Cast in Firelight

by Dana Swift

  “What the blood was that?” I ask, but I already know. It wasn’t some death dream or hallucination. Erif was real; her warning was real.

  “Don’t worry about it. We need to focus on evacuating,” Riya commands.

  Prisha still cries in my embrace. Zara is calm enough to announce the truth, to tell me just how much I do need to worry about it.

  “It’s Mount Gandhak. It’s erupting,” she whispers in fear.

  * * *

  “You can’t go. I’m not losing you again.” Riya pushes me away from Hubris the Third.

  She won’t listen to me. Even as I threw on flying pants and tried to explain Erif’s warning, she wouldn’t listen. “I have to go,” I tell her.

  “You just woke up. Your parents and Maharaja Naupure are taking care of the air. Jatin is already there. We need to evaluate and help guide the survivors to safety.”

  Jatin is already there? Survivors? I freeze, my stomach coiling. “Are you saying Jatin is on Mount Gandhak?”

  The earth rumbles again. All four of us stumble, holding out our arms to steady ourselves. Zara clutches the nearest archway, praying silently, her head bent.

  “No one made him go. They tried to stop him,” Riya says, sounding desperate.

  I don’t hear anything but the confirmation. Jatin is on the volcano. He will be trying to stop Mount Gandhak like it’s a normal natural disaster, like it’s a mere avalanche. He won’t know it’s fueled by my firelight. Oh Gods.

  “Riya, I will explain everything to you later. But right now, give me my skyglider or I will take it from you.”

  She steps away from me, shaking her head and sliding the skyglider behind her. “How are you so willing to die? If you fly to Mount Gandhak, you probably won’t come back. You realize that, right?”

  She’s right. Of course she’s right. But Erif is right too. I’m the only one who can possibly stop it. It’s my spell. It’s my magic. I died to learn that truth. I can’t concede. “I know.”

  “You know,” she whispers, almost to herself. “Maybe my father was right about you helping people, about what a true rani is.” Slowly she brings Hubris around and holds it out to me. “I have to get him, and the rest of the clinic, to safety.”

  I grab Hubris the Third tightly. “Thank you.”

  Prisha runs into my arms. “Please, come with us.”

  “I have to do this.” I squeeze her tight. “I love you.” The earth rocks again and I hold on tighter.

  My eyes find Riya’s over Prisha’s shoulder. “You’ll get them out safely?”

  “Yes.” Riya presses two fingers to her throat, the message clear.

  I grasp Prisha’s shoulders, peeling her off me. “Hey, I just came back from the dead. I can do it again.”

  “You better,” Riya whispers.

  “Be safe,” Zara calls. “And take these.” She holds out the two bubble masks for flying at high altitude and ventilation that I bargained off Mittal. I probably won’t need them. If my parents’ magic fails we are all dead. But I take them and thank her all the same.

  “No, please, Adraa,” Prisha whines.

  “I have to do this.” And gently I pull away from my sister. “Goodbye.”

  With a nod to all three of them, I mount my skyglider. For once, frostlight petals seem to have deserted the training field and only dirt springs upward as I launch into the air.

  * * *

  I balance on my skyglider, not fully able to process the destruction I’m witnessing. My world is cast in firelight. The sky is one large glob of darkness painted in bleeding red. Mount Gandhak is breaking apart, lava running down its slopes like angry scars. Its top fumes in a gray mass of clouds as big as my entire city. Instead of up and out, the clouds are rotating like a slow twister. Wrapped around the ash and smoke are coils of color: pink, orange, and blue swarming and shifting together. Maharaja Naupure and my parents are controlling the gas, keeping its heat and poison away from both cities. They’re saving us from death, but they can’t hold it back forever.

  I fly through ash, weaving and bobbing around other witches and wizards desperately fleeing. They yell out at me as I pass. Am I lost, am I confused, am I stupid? They’re probably all right.

