Seraphina Frostscale's Arc

Chapter 6 of 11

The green haze had crossed her last field. Now it climbed toward her home. Seraphina stood at the edge of her yard and watched the vapor eat the grass foot by foot. Each blade turned black and curled. She had mastered the shift on land and in air. None of that mattered while the poison spread. To finish the elder spell, she had to kill it at its source. She turned to Draven. "We follow it north. Today." Draven strapped his sword to his back. "To the crater," he said. He did not ask if she was sure. They rode the black winged cat north, over dead soil, toward a broken pit in the earth. The pit yawned open like a rotted stump. Cracks split its walls. Green and violet ran down the sides. From the center rose the vapor, thick and slow, a dark cloud shot through with poison light. It billowed up and drifted south on the wind. This was the wound feeding her land. A figure stood at the crater's rim. Valxara. The dark dragon had followed the poison too. She was the mate of the elder dragon Draven had slain, and once their enemy. She had let them seal the crack beneath Seraphina's yard. Now she stared into the pit alone. Her wings hung low. "You came," Valxara said. She did not turn. "I sealed one crack. This one is worse. My frostfire is spent. Yours cannot reach so deep." Draven drew his blade. "Mine can," he said. "Not alone," Valxara said. "The vapor grips anything that touches it. You need it cooled first." Seraphina understood. She lifted the pendant at her neck. The center stone woke and light spread down her arm. She pulled the heat from the air above the crater. The vapor slowed. It paled and stilled and held, frozen in place mid-rise. The poison cloud hung motionless over the pit. "Now," she said. Draven jumped. He drove his sword into the frozen vapor and down into the crack below. Frostfire ran along the blade. It cut through the poison and struck the stone. Light burst white from the seam. The cracks along the walls sealed one by one. The frozen cloud shattered and fell as gray ash. The crater went quiet. No new vapor rose. Draven pulled his blade free and climbed out. Seraphina knelt and touched the crater floor. It was cold and dead, but clean. The source was closed. "It's stopped," she said. "The spread is over." Valxara looked at the still pit. "The land it already poisoned will not heal soon," she said. "But it will spread no more." Seraphina stood. The wind carried no green now. Yet the ground here was ruined ash, and her fields at home were dead. She had stopped the vapor. She needed help to hold off the vapour. There was one place cold enough to hold it. The north. Glaciana's domain. Together all four might stop the miasma.