Hard to miss was an understatement. Vantra assumed the concentric depression they viewed from the top of the ruin-lined cliff was the complex, but vibrating vines had created a thick dome, hiding all beneath from view. Anti-darkness torches lined the street down to it, which ended at a cluster of over a dozen bored guards.
Shielding reminiscent of the kind in the jail, but with a deadlier feel, lay like a layer of water above the vines. Vantra thought that odd; did the dome not keep who they wanted out?
“That’s ugly,” Kjaelle whispered, her voice as dark as the shielding swirling around her. She offered to protect them with Darkness because the gleam of Light and Sun might attract more attention than they wanted, and considering the number of enemies they snuck past, Vantra was happy she did.
Especially when they skirted a shaman with a large escort. He, too, had markings covering his upper and lower torso, and the wrongness oozing from his staff beat at her. Kjaelle nearly exposed herself getting a closer look, and told them the symbols were warped Kanderite letters, much like those Daunifen and her changelings had. Not a surprise, but certainly not what the real Strans would use if he marked followers.
“Mica, see if there’s a back door,” Jare said. Before Vantra could protest—he needed backup!—the Light-blessed bled from view and disappeared.
“It’s going to be obvious if we go in the front,” Kjaelle agreed. “We can take them, but not before they raise an alarm.”
“There’s something strange about their spears,” he murmured. “Have you noticed, official guards have enchanted ones, but the regular fighters we’ve encountered don’t?”
“What are they even doing up, this time of night?” Kjaelle asked. “And carting supplies? That seems odd, to have workers so active.”
“I don’t understand how the guards seem so relaxed and chatty,” Kenosera said. He touched his stomach. “I feel queasy, being so near.”
“Me too,” Yut-ta said. “They should be throwing up.”
“The marks probably mitigate it,” Jare said. “They must provide some protection against what we sense. What is it, exactly, you feel?”
“It’s like I’ve been drinking too much,” Kenosera said. “There’s a sense that if I get much closer, I’ll get physically sick.”
Mica reappeared, startling her; that was fast! Of course, as a Light-blessed, he could use the quickness of light to his advantage. “There’s another way down opposite this one, with just as many guards,” he whispered. “The road runs from an encampment; there are hundreds asleep there, all under small animal-hide lean-tos.”
“We saw a large encampment on our way to the jail,” Vantra said. “It was outside the walls to Kjivendei.”
“Kjiven’s gathering a force.” Jare rubbed at his lower lip. “I wonder who he plans to invade. Selaserat is under Hrivasine’s hand, and Embeckourteine houses loyal Kanderites.”
“He cleared his faithful followers out of the city,” Kjaelle said.
“But left the mercs. That makes no sense.”
“The forest dwellers have been tricked,” Yut-ta murmured. “They think they will throw outsiders out of Greenglimmer, but there’s something more going on than that, isn’t there? It isn’t a secret, Hrivasine has designs outside of Selaserat, but who is he expecting to conquer with a few rufang and evaki and no powerful spiritesti?”
“He has Kjiven,” Kenosera reminded him.
“This is not petty political ambition.” Kjaelle hooked her hair behind her ears. “Hopefully, when we find this lake of ryiam, we can discover what’s really going on.” She half-laughed. “I wonder how much of Kjiven’s instability is related to his theft of a mantle he can’t properly control, and how much is his own ambitions warped against him. That might be what’s affecting the magic.”
“The Kjiven I met would never willingly bow to anyone,” Jare said. Mica nodded in agreement. “Though, I can see how surviving the flood, then returning to a smoking, sacked citadel would have broken him, and Hrivasine isn’t adverse to taking advantage of a fragile mind.” He eyed the two living beings. “Do you think you’ll get sick when we move closer? This is serious; if you can’t function near the vines, you’re not going down with us.”
Kenosera narrowed his eyes, looking as if he wished he had not spoken, then sucked in a deep breath. “I am fighting the touch.”
“Not good enough.”
Yut-ta clacked his beak but did not say a word. Kenosera pursed his lips, then proffered his spear to Kjaelle. Jare shook his head.
“Keep it. You might need it on the way back to the temple. Vantra, you should accompany them.”
She straightened. “But—”
“You have Clear Rays, and if anything worse happens with this feel, you’re the one best able to help them.”
