Stormlands ( Book 2 of the Torrent Skies Saga)

Chapter Twenty-One: Aftermath

Katerin peeled her eyes open, and gasped in a staggeringly painful breath. She was lying on her back, covered in ash and still burning plant matter. She was no longer near the center of the summoning circle, but instead she had been tossed several feet away.

She pushed herself up with one hand, ignoring a spike of pain in her wrist that would've brought her to tears if not for the shock that numbed her senses. She heard the sounds of her companions, and glanced around the clearing to see them shuffling to their feet, coughing, and sporting too many injuries to name. She pushed herself to her knees, and scanned the ground. "Jon!" she coughed. For a moment she was shocked by the hoarseness of her own voice, and the pain it caused her.

"I'm here," he said, gasping where he lay, and making no move to stand.

Katerin let out a quiet sigh, thankful she had used the spell she had when the fight began. Anything less than a magical dampening of the fire would have left them all as nothing more than ash. She scanned across the faces of her companions as she stood. Fykes was wiping blackened ash from his face, favoring one leg.

Arjiah was holding her knees and breathing heavily. Trunk was shaking where he sat, staff clattering on the stones as it lay across his lap.

Jon heaved himself up, and stared in bewilderment at the pistol in his hands.

Roahn was kneeling over something, her hammer discarded in the ash as she spoke. It took Katerin a moment to register the words, and as soon as she did, her feet were carrying her without her command.

"Come on, kid, wake up," Roahn said, her voice harsh and echoing through Katerin's head like a nightmare.

Katerin tripped and skidded to Roahn's side. Beneath Roahn's hands, Brazen lay in the dirt, unmoving. Blackened ash covered him and his bodies strange composition was cracked like tile, and hot to the touch. "Arjiah!" Katerin called, her voice breaking away to nothing.

Roahn looked at her with wide eyes. "I tried to heal him. It—" She snapped her mouth shut, only to open it again.

"Can't affect him," Katerin said, her words a whisper. Brazen, it's okay. You just rest. She laid her hand on his chest, doing her best to ignore the heat and the blue blood-like fluid that mixed with ash and stained her skin. She whispered the words to a spell, pouring every ounce of energy she could into it, and the cracks across him sealed, but deep blackened lines like scars still shone through, and marred his strange features. I need you to answer me, as soon as you can.

Minutes wore on, as she talked to him, and called out to him in her thoughts. Eventually, she realized she found no trace of the link they shared. There was only a cold nothingness in its place.

She cast the spell to mend him again, though it did nothing to remove the black scars, and he never replied. The link was gone. Not distant, or weakened. Gone. Despite the lingering heat in the air, Katerin felt a chill that drove through her bones. She did not know how long she sat there, staring at him. Trying every few seconds to find him in her thoughts, his name became a chant, and one that grew increasingly flustered.

Eventually she felt a warm hand on her shoulder, something that pierced through the cold.

"Katerin," Fykes said, "I'm so sorry."

"No," she whispered. "Don't you dare say it." Her eyes snapped up to his, dark and brimmed with tears.

"Katerin. You can't sit out here forever," he said, his sadness reflected in his eyes.

"I have to stay with him," she said. She tore her gaze from Fykes' face, to look past him and blink back fresh tears. It took her entire will to resist falling into his shoulder and weeping.