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Exactly.
Rage replaced panic, and she balled her hand into a fist, determination settling into her. She had a job to do.
Curling in on her side, she fought sleep and waited for Fern’s breaths to even out. Rubbing her fingers together, the spell wove around her, memorizing her imprint and solidifying. She rose in increments, careful not to disturb her sleeping friend, too afraid to mist this close to her. The perceptive Fae might feel the surge in power and raise the alarm before Lunara had a chance to escape.
As soon as she was in the corridor, Lunara leapt. A blink and she stood in the Westrealm, on the edge of Glynmor’s fields.
Where it all started.
Lunara didn’t have it in her to look at the village, the graveyard still too new. Too terrible. Even being on the periphery—in the remnants of a gigantic rut made during one of the battles fought there—was testing her.
The one bright spot was the Thodelemaia Dread Chasm yawning before her, still empty of the filth she eradicated from its depths.
Eyes on the bottom, miles away, she misted.
It was like walking into a nightmare and knowing it. The steps Brand made still jutted from the cliff side, leading right to the destruction he’d wrought in order to keep the monsters at bay while he raced to save her life.
The very monsters she was now looking for.
Ash shifted beneath her feet like sand, the fine powder almost crunching—a product of her cataclysmic incineration of the chasm’s inhabitants. It had piled in corners and sunk into the footprints they’d left behind. A wave of her hand blew some of it away and revealed the old gouges they’d followed, and the splatters of what had not, in fact, been Faldir’s blood.
None of the memories were good, but they grounded her. Still, she didn’t quite want to go alone.
Lunara called to the well and freed some threads of her power. Light gathered on her fingertips as she wove beak and feather, wing and claw, and poured her own soul into the sculpture, until her oldest friend swooped forth and perched on her arm.
“Hello, Axanderus,” she murmured, leaning in when the owl bumped his head against hers.
A thought and their sight was shared, but Lunara didn’t set him free to scout ahead. She needed the courage his closeness offered.
Looking into the distance, as far as they could see, Lunara misted again.
And again.
And again.
It was the only way. Her ability was limited either to places she’d been or places she could perceive.
At last, she reached the end, the wall of oozing, blackened rock in front of her belonging to the Ghostbor and Forgotten Lands. And to her left…
Woodmaia Dread Chasm, dividing that awful place from the Tempusrealm—rife with darkness.
Her entire plan hinged on more of the Forgotten being down there, growing in the depths. On the possibility that the thing transforming them was the same thing possessing Brand. And finding a way to purge it.
The shadows licked out, an invisible wall preventing them from spilling free and refilling Thodelemaia with more of their putrescence.
“Ready?”
Ax turned his head all the way ‘round, facing the dark, yawning path with a steely determination that matched her own.
She perched Axanderus on her shoulder and nodded once. “Let’s get our Brand back.”
Lunara threw out her shield and stepped into the abyss.
The first attempt was a complete and utter failure. Once again, she hadn’t spared a second to actually think and went straight to laying healing hands on a half-formed Forgotten.
A mistake.
At least Lunara had been ready for the glow in its eyes and the shudder beneath her fingertips. For the flaming signal it sent to its brethren. For the ones beside to wake up and turn undead stares on her. Luckily, she was able to isolate the group and dispose of them before it went too far, but still. The failure rankled.
