Page 1 of Keldori By Daybreak

1. Geological Climatology I

The storm tasted like iron, and the metallic sting in my mouth made me think my stomach ulcers were bleeding again. But the sharp pains in my abdomen were gone, as were the aches in my ribs, and though the sky roiled in a thick mess of clouds, sleet, and lightning, I felt better than I had in weeks.

Which was all well and good, but I had no idea where I was. I fought to see through fast-falling sleet and curtains of snow thrown up by the raging winds, and through the angry gloom, jagged ice formations cut the ground.

Thunder clapped directly overhead, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. Blue lightning sliced through the storm, striking the ice some fifty yards away. Frozen fragments sprayed into the air, and the blitz of shards sent me careening to the shaking ground.

“Blue hair, Wren?” A woman’s voice, strained but exasperated, sounded behind me. “Your Nightmare form has blue hair?”

I flipped onto my hands and knees, gawking at the woman. I wasn’t too familiar with this version of her, with her gossamer dress that whipped around her calves, or the young, smooth face that radiated power and magick as she sustained the raging storm.

No, the Gams I knew was wrinkled from decades of laughter and wore paint-stained shirts and kept her gray hair short. That Gams wasn’t a Magician. That Gams wasn’t the closest thing the magick-fueled world where I was trapped had to a god.

But it didn’t matter that I didn’t know this version of her as well. She was still my grandmother, and I needed her. I needed to make sure she was okay.

“Gams!” I tried to crawl closer, but her wind was too strong, and the ice beneath me was coarse, as if it had been broken and thawed, and then refrozen, over and over. “Gams, are you—”

“The hair, Wren!” she said again through gritted teeth. “It’s blue!”

The last we’d been together, we’d been held at sword-point and ripped apart from each other as our world collapsed around us, and she wanted to make fun of my hair?

“I didn’t choose it!”

“Of course you did. That’s how Nightmares work. Don’t let Sarah see. She’ll never let me hear the end of it.” She broke off in a labored grunt, and blue lightning flashed in the dark clouds overhead.

“Nightmares?” I looked at my hands where they pressed against the ice in a bid to keep me steady in the storm. Blue hair whipped in and out of my vision as it caught on Gams’s wind. That’s why I couldn’t feel my injuries. That’s why I had blue hair again. “I'm a Nightmare? You summoned me?”

There wasn’t much left of the icy cavern where I’d said goodbye to Grams a week ago. The cave roof and walls were gone, and an array of colossal ice shards rose up behind Gams to replace what had once been a smooth-walled tunnel of ice connecting Skalterra to the world I called home. A new tunnel nestled at the base of the shards directly behind Gams’s tensed and ready figure, glowing a gentle blue.

“Of course I summoned you. How else could you be here? No one gets past my storm.” Behind her thin-rimmed spectacles, my grandmother’s eyes glinted the same electric blue as the sparks of Skalmagick that arched between her fingers. “The Rift between Skalterra and Keldori is open. I’m doing what I can to keep those leeches on the shore from getting through.”

“We know! We’re working on a plan to get past the armies so we can refreeze you and reseal the Rift.” My heart broke at the thought of refreezing Gams back in her glacier, but if we did, maybe things could be normal again. The Gams I knew would return, even if it was just as a Nightmare. She might even bring Liam back. I could go back to focusing on getting into Von Leer University. There was no hope for me this year, but next—

“You can’t reseal me.”

“Yes! We can! Sorcha—I mean, Sarah says you have about three months before you burn out. We’re hiding in the foothills—”

“Get out of the foothills!” Gams barked. “Wren, you need to get everyone south of the mountains.”

Lightning and thunder crashed overhead, and I threw my arms over my head to protect myself from the storm. When I lowered them, Gams was looking at me with something new playing across her face.

Something like pity.

“We’re coming! Soon!” I had to shout to hear myself over her gale. “Me and the others, we’re going to fix this. I’m going to fix this.”

Gams shook her head.

“Nothing gets past my storm. Not Ferrin Quillguard’s army. Not the Baron’s troops. Not you.”

“But the Rift—”

“Will be sealed.” Gams pressed her too-young lips together, and I thought I saw her chin quiver before she continued. “There is a reason the Bay of Teeth is surrounded by volcanoes. With the Rift open, they’ll be waking up, like we designed them to do.”

I tried to make sense of what she was telling me, but it wasn’t quite computing.

“But there will be mudslides,” I said stupidly. “Maybe lava.”

“Yes, Wren.”