“What are you saying, Nevis?”
“You will address me as ‘Your Grace’, Cason. I’m not your chum. I’m prince of the Dhaxanians and ruler over Athelathan. Your father treats me with respect, and I expect the same from his sons.”
The air thickened around us. I could almost feel Nevis’s anger about to burst out. I didn’t want to be in the way of that. Cason had been reckless and overconfident and was clearly a newbie and ignorant tool where diplomacy was concerned. For the time being, Shaytan considered Nevis useful, and, as evidenced by our entrapment, for good reason. The daemon king didn’t strike me as a fool. His underachieving son, however, was seething with frustration. He probably had all kinds of dreams about wearing the king’s crown.
“Hand over the prisoners, Nevis. You don’t scare me.” Cason held his head high. Wrong answer, buddy.
Nevis cocked his head to one side and breathed an audible sigh. Cason stilled, his red eyes nearly popping out of their orbits as he looked down. Crystal clear frost spread from Nevis’s bare feet and covered Cason’s boots, tightening around his muscular calves. He couldn’t move.
“I don’t need to scare you,” Nevis replied, briefly glancing at the petrified daemons behind Cason. They didn’t seem eager to attack. Not that I could blame them. “You know what? It just dawned on me,” he added, peculiarly serene. “I never gave my guests the opportunity to defend themselves.”
He walked over to Avril and touched the frost encasing her. It all came off cleanly and shattered on the ground in millions of icy shards.
The color was drained from Cason’s face. “What are you doing? Are you crazy?!” he growled, struggling against his leg restraints. Unable to do anything, he barked orders at his daemons. “Don’t just stand there! Stop him!”
The daemon soldiers hesitantly looked at each other for a few seconds, then moved toward Nevis, drawing their rapiers and snarling ferociously. Nevis waved his arm once, in a graceful, clockwise motion, and the frost extending from beneath his bare feet spread out fast, swallowing the daemons whole.
Before the others could spill into the chamber from the tunnel, Nevis waved his hand again and covered the tunnel entrance in a thick, unbreakable layer of ice. We were all speechless, staring at the daemons. The frozen dozen were suffocating and would soon die, while the others roared and desperately tried to chip away at the ice wall with their swords.
“You bast—” Cason tried to speak, but the Dhaxanian prince’s frost quickly covered him up to the nose. The daemon was now experiencing the same level of discomfort as the rest of us, and that gave me unparalleled satisfaction.
I shifted my focus back to Avril, who was standing there, struggling to make sense of what was going on. “What… What’s happening?” she murmured.
Nevis scoffed, then touched my frosted casing. It disintegrated, releasing me. I wobbled, my knees a little weak, but I was going to be okay. It felt as though I could breathe again. I really didn’t like imprisonment of any kind. The Dhaxanian prince proceeded to free Scarlett, Patrik, and Hundurr. The pit wolf growled at him, baring his enormous fangs, but Nevis raised his index finger at the beast, narrowing his eyes.
“Don’t be stupid,” he said, then looked at Avril. Hundurr took a couple of steps back, whimpering like a scared pup.
He’d probably been waiting all day to chomp on the guy. Unfortunately, Nevis had just turned from enemy to… what, exactly, I wasn’t yet sure. What I knew for a fact was that we couldn’t attack him. He’d just given us our freedom back.
Was he our friend now? Cason had insulted him to the point where Nevis had seen a bigger benefit in releasing us, but the move was definitely going to jeopardize his alliance with Shaytan. Was he going to stop Cason from coming after us altogether, or was this simply going to be a much-needed head start?
I was fine with whatever came next. We could move again. It was all we needed.
Avril
It felt strange to watch everything crumble before my very eyes, to then have hope restored in the flicker of a second. Whether Nevis had come back with the intention of releasing us or had decided to do so after Cason insulted him, it didn’t really matter at this point. We were free, and the daemons that had come for us weren’t.
In fact, some of them were dying a slow and agonizing death, as the frost prevented them from breathing. They were going to suffocate soon—not that I felt sorry for them. Cason was helpless, his mouth covered and pure hatred blaring through his fiery red gaze.
