Nym's Arc

Chapter 13 of 41

The blue runes still glowed on the center stone. Beyond it, the ground had split. A slab of rock stood upright now, carved with the same double circle as Nym's ring. This was the door. Her mother waited behind it, sealed away for three hundred years. Nym pressed her palm to the cold stone and called her fire. Blue flame ran across her fingers. She pushed it into the carved marks the way she had broken the tower door. The runes drank the fire and stayed shut. She pushed harder. Her flame climbed higher, hissing against the stone. Nothing moved. "It broke the tower seal," Nym said. "Why not this one?" She tried her nature magic instead. She spread her fingers and reached for the earth, the way she had opened the second door inside the tower. Green light flickered under the grass, then died. The slab did not shift. She tried the fire again. The flame guttered out in her palm. Nym slammed both hands onto the wet ground. "What do I do?" she yelled. Her voice bounced off the black stones and faded. She sat back on her heels and stared at the door that would not open. Magnus knelt beside her. He was the rune reader who had known her mother, who had waited three hundred years at this ring for someone he now believed was Nym. His golden gown pooled in the mud. He did not tell her to try harder. He held out his hand. "Let us try together," he said. Nym looked at his open palm. She took it. Magnus turned toward the door and spoke words she did not know, low and steady. As he chanted, Nym reached for her fire again and poured everything into the stone. Blue and gold light met on the carvings. The runes brightened. Then they dimmed. The chanting stopped. The door stood shut and silent. Magnus lowered his head. "It answers to blood," he said. " Your blood woke the marks. But the seal needs more than fire or earth." Magnus lets Nyms hand go. Nym sits on the ground she starts to cry. She closes her eyes and she pictures the life that she could have had, just as she was doing that she rose off the wet ground, her eyes glow white, her hands shined white, she float above the circle now. A light shined from the stones, Magnus shielded his face…