The creature dragged her with it as it morphed and bellowed and squeezed into the rent earth. The halfling couldn’t release her hold on the black stone, and she didn’t have to.
The air in front of her burst with crackling silver light and Corian’s extended claws came down on the tendril around her ankle in a blur. Dark ooze spurted from the severed limb before the creature slid down, down, down into the darkness.
“Damnit! What the hell were you thinking?” Corian grabbed her under the arms and pulled her away from the edge of the crevasse. “This isn’t another training session, by the way.”
“I know.” When she got back to her feet, Cheyenne brushed him off and reached for the glistening black spires of the portal ridge again. “I got it.”
“You can’t just play around with this until something sticks,” he shouted. “We don’t even know—”
Black sludge sprayed from the open crevasse like a geyser, and Cheyenne threw up a shield around them both before it rained down from the sky. “You wanna wait around to find out what else is down there?”
Corian’s silver eyes darted to her face, then he snarled and stepped back.
The halfling lowered the shield when it was safe and reached out for the black pillars again, searching with her magic. Might work as a barred door, at least for a little while.
When her magic found the energy in all that frigid, searing stone, she pulled on it again and roared with the force of her magic coursing through her. The jagged stone spires surrounding the massive crack in the earth shuddered and broke almost as one at the base. Rock crashed against rock, drowning out every other sound in the clearing as the spires toppled against each other, rolling and bouncing and turning into a latticework of fallen stone. Huge plumes of black dust and brown dirt sprayed up in a cloud around them, and after the last smaller pebbles had finished bouncing down on top of the fallen portal ridge, the clearing fell silent.
The wall of pitch-black magic stayed where it was, reaching up into the sky along the length of the jutting ridge of stone. Then it flickered once or twice and let go of the darkness.
Sunshine slowly filtered back into the clearing, and Cheyenne stumbled sideways before dropping into a crouch.
“Hey.” Corian bent to put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’m fine,” she wheezed. “Just give me a minute.”
The Nightstalker removed his hand and stepped back, staring at the destruction across the portal. His lips twitched on his feline face before finally curling into a smirk. “That was definitely not what I expected, either.”
Chapter Seventy-Three
When the wave of dizziness subsided, Cheyenne rose slowly to her feet and studied the fallen pillars lying over the crevasse of the newest Border portal. A stream of cold air rose from the gaping split in the ground beneath the broken black spires, but nothing else stirred.
“Probably just a temporary thing, huh?”
Corian threw his head back and roared with laughter.
She turned toward him and raised an eyebrow. “It’s not that funny.”
“Not tha…” Another laugh burst out of him before he pulled himself together and cleared his throat. “No, Cheyenne. This issue in front of us isn’t a laughing matter, I’ll give you that. But you? You never cease to amaze me.”
“Thanks. I think.” The halfling headed toward the open part of the clearing and sucked in a sharp breath. She glanced down at her ankle and the puncture marks through the fabric of her pants. “That’s not good.”
“We’ll take a look at that later, kid.” Corian’s smile had faded, but his blasé glance at her wounded leg made her feel a little better.
“What the hell did I just watch?” Byrd shouted as he raced toward them.
Lumil flung a glob of black goo off her fist and joined him, cursing in O’gúleesh. “That was much worse than any crossing I’ve made. I’d make them all again at the same time if it meant I never had to deal with this shit again.”
Behind Corian, Persh’al flicked out his hand, and the green whip of his magic disappeared. “I tell you what, halfling. You sure as shit didn’t get that from L’zar.”
“Look at you with your massive insights into the obvious.” Byrd thumped his palm against his forehead and shook his head.
Cheyenne shook out her hands, the chains clinking against her wrists, and let out a quick, heavy breath. “Didn’t get what from him?”
“All that.” The troll waved his hand over the broken spires crushed against each other, then nodded at the mound of natural dirt and earth still jutting up toward the portal ridge where she’d raised it. “That’s some next-level drow shit.”
“And who made you the expert on that?” Lumil asked, folding her arms.
Persh’al blinked at her and gestured toward the destruction across the border ridge. “We’ve all seen enough drow magic to know that’s not usually in the bag of tricks. Unless you’ve seen that before and haven’t gotten around to telling us the story fifty million times already.”
The goblin woman smirked and tilted her head, her flop of yellow hair spilling down over one eye. “No. That was pretty damn impressive.”
When Lumil nodded at Cheyenne, the halfling just nodded back.
“So, now what?” Byrd asked.
Corian scratched the side of his fur-covered face and shook his head. “This thing seems pretty blocked off. For now. And we still don’t know if any of this happened on its own or if someone’s working double-time to open the portal from Ambar’ogúl.”
Persh’al stared at the black rift in the earth, barely showing between the toppled pillars. “You really think she has that kinda firepower over there?”
The clearing fell silent as the O’gúleesh magicals exchanged