“Thank you,” I breathed, looking at Nevis.
“I’m not comfortable with this decision just yet, so, please, do not thank me,” Nevis replied.
“Nevertheless, thank you. We won’t forget this. I won’t forget this,” I said, giving him a weak smile.
He smirked, crossing his arms. I had a feeling I’d actually gotten through to him, and that, deep down, he wasn’t as cold and heartless as he pretended to be. His posture reminded me of Heron when someone was kind to him. He was shy, and probably all soft and gooey on the inside.
“What’s going to happen to them?” Heron asked, nodding at the daemons as he came to stand next to me. His hand settled discreetly on the small of my back. It was enough to reassure me that what was happening was all too real.
Nevis groaned, rolling his eyes, then started rubbing the back of his neck. He hadn’t thought this through, it seemed. “I don’t know,” he muttered. “I’ll have to let them go. I can’t deal with Shaytan’s wrath right now, which is exactly what I’ll have to do if I kill this imbecile,” he added, pointing at Cason.
“What will happen once we’re gone?” I asked, suddenly finding myself worried about Nevis and the Dhaxanians. Nevis was quick to notice.
“You’re concerned for my wellbeing?” he replied, raising an eyebrow. His blue eyes shimmered with amusement.
“You’ve proven yourself a friend of GASP. You bet your ass I’m worried,” I shot back.
“We’ll be fine here. Cason will have to find another way to catch you. I doubt Shaytan will rush to attack me. Capturing his enemies was never part of our agreement, anyway. Our alliance was always about staying out of each other’s territory. Besides, he’s stretched too thin right now, after what happened in Infernis,” Nevis said, then produced a small snowflake-shaped pendant in the palm of his hand, and offered it to me. “Take this.”
I put my hand out, and experienced chills as the frosted snowflake touched my skin. It didn’t melt, and it came with a fine, equally frozen chain.
“What is it?” I asked, unable to take my eyes off it.
“Consider it a token of friendship,” he replied. “Cast it into the northern wind when you need my help. It will find me and bring me to you. Nothing travels faster than the winds of the north, Avril. It only works once, so make sure you call me out for a good reason. I will not take my Dhaxanians out of Athelathan otherwise. Don’t make me regret this.”
I was speechless. Not only had he set us free, he’d also offered his support in our fight for freedom. “I… I don’t know what to say,” I breathed, humbled and, at the same time, grateful that my pleas had actually paid off.
“You’ve said more than enough.” Nevis smiled, then glanced at the others in my team. “I took your words seriously. I just needed a few minutes to make a decision. Which is why it irked me to come back and find the Druid trying to get you out,” he added, narrowing his eyes at Patrik, who responded with a shrug. “Nevertheless, I do understand your reaction. Daemons were coming for you, after all.”
I nodded. “You’ve made the right choice, Your Grace,” I said. “You’re a friend of GASP now, and you and your people will be treated as such. You have my word.”
“I’m taking a huge risk with you, Avril. I need you to prove yourself to me. Make me feel better about my choice,” Nevis replied. I had a bad feeling about this.
“What do you mean?”
“I can’t make this too easy for you. I need to see you’re capable of tackling a
throng of daemons. Otherwise I’ll be forced to assume that your Infernis stunt was simply dumb luck. I can’t sour my relationship with Shaytan for a bunch of weaklings.”
“What are you trying to say?” I replied, feeling my anger come back with a vengeance, after our earlier discussion.
Nevis smirked, then nodded at the tunnel behind us. “I’ll give you a five-minute head start. Your Imen friends are loyal, and, to my surprise, still alive, waiting for you at the base of the mountain by the western ridge. That tunnel will take you to them, though you’ll have to poke your way back to the surface at some point.”
“You have got to be kidding me.” Patrik scoffed. “You’re letting us go just so you can watch us run from daemons?”
It was Nevis’s turn to respond with a nonchalant shrug. “Get rid of the daemons, and I’ll know you are capable of seeing this task of freeing Neraka to the end. If you die before you get back to the Lagerith plains, at least I’ll be able to salvage my alliance with Shaytan. If you survive, I’ll know exactly what I’ll be fighting for.”
