I licked my lips and mumbled, “Why isn’t that beam of light thing happening?”
Sol must have heard me. The second I uttered that?
Thank fuck, the sun concentrated itself, found the floating silver disc, and boom.
The blindingly strong light, exactly like a laser cannon outside of a club but a thousand times brighter, shot forth.
Just as the leopards did.
Fourteen
Riel
As the leopards leaped at us, evidently pissed at our presence, I hissed at them to get them to back off, but wouldn’t you know? Wild leopards didn’t respond to hisses.
Saying that, did housecats?
I doubted it.
They were royal assholes in the best possible way. When I was a kid, my friend had a cat. Best pussy ever. Ate her weight in turkey and was a total badass around my friend’s twin brothers when they were babies.
I seriously doubted a hiss could have made that cat back off from her protection detail.
Still, just as I hissed, Linford spun us out of nowhere, and where we landed wasn’t much better.
“You have to be shitting me,” I ground out, but fuck, the wind snapped up my words, tearing them from me just as it ripped at my magic.
The cold sank through the pink haze, and the guys forged us some fresh clothes, thickly padded stuff that kept us from losing extremities. Dressed like the Michelin man, and without another word, I quickly dropped the remaining pieces of ore to the ground. As did the others. This place was intolerable, and the sooner we were out of here, the better.
Without prompt, Linford screamed over the wind, “The air rune is a triangle with an ‘L’ running through its tip.”
Daniel pressed his fingers to the ore and quickly found the Air stones. His hands shook from just that minimal exposure, and unsure if we could store the Fire stone together, I ducked down, grabbed a piece, and handed the others back to my men just in case.
When that was done, the wind slipped through my magic and grabbed a firm hold of my hair. Now, I wasn’t averse to some hair pulling, but this wind nearly tore at the roots.
“We’re not dressed for this shit!” I grumbled, calling on my magic to cover my head with a balaclava. I quickly cast another spell and made sure our whole group was covered appropriately—I swore, men didn’t know how to dress.
Who would travel to Everest without being swaddled in a thousand layers?
Shuddering into my down coat, and shuddering even more at the thought of what I had to do, I place the Air stone close together and, over the wind, shouted, “If this wind isn’t fast enough then…” We were already being buffeted, but behind us, there was a rock face we could cling to.
I wouldn’t exactly have said that we were in a protected pocket, because on Everest, where in Sol’s name was protected? But we were in a kind of clearing. I’d kind of expected to be dumped on the summit, but I knew from an article I’d read only recently—an article that had cemented my desire to never climb Everest—that the summit was really fucking narrow.
Maybe I should be grateful that Linford’s Goddess’ guided coordinates didn’t take us to the peak where we could be swept away.
Shuddering at the thought, I pinged some stakes into place on the wall behind us, and then crafted some rope. It was rudimentary, but aside from willing our feet to be superglued to the snow, I couldn’t think of what else to do.
Did superglue even work in minus temperatures?
“We need to tie this around our waists,” I called out, “and then tie it to the rock face. The wind I brew might—” There was no need to carry on. Everyone knew what might happen, and no one argued because no one here was a fucking moron.
I figured after the rainstorm, and then, ya know, growing a tree in a handful of seconds, they could predict with little to no issue just how much of a clusterfuck the wind I was going to brew would be.
Just thinking about it made my skin crawl with misery at how cold the temperatures were going to dip to. I already felt like my bones were in the deep freeze. Any colder? I wasn’t going to be a happy bunny.
As I knotted the rope around my waist and passed the rest to Daniel, I waited for everyone to link up. Staring overhead, I winced at the sky which was almost white, it was so pure. Our feet had left tracks on the pristine snow, and I eyed that then the Air stone.
Calling on the elements was easier now, but calling on the wind when I knew it could blow us off the fucking mountain was sure as shit no fun.
Still, if we were all tied together, then Linford could ping us out of here… Didn’t mean I had to like it though.
When we were tied together as one, and the guys were clinging to the metal posts in the rock face, I summoned the wind.
No surprise, it came to my call like I was born to cast it, which, go figure, I was.
I shivered as it caught onto the existing wind and slipped in seamlessly. At a guess, I’d have said the ‘breeze’ was approaching hurricane level-force before we arrived. Now? I wasn’t even sure if our minimal safety guards were going to save our asses. As Fae, we had inbuilt protections against flying in these winds, but standing still was apparently a whole other ball of wax. Figured there had to be a catch.
My only consolation was that if anyone was going to die today, it wasn’t innocent Sherpas and stupid tourists who wanted to climb the mountain. That article I’d read had said there was a narrow-as-fuck window for climbing Everest and that was back in May.
As the wind brewed, the way it whipped at the few locks of hair that slipped through the holes in my balaclava stung as they lashed at the exposed skin with the silken strands. I truly resented having long hair at that point as I called on more and more, not stopping until the wind sapped the very breath from my lungs and the snow on the ground beneath us stirred.
Maybe that was the catalyst.
The ore was suddenly swept away by the snow. My grandmother screamed, just loud enough to be heard over the wind, but Linford, thank Sol, caught her and held her back.
