Through the pain and effort occupying the entirety of my focus, I became aware of three sets of heavy footsteps approaching from behind me. A small trickle of mana worked its way down my legs to snake towards the intruders and intercept them before they could interrupt my work, but the footfalls were suddenly replaced with three simultaneous thuds before I could reach them. Comforting warmth surrounded me on all sides, and I felt a gentle hand on my shoulder. “Lux.”
“Lia,” I grunted, “keep...the wagon...moving. The gate...will open.”
A rush of amber energy suffused through my shoulder and down into my core. “We’re almost there,” she whispered. “We can do it.” Lia disappeared as quickly as she had arrived, but I was filled with renewed vigor.
The spiked teeth of the gate cleared their resting places and hovered a few inches above the ground. The only thing standing between me and a life of peace is this gate. My enhancements finally passed the tipping point, and the gate was steadily moving upwards, but not fast enough; the sound of pounding hooves began to echo in my ears, and I knew there were only a few seconds left before Marin would charge out of the smoke at full speed. I just need one final push. One push with everything I have.
I gave the gate a furious tug and sent it rattling up out of my hands, clacking away until it reached the apex of its movement with its bottom rungs at my eye level. My head swam as time seemed to stop once again, and I took a centering breath. Everything I have. No holding back...no running away. I reached down to the center of the mana reserves in my core and felt the vast sea of energy that still remained there, swirling with pulsing blue light. Any unconscious barriers I had created to limit my mana flow shattered as I called the energy into the gauntlet on my right hand all at once.
Arcs of electric blue crackled along the surface of the metal as pure, raw mana suffused and overflowed from the gauntlet. The enchantment within the gauntlet consumed the energy with a voracious appetite, no doubt never having absorbed even a fraction of the power I was feeding to it. My arm burned as it channeled the massive amounts of mana, but I clenched my jaw against the pain and continued the effort. When the neon blue light had grown to a near-blinding strength, I lowered my arm, clenched my fist, and wrenched it up in a devastating uppercut.
My ears were immediately filled with an overwhelmingly powerful screech of metal on metal, and the gate shot up into the smoke overhead, out of sight. When the screeching stopped, it was replaced by the sound of cracking stone and snapping metal that shook me so violently that I fell to one knee. I turned my face up to see the damage I had done and found myself looking into Marin’s awestruck eyes as the wagon thundered by with perfect timing. Her face quickly disappeared when the wagon sped through the opened gate and onward into Lybesa.
As I staggered back to my feet, a smile spread across my face. I did it. I managed to take two shaking steps forward until I had to reach out to the wall for support; I could already feel the mana withdrawals coming on, and based on the amount of energy I had expended within a single second, I knew they would be severe. As I closed my eyes and rubbed my temple to relieve the pressure I felt in my head, the wall beneath my hand began to rumble again. I turned and stared at it without recognition, puzzling over what would be strong enough to shake the massive wall.
A rough impact between my shoulder blades derailed my train of thought and lifted me from the ground. Wind blew against my face as I accelerated forward, suspended in midair by something holding my cloak. “Need a ride?” Lia asked as she swung me onto the back of her horse.
I laughed loudly as I realized how sluggish my brain was. “Did you see—” Another thunderous crash echoed out from behind us, and I turned back to see that the gate, now crumpled and distorted, had fallen back to the earth after impacting the top of the wall. A massive crack shot out in multiple directions from the top of the archway, spanning the full height of the wall in three separate spots. I gasped loudly at the sight of the devastation. “Did I do that?” I asked, rubbing my head. I tried to circulate my remaining mana through my body to push away the fogginess I felt, but I hardly noticed the effects of my effort.
“Yes, you did,” she giggled in response to my faintly slurred speech. “We actually made it through. All of us.” I rested my chin on her shoulder and wrapped my arms around her waist to keep from falling. “We just have to cross the Maw, and we’ll never have to look at Kaldan again.”
“The Maw,” I said, squinting. “Everyone keeps talking about the Maw. What’s the Maw?”
She pointed off to her right. “That’s the Maw.” I followed the line of her finger to the edge of the road, which I finally realized was actually an elevated bridge made of the same stone as the wall. On both sides of the bridge stood two parallel mountain ranges that stretched out further than my eyes could see, creating a yawning chasm between them over which we were currently suspended. The valley floor and mountain walls were made of angry, jagged stone that left the chasm without any signs of life. A quick turn of my head found the same sight fading into the distance to the south.
“I see why they call it the Maw,” I commented, resting my forehead on the back of her shoulder as my headache worsened. “I’m not sure how
