“Almost there,” Eric said, his eyes bright with fire aspects. “Just a little more.”
“You got this,” I groaned, then staggered forward, my body in open rebellion against the command from my mind. Time kept hitching and jerking around me, making it difficult to stay on my feet.
Clem and Abi rushed to my side and caught me before I hit the cavern’s floor. My legs wouldn’t hold me up, and my head felt like someone had spun me around inside a centrifuge a few thousand times. I was dizzy and my vision was a blurred mess. At least I could hear again.
“Is he okay?” Clem asked. “He looks terrible.”
“Thanks,” I groaned. “Just a little dizzy. You guys were frozen, and—”
Abi laughed and helped me back to my feet. He steadied me when my legs threatened to go out from under me again, but after a few seconds I was okay to stand on my own.
“We weren’t the frozen ones,” he said. “You were like a statue. We all had a vision of—”
“It’s open!” Eric shouted. Then, in a more subdued voice, “This does not look like a heart.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “What’s in the coffin?”
“See for yourself.” Eric stepped aside and let me look in the coffin.
The crude stone container was almost empty. A small pile of ash lay within its scratched walls. There was no body. No bones. Not even a burial shroud.
“Did he cremate himself?” Clem wondered.
“Not enough ash,” Abi said. “That looks like what’s left after burning a few sticks of incense.”
We’d come all this way, only to come up empty. I cursed, my breath gusting out to stir the ashes inside the coffin. Something glinted beneath the grime. My fingers brushed aside the last of the ash, revealing a pair of glassy shards. One glossy blue, the other emerald green.
“They broke it,” I said, my throat tight with anger and worry. “Someone broke the Heart of Eternity.”
Clem’s hand tightened on my arm. Her eyes were sharp and bright, hope still burning in them. “We’ve still got my lead. Maybe there’s more than one Heart.”
I pawed through the ashes, looking for anything else left behind. But all my questing fingers found was a series of angular scratches that looked like they’d been hacked into the bottom of the coffin with a chisel and hammer.
“Is that writing?” Abi asked. “It looks like some sort of runes.”
Now that he said it, I thought Abi might be right. The scratches were too regular to be random. There was a pattern to them.
“Clem, do you have some paper and a pencil?” I asked, and we all chuckled. “I knew you would. Can you make a rubbing of those marks? I think it’s important.”
“On it,” she said, appearing glad to be doing something, anything, useful. She leaned over the edge of the coffin and went to work.
“Anyone home?” A woman’s harsh laugh followed the echoes of the words through the cavern.
It didn’t sound anything like Maps. This had to be the enemy she’d warned me about.
“We have to go,” Abi said. “There’s nothing more for us to do here.”
“No,” I said. “If the writing in the coffin is important, we can’t let it fall into anyone else’s hands. We have to stop whoever that is.”
“Jace, you’re in no condition to fight,” Clem protested as she furiously dragged the pencil back and forth across the paper. “Abi, get us out of here.”
Before I could respond to that, footsteps echoed through the cavern. A small group of men and women wearing ragged, stained robes strode into view, weapons cradled in their arms.
“Oh, that’s too bad,” the woman at the front of the group said. “I was hoping it would just be the chaos core. I was so looking forward to testing myself against you.”
She inclined her head toward us and barked an order.
“Kill them all.”
The Burning
ERIC LAUNCHED ONE OF his burning bolts at the closest gunman before any of us could react, forcing the thug to drop to the floor to avoid immolation. Clem stuffed her paper into her robes, then whipped her body around in a spinning kick that unleashed a wall of air that blasted across the cavern and transformed the dust underfoot into a blinding cloud. Abi strode forward, planted his feet, and summoned a wall of pure force between us and our enemies.
“We don’t have much time,” he said in a low voice. “The shield will hold for a few seconds, even against gunfire, but after that, we are in a lot of trouble.”
I nodded, too busy cycling my breathing to gather my strength.
“I have an idea,” Clem said. “Eric, can you do that pew pew laser trick again?”
“It’s not a laser,” Eric said, “but yeah, I’ll do it.”
“As soon as you see the bad guys, let it fly,” Clem said.
The wall of dust she’d kicked up faded far more quickly than I’d hoped. Our enemies unleashed a torrent of bullets that splattered against our defenses and left scabs of smoking lead stuck to the shield.
“Here goes nothing,” Eric said.
He unleashed another bolt of burning air, and Clem thrust her right arm out in front of her, index and ring fingers raised, the other digits curled into her palm. A cone of wind exploded away from her, caught Eric’s attack, and spun it wildly. Their combined techniques created a roaring funnel of flame that plowed into our enemies.
Two of the gunners screamed and threw themselves to the ground. Their filthy robes were ablaze, and they rolled in the dust in a desperate attempt to extinguish the flames. The other three members of their group weren’t set alight, but the wash of fiery air drove them back toward the cavern’s mouth.
“We have to finish them,” I barked. My core was far from full, but there was no time for hesitation.
