The darkness recoiled from my touch, and the forked tongues that had extended toward my friends retreated until they were once again part of its wildly spinning body. The vortex churned the air into a roiling black maw centered above my head. The primal aspects that filled my aura obscured the dire threat but did nothing to muffle its screaming as it dropped on me like an avalanche of nightmares.
“Jace!” Clem screamed, and then I was gone.
The world broke apart in chaotic streams of sacred energy and tattered aspects. The endless black stripped my aura bare and drained the jinsei from my breaking core. The tornado pinned my arms to my sides with bands of pure force and carried my struggling form far beyond the arena’s boundaries. The air grew thin and foul. Every breath filled my nostrils with the stink of burning metal and left my lungs aching for more oxygen.
Despite the lack of clean air, I clung to consciousness. As long as I was awake, I had a chance, even if a slim one, to fight.
I couldn’t give that up.
After what felt like an eternity, the nightmare tornado spat me out. I bounced across a glossy black plain like a rock skipped across a lake’s still surface. Every impact jarred me to the bone and rattled my brain in my skull. I couldn’t tell the difference between the ebony sky and the surface beneath me as I tumbled. My hands scrabbled at the impossibly smooth ground, but even my disciple-level core didn’t give me the strength I needed to stop myself.
And then a giant stomped on my chest with a heavy boot and pinned me to the ground. The creature towered over me, its face lost in the shadows of its crimson cowl. The pressure on my ribs increased, as if the giant had shifted its weight to squash me like a bug. Then, it nodded its head and walked away.
I scrambled to my feet before the tornado could send me sliding again or another monster showed up to put an end to my torment. Pain radiated from my body’s countless contusions and other minor wounds, and I ignored them all. The agony in my core, though, wasn’t so easy to deny. Every breath became a tortured gasp, and every touch of jinsei against my center was a splash of acid.
“You’ve really done it now,” I groaned.
“Jace Warin?” A familiar voice called from behind me, and I hobbled around to face it.
The dragon who’d spoken to me before the challenge stood a few feet away. Blood streaked her face, and her robes were tattered. The skin that peeked through the torn fabric was crisscrossed by deep scratches, and she held one arm across her abdomen. She looked every bit as terrible as I felt.
“Yeah.” I held both hands up, palms toward her. “Truce. I don’t think either one of us is in any condition for a fight.”
“Agreed.” Her pronunciation was strange, as if every word had extra syllables. “I have no idea where we are.”
“Same.” Satisfied she wouldn’t try to claw my throat out, I turned in a slow circle to look for anything that might shed some light on what had happened to us. The obsidian ground was uninterrupted for miles in every direction, and the dark sky didn’t hold even a single star. The only thing, other than the dragon, that I could see was the lone figure of the giant, who had nearly vanished over the horizon. “That guy’s going somewhere. Might as well see where it is.”
That conversation left me gasping for air, and my unlikely companion struggled for breath, too. The painfully dry and thin air reeked of burned metal, and it was cold in my nose and lungs. Wherever this place was, it wasn’t built for humans. Or dragons, apparently.
“Agreed.” She shivered and hugged herself against the cold air. “I am Trulissinangoth.”
“Nice to meet you. Here, take this.” I ripped a wide strip from the bottom of my robe and tossed the scorched black material to her. “It’s not much, but it’ll help keep the chill off.”
“Thank you.” Trulissinangoth snatched the long scrap out of the air and wrapped it around her shoulders.
We headed after the giant without another word. We didn’t have the breath to spare for conversation, though dozens of questions whirled through my thoughts. There was so much I wanted to ask Trulissinangoth, and I was sure she felt the same. We came from very different worlds and had both been thrust into an age-old conflict that I, at least, didn’t want or understand. When we got out of here, I promised myself, she and I would have a nice, long talk.
If we got out of here.
We walked in silence until the giant’s form became a hazy shadow. Every time I blinked, I was afraid that he’d move out of sight, leaving us alone on a featureless plain of endless night.
“There,” the dragon gasped. “Do you see the light?”
“No.” Her eyes must have been much sharper than mine.
“This way.” Her strides grew longer and her pace quickened. Trulissinangoth’s reserves of energy surprised me, and I struggled to keep up with her.
If she wanted to ditch me on the obsidian field, this was her chance. My channels were drained of jinsei, and even the thought of pulling in more sacred energy filled my core with a ball of spiky pain. I’d have to gut this out with willpower and sheer stubbornness.
The ground rose beneath our feet, and the giant finally vanished as it crested the ridge we were walking toward. The light had grown bright enough for me to see. Its silvery radiance fell from the sky, and I chased it up