“Seriously, Nevis? After all this?” I replied, resting my hands on my hips.
“You have my attention already, Avril, much to your lover’s dismay. If you want my undivided loyalty, you’ll have to earn it.”
I heard Heron’s low growl, and I knew he put in a lot of effort to stifle it.
“Well, it’s not like we have a choice now, huh?” I sighed, and Nevis shook his head. “Okay. Five minutes, you say? Cool.”
I put the frosted necklace around my neck, slipping the snowflake under my combat suit. It pressed cold against my skin, but it was also strangely comforting. I then looked at my team. “Are you guys ready for a good ol’ fashioned run?”
“From daemons? Anytime,” Scarlett replied with a grin.
“Hundurr and I will stay at the back, Heron in the middle,” Patrik said. “You and Scarlett take the lead. The tunnel will take us through the underground, but Dion and Alles are above somewhere. We’ll need you to sniff them out.”
I nodded, and briefly checked that my sword and belt satchels were intact, along with my knives and the other trinkets and swamp witch artifices I had with me, including my reserve of invisibility spell and the red garnet lens. The latter was essential going forward, especially with a horde of daemons tailing us.
“Despite your… test, I can’t say this enough: thank you, Your Grace,” I said to Nevis, following up with a curt bow.
He smiled. “Please, call me Nevis.”
“Oh, first name basis now. Whoop-tee-doo!” I giggled, then moved to the front of my group with Scarlett. I gave Nevis once last glance over the shoulder. “Thank you, Nevis. We’ll see you again, soon enough.”
“Five minutes, Avril. Don’t let me down.”
I darted through the tunnel, keeping that last smirk I’d reserved for him to myself. Scarlett ran right behind me, followed by Heron, Patrik, and a particularly gleeful Hundurr. That wolf was eager to run, but I could tell from the look in his red eyes that he was equally thrilled to rip into some daemon throats.
We had five minutes to make a clean break. We were fast, and we were resourceful. Fortunately, we also had Dion and Alles waiting for us on the surface, along with the horses. Once we got back on our indigo stallions, the daemons stood zero chance of catching up with us.
Most importantly, we were running through a tunnel.
Tunnels had a tendency to collapse, if properly poked.
Scarlett
The mountain was huge. Climbing it hadn’t seemed like the feat of the century but covering the horizontal length from its center to its edges via the underground seemed to take longer with daemons on our trail. The only upside was that we were going in a straight line.
I didn’t go as fast as I could, since that would’ve meant leaving my team behind, but, after more than a day spent in that Dhaxanian ice, I relished the ability to simply sprint. The underground current brushed against my cheeks, and I welcomed each breath with newfound delight. Freedom felt so good, there was no way I’d let daemons trap me, or my friends.
Nevis kept his promise, too. Five minutes put about half a mile between us and the daemons. It was a healthy head start, but we could still hear them roaring and thundering through the tunnel after us. Cason was probably foaming at the mouth, eager to get his claws on us.
Tough luck, daddy’s boy.
“That went better than I’d expected,” Avril breathed, running in front of me.
“Yeah, I’m sure your boyfriend is pleased,” Heron shot back from behind, prompting me to chuckle. I could almost hear Patrik’s eyes rolling in his head, and I couldn’t wait to catch him alone, in a moment of peace, so I could hold him in my arms and feverishly kiss him. It was one of the thoughts that added fire to my heels as we continued to make our way through the tunnel.
“Oh, don’t be grumpy! You know where my heart is!” Avril replied. “So, I tugged a little at his and got us out of there. A ‘thank you’ would suffice.”
“Not only that, he decided to help us,” I said. “After all those hours spent in his frost, I almost lost hope.”
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. We are not dying in this place!” Avril persisted, and I loved her even more for it. Her resolve and resilience were truly out of this world. Even when everything came tumbling down and smacked us over the head, she could still find the strength to stand up and tell the universe that she wasn’t done yet.
