Emerald, p.44
Emerald, page 44
Think, Karria, think! There has to be something we can do!
Her magic could create anything. So, could she make heat? Her brow furrowed when she thought of such an abstract concept. How could someone even go about forging heat? She could make fire, and heat came from fire, but the fire she made was white and Silver had told her not to use it.
What else made heat?
Karria thought as she forced her way through the deep snowbank, traveling ever upward.
Friction also makes heat…
Once, when she’d been younger, she rubbed her face a bit too vigorously with a towel and had accidentally burned herself. But how could that help in her situation? She could make Kya a heavy coat, but that wouldn’t really solve the problem. By now, she was cold on the inside. The cold was slowly making its way through her body and chilling her. A coat would do her no good at this point.
Karria growled, throwing one more look over her shoulder. Kya had stopped and was just standing there, staring out into empty space.
“Kya,” she said, turning back and grabbing her by the shoulders.
“Huh?” Kya asked, sounding barely awake.
“You need to stay awake. Don’t fall asleep on me!”
“I’ll try,” Kya mumbled. “But it’s just so…cold.”
Her voice was weak, and Karria knew that unless she got her warmed-up, Kya would die.
“Screw it,” she said, letting go of her friend and conjuring the white flames.
Silver would understand, right?
A pile of wood appeared on the ground next to her, and Karria dropped the glowing white fireball on it. She’d never tried something like this before and wasn’t even sure if the conjured wood would burn. She started to hold her breath, but she let it out a second letter, involuntarily. As soon as the white fire touched the wood, a blast of cold air radiated outward, throwing both her and Kya back.
Luckily, they landed in the snow, so they weren’t hurt, and the fall seemed to break Kya momentarily from her stupor.
“Karria?” she asked, looking at her in confusion. “What’s happening?
Karria simply stared out at the white flames, then scrambled to her feet, dragging Kya with her.
“Run! We need to run. Now!”
Kya didn’t understand what was happening. However, one peek over her shoulder cleared that all up.
White flames roiled up into the sky, burning so fiercely that the snow and ice around it shimmered. But that didn’t seem right to her. The fire was supposed to melt snow, wasn’t it? Then her eyes widened as she realized what was really happening and she felt her heart speed up, forcing blood through her chilled veins.
The fire was burning the snow!
“What did you do?” she asked as Karria plowed her way through the now knee-deep snow.
“I tried to make you a fire!” Karria yelled, sounding equally as panicked. “I had no idea this would happen. Fire is supposed to be hot!”
Kya threw another glance over her shoulder and saw the white flames rushing across the snow. Wherever the fire touched, the snow turned to solid ice, freezing over in an instant. She’d never seen magic like this in her life. It was unnatural and sent a chill down to her very soul. Fire like this shouldn’t exist.
“Didn’t Silver tell you not to use the white fire!?” Kya yelled, now running under her own power.
“Yell at me later!” Karria yelled, dropping to her belly as the incline grew too steep for running.
Kya was right behind her, scrambling up the freezing snow for all she was worth. She could feel the cold retreating, and a sheen of sweat broke out over her body. However, a quick glance behind showed the white fire spreading even faster. She had no idea if it would continue burning once they got out of the snow, but for their sakes, she really hoped so.
Karria was in a panic. She had no idea what she’d done. As soon as she’d dropped the fire onto the wood, it had been consumed in an instant, burning away to ash before freezing solid. The fire was cold, somehow even colder than ice. She’d only gotten a blast of air, but that alone was enough to tell her how cold this ice truly was.
And the worst part was that she had no control over it. It was spreading faster and faster, turning all in its path to solid ice. She took a peek back, feeling snow trickling down her collar. It was one of the most unpleasant sensations she’d ever felt, but seeing this fire that she’d started continuing to spread was even worse.
It was rolling down the mountain, picking up speed as it went. However, it was climbing much slower than normal fire did, which was the exact opposite. This seemed to be the very antithesis of a natural fire. Where normal fire burned, this froze, though it seemed to be able to burn anything other than snow.
Where heat flowed upward, this moved downward. And while fire sometimes gave life, this was only death. Cold and absolute. Though the cold was slow to rise, she could feel the temperature dropping even as they climbed. In just the span of a few minutes, it had dropped at least five degrees, and it was getting colder still by the minute.
Another look down confirmed that the fire was climbing, though she did notice something other than impending death. The white flames rolled toward a small piece of gray stone that was sticking out of the snow. And, instead of burning over it and turning it to ice, the fire flowed around it, ignoring the stone entirely.
“Kya, climb faster! It can’t burn stone!”
The outcropping was directly above them now, standing out in stark contrast to the white snow all around. She scrabbled for stable handholds as snow showered down all around them, and she desperately hoped that it would hold. If she slipped now, she was a goner. Falling into those flames would be almost certain death.
Her arms and legs burned with the effort of hauling herself up, and her lungs burned as she gulped in huge breaths of the thin air. She felt faint, her vision dancing with stars, yet she kept going, knowing that at any second, the freezing flames could be licking at her bootheels.
