THEY WERE READY within the hour. There wasn’t much to pack—just extra rations and layers of clothing. Tenn sat by the fire for most of the preparations, staring into the flames and watching the runes flash over and over again in his mind. With every trace, he felt his understanding shift deeper, as though it were slowly sifting away layers of confusion. He knew the runes would transport them wherever they desired. He knew they needed Earth for grounding, Air for speed. And he knew they were a power the world hadn’t seen in hundreds of years, a language the gods had long ago stopped speaking. The weight of that knowledge settled on his shoulders with every crackle of the bonfire. Once more, he was entrusted with something he had no right to possess. What made him worthy of this knowledge? Why was he the one the spirits or gods were entrusting with their secrets?
And perhaps most important, would it be enough to save Jarrett?
One must be godlike...
At the moment, he felt terribly small.
“How does this work?” Dreya asked when they were ready. She had a small bag on her back, and wore a necklace with the symbol he’d seen above Rhiannon’s door, the seven-pointed star within a horned moon. He didn’t ask how she’d come across it.
Dreya’s was a question he barely had an answer to. Each of the dozen or so runes and symbols from the vision had a meaning. Each layered atop each other to create a sentence, a spell. In a way, he had whispers of meaning from each rune. But he didn’t know the individual powers, just as he didn’t fully grasp the individual meanings of the runes he used in the protection circles. He just knew they worked as a whole.
Until he had time to experiment, that would have to be enough.
Thankfully, his time in the vision, or whatever it was, gave him enough of a hunch on how to use the runes.
“I need you to channel Air into the runes. Each of you. It will only carry someone using the magic that fuels it. That’s it.”
They nodded.
“Ready?”
Another nod. That was enough for him.
He knelt and traced the runes into the cooler ashes by the fire, let the grit sift around his fingertip. There was a small voice in the back of his head screaming that he was getting it wrong, that he needed to give up now, that there was no way he was the one meant to channel this power. But with every rune, the voice grew weaker and the hum of power in his head grew stronger. Every scratch of his finger, and resolution grew. When the runes were completed, he looked up to the twins. They stared at the runes with...trepidation? It didn’t help his confidence.
He pressed his hand to the center of the runes and opened to Earth.
Magic swirled through him, blossomed from his fingertips and twined around the ash, billowing and fluttering like a butterfly, a fold in the fabric of the world.
“Now,” he said. The twins opened to Air.
The runes exploded in light and ash, funneled up and around the three of them in a cocoon of soot and wind and brilliance. The world shifted, swirled, sank. Power was everything.
Then the cocoon collapsed around them, and the trailers vanished to light and the sound of hoofbeats.
* * *
When the dust cleared, they were no longer in the Midwest.
Mountains rose on all sides, peaks silhouetted in dark blue and starlight. The moon was hidden, but the stars were bright enough to see by, glittering off snow that blanketed every rise and sweep. Light bloomed in the valley below them. Violent. Orange. Electric.
Leanna’s compound glowed and smoked in the night. The sight of it made Tenn’s head whirl. It looked so...out of place. The streetlamps, the swept streets, the houses with their plumes of smoke. Exactly like before the Resurrection, save for the wall that surrounded the city and the warren of ramshackle houses splayed about just within the perimeter.
“It worked,” Dreya said. Her voice was breathless, thin in the mountain air. Tenn glanced at her. She stared with wide eyes at the city below them. It looked like the way life once was, a city of life and energy and sound. Yet every human in there served the Dark Lady, willingly or not. It wasn’t like the Farms he’d seen in the Midwest. Those had just been giant kennels for holding human livestock. This was almost worse. Here, the Howls and necromancers feeding on the innocent lived in the same pen.
“Yeah,” Tenn whispered. “It worked.” He had no other words. He still felt the magic swirling within him, the runes an after-trace in his vision. He was too preoccupied with finding Jarrett to be surprised by his own skill.
“What...what do we do now?” It wasn’t Dreya who asked, but Devon. He stared down at the compound with narrowed eyes. His voice was tight, and even though he wasn’t using Fire, Tenn could practically feel the impatience in him, the need to avenge. Tenn felt it, too.
“It could be a trap,” Tenn said. “Matthias might have been lying, just trying to get me to come here. I don’t want you two to be in danger if that’s the case.”
“But we are already here—” Dreya began.
Tenn shook his head and cut her off. “And I’m grateful for it. Leanna wants me. That’s always been apparent. Chances are that means that, even if I’m caught, I’ll make it to her alive. She’d kill you both in a heartbeat.”
The twins shared a long, silent look. Fire flickered in Devon’s chest, just the slightest flare, and Tenn fully expected him to speak out.
“Do you propose we just sit and watch you, then?” Dreya asked when she looked back to him.
