its neck, and slices her blade clear across the thing’s large compound eyes. The scorpio rears backward, Valasca hurled off its back as it releases my arm. Dark ichor sprays from its head, the beast shrieking so loudly that I fear my ears will burst.
Abruptly freed, I lurch away from the scorpio as it levers its forelimb back at me, its limb colliding with the rock wall and just missing my shoulder, as two more scorpios close in and slash their forelimbs at Valasca.
A brilliant flash of golden light rays out from the portal.
“It’s charged!” Chi Nam calls out in Noi.
Valasca turns just as the largest of the remaining scorpios closes in and slashes its serrated forelimb at her with blinding speed. A metallic streak arcs through the air as Lukas’s sword slices through the limb and sends it skittering away before it can impale Valasca. Another scorpio limb swoops toward Lukas in a blur, the forelimb’s knife-edge slamming into his shoulder in a spray of blood, the blow knocking him to the ground as my heart bolts through my body.
“Lukas!” I scream, lurching forward just as Valasca darts toward me, her expression ruthless as she grabs rough hold of my arms, swings me around, and shoves me headfirst into the portal’s rippling lake of gold.
Part Four
CHAPTER ONE
VONOR
ELLOREN GREY
Sixth Month
Northwestern Agolith Desert
Everything flashes gold as I fall through the portal’s shimmering depths. My hands slam down onto night-darkened stone as I collide with the ground, fine sand coating my body in a choking cloud.
I cough and whip my gaze across the scene, wildly disoriented.
I’m on a greatly elevated ledge and encased in a translucent, runic dome, a dramatically surreal desert landscape with lurid, blood-colored sands splayed out before me. Giant, arcing red rock formations and smatterings of bulbous trees mark the view as far as I can see. They’re washed in dim ruby light that emanates from the blazing stars and moon, which are not glowing their familiar white but a luminescent crimson. An impossibly long band of dark clouds is massed along the entire eastern horizon, lightning scything through it.
Desperation for Lukas roars through me.
I force myself to my feet just as Chi Nam rushes through the portal interior, golden rays blasting from a runic frame that’s now marked on the mountainous ridge before me. A bloody Valasca bursts through next, dragging an even bloodier Lukas, a burst of his untethered affinity fire hitting me like a hot, violent wave.
“Lukas!” I cry as I rush to him and he drops his sword and staggers to his knees.
I fall to one knee beside him and grasp his arm as I take in the deep gash that’s slashed clear across his chest and shoulder. His tunic is shredded, his power lashing and untethered. He’s frighteningly pale, his normal deep-green shimmer reduced to a sickly white-green.
A chittering shriek sounds from the portal as a scorpio’s massive forelimb thrusts through its shimmering center, and I flinch protectively over Lukas just as Chi Nam lunges forward and slams her staff onto the portal in another explosion of golden light. The portal’s rippling interior vanishes in a shower of yellow sparks, the serrated limb thumping to the ground beside her.
“We need alluriem to stop the bleeding,” I implore Chi Nam, invoking my apothecary training as I tear open Lukas’s shredded tunic to better view his injury. My gut tightens as I take in the depth of the wound slashed across his chest and shoulder, his chest slick with blood. So much blood...
“Support his back,” Chi Nam orders, her face a mask of determination as she lowers herself before Lukas, blue rune stylus in hand, and I recall how she healed my scalp after it was slashed by a killing star.
I throw one arm around Lukas, his out-of-control fire power whipping out of him and rapidly depleting, like a great star burning out. Lukas is panting, every muscle tensed, his expression agonized.
His vastly weakened magic seizes mine like he’s a drowning man as Chi Nam draws a blue rune in the air just over Lukas’s chest and shoulder, then swiftly pierces the rune with her rune stylus’s tip and drags the stylus down the entire length of Lukas’s bloody gash, trailing a golden wavering glow that sizzles with heat.
Lukas groans, his back arching against my arm as he throws back his head, his whole body seeming strained to the breaking point as his remaining magic scrabbles to keep hold of mine, power draining out of him.
“No!”