  Soon it’s not other Touched I’m avoiding, but flying rocks. I swerve and veer, Hubris shaking with the amount of magic I’m pumping into its wood. Ash cascades down like thick rain. Then I hear it—a boulder has crashed into one of the flying stations suspended above the city. Yellow magic spinning underneath a block of lofted earth unravels. Rock and stone groan as the thing tears in half and crashes onto the city below. Oh my Gods. I squeeze my eyes closed. If this goes on another hour, let alone two months, we will all be destroyed. I have to stop this.

  “Simaraw!” I cry out. The shield is of little help. I drop lower, blasting up and over the side of the volcano. On this side, part of the mountain gave way, a mudslide of trees and earth washed toward the sea. Oh my Gods…

  Jatin is down there…somewhere. I keep flying, searching. Along the side closest to Naupure I make out a long white streak. “Vardrenni!” I yell. My eyes zoom in through the wall of gray and I’m finally able to make out what it is. Ice, a stream of ice. Yes! Thank Gods.

  “Pavria,” I cast, and I hurtle through the air.

  My feet skid on ash-coated slush as I land and buckle Hubris to my belt. Jatin stands ahead, freezing the lava as it flows and spews near him. The ground turns from hot red to cooled black to frozen white. He’s trying to get to the top, infuse the thing with chilling ice. If I perform my own extinguishing spell we might be able to do this.

  “Jatin!” I scream.

  He doesn’t hear me. I can barely hear myself.

  A blast of heat and pressure rises up on Jatin’s right. “Chiduraerif!” I cry. My magic swarms the emerging lava and dives into the rock. The earth bursts with a burp instead of a vomit of fire.

  Jatin looks at the bubbling earth, then swivels and sees me. The look on his face makes me want to cry. Those eyes hold both the torture of my death and the euphoria of my revival. Beyond any doubt, in this moment I know he loves me as much as I love him. I can’t hear him over the roar of destruction, but I know what he is saying. He is yelling my name.

  I’ve resigned to die on this volcano if that’s what it takes. For the first time in my life no voice holds me back, saying, Careful, you are the future raja. Maybe because in this moment I am a raja, and this is what I was meant to do—protect my country.

  I know it’s also the grief, consuming me, pushing me. Adraa…is…gone, my mind rattles, both unaccepting and inconsolable. But I won’t die before I know this is over, that I have stopped Mount Gandhak from killing anyone else’s Adraa. That means facing this thing, climbing up to the mouth and casting inside the belly.

  I yell out freeze spells like never before. I unleash my anger, my pain, on this force of nature. It is just like me, exploding, bleeding its heart out. But something’s wrong. This eruption is unlike that of a normal volcano, or at least what I assume to be a normal volcano. Pressure points arise throughout the landscape, as if the power of this thing seeks any crack in the earth to blast open. From what I can tell, the true monster has yet to blow, and yet the explosions and mounds of lava keep coming in bloodred geysers, and I keep casting.

  A glint of red smoke soaks into the ground, and I turn. The earth chokes back an explosion that might have killed me. Ash cascading, heat soaking, thunder roaring, within it all Adraa’s ghost emerges through the firestorm. She stands meters away with a hand raised as if she has just finished a spell.

  A sob rocks my body in one heave. Have I gone completely mad? Yes, yes, I have. And yet this is a happy madness if she is here. I’m okay with whatever realm my mind has escaped to if it means Adraa and I can be together again. I’ve never wanted anything more in my life than for her to be real, for th
is not to be a mirage created by my grief and volcanic fumes.

  “Adraa?” I scream. “Adraa!”

  We run to each other as best we can through the minefield of boulders, gas, and lava.

  And then her body slams into mine. She’s in my arms. She feels real, so real. I can’t stop touching her, squeezing her, feeling her hugging me back.

  “Are you real?” I whisper.

  “What kind of question is that? Of course I’m real.”

  “I thought, I thought…” The agony and joy of knowing I haven’t lost her suffocates and fuels my lungs at the same time.

  I cup her face and stare into her fiery eyes.

  “I won’t be late again,” she says with a smile.

  “How? How are you here?”

  “I’ll tell you later. We need to stop this.”

