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Dazmine’s chin lifted. “Ready.”
They took my hand, and I dragged them into darkness.
As usual, my power pulsed with far-off lights, like we’d climbed up into the Cosmos itself. I gritted my teeth and pulled us forward, trudging through the thick, inky darkness and feeling the miles whiz by with each step.
I still wasn’t sure exactly how it worked, but I could sense each location like a world map imprinted in the layout of the Cosmos around me. Here, the flagship. There, the Sorronian palace. There, the Esholian Institute. And up ahead…
The Uninhabitable Zone.
It was shrouded in an invisible, foreboding energy, cloaked in the same barrier of antipower as the island and Bascite Mountain. But unlike the latter, it wasn’t threaded with the poison-like substance—merely surrounded by it.
Which meant I’d be able to get us inside.
As soon as I stepped through that barrier, a cold shudder rolled down my spine. Terrin and Dazmine shivered against me, too, and for a moment I felt that gray, sticky poison latch onto us, as if it were trying to ensnare us in an invisible web.
Then I ripped us through and released my power.
Instantly, we were falling.
Wind shrieked past my ears. Dazmine screamed, Terrin yelled, and my hands lost both of theirs as we all plummeted into a body of sparkling blue water.
I barely had time to snatch a breath before I went under.
Water tumbled over me, gurgling in my ears as Old Veracious dragged me down to a pebbly bottom. The blade glittered underwater, still clasped in my hand as it reflected tiny, fluorescent darting creatures all around.
Fuck me. I’d teleported us straight over a pond.
No sooner had the realization crossed my mind than the water vortexed around me until I was coughing into muggy air, the pond water rising into a massive, shimmering ball above my head… Terrin with his hands outstretched before me.
Dazmine scrambled to a stand, water dripping off the ends of her braids, and blinked at the scenery with her mouth gaping.
“You idiot!” she shrieked at Terrin finally. “You’ll kill the damn tetras!”
Sure enough, hundreds of the brightly-colored fish were flopping in the muddy pebbles all around us, gills fluttering at desperate speed. I could only imagine what kind of screams a Wild Whisperer would be hearing right about now.
“So sorry for trying to save your life,” Terrin grunted, still concentrating on keeping that massive ball of pond water above our heads. “Won’t do it again.”
“I can swim, you know.” Dazmine planted her hands on her hips. “Now put the water back.”
“Get out of this goddamned bucket first.”
Terrin was right. One glance at the rock-hewn upward slopes surrounding us and I knew we were worse-off than trapped sardines.
Ancient, moss-slick pillars rose from the pebbled bottom, supporting a labyrinth of crisscrossing walkways looming even higher than Terrin’s levitating ball of water. Shrubs drooped over the parapets above, and twisting trees seemed to grow from the stone as if the jungle and architecture had merged long ago.
Where the hell were we? It was the Uninhabitable Zone without a doubt, but it looked pretty damn inhabitable to me. If I knew the details of this place, I could Walk us to a better spot, but—
“Look out!”
I lunged at Dazmine and knocked her out of the way just as an arrow rooted into the ground right where she’d been standing. As soon as it made impact, the pond bottom began to bloom with black rot like creeping tendrils.
By the moonbeam and the mist, what the hell? Brandishing my sword, I looked up just in time to find five or six figures positioning themselves along the walkways all around us, poised to shoot even more arrows.
“TRUADE!” one of them cried.
It sounded a bit like the Sorronian word for intruder, but warped slightly, as if several centuries of evolving dialect separated the languages. I made eye contact with Terrin, who nodded at me with gritted teeth.
“No. We’re not leaving him—” Dazmine started.