“Of course not,” Tenn said. “Once I get Jarrett, you’re in charge of getting us out. I’ll need a distraction. And everyone down there is going to need a rescue.”
“Just like with the Witches,” Devon said. There was a level of hurt in his eyes. Tenn didn’t blame him. They didn’t want to sit around and watch the show. They wanted to be in the ring. He wasn’t the only one trying to avenge his bloody past.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t risk you two getting hurt. You’re more valuable alive and out here. Besides, I don’t know anyone else whose magic can reach as far as yours.”
He caught Dreya rolling her eyes, but she didn’t fend off his lame attempt at pacifying them. There was logic in his words, even if their desire for revenge was stronger.
“What happens then?” Dreya asked. “When the prisoners are freed? No one has successfully overthrown a compound before. Ever. What chance do we three have?”
“No one has had the runes,” Tenn said. He hoped it was the truth, that the small advantage was enough. If he thought about the fact that he only had a handful of runes, ones for hiding and travel, the task seemed even more dire. His plan had worked on the necromancers, but this? Matthias may have been powerful, but he didn’t hold a candle to the Kin.
“How will we know you have succeeded?” Dreya asked.
Tenn shrugged. They were too far away for Earth to reach like last time. Which meant there was only one way to show that he had Jarrett, and was safe.
“Give me until dawn,” he said. “I should be able to get in and back before then. If I need your help, I’ll start an earthquake or something. If you don’t hear from me, or if my tracking rune stops moving... Well, dawn at the latest.”
“And if you haven’t found him? If you are killed?”
“Then there are still hundreds of innocent lives down there for you to save. I’ll create a protection circle around you, just like last time. You’ll be safe to do your magic.”
She gave him a look that said she wanted to argue. But there wasn’t time.
He gritted his teeth, then got to work.
He walked a circle around the twins, melting the snow with a thin stream of Water and scratching the runes into the earth with his staff. Just like with the Witches. It had worked with them; it would work again here. He tried to ignore the fact that, barely a mile away, there was a town filled with necromancers and Howls and worse, all bent on finding him and killing anyone associated with him. This was the nexus from which all of his pain stemmed.
On the one hand, it meant the end of this fight.
On the other hand...it could mean a lot of other ends, as well.
“Why are you doing this?” Dreya’s voice was quiet. It barely carried on the otherwise-silent night air, the town too far away to be heard.
“I’m setting up defenses—” Tenn began, but she cut him off.
“Not the runes,” she said. “This.” She gestured to the town, to the surrounding countryside. “This is suicide. Madness. Do you truly think Jarrett would want you to run headfirst into Leanna’s hands? Alone?”
I’m not alone, he thought.
What he actually said was more biting.
“Are you telling me you wouldn’t do the same?” he asked again. He pointed to Devon. “If he was in there? Would you?”
She dropped her gaze.
“Precisely,” he said. He went back to scribing the runes into the earth.
“But you could die.” The way she said it made her sound so small. “What about us?”
Tenn stopped, felt his whole world come to a grinding halt. “What do you mean?”
She looked back up to him. “I mean, what happens to us if you die in there?” She sighed, as though the words she was about to say were painful. “We can’t do this without you.”
“Of course you can,” he said. He shrugged and looked back to his work.
“No.” It was Devon, not Dreya, who continued the argument. He had pulled his scarf down, so his voice rang out in the night, low and deep like a mourning bell. “Rhiannon told us the spirits had chosen you. You are the one they will work through. You are the one who will change the world. If you die, that change dies, too. You are no longer responsible for just your own life. You never were.”
Tenn wanted to punch him. He wanted to shut Devon up for saying all the things he’d been trying to ignore since the very beginning. The idea that he was different. Important. The sheer, crippling weight that he had the world riding on his shoulders. He knew without a doubt that, if he’d been a Fire mage, he would have exploded. Instead, Water filled him with doubt. What if you fail?
Tenn looked toward the compound and tried not to sink to his knees.
“Do you have a better idea?” he asked.
Silence.
“I’m doing this,” Tenn continued. “With or without your help. I’m saving Jarrett. And then I’ll save anyone else in there. Why else were we sent on this mission if not to wipe out the Howls? Well, here’s our chance to start. Leanna runs the Howls in America. We take her down, we’re one step closer to freedom.”
Dreya sighed. She looked at Devon, who looked both angry and bewildered.
“Dawn, then,” she finally said. “If we do not hear from you, we will attack at dawn.” She fingered her wrist, the spot where he had marked her with the tracking rune. “We will watch out for you. But come back to us before then.”
Tenn nodded. “I will.”
He scratched the last of the runes into the ground and watched his only friends wink out of sight.