cascade | kotlc

EVERBLAZE

 "What are you waiting for?" Keefe shouted over the howling wind and the roaring sea. "Don't tell me the great Sophie Foster is afraid."

June snorted. "Hurry up! They told us to come immediately!"

"I'm just trying to ceoncentrate!" Sophie shouted back, wishing her voice didn't sound so shaky.

Not that she could fool them.

As an Empath, Keefe could feel the terror coursing through her veins like a herd of stampeding mastodons. And June -- well, June was her sister. There was no way she could fool the brilliant, brilliant girl.

"You should be afraid," Sandor told her in his strange, squeaky voice. He placed a gray gobliny hand on Sophie's shoulder and pulled her back from the edge of the cliff. "There has to be a safer way to teleport."

"There isn't."

"There probably is, then," June said. "I wonder, if I just flew you up fast enough..."

She dismissed the thought. "Won't work, doesn't work, it's falling, trust Silveny." She could teleport better than light leaping, and it was -- unfortunately -- more reliable. She had faded too many times, even with two nexuses, which were meant to keep her particles together.

"Want me to push you?" Keefe offered, laughing as Sophie jerked away from him. "Come on, it'll be fun, for me at least."

June rolled her eyes. "How about we all jump off at the same time? I guarantee Keefe will shriek like a little girl when we jump off."

"Like you won't."

"When have I ever screamed when I jumped off a cliff? Actually, scratch that, when have I ever screamed because I was afraid?"

"Oh, you definitely have, you just don't show it."

She pulled out Gistensteel. "What was that?"

"Nothing, your highness."

Sophie laughed. It was quite entertaining how Keefe would visibly flinch whenever June pulled out her blade.

Dex coughed. "And he gets to go with you today."

"Uh, more like she gets to go with me," Keefe corrected, flashing his trademark smirk. "Go on, tell Dex who the Council contacted first."

June flicked the hilt and Glistensteel expanded into a dagger.

"You," he amended. "June. The Council contacted June first."

"This is actually hilarious," Dex said.

Apparently Silveny was having some sort of trouble at her new home in the elve's special animal preserve. Since all three of them each had a connection with the precious alicorn, the Council had asked all of them to head to the Sanctuary immediately.

The Councillors had to be pretty concerned if they were relying on Keefe. She wondered why they couldn't've just sent her sister to finish the job, with her Gusting powers and increased strength from their last journey.

"I'm sorry, Dex," Sophie said. "You know I'd bring you if I could."

Dex smiled, but not enough to show his dimples as he went back to playing with the lock she'd asked him to open. Thanks to all their crazy stunts they'd pulled off in the past year or so, Grady and Edaline had updated the lock to be bigger than his head, stuffed with contraptions and key-locks and combination-locks and DNA-locks of every kind. It, of course, was taking Dex forever to open, since he had to destroy part of it to even access the core. June helped him.