Raven Nightshade's Arc

Chapter 4 of 8

White light burst against the black stone. Ayla stepped out of it, staff first, her white robes gray with ash. Raven caught her before she stumbled. Her cousin looked thin and drawn, but she smiled. "They know," Ayla said. "Zach holds the twins. Talon is coming with the mages and an airship." She gripped Raven's arm. "He told me to tell you: don't die before he arrives." Raven pressed her forehead to Ayla's. "Good." Then she stepped back and looked at the sand. Thousands still breathed beneath it. "Now we get them out." Lyra crouched over the black grains, her palm flat against the stone. Her purple eyes went distant. "The curse binds them," she said. "If I pull one free, the binding kills it. We can't dig them out. We have to break the spell that holds them." She pointed past the ruined house. "There's a door. Sealed. The curse pours from behind it." Armin walked to the door and stopped. It stood in the black stone, marked with cold symbols. "I know this seal," he said. His dark eyes narrowed. "My mist won't touch it. It answers to fire and frost, not fog." Lyra rose and joined him. She had loved Talon for five years, and now she would be queen beside him, but she wore that future lightly. She only rolled up her sleeves. "Then I'll answer it." Flame gathered in one hand, ice in the other. "Armin, hold the ash back so I can see the joints." Armin lifted his arms. Gray mist rolled off the ground and thinned, baring the seal's carved lines. Lyra pressed fire to the top edge and ice to the base. The stone groaned. Cracks spread. "It's fighting me," she said through her teeth. Raven felt the change first. The sand shifted. Hands of gray sand rose all around them, clawing upward. "The curse knows," she said. Her claws slid out. She turned her back to Lyra and Armin and faced the field. "Break it. I'll keep them off you." The risen hands lunged. Raven cut through the first wrist, then the second. She spun and kicked a shape apart. More climbed from the ground. She held the line, breath ragged, blood on her knuckles. "Now!" Lyra shouted. Fire and ice met in the seal's heart. The door split down the middle and fell inward. A wail rose from the sand. The gray hands collapsed to dust. Across the whole field, the black grains loosened. People stirred beneath, coughing, alive, freed. Raven stood among them, chest heaving. She had broken the curse's hold. But through the open door lay a stair going down into deeper dark, and the true maker waited below. The freed victims were only the first wall between her and him.