“I’ll go with,” Dough said, brimming with excitement. “I’ve an idea, how to get in!”
Vantra would have stared at him in confusion as well, if she had not succumbed to fuming. They were sending her away! Her grip tightened on the shard as she trembled. She was not—
“The weapons still work on the spintop. What if I cause a distraction, or destroy the vines with them?”
That had Jare and Mica’s attention; Kjaelle’s horror more reflected her feelings on the matter.
Kenosera beamed and struck the pirate on the arm. “We can scout the citadel while we’re up there,” he said. Dough opened his mouth to protest, but he and Yut-ta turned and scurried back the way they had come.
“But—” Vantra said weakly.
Dough chuckled, rubbing at his forehead, high enough to tip his captain’s hat back. “Kenosera’s no coward,” he said. “Should have remembered that.”
“You better catch them. They might decide to go up without you,” Kjaelle said. The pirate triggered Ether Touch and zipped away; Vantra trailed, not certain at all about this impromptu plan. What of the other spintops he mentioned? What if they attacked while Dough focused on the vines? Grave danger awaited Kenosera and Yut-ta if they came with them.
Which, apparently, was why they insisted on joining them.
“You do realize, my defenses might not hold?” she snapped as they whisked through the Light shield protecting the machine. Kenosera grinned at her as he slid the door open, a charming and confident look that made her want to smack him. Had reason drained out of his head?
“They will.” He hopped up the steps, Yut-ta right behind.
“It’s dangerous.”
“Just like everything else we’ve done today.”
That made no sense. She entered the over-warm interior, which had four dual seats behind the pilot and co-pilot chairs, a wider bench in back, all upholstered in thick, velvety-black padding that struck her as luxurious rather than military-oriented. The plush ebony carpet added to the sense that someone had decorated the machine for pleasure rather than a fight. She ducked to avoid the storage cabinets and glared at the two.
Kenosera buckled up as Yut-ta curled his wings around his shoulders and pulled the belt across his lap, excited and just as confident.
They were going to die. She knew it, and she would carry that weight for the rest of her existence.
“Please?” she pleaded.
They smiled, as if out for a pleasant stroll rather than a death ride.
She strapped herself into the co-pilot seat, grumpy and unable to swallow it as she shielded them all—no use letting her and the pirate go unprotected from these shenanigans. Dough slid the door closed, smacked his hands together, and flumped into the seat, eyeing the dashboard. He pressed a few buttons and the interior lit with red and blue lights galore, then stared at a screen in front of him, tapping through menus.
With gusto, he pushed a red button; the blades began to rotate, the whirring increasing in volume as they picked up speed. He wrapped his fingers around the horseshoe-shaped steering stick, and his gleeful hee hee concerned her. “Hold on!”
The takeoff did not feel as rocky as his landing had looked, but she thanked the Sun that she no longer lived, because she doubted she would have kept her last meal down. Kenosera and Yut-ta looked slightly green, but not as ill as when they were near the guard complex.
It bothered her that they said the nausea did not go away until they had snuck halfway back to the Light temple, and they agreed they had not originally started feeling ill until much further up the hill. Was the breadth of the corruption growing, or were they mistaken about when they first noticed the adverse effects?
She peered at the sky for signs of the other spintops as the craft rose, but nothing moved above the ground but them. Dough laughed with unabashed glee as they flew forward, and she prayed to Katta and Qira and any other entity willing to listen, that they did not end up in a fiery heap on top of a ruined building.
She swore a presence checked in, confused yet curious, though she could not identify who as the pirate scrolled through the menu, then punched buttons.
Mechanical sounds erupted from the front. Glowing shots sailed away from them. A flare from below proved they had struck a shield, which intensified into a brilliant radiance, then disappeared, leaving white parading through her perception. The tip dipped, revealing shredded vines flipping away from the dome as the guards raced away, arms over their heads.
A Light-drenched beam shot into the air and burst; she took that as a sign the others had made it in. Dough did as well, and he stopped firing and moved to the right—just in time to avoid a flaming swirl of corrupted magic that sailed past them.
“What was that?” Kenosera asked as she threw up a hasty shield; a second attack splatted against it and disintegrated the protection. She stuffed layer after layer into a defense that broke as soon as she erected it; the assault intensified.
“Hang on!” Dough called, his glee having plummeted into grim seriousness. “I’m landing this thing!”
