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I’m worried for North, that his phasing won’t hold, and we’ll be deep under the water and he’ll start to drown. But I have to maintain my cool. My emotions are being broadcast to the entire rest of the fae, and if I panic or show fear, they’ll know it, and they’ll probably panic and be afraid too. Our whole mission will be a bust.
We can’t have that.
It takes us a while to get through the water. The resistance doesn’t mean anything to us while we’re phasing, but it’s still a great amount of distance. It’s dark under here, hard to see, and my heart, if I could feel it right now, would be thumping wildly in my chest as indistinct shapes sometimes pass us in the gloom. I know it’s ridiculous, but I can’t stop imagining some terrifying sea creature coming at us and eating us.
Yeah, ridiculous, but fuck, the adrenaline pumping through me is not in the mood to be logical.
And there’s the fact that my vision still hasn’t happened yet, and I’m scared the guys will be attacked and die somehow while we’re here.
At last, we finally emerge from the water and can phase back into existence if we want to, but we don’t just yet. That shield is up around the island and we need the element of surprise as much as possible, so if we can use our magic to disable the shield while we’re still phased out and invisible, that’ll really help.
I send a message out to the other fae. This is a definite upside to this whole All-Soul thing, I can give orders and communicate without saying anything out loud, so we still get the element of surprise and the enemy doesn’t know what our plans are.
Get ready to open the portals. Be stealthy about it. We’re going to disable the protection barrier. Once it’s down, you can let everyone else through.
Raven, North, Cain and I stealth through the island. There has to be some place where the protective spell for this island is located, an anchor of sorts. It helps to stabilize the protection spell and make it stronger and ongoing rather than a temporary thing. Normally, most protection spells are woven into the walls of a place, like the safe house we had under the subway, or they’re placed temporarily around a person and maintained through the concentration of the caster.
But where would the protection spell be woven into here? It can’t be like the safe house where the spell was a part of the construction, Roanac probably didn’t have enough time for that. But there must’ve been some physical place where he could anchor the spell, and if we can find it and disable it, the island will no longer be protected and everyone can get through, without phasing.
This island is completely bare except for the rocks that rise up around us, almost like a kind of summoning or magical circle. Roanac’s magic has stripped the place of all life, just like it’s doing on that other island. I shudder to think of how far that destructive magic will reach once he’s at full strength, how many plants will simply wither away and die, perhaps even miles away, as he drains the life out of everything.
There!I can feel Cain’s thought as he directs it at me.
His mind nudges me to look in the right direction, and I can see what he’s seen. Through the mist rise up more standing stones, but this time they’re piled right up next to each other, almost but not quite like the remnants of some temple or other.
Hmm. That seems like the most logical place for Roanac to put anything, since it’s a shelter and not just out in the open.
The magic in the air is palpable, and I’m glad I’m phased out for this. It’s the only thing keeping us from being affected by it as we walk through the thick air and enter the shadow of the stones.
Hidden from outside view, but visible once you enter the stones, is a worn-down, ruinous staircase. We take it down into the earth. This must have once been the lower level of this place back when it was a proper temple or building of some kind.
The walls have been all but worn away, the stone gone so that mostly just hard-packed earth remains, threatening to cave in on us at any moment. A few soft, glowing lights cast a dim yellow glow, probably to light the way for Roanac if he needs to come down here. It goes on as a tunnel for a time, and then flattens out and widens into a large room.
Here there’s more stone preserved, mostly on the floor, and I can see some ancient runes carved into them. They look fresh, without any grass growing up or dirt stains, no weathering or staining, so it must be Roanac who made these.
In the middle of the room, one of the runes glows. It’s got a blue light, unlike the other glowing lights in the room. That must be the spell.
How do we break it?I ask mentally.
Break the rune, break the spell,Cain replies.
I look over at Raven. He’s the strongest of us.
It’ll be tricky to manage, but also the work of a moment, if Raven can pull it off.
Raven phases from his incorporeal form to his gargoyle form in a split second, landing hard with his fist ramming into the rune so that the stone is crushed, not just cracked but smashed into smithereens.
I can feel a wash of relief pass through me from the other fae, and I know that the spell’s been broken. They can release the portals and bring the vampires and shifters over.
Raven morphs into his usual form, while North, Cain and I also shift back to being corporeal. I can feel the cheer of affirmation from the other fae, letting me know that we succeeded and they’re able to do the portals, get the rest of our army over here.
“That’s a relief,” I say out loud.
What’s that phrase? About famous last words?
In the distance, I hear Roanac roaring. It’s enough to shake the earth beneath us, and I wince. He’s furious and powerful, and I worry that he could take on our entire army by himself.
“We need to go,” North says. “You need to lead the others.”
