, bloody and dazed, incapable of going any further. And of course, that says nothing of the ones who couldn’t make it through the rift at all.
Once, I would’ve sized these people up like prize hogs, hoping the most well-equipped among them would fall and not get back up. I would’ve prayed the rift would close too early, leading to more casualties abandoned on the battlefield. Now it’s like I’ve stepped into a scene I’ve only ever viewed as a flat painting, seeing it come so vividly to life around me it’s impossible to look away.
And in the middle of it all is Syrus. He’s down on one knee in front of the rift, head down, wings folded, and arms outstretched on either side of him, angled toward the ground. From his palms stream twin plumes of shadow, arcing around and up toward the huge rift, wrapping around its perimeter. They don’t look like ordinary shadows either, burning orange at the edges, flickering like the periphery of the rift opening.
I don’t know what precisely he’s doing, but I can tell it’s working. The rift is trying to curl inward, the sides weakening as the aether seeks to seal the hole back up. Buthispower alone is keeping it open, shoring up the portal and holding it in place so the others can come home safely. I always thought it was nearly impossible to fight the aether once it’s decided to swallow back up the rips we create in it—I have seen wingers try and fail out on the plains—but Syrus is managing it.
By the time the last of the soldiers and kelaryn are staggering or flapping through, it’s clear the rift won’t hold for much longer. Despite Syrus’s magic, the sides are collapsing, the rip narrowing as the edges draw together. I hurry forward, placing a cautious hand on Syrus’s shoulder.
“It’s okay, Syrus,” I say as he lifts a strained face toward me. “They’ve made it through. You can let go now.”
He looks through the tear in the air to the realm beyond, and for a second, I see his eyes cloud over with a look of pure longing. Then he nods and closes his fingers over his palms. The shadows sputter out and so, too, does the orange light. The rift finally shudders closed, leaving nothing but empty air behind and a clear view of the temple.
Syrus gasps as he climbs to his feet, wiping a sheen of sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. He looks tired but satisfied, and the expression tightens my chest. He’s pleased he could do something to help the soldiers. Such a simple emotion for a man who just displayed more power than I’ve ever seen from a demon in my life.
We both look around the square at the same time. Most of the injured are gone by now, taken to be healed, and the remaining people are too busy to pay much attention to us, which is maybe why Syrus thinks now is an appropriate time to tell me off.
“I thought I told you to stay at the store,” he says, though he sounds exasperated rather than angry.
“No, you said Ishouldstay at the store, not that I had to,” I point out.
His lips press into a thin line, and for the first time I wonder if it’s not, as I assumed, an expression of anger for him. It’s almost like he’s trying not to laugh?
“I realize you might be a bit worn out from saving the day,” I say, testing my theory, “but could we maybe pick up my plant before we go back to the castle?”
He nods, a small smile on his lips. “I can hardly let us return empty handed.”
We walk, rather than fly, back to the shop, which gives me a chance to ask him about what I just saw.
“Does that happen a lot?” I ask. “Battles spilling over into Infernum?”
He gives me a calculating look I don’t understand, but at least he answers.
“That was really the aftermath of a battle,” he points out. “But no, they generally manage to drive the ephilium back before the pale-bloods get a foothold in our realm.”
“My father says that fifty years ago, there were hardly any battles on the plains,” I say. “Now they happen every few weeks.”
“We had a good few decades for a while there. It felt like the pale-bloods were getting as tired of the war as some of us demons. But lately they’ve become more aggressive again, and Infernum has had to respond in kind.”
“Aggressive” like messing with the Morphos, I guess. Or finding a loophole so they can smite demons in Pax.
“Do you know why?” I ask, and again he gives me that look, like he wants to know why I’m so interested.
“The pale-bloods love war,” he answers. “It’s baked into their culture. Everything is about glory and honor to them, and killing the enemy is a surefire way for them to prove themselves to their ancestors.” There’s a bitterness in his voice I recognize from the time he talked about the ephilium in Strata.
“Did they start the war then?” I ask. “No one in Strata really seems to know how it began.”
“I don’t know if they do here, either,” he says dismissively.
I gape at him. “Really? Surely people havesomeidea.”
He sighs. “There’s a story. A legend, from millennia ago.”
I cross my arms. “You’re going to dangle that and then not even tell me what the legend is?”
“All right,” he says, sounding unenthused as he looks ahead toward the end of the street. “If you ask most demons, they’ll tell you the first of our kind came from the Abiding Dark.”
