Seraphina Frostscale's Arc

Chapter 10 of 11

The door was hers now. Seraphina left the ice queen's den with the beast locked behind it and one task left. The crater in the north still bled. Draven had sealed its mouth months ago, but the poison lingered in the rock, ready to creep south again. Frost could hold it. Only her cleansing magic could end it. She flew north with Draven at her side and landed at the crater's broken rim. The pit yawned below her. Green vapor still leaked from the fractured stone, coiling up in slow black ropes. Draven drew his sword and stood at the edge. "How long?" he asked. "I don't know," Seraphina said. "Long enough to burn it out." Valxara landed behind them, wings folding. The dark dragon had been their enemy once, mate to the corrupted beast who nearly killed Seraphina. Now she watched with narrow orange eyes. "You cannot rush this," she said. "Cleanse it whole. Leave one root and it grows back." Seraphina knelt at the rim. She gripped the pendant at her throat. The light in her chest woke and burned, hot and steady, a second heartbeat she could no longer silence. She poured it down into her palms. White fire spilled from her hands into the crater. The vapor screamed. It writhed away from the light, then surged back, thick and choking. It wrapped her arms and pulled at the beast behind the door. The lock shook. For a breath she felt her old panic rise, felt herself reach for Draven's red eyes. She stopped. She held the door shut with her own hand and drove the light deeper. "Cut the far wall," she told Draven. "Where the green runs thickest." Draven leapt down onto a ledge. His frostfire blade bit into the stone. Frost and fire spread through the cracks. The poison had nowhere to hide now, pinned between his blade and her light. Seraphina forced the fire wider until it filled the whole pit. The vapor thinned. The black ropes broke apart. The green fissures dulled to gray. She held the fire until her arms shook and the last coil of miasma guttered out. Then the crater went quiet. Cold, dead stone. No leak. No smoke. Seraphina sat back on the rim, breathing hard. "It's gone," she said. Valxara dropped into the pit and pressed her claw to the floor. She was still a long moment. "Clean," she said. "The source is dead. Your land is safe." Draven climbed up and knelt beside Seraphina. She looked at her own hands, still glowing faint. She had held the beast and the fire together, alone, and won. "Then it's over," she said. "No," Valxara said. She looked at the empty crater, then at Seraphina. "The ground is clean now. You can finally shift here without the poison twisting you. But your shift is not mastered. Half a dragon still is not a dragon." She spread her wings. "Learn the elder spell. Become what you are, or the next corruption ends you."