Page 17

Neith

“O h,” I reply. “That’s really interesting. If I ask too many questions, just tell me to shut up, and I absolutely won’t be upset if you refuse to answer a question. Goddess knows that I have questions that I would refuse to answer.”

She smiles, “Thank you. I really appreciate your understanding.”

She changes the subject again, clearly done with that conversation and most likely where it could lead.

I’m not stupid enough to ask her why she is still here when she could have and still could move on, and I’m also not going to offer the services of Raiden to help her move on.

I’m hoping that if she wants to, she will tell me, and then if she wants to move on, I will help her figure out a way to do so if the problem is that she’s stuck here or something.

The thing is, I haven’t known her for very long, and I know very little about her.

The last thing I want to do is to upset her.

Continuing, she adds, “I think that they probably assumed that you already knew the spell, but since you are human, or at least that’s what everyone assumes, you wouldn’t have been taught it or be able to do it.”

I raise my eyebrow and repeat her sentence, “That’s what everyone assumes?”

She gives me a look, “Oh, please. You are most certainly not human. Far from it, but it’s not up to me to give you any more information than that.”

“Of course,” I reply. I know what I am now though, I’m a motherfucking angel just like my mom, so her vague answer and refusal to say anything else doesn’t annoy me as much as it would have only days ago.

“Don’t pout,” she teases, making me laugh.

“I’m not pouting. I’ve sort of gotten used to being told that someone knows something, but can’t or won’t tell me by this point,” I tell her.

She frowns, “I’m sorry. That has to be really fucking frustrating.”

I nod, “Oh yeah, it definitely is. I get it though, all of them want to tell me, there are just extenuating circumstances.”

“You know, I don’t think that many people would look at it that way,” Ribit says thoughtfully. “At least not someone as young as you are.”

“You’re the same age as me or thereabouts,” I retort with a laugh.

“I am nearly six hundred years old. I may look like I’m the same age as you, but even when I died, I was a couple of centuries older than you are now,” she replies.

I face palm, making her laugh as I reply, “Well shit, that should have been obvious. I know that supes age differently to humans, and therefore don’t look their ages.

You also already told me that you had centuries of practice at sitting on things, so I should have known that you are a lot older than you look. ”

She smiles, looking very amused, “Don’t worry about it, I definitely take it as a compliment that you forgot that I was dead.”

“It’s kind of hard not to,” I reply. “To me you are exactly the same as I am, even though you can stick your head through doors and scare the shit out of me.”

She bursts out laughing, “To be honest, it is such a relief to be able to talk to someone like this. It’s not often that someone can hear me, and no one can see me properly. Mabel is the only one that I can really communicate with regularly, and even then, that’s a bit hit and miss.”

“Well, I’m happy to talk to you whenever you would like,” I tell her honestly.

“Thank you,” she replies. “Okay, let’s see what your men are up to.” She says a spell, and then what looks like a massive screen appears in front of us.

As soon as I realize what is happening on the screen, I panic, “Is that lava? Are they surrounded by fucking lava?”

“Oh fuck,” Ribit exclaims and that’s enough to confirm that what I’m seeing is correct.

Fucking hell.

Reed

“T his is not good,” Griff mutters.

“Way to state the obvious, man,” Doc replies sarcastically, making my lips twitch in amusement despite the situation.

The situation is that we are on a shrinking piece of rock, in the middle of a ginormous sea of molten lava.

It’s not normal lava either, which would be bad enough, but rather magical lava, which is even more deadly and unpredictable.

As if that’s not bad enough, the journey to get here was not easy, and we’re all injured in some way, although thankfully, none of us is worryingly injured.

As always, when we’re in situations that are similar to this