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The light in Dawsyn’s mind grows inexplicably warmer as she hastens. It seems to urge her onward.

“Dawsyn! Mother above, these boots are newly stitched!”

But Dawsyn barely registers her voice. The cedars tower above her as she grows closer, and her eyes track their height. They disappear into the sky, taller than that of any other tree around them. And between their vast trunks, clinging to the bark, is that barricade.

Not mist, Dawsyn realises, but something other. A filmy haze.

It hums with magic. She can feel it in her blood.

“Ouch,” Abertha complains, coming to a halt at her side. “I would remind you of my very recent dismemberment, but as you were the butcher, it seems pointless.”

Dawsyn holds up a hand to stay the girl’s complaints. “Do you hear that?”

The humming grows louder. It is the swelling of a storm, the amalgamating power before the burn of lightning.

“No,”Abertha emphasises. “Dawsyn, what–”

“And the mist?” Dawsyn queries, studying the barrier before her made of trees and haze. “You still do not see it before you?”

Abertha appears truly incredulous now, looking left to right as though the blanket of grey does not distort her view in every direction. “I do not see it,” she says, her voice quieter. “I swear it.”

Dawsyn frowns warily at the film, the magic. Her hand reaches forward.

“What are you doing?”

She hears nothing but that alluring hum. The mage light within courses down her arm and she does not give thought to the fingertip that stretches before her, gently glancing off the haze…

A shout leaves her as she is thrust into the air. Dawsyn is flung backward, her feet leaving the ground for one long second before her back collides with it again, the snow softening the fall, but a strike of pain sizzles up her arm, quickly dissipating.

“Mother above!”

Dawsyn sees only the tips of cedar and blue sky, before the view is impeded by Abertha’s face. “Fucking hell! Are you all right?” Her eyes are wide with alarm. “What wasthat?”

But Dawsyn only groans softly, the fall having pushed all air from her lungs.

A voice travels to them from uphill. “Is that Dawsyn I see on the ground?” Esra’s hovering face joins Abertha’s. “Having a kip, are you?”

Dawsyn gives him a lethal glare, still struggling to suck in a breath.

“What’re yeh doin’ down there?” Salem adds, his face appearing among the others. “Weren’t yeh the one tellin’ us all to keep our arses off the snow?”

“Yes, Dawsyn. If you must swoon, do as I do and ensure there is a strapping lad whose arms will catch you,” Esra says.

“Shut up, Es,” Salem mutters. “Ain’t nary a man strong enough to catch tha’ thick skull.”

“On the contrary, I have delicate features, but a huge phallus. So, I suppose, the ratios balance in the end. Dawsyn? Are you having some sort of episode?”

Abertha answers for her. “She was thrown backward.”

“Dawsyn?” Hector’s voice hails from the distance. “Why is she lying in the snow?”

“She is having an episode!” Esra shouts back.

Dawsyn groans once more and sits up. She feels snow drip down the back of her neck. “There was an entire pit of molten lava waiting inside that Chasm,” she says on a shallow breath. “If I was wiser, I would have pitched myself into it.”

“Has she maddened?” Esra asks.

“Fuck me, but these people are annoying,” Abertha says with a sigh. She proffers a hand, and Dawsyn accepts it, getting her feet beneath her. Then Abertha’s gaze returns to the place between the cedars where Dawsyn had been standing moments before. “Whatwasthat?”