Vhalla heard the echoes of stones bouncing down the mountainside. A horse’s whinny echoed through the caverns. Victor stilled, looking through the doors she had opened and down the long stretch of crystals to the main entrance.
“I think we will have an audience for my ascension.” Victor smiled, turning.
A tall shadow stood in the entryway, the sunlight burning at his back. Vhalla struggled to lift her head, squinting to prove without a doubt what the frantic beats of her heart already knew.
“Aldrik!” she screamed at the top of her lungs. Her high-pitched, desperate call carried across the walls and out to her prince.
“Vhalla!” he roared in tortured and broken agony. His voice was as deep and dark as midnight, and Vhalla wondered how she could have mistaken anything else for it.
“It seems you shall be the first Solaris to die by my hand!” Victor beamed and turned to face the inferno that roared toward them.
The caverns were quickly illuminated with the burning rage of the crown prince.
STEAM FILLED THE caverns as Aldrik’s flames met an ice barrier and vaporized it. He threw out an arm, sending another blaze in quick succession. Victor blocked it with a surge of magic, the crystals in the crown on his head flashing brightly to amplify his powers.
“Are you not happy to see me?” Victor japed.
“Let her go!” Aldrik skidded to a stop, bracing himself, and Vhalla pressed her eyes closed for the next wave of heat. The fire was so great that it sent explosive shockwaves through the caverns.
“You always were the wild one! Running in head first, not thinking, letting your emotions and that unstoppable rage of yours get the better of you,” Victor bated.
Aldrik reacted quickly to the ice that formed beneath his feet. A spiral of flame swirled about him, blocking any further attempts to freeze him in place.
“Aldrik!” Vhalla cried, hoping he would hear her over the din of the flames. “Free me!” She struggled against the ice that held her. If she could get free she could get the axe and remove the crystal blocking her sorcery. Victor was strong and bloated on magic-altering crystals, but Vhalla doubted he would be able to handle them both at once.
The prince’s fire vanished at her words, and Aldrik looked, really looked, for the first time past Victor. Vhalla witnessed his rage deepen upon seeing her entrapped. He threw out a hand.
At first, his fire was a welcome warmth. Like the familiar caress of an old lover or well-known friend. It weakened the ice and melted it around her. Victor wasn’t the only one who was trained to leverage the crystals, and Aldrik’s magic could stand toe-to-toe with the minister’s.
But warmth quickly turned to heat and then to agony as Vhalla was burned for the first time by Aldrik’s flames.
The ice vanished from around her, removing the barrier between flame and skin. She rolled on the floor, trying to snuff out the blaze. Every nerve in her body screamed in unison, alerting her to a blisteringly hot agony that seared across her flesh until it bubbled.
The moment her screams echoed through Aldrik’s ears, the flames vanished. Victor turned curiously, and both men seemed to be stunned out of their assault upon each other by the woman sobbing and rolling on the floor. Vhalla tried to catch her breath, but her skin was alive with red-hot burns. Everything hurt; it was a pain beyond all previous thresholds, and she saw stars behind her eyes.
Victor turned and took a few steps toward her. He stared down at her writhing form. There was interest alight in his eyes at her pain.
“Vhalla, Vhalla!” Aldrik began running once more. He sprinted through the first archway into the antechamber just before the inner-most sanctum of the caverns. Vhalla opened her eyes weakly. In a moment of desperation, she reached out to him. Victor stepped upon her hand, crunching her fingers with a twist of his boot.
Aldrik was just at the doorway when a thick wall of ice covered it, stretching out from the crystals Victor had placed around the doorway. It was solid and almost perfectly transparent. Aldrik slammed into it hard, his momentum forcing him to collide. He barred his teeth in a frustrated grunt, banging his fists against it. He tried to burn his way through but the ice repaired itself as quickly as he could conjure flames to expel it. Aldrik punched it with a cry of frustration, blood smearing