Chapter Fourteen
Cheyenne leaped away from a branching crack splitting off from the main fissure. Her activator pulled up a huge, blinking yellow arrow. Right around the corner. That’s where we can put it back.
A shrill scream came from her right, and she skidded to a stop to see a group of magicals running out of an alley toward her, their eyes wide with terror. One of the buildings behind them started to sink, crumbling in on itself as the ground buckled beneath it. Cheyenne scanned the stats the activator gave her and nodded. I can make it.
“Stop!” L’zar grabbed her wrist again and jerked her back.
Cheyenne whirled and slammed her fist into his face, powering it with a sphere of crackling black energy balled in her hand. L’zar grunted and staggered backward, blinking against the daze as she shook out her hand. “Either help me or get the fuck out of here, but don’t try to stop me again.”
“Wait!”
She darted toward the slowly collapsing alley where the screaming magicals still spilled out of the space between buildings. “Over here!” She waved them toward her, and the frightened O’gúleesh headed her way without a second thought. “How many more are in there?”
“I don’t know.” The troll she asked barreled past her as he answered, looking over his shoulder.
The buildings crashed against another, spewing sparks and shrieks as metal ripped into metal. Cheyenne ran toward the collapsing alley and threw up a shield of dark, shimmering drow light. The force of the top half of the building toppling onto her shield made her cry out in an effort to keep it up. Marching closer, she raised her hands above her head and sank to her knees when more of the building toppled onto her broad shield. A little heavier than that construction site. No problem.
O’gúleesh raced past her, dragging each other along. A wide-eyed goblin dropped his tankard on the ground, and Cheyenne snarled at him when he stopped to pick it up. “Go!”
He jumped and scurried around her. With a deep breath, Cheyenne slipped into drow speed and released the shield. As soon as she got to her feet, L’zar barreled into her, and they both went flying away from the collapsing building and the spray of unleashed magic spewing through the closing alley faster than either drow could move.
Grunting, Cheyenne rolled across the cracked metal and pushed herself to her feet.
“Are you okay?” L’zar scanned her as he approached.
“So you decided to help. I’m fine.”
“We need to go.”
“Not yet.” She spun and scanned the avenue for the source of the bright yellow arrow in her vision. “I can turn all this off. Probably temporarily, but it’s something.”
“Cheyenne, I can’t risk it.”
“You don’t get to decide for me!” She stalked toward the yellow arrow blinking in her vision, ignoring his growl of disapproval.
“You’re making this incredibly difficult.”
“No, that would be you.”
The ground bucked beneath them again, but she managed to keep her balance this time. When she finally reached the blinking yellow arrow, the activator displayed brand new lines of code and overlapping diagrams along the wall of a short, squat building another block off the main avenue. She studied the data and pressed her hand to the wall.
“We don’t have time for you to play around with this shit,” L’zar snarled. Right on cue, another explosion came from the center of the city.
“Shut up.” Cheyenne selected the best of the activator’s next presented options, and with a swipe of her finger against the wall, the O’gúl version of a breaker box opened in a recessed square in the wall. She bent over and reached inside as far as she could, feeling for the lever the wall should have created on its own under her command.
“What are you doing?” L’zar ran his hand over his head and looked between her and the mushrooming cloud of volatile magic spewing toward the top of the dome-shaped shield.
She ignored him and finally found the lever, giving it a quick jerk as she poked the illuminated symbols on the wall. A loud, pressurized hiss filled the avenue. When she looked up, she saw the muted gray dome above Hangivol shimmer, flicker, and disappear. The released magical cloud caught inside burst from the top of the city and rose straight into the sky like a beacon.
Metal and earth groaned around them, and Cheyenne removed her hand from the hole in the wall before it sealed itself.
L’zar’s mouth popped open as he stared at the clear sky above them. “Did you just do that?”
“That and other things, yeah.”
“How? You know what, never mind. Let’s go.”
“Wait.” Cheyenne glared at him as she stalked down the block again and entered the main avenue. The spewing magical light dimmed beneath the giant crack in the ground, then tiny metal squares folded and unfolded themselves along the fissure, drawing the floor slowly back together and sealing the crevasse in less than a minute.
The ground stopped trembling, and a deep groan rose from beneath the city before everything was still and quiet again, except for the column of magic still spewing from the center of Hangivol into the sky.
Cheyenne gestured toward the mended ground. “Told you.”
“Incredible.” L’zar chuckled, slowly shaking his head. “You instinctively knew how to do whatever that was?”
“This activator is no joke.” With a flick of her finger, she dimmed the scrolling data feeds on every metal surface so they wouldn’t distract her. Better keep it on just in case, though. “What idiot thought keeping a magical shield around a city filled with brewing magic was a good idea?”
He spread his arms. “Again, nearly every bad choice in this place can be traced back to Ba’rael. That shield was one of the first things to go up when she started making changes.”
“It was part of the damn problem. Those fellfire pits outside the city. No one would be working those today, right?”
“Not a chance. No one’s working.”
“Good, ‘cause I just
