“Any time now,” Heidel shouted over the wind.
“I’m trying,” I yelled back.
“Try harder!”
I pressed my hand firmly against the portal’s surface. As the wind tore through the room, I gathered the courage to speak the spell word aloud.
“Dalgotha.”
The room began rumbling. A crack split the portal’s surface. It widened, making large rocks fall from the ceiling and crash to the ground behind us.
“Step through the opening,” Silvestra shouted.
I inched toward the gap as it widened, but the wind knocked me back. Rolf made it through first, then Heidel, Grace, and Brodnik. Kull took my hand and pulled me toward the opening.
We stepped through the portal.
I awoke with sand in my mouth. No, not sand. Something cold. Snow? As my eyes opened, I gazed at a deep purple sky overhead and a band of glowing stars stretching from one end of the horizon to the other. I spat the sandy stuff out of my mouth, realizing I lay on a ground covered in cold, icy beads the size of sand grains.
My muscles protested as I raised to a sitting position. The others lay scattered around me. Everyone looked dazed as we stared around our new surroundings. Kull lay not far from me so I crawled toward him.
Dizziness made it hard for me to see straight, so I steadied myself and took several deep breaths before I reached his side. He lay with his eyes opened, staring blankly overhead. I gently shook his shoulder, and he focused on me.
“You all right?” I asked.
“I’m alive.”
Heidel came toward us. “It looks like we all made it through.”
After getting to my feet, I located my pack and the staff, and I picked them up.
The others stood, and we scanned the landscape. A mountain range rose over the horizon. Other than that, I saw no other landmarks. The air wasn’t as cold as it should have been for ice to form on the ground, which made me wonder how the tiny pebbles managed to stay frozen. As I stared at the strange purple sky, I realized what I assumed were a band of stars might be something else.
“Is that… the moon?” I asked.
Near the horizon, what appeared to be a large chunk of the moon glowed in the sky, but the rest of it had been broken into pieces so small they looked like bright stars glowing in a band that crossed from one end of the sky to the other.
“Yes,” Brodnik said. “What happened to it?”
“No idea,” I answered.
“What do you know of this world, Olive?” Rolf asked.
“Not much. In the vision I saw, I got the impression that it was damaged somehow. I also know there are unfriendly creatures here, and we’ll most likely run into the Regaymor at some point.”
Brodnik wrinkled his nose. “Regaymor?”
“You remember those, don’t you?” Kull said, finally getting to his feet. “Big, scary phantoms with long, wispy cloaks. Impossible to kill.”
“Then we should avoid them if at all possible,” Heidel said. “Where do we go from here?”
Glancing at the staff, I tried to figure out how the thing was supposed to lead us to Lucretian when it occurred to me that I had no idea how to use it. “To be honest, I’m not really sure.”
Grace whined as she sniffed the ground. She trotted ahead of us, stopped, then headed straight for the mountains.
“Should we follow the beast?” Brodnik asked.
“The mountains would be the best place to find shelter,” Kull said.
“We can’t let her go alone,” Heidel said.
“Fine,” I answered. “We’ll go to the mountains. In the meantime, I’ll try to figure out how to use this staff.”
The five of us started across the desert. There were no trees or plants of any kind, no sounds except for our footsteps shifting over the icy sand. The air was thin. As we walked, catching my breath became more difficult.
The sun rose above the horizon, changing the sky from a deep purple to lilac. Although there were no clouds, the sky remained hazy, and the moon remnants were still visible. A stiff wind whipped my cloak around my legs.
“How does anything survive in this place?” Brodnik asked, breaking up the tense silence that had fallen over us.
“Not very well,” I answered.
When the sun rose higher, we reached an area where large boulders lay haphazardly over the ground. Resting on the rocks, we ate a quick lunch of dried fruit and a strange dried meat that tasted stringy and was difficult to chew, bread, and a few pieces of cheese. I’d been smart this time and smuggled a few granola bars with me. I shared, of course. I wasn’t totally selfish.
“It tastes like stale marshmeal,” Rolf said, staring at his half-eaten granola bar.
“At least it’s better than that cissikin she roasted in the pixie swamps,” Brodnik said. “She almost killed us with that charred rodent. Do you remember?”
“Yes!” Rolf answered a little too cheerfully, “I remember that one. It was horrible!”
Brodnik grunted. “Hard to forget.”
“But maybe we should forget about it, right?” I asked. “I think we’d be better off if we just forgot about it.”
“I like it,” Heidel said, interrupting us as she chewed a bite of the granola bar. “It’s better than those dried leathers you brought, Rolf.”
He squared his shoulders. “I’ll have you know that Bryn made those.”
“Did she?” Heidel smirked.
“Yes, she did.”
“I’ll keep that in mind next time you invite me over for a meal.”
“Bryn is an excellent cook,” Rolf said.
“I’m sure she is,” Kull interjected.
“You see? Cousin Kull agrees with me.”
Heidel tossed her half-eaten piece of jerky to Grace. “That’s one person.”
“Let’s get moving,” Kull said as he stared out over the mountains. His eyes grew pensive as the wind shifted. The fog obscuring the sky grew thicker, making the sun look like a floating pink orb.
After replacing the rations in our packs, we continued through the desert. As the mist descended, the air grew chillier. Grace growled and trotted ahead, but I couldn’t