Within seconds, the glow from the ore began, and it melted through the snow that had grabbed it. It was picked up by the wind, then tossed into the air until it was about twelve feet from the ground—there was definitely a pattern there—and like that, it was hurled around like pizza dough being tossed until it was wider and wider, getting thinner and thinner, spread flat until it was as wide as the others.
The wind had been howling piercing sounds that hurt my ears, noises that would make me shiver forever. I’d been in the eye of a storm, I knew what it sounded like, but this? Nothing compared. It was wild and raging, and, I’d admit, terrifying. Clinging to the metal post made my hands ache from how hard I was clutching at it, and my eyes streamed as I waited for the bolt of sunlight to appear, to take us from this misery.
With an eerie whistle, the wind came to a sudden halt. In contrast to the bullet blender of seconds before, there was only silence, because the bolt of light appeared, streaming through from out of nowhere and colliding with the disc.
Linford didn’t need prompting. He got us out of there before I even took my next breath, and it was with relief that we were away from that hellhole—who knew hell was cold as fuck?—and onto the final stop in our journey.
Our quest.
I gulped at the thought because, whatever life changing crap was about to go down, we were going to get a bird’s eye view of it. The other stones had evidently been ‘activated,’ but it would undoubtedly require the fourth and final one for any affirmative action to take place.
I gnawed on my bottom lip as I looked around the area. The sky was just as white as it had been on Everest, but it was different here. There were trees and shit, lots of different colored rocks, and, thank Sol, in the distance, I could see evidence of life. Granted, the distance was well away, but it felt less isolated than the place we’d just left.
Why anyone wanted to go there and spend thousands for the privilege had me wondering at their sanity.
&n
bsp; Shivering still because though it was definitely warmer here, I felt like I was defrosting, I turned around, whipping off the balaclava I was wearing, and came to a startled halt when I saw my Virgo and grandparents were staring at me.
“What is it?” I rasped, my voice hoarse from having to scream so loud back on the mountain.
“Your hair,” my abuela muttered. “Your wings.”
“What about them?” I scowled, peering over my shoulder, trying to see what the problem was.
“They’re glittering,” Daniel whispered, and his voice was low, husky, and I recognized that tone, recognized it deep in my core.
Fuck.
What a time to be horny.
The Rut reared its ugly head. Thus far, the entire clusterfuck of my life had kind of taken precedence. What with being threatened with being swept away by the Amazon, eaten by leopards, and destroyed by wind born on Everest, I’d had other priorities.
Now?
Sol’s teeth.
My subsequent shiver had nothing to do with the cold. Nothing whatsoever. I tore my gaze from his and, knowing what I’d see in the face of the others, ignored Matt and Dan because I couldn’t handle seeing their arousal and not being able to act on it.
Instead, I just asked my grandparents, “Why?”
My grandmother shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not a bad sign. If anything, I think it’s proof it’s working.”
How glittery hair was proof, I had no idea, but I wasn’t about to question something so unimportant.
Shrugging it off, I also willed away my Michelin-man coat because suddenly, I was nice and toasty—helped that I was near a volcano, I guessed—and decided to get down to business. The sooner this shit was over and done with, the sooner I could have an orgasm.
Or ten.
If that wasn’t enough to make me enthusiastic, then nothing else was. The deep tremble in my belly made itself known in the form of a gnawing ache that tore at my insides, but I had to focus.
Linford’s magical coordinates had brought us here for a reason, so it figured this was the place shit was about to get real. But exactly why was another matter entirely.
“This is an active volcano, yeah?” I questioned him, focusing on the here and now, not later.
“It is.” He peered around. “I don’t know if there’s a mouth. I’d assume it has one, but we’re nowhere near it. At least, I think we’d feel the heat.” He shrugged. “Volcanoes aren’t exactly a part of my expertise.”
I turned to my Virgo, but stared at their noses rather than their eyes because that was one way to Sol’s lair in a handbasket, and mumbled, “Okay, let’s get started.” I tossed the remaining piece of ore in my pocket onto the ground and my men did too.
Daniel didn’t have to touch them this time, but almost as though there was a magic in place that did so for him, the rune made itself known without him even having to brush it.
Maybe it figured it was the simplest rune of them all. A triangle. Thick and glowing, it seemed to respond to whatever was in the air as I settled them into a circle so that each seam was close to the other.
Standing back, I called on fire, and allowed two flames to settle into my palm. I placed the flares above the discs, allowing them to hover and hopefully heat the discs, but when nothing happened, when the glow actually died, I shuffled forward and stared down at the ore, willing them to do something.
“What did Trude say?” Dan murmured after my staring at the ore did fuck all. “Place the Fire stone within Heklugjá?”
I cut him a look. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“She said change would be born, so maybe there needs to be another eruption or something,” Matt muttered.
“Okay, so that’s like even harder than what you said, Dan. How in Sol’s name can I trigger an eruption?”
Almost as though the words were the catalyst I needed, beneath our feet, there was a rumble. I jerked in surprise, because the rumble wasn’t enough to shake me on my feet, to make me fall over, but I felt it. Knew the earth beneath me was stirring.