Admittedly, I’d played a little part in this. As soon as I had made Avril aware of the fact that Nevis had a soft spot for her, she had gone straight for the feels. And she had played her cards right.
“How much longer, do you think?” Patrik asked.
I briefly stole a glance at him over my shoulder, then looked ahead, my gaze finding Avril’s.
“I think we’re close,” she said. “I’m getting an Iman scent, but it’s faint. We’re definitely on the right track. We need to keep this speed up. Otherwise our horned friends back there will catch up.”
We didn’t ease up at all. We kept running until Avril came to a sudden halt. I nearly bumped into her but managed a last-minute swerve and stopped several feet farther. “What’s wrong?” I asked.
“They’re somewhere right above us,” she said, frowning as she looked up. “But they’re not alone. I’m getting more scents.”
“Hostile?” Patrik asked, touching the tunnel walls on both sides, looking for weak spots. He used a piece of chalk from his supply belt to draw spell symbols in specific sections.
Avril shook her head. “I don’t think so. They’re also Imen. They’ve got a distinctive trace, like I’ve smelled it before.”
“Okay, cool. Where are we on the exit strategy?” Heron interjected, looking at Patrik. “I’ve had enough of the Nerakian underground to last me a lifetime.”
“Almost there,” Patrik replied, drawing a series of interconnected lines on the ground, and on the ceiling. Once he completed the first stage of his spell, he took a few steps back, and motioned to Hundurr to move as well. “Everybody stand back,” he said. “Timing is everything on this one.”
“Why? Blow the damn place up, and let’s get the hell out of dodge,” Avril chuckled.
Patrik gave us a devilish grin as the daemon roars grew louder. I could see them coming, less than two hundred yards away. Their rapiers were out, blades thirsty for our blood. As expected, Cason was leading them, his red eyes reduced to vicious slits as he set his sights on us.
“There’s no point in running back to the surface if the daemons are just going to keep coming after us,” Patrik said. “I’ve set something up to slow them down a bit, and it will probably knock their numbers back. But I need them closer.”
“Ah, man, we are seriously playing with fire here,” Heron muttered, drawing his swords.
Patrik raised an eyebrow at him, then nodded at his swords. “Put those away and get ready to jump. Once I set this spell loose, we’ll have a clear way t
o the top.”
“Ugh, babe,” I said, staring at the incoming throng of daemons. “I know you need them close for this to work, but how close is that, exactly? Because I can almost smell their breath on my face, and I’m no Avril.”
“Hold on just a little longer,” Patrik replied, then reached his hands out to the sides, his fingers touching two of the symbols he’d drawn on the walls.
We stood a couple of feet behind him, waiting. My heart was stuck in my throat. The closer the daemons got, the higher the rush. Hundurr growled, his hind muscles trembling with anticipation. My body bucked, and I held my breath for what seemed like an eternity.
“Get ready. Once the spell kicks in, it’ll disable at least fifty yards of tunnel,” Patrik warned, and I shifted my weight onto my right leg, ready to move as soon as he gave us the signal.
The daemons ran faster, their armor jingling and their boots stomping in an almost rhythmic series of thunderclaps. Cason sneered at us, his sword drawn as he led the charge. There were only twenty feet left when his sly grin faded, and he realized that something was about to go horribly wrong.
“Five. Four.” Patrik started counting, and we braced ourselves. “Three. Two… One.”
A split second later, he muttered the activation spell. Bright golden light shot out from his fingertips, spreading through the symbols like incandescent ink. Within seconds, the entire spell design lit up, shining brightly and bringing Cason to a screeching halt. His eyes widened as he figured out what came next, while his daemons bumped into him.
“Hold!” he snarled at them. “Stop!”
Too late.
One by one, the symbols that Patrik had drawn over that tunnel section snapped like fireworks. Pop. Pop. Pop.
It all came down. Cason staggered backward, horror twisting his features into a grotesque expression. “Get back! Get back! Get ba—”
Much too late. Chunks of rubble pummeled him and his daemons into the ground. The tunnel collapsed, and dust billowed toward us. The rumble sent shivers down my spine. I watched the daemons disappear behind a pile of boulders.