Then, her fingers jammed painfully into something hard and cold. She cried out, instinctively yanking them back. It took her a moment to figure out what had happened, but when she did, she let out a whoop of joy. They’d made it!
Karria reached up and, with monumental effort, pulled herself up onto the outcropping of stone and out of danger.
“We did it, Kya,” she said, lying there and panting hard.
It was only when she received no reply that she realized that Kya was not beside her. She quickly scrambled onto her stomach and pulled herself to the edge of the outcropping and was faced with a living hell.
The entire mountainside was aflame, white fire roiling in great waves over the snow. Hundreds of trees stood burned, blackened, and encased in ice. No smoke rose into the sky; however, she could see storm clouds gathering above. Lightning flashed, which was extremely unusual if these were blizzard clouds, though Karria had a feeling that it would be far worse.
White fire poured up the mountain, and after a few seconds of frantic searching, she saw Kya, nearly a hundred feet down, desperately trying to climb away from the approaching flames. Karria felt her heart nearly in her throat as she saw the fire climbing higher. Any second now, they would overtake and consume her.
“Grab onto this!” she screamed, forging a rope as quickly as she could and dropping it down to her friend.
Kya scrabbled for a few more moments, trying to catch it, and Karria watched in breathless anticipation as the flames grew ever nearer. As soon as she got a good grip, Karria leaned back, straining against her friend’s weight and her own exhaustion. Slowly, the rope began to move.
A metal pole appeared in the stone before her, forged by her magic, and Karria looped the rope around, turning back and heaving with all her might. Her tendons stood out against her skin, the extra layers forgotten on the ground as she slowly moved backward, dragging Kya up to the outcropping.
Panic began to grip her as the rope snagged, but Karria forced herself to remain calm. Though her very mind seemed to boil, a crossbow formed midair and a shower of bolts slammed into the offending stone, knocking it loose and freeing the rope. She nearly collapsed as the construct was dismissed but forced herself to keep pulling.
She could feel something in her body about to give, but she knew she couldn’t give up on her friend. Then, the pressure was gone, and Kya was dragging herself up onto the outcropping. Karria stumbled over, dragging her friend completely up and away from the cliff face, then immediately yanked off all of her snowy layers.
As white flames roiled up around the outcropping, the two of them ran into the large stone tunnel, hoping against hope that the fire would not be able to follow.
57
The two of them stopped about a hundred yards in, both shivering and shaking with a mix of adrenaline and exhaustion. Karria had no idea what kind of damage this fire could inflict, should it keep spreading, and she had no idea how to put it out. She doubted water would do much against something like this. Smothering it may not even work.
Thankfully, it seemed that as soon as it froze something, it didn’t stick around. So, even though the landscape would be covered in ice, it would still be traversable. All she could do was hope the fires would meet enough stone and stop. The Flatlands were at the bottom, so they wouldn’t spread there, but a fire like this could cover all of the Jagged Peaks.
And that was not to mention the massive storm that had been building. Whatever that was, it was not going to be good.
“We need to get to the dwarf king and warn him as soon as we can,” Karria said, leaning against the wall and trying to catch her breath.
Kya just nodded tiredly, seeming to want to collapse but not daring to. If either of them sat down now, they wouldn’t be getting up again. While it was warmer in the tunnels, it wasn’t yet warm enough for them to survive if they fell asleep. Despite their overwhelming exhaustion, pain, and fear, they had to keep going.
After only a couple minutes’ rest, Karria got them moving again.
“We’ll be even worse off now if we don’t get warm,” she said as she broke into a shuffling jog. “The sweat on our bodies will freeze over, chilling us even more. Our clothes are soaked through, so we don’t have long.”
“How far into this mountain is this city?” Kya asked, her breaths ragged and uneven.
Karria pulled the map from her pack and tried to examine it while running. The map detailed an intricate labyrinth inside the mountain, showing the way to the city. But she had no point of reference for the distance.
“We’ll be there soon,” she said, stuffing the map back into her pack.
Though she didn’t say so out loud, Kya knew what that meant. Karria had no idea how far it was, and the longer they went without getting warm, the worse off they’d be.
It was roughly thirty degrees by now, though Karria knew that it probably wouldn’t get much better. At this temperature, they were still very much in danger of dying. Even with no wind or snow, their own clothes would freeze them to death. More than once, she debated stripping down to her underwear.
Wet clothes chilled the body ten times faster than bare skin. However, if they stopped moving for even a second, she felt she wouldn’t be able to start again. And so, they ran on, their hands and feet growing laden and their bodies numb.
At one point, Karria began to imagine she heard things; however, when she looked around, all she saw were empty tunnels. Their situation was growing worse, and soon, they were barely shuffling along.
Karria didn’t have the ability to use even a spec of magic in her condition. She’d gone way overboard with rescuing Kya and that, compounded with how much she’d been using in the last few days, had resulted in a lockout. Her body was physically stopping her from using magic. This had been explained by Palmine as a sign that the body needed a good, long rest.