  A burst of heat ripples up my back, which means only one thing. Lava. Without thinking I cast an ice shield and tuck Adraa behind me. She has a similar thought, and puffs of smoke explode around the two of us, shielding us further.

  “It’s my firelight!” she yells.

  “What do you mean?”

  She points toward the top of Mount Gandhak. “The Vencrin or Moolek or both of them, whoever, they put my firelight into Mount Gandhak. That’s why they were stealing it. That’s why Mount Gandhak is erupting.”

  Those bastards! Were they willing to destroy us all? I want to ask how she knows this, but that doesn’t matter right now. After weeks of working on the streets, we still hadn’t discovered this plan, and now it’s blowing up in front of our faces. I’d promised her we would find out what was happening to her firelight. We failed.

  With Adraa by my side, safe and well, a part of me wants to grab her and run. We could still escape this. Both of our cities would die, but she and I would live. I would have her.

  Adraa looks at me and I know she can read my hesitation. “Jatin, we are the only ones who can do this.”

  She’s right. Gods, she’s right.

  “Tuhinadloc!” I holler, and cold white magic releases from my arms, creating a large sheet of frost at our feet.

  We climb. I pave the way in a sheet of ice and snow. Adraa extinguishes the heat on either side of us. The past month of fighting together has taught us well. If I sweep low, she covers the sky. We work in rings like in a fight. Our mission is to cool the ground in front of us and then proceed, step by step.

  “How exactly does your firelight make this any different from a normal eruption?” I yell.

  “If we don’t stop it, Mount Gandhak will continue to blow for two months.”

  My stomach drops out from under me. Two bloody months. “How do we stop it?”

  “I don’t know. Let’s get to the top and try to force it. If you cool it from the inside and I work to release all the gas, it might work.”

  I nod. As we go, Adraa sweeps her arms upward and calls to nearby roots to groove out the earth. She builds a trench on the left side, and I follow her lead and create one on the right. Suddenly, I know we can do this. It is Adraa and me. We understand how each of us is going to move. We are powerful enough.

  So we keep climbing, increasing our speed with each step we take. Finally the air becomes heavy with heat.

  “Tuhinadloc.” I blast at the earth. It crackles against the blaze, forming a plate of ice. Meters above us, the lip of a brewing cauldron bellows. I can’t see anything through the sheet of black and gray, but the smell of sulfur slams into my nose.

  “I think this might be as high as we can get,” Adraa yells, hand outstretched as if to block the sheets of ash trying to consume us.

  “Is it enough?” I ask.

  “Gods, I hope so.”

  Digging our feet in the ground, Adraa and I lock eyes and nod. We move in sync, weaving the toxic air out of this pit. Ria, Htrae, Erif, Retaw. We chant to the main four. Anything to release gas, calm earth, dull fire, and welcome water. Nothing seems to help.

  “I can’t think of any more extinguishing spells!” Adraa cries.

  “Do you remember the spell you cast against Ax that night I first saw you, in the Underground?”

  “Which spell?”

  “He was throwing purple flames at you and you contained them, like put them in a jar.”

  “Oh yes! Yes, of course.”

  “Well, if you—”

  “If you ice it and I— Yes! Got it.”

  “On three, then.” We don’t have much time left. This is our last shot. One last big spell from the both of us. I look over at her. She’s watching me, waiting for the count.

  “Jatin? You ready?”

  “I love you.”

  She bounces up from her stance. “Are you serious right now? Jatin, the volcano.”

  “Just needed to tell you.”

  “Well, I love you too!”

  I smile. If I have Adraa, we can do this. “On three. One…” I breathe in.

  “Two…,” Adraa exhales.

  “Three.”

  “Himadloc!” I shout. The simplest ice spell I have. Then I build on it, adding all the layers of frost, slush, and snow I can think of. A blast of white erupts from my hands. Out of my peripheral vision, a blaze of red spews from Adraa, and I hear her containing spell trying to quell the heat beating me in the face. Slowly, a sheet of red magic blooms over the peak of Mount Gandhak, suffocating the ash and enveloping the terror.

  Yes!