“Did you feel that?” I gasped, gaping at my group with round eyes.
“Feel what?”
“Huh?”
When everyone gave me pretty similar answers that asked me without saying a word, ‘What in Gaia’s graces are you talking about?’ I shrugged it off, then as if that wasn’t enough, the pulse that reminded me of the night we’d caught the meteor, the night this whole mess had begun, the white noise reappeared.
I screamed as it surged into my brain, louder than ever, louder even than the rapids of the Amazon, than the winds on Everest. It tore through my senses, ripped them to shreds. This time, I didn’t feel it when my knees collided with the mountain, didn’t even sense that I’d crumpled into a pile of nothing as the sound shredded my being. My eyes began to flicker and I saw it.
Saw it.
And just like that, the noise disappeared, and I was left staring up at the sky. As I did, I saw the faint metallic shimmer in the air around me. It was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Think NYE at midnight when someone had blown a shit ton of glitter into the air. That was the only way I could describe it, but this glitter was micro-small. Not enough for the average eye to see. It reminded me of…
Magic.
The golden gleam that surrounded the Fae. That filled the walls of Eight Wings Academy.
Magic was here.
The only question was why?
My mates were around me by this point, and their proximity didn’t stir arousal in me this time. I was too wrecked, inside and out, to even ponder the Rut.
I blinked at them, then whispered, “Help me up?”
Dan grabbed my hand and steadied me on my feet once I was standing. The second he moved back, my knees gave way. “Your eyes are silvery again,” he told me as he supported me.
“When I’m under p-pressure, you said?” I stuttered around a choked laugh. “Understatement.”
The noise that had fucked with my head had gone, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t left shaken by it. I felt like my brain had been raped—and that was no small statement. I truly felt like I’d been violated, and I didn’t give a shit if that was by Gaia or not, I just felt torn apart inside.
I leaned against Matt and stayed propped up against Dan as Seph moved the ore. I didn’t realize it, but I’d actually collapsed on top of them, shoving them apart. He moved them together again, and I watched with dazed eyes as he did so.
Then, I thought about that rumble beneath my feet, and I caught onto what had stirred it. I could only assume there was a lava chamber underneath me, and the thought that somehow the ore was supposed to be in that, told me the ground beneath us was either going to get fucking hot really quickly or it was going to crumble away.
I turned to my grandfather. “You need to get her off the mountain.”
My grandmother scowled at me. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here—”
I ignored her and caught Linford’s eye. “What’s about to happen… she doesn’t have wings. She won’t be able to save herself,” I informed him simply.
He blinked at my explanation, but nodded. “I’ll be ready.”
Would I be?
I sighed, and to Dan, mumbled, “You might have to help me. I-I don’t feel too well.”
“Okay, babe. Don’t worry. We’ve all got you.”
And they did.
I felt their support like a wall at my back. It bolstered me, gave me strength when I was feeling truly decimated.
That thing Gaia did to my mind fucked with me in ways I couldn’t describe. It was like everything that was me was torn from me, ripped out of my grasp and…
My throat choked as I dipped my head. There was no point in focusing on just how badly my free will had been torn from me, instead, I only concentrated on that rumble from before. I channeled power into it, not really knowing what I was doing, but aware that I was doing something right as the rumble grew stronger. I felt my mates shifting aro
und me, standing tall and straight so as to absorb the tremors in the ground.
My mouth worked for a second, noiselessly, as I focused on creating heat from beneath me. That was the only way I could describe it. The earth had guided me, told me where to focus, where to channel my magic, but otherwise, it was in Sol’s and Gaia’s hands.
A second before the ground gave way, I knew it, and screamed, “Now!” My wings fluttered, but they were useless. My Virgo grabbed me as they jerked me into the air.
“Farther away,” I shrieked. “Too close!”
I was relieved when Linford grabbed my grandmother, even more relieved when he stayed close to us. I had a feeling we’d need to get out of here quickly, especially when I saw the ore disappearing as it tumbled through the rift that had appeared from out of nowhere.
The ground cracked and creaked, shards of bright molten hot light spilling between each crevice. The silver orbs were gone, but not for long. Just as the ground totally caved in, crashing down until it was like that big, gaping hole had always been there, a pure spout of lava soared upward.
If I hadn’t seen it for myself, I would never have believed it.
It reminded me of a geyser, except for the fact it was molten fucking lava. It was so bright that I could feel the damage to my eyes, and just as I thought about looking away, I saw that the ore was perched atop it. This time, the lava spout climbed almost as high as us. About forty feet in the air. The ore, hovering on it, began to be beaten into shape, the lava pummeling it with its strength.
Within seconds, that fat piece of ore was shaped into a disc, and when the expected bolt of sunlight hit it, my body shuddered as the gold in the air seemed to be polarized, magnetized until it was clinging to the stream of light.
Around me, my men shrieked, and Linford too—he howled in pain. I couldn’t speak though. Couldn’t ask what was going on. The bolt of sunlight collided with the disc, staying pure and true, and just as the ground rumbled once more, I saw the bubbling lava begin to surge from deep in the volcano’s belly.
The Ascended: The Eight Wings Collection Page 61