A lockout would happen when compounding damage to the body and mind was done over time, and only then. This was how it was still possible to overdo it and kill yourself by going too far. However, if enough time was given, the body’s defense mechanisms would be activated, and the Mage would find themselves powerless until their body decided otherwise. Some Mages had pushed so far that they’d triggered something called burnout.
A burnout was like a lockout, only worse. Because while you could recover from a lockout, a burnout would result in the complete destruction of your Origin. In other words, you’d never be able to use magic again. And though Karria was on the brink of collapse, she realized that she had gone way too far.
“Oy! Who goes there?”
It took Karria way longer than it should have for the words to penetrate into her clouded mind. But when it finally did, she felt a small spark of hope. Someone was speaking to her, and if they’d found people, that meant they could get out of here.
Karria looked up tiredly and, through blurry vision, saw a group of metallic men roughly four feet tall.
How strange. I didn’t know that metal men live here.
Then she collapsed forward and blacked out.
She wasn’t out for long, though, as just a couple of minutes later, she was rudely slapped awake by a very hairy man.
“Wake up, girl. If you don’t answer me, I’ll just keep hitting you!”
Karria winced as another ringing slap rocked her head to the side.
“I’m up, you sadistic shit! Stop hitting me!” she yelled, feeling blood in her mouth.
“Hey, Jek, I think this one’s up!” the man said, stepping back from her with a scornful look.
No, not a man, Karria realized. A dwarf.
She tried to sit up but found that both her hands and feet had been tied. Kya lay just a few feet away, similarly, bound with two angry red welts on her cheeks. Karria’s still-addled mind tried to come up with an explanation. If she really was with the dwarves, then why were they treating her so badly?
A moment later, she was hoisted painfully to her feet and found herself facing, or perhaps a better term would be looking down at, a very young-looking dwarf. He was perhaps twenty, maybe even younger. His beard was quite short and still patchy in places, and he barely topped three and a half feet.
He was dressed from the shoulders down in a full set of plate armor, and Karria could see a helmet clipped to his belt. The one thing that stood out most to her was the very unpleasant look he had on his face.
“What are you humans doing here?” he demanded impetuously.
Though Karria was exhausted and her body felt like it would simply give out on her should the dwarf holding her up let go, she still had enough sense to realize that she shouldn’t be telling this dwarf why she was here. From what Silver had told her, dwarves and humans typically got along, so if she was being treated so poorly, something had to be wrong.
She also noted that this dwarf had referred to humans as a multiple instead of singular, which must mean they hadn’t recognized Kya as an elf. Though the differences in appearance should be quite obvious, if her ears were hidden by her hair, she could pass as human in this dim lighting.
“Needed to get out of the storm,” Karria answered, eyeing Kya out of the corner of one eye.
Sure enough, she was keeping her face downcast, her long hair covering her pointed ears. She looked to be in bad shape, though seeing as this dwarf didn’t yet seem to know why they were here, Kya hadn’t yet given anything away.
“A likely story from one of your kind,” the dwarf answered with a sneer.
“What do you want us to do with them, Jek?” one of the others asked.
The dwarf eyed Kya for a moment before shaking his head.
“I don’t have time to deal with these two right now. Just toss them in the outpost cell for now. We can question them more when it’s done.”
Karria tried to struggle as the dwarves began marching her forward, though she might as well have attempted to fight against a boulder. So, she gave up and simply allowed them to march her along. Her pack was gone, and judging by the absence of weight at her waist, they’d taken her dagger as well.
She closed her eyes, trying to reach for her Origin but found only a black void. She could feel her magic, pulsing on the other side of the void, but for now, she couldn’t reach it. One upside to being captured, if there was one, was the fact that these dwarves seemed to have some sort of heating enchantment built into the armor, and it was strong enough to warm her to the point where she was no longer in danger of frostbite.
They marched the two of them on for nearly thirty minutes, and every step was agony. Her muscles were still screaming, her eyes were drooping, and her body felt like it was going to drop at any moment. Add to that the fact that her feet were tied, and it made walking very awkward.
The apparent leader of this little gang, the dwarf named Jek, walked behind her the entire time, prodding her with the butt of a spear whenever she slowed down. He seemed to take great pleasure in doing so, as though someone had once done the same to him, and he was now taking it out on her.
“What are you looking at, human filth?” he demanded when she turned to glare at him.
When she didn’t answer, Jek merely grinned and prodded her again, harder this time.
“You humans are all the same, aren’t you?”
Karria once again failed to reply, which seemed to only aggravate the dwarf more. Though he continued prodding her, Karria remained silent as the dwarf continued to ramble. He was clearly young and was freely giving away information. If all she needed to do was endure the annoying poking of the spear shaft to get more information, then she would endure it.
“Had a cocky human bastard just like you come here a few months ago,” Jek continued, prodding the small of her back. “Thought he was all that just because the king gave him a special mission. Him and that damned gremlin filth!”
Jek followed this statement by prodding her extra hard.
“That damned asshole never saw what the other races were doing to us,” he said, continuing his rambling. “Always took the side of strangers and outsiders. But not anymore!”