  I yell louder and louder, until my vocal cords ache and my throat turns to ash. My limbs are numb, my body wrapped in ice as my white magic runs not only off my arms but also down my torso. My sweat turns to icicles. I can’t move with my magic anymore.

  “Jatin, I don’t think it’s working!” Adraa shouts.

  I open my mouth to agree, to spout one final ounce of encouragement, when boom! Mount Gandhak rejects our magic. Adraa screams. With a blast of heat, all the ice melded to my body shatters and I’m blown backward.

  * * *

  The world blares awake. My ears ring. Ash floats from the sky in heavy heaps.

  I struggle to right myself, to recapture reality. Where the blood am I?

  Ah, blood. I clutch my side. Even the smallest of breaths stabs my gut. I think a few of my ribs are broken. “Suptaleah,” I tell my body as I seek out Adraa amid the ash. She’s gone again.

  “Adraa?” I scream. My lungs feel like they’re about to explode in my chest, like bone fragments are piercing my air supply. “Cyavateleah,” I cast again, with more strength. The pain eases, slightly, as my body is told to forget the agony.

  “Adraa?” I call as I stand. The gray darkness whirls.

  “Jatin? Jatin! Where are you?”

  Finally. “Adraa!” I move to the sound of her voice. Then there she is, only meters away. We run toward each other. Right as I reach her, the ground rumbles. I think Adraa and I have made it worse. This is it. Mount Gandhak has had enough of our antics. It’s going to go.

  “Are you okay?” we yell at the same time.

  She nods. It’s enough.

  “We can’t fix it with physical force.”

  “I know!” I yell over the roar.

  Boom! Blazing, unnatural red fire explodes and interrupts the sea of gray. Adraa and I shield our faces because with this light, we can see everything. Orange, pink, and blue streams of magic wrestle with the clouds, but they can’t stop the lava. Gushes or explodes is too tame a word for the fury before us. I stare into pure unyielding fire, a two-month-long inferno that will wipe out both our cities. Before it was my life crumbling in front of me with the loss of Adraa. Now it is the world, the physical world erupting. And we still can’t seem to do anything to stop it.

  “We have to move.”

  That’s all Adraa needs for motivation. We run. My lungs answer with a piercing pang.

/>   “Do you have any ideas?” Adraa yells.

  I rack my brain. We could try starting over at the base and climbing, ringing the mountain in a shell of ice. We could create deep trenches. But I have a feeling neither idea will work. A wall or a trench would only buy us time, a few hours at most. We need to stop it completely.

  “Can we corrupt the firelight? Make it so it won’t last months.” My right arm is numb with tingling spikes. I shake it. I meant to numb only my ribs. I must have—

  “No, I made sure firelight’s longevity could never be tampered with,” Adraa says.

  “We have to figure out something. A disadvantage even you couldn’t think of.” My foot slips and I stumble. I call to my orange magic for strength or precision. But nothing—my Touch looks dull and the numbness in my arm only sharpens. What the—

  Pain swallows my head. I clutch at it with a gasp. My vision blurs. What’s wrong with me?

  “Jatin?”

  “I’m fine.”

  But then I process what is happening, and fear shoots through me. So this is what it feels like to burnout, for your magic to collapse within you. Gods, it’s worse than I could have imagined. I’m dissolving.

  I meet the hard earth with a thud. Black wavering dots stream in front of my eyes. Pain engulfs my rib cage and squeezes, unwilling to forget any longer.

  Adraa shouts and tugs me toward her. My arms lie limp at my sides, unmovable. My nerves seem to have liquefied. I’m going to fail her, leave her here amid this destruction. I’m going to die. Her voice sounds far away. “Jatin! Just hang on. Just—”

  “Adraa, I’m sorry. I’m so—” Before I can finish my sentence, the world goes dark.

  I should know how to save both my world and Jatin, but I don’t. I hold Jatin’s unconscious body in my arms, trembling as heat blasts my face. He’s fine for now, just a bad burnout, I think, I hope. No matter what, I can’t leave him on the ground to die without protection. I am left to choose—fight the volcano or save Jatin’s life.