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Kerrigan looked down at her hands and jolted. She was just a ghost of herself as well. She couldn’t exactly see through her hands, but it was close. They had a hazy outline to them. She wasn’t solid any longer.
“Where are we?” Kerrigan finally managed to get out. Fear coated her words.
We are on the spiritual plane. He hesitated, as if in incomprehension. You pulled us both through.
“I did?” she asked. “How?”
That I do not know.
“Scales,” she whispered. “What do I do? How do I get us out? Is this normal?”
We will assess how to get out when it is time to depart. Gelryn paused over her other questions. This has never happened before.
He said it like an admission.
They were silent at that realization. Kerrigan had done something that no one else had ever done before. That Gelryn knew of at least. All because she had been too stubborn to let go? Or was there another reason?
“Why did this happen?”
Truly, Kerrigan of the House of Dragons, I do not know.
She was stunned. “You have never entered the spiritual plane?”
In fact, dragons enter all the time. We are the dominions of the spiritual. The test is to project your essence out onto the spiritual plane so that I might assess your magical prowess.
“And I brought you out with me?”
So it appears.
“Huh. This isn’t part of the test then, is it?”
No. He rumbled in his chest. Fire heating through and then dissipating. You appear to be in control of this plane. You were the one who created it.
“Created it?” Kerrigan asked in confusion.
Whoever summons the spiritual plane commands it. It would take a great magical user to wrench control of someone else’s spiritual work. At present, it seems safer for us both to allow you to control it. This is not how I test my subjects, but it seems prudent to continue—and quickly. The spiritual plane saps your energy. I do not want you to pass out and strand us here.
Kerrigan shivered. “We don’t want that.”
No, we do not. Gelryn stretched to his full ghostlike height. Show me each of the four elements.
“I don’t have anything to show. I mean, I can probably get a flame in here,” she said uneasily.
Magic was a conduit. The elements were its source. It was possible to create something out of nothing, but it was draining. That was why, in fights at the Wastes, all four of the elements were provided for the competitors. A lot of Fae couldn’t even summon them out of nothing. Only the strongest among them.
She supposed this was why there was testing to begin with. To get the strongest among them to compete to be a dragon rider.
A small flame will do.
She sighed and then snapped her fingers. He had already seen her do it, but she would oblige him. Nothing happened. She snapped again. Her eyes grew wide and fingers frantic.
“What is happening?”
Gelryn had his eyes closed. He wasn’t even watching her. He was just swaying slightly, as if to music.
“Gelryn?”
Now, air.
“But nothing happened.”
You do not have control of your magic on the spiritual plane. You only have access to spirit here. It is the energy that moves between us. And when you attempt your magic, you are pulling from the energy to create flame. As you will pull from the energy to create water and air and earth. The energy is still there, being manipulated. I can sense it even if the flame does not actually ignite.
“That is… okay,” she muttered.
She didn’t have words for it. No magic in the spiritual realm. She suddenly felt very exposed. There was energy here that she couldn’t see or feel or use, but it was still there. She didn’t like it.
Air, he repeated.
Fire was her easiest by far. Her chosen element, as they expressed in the House of Dragons. Few had fire as their chosen. But it suited her.
Air, however, was what she chose to fight with in the ring. Fire was too flashy and too destructive. Plus, it would pinpoint her as a target if she had that much affinity for the element.
Kerrigan had watched the air Fae train for years by hiding in an alcove in the mountain. She’d hidden the true might of her powers for so long that she had taken to learning in secret, so no one else could judge her strength.
She brought her hand up like a blade at hip height. She scooped it inward, as if sweeping the air in a current. Then, she pivoted, flipped her palm, and shot her hand at an upward diagonal. Nothing happened. She almost laughed. It was ridiculous. That move would have slashed through a competitor’s skin with ease in the ring. It did nothing here.
Strong in fire and air, Gelryn noted. Earth next.
“Is it normal for me to feel nothing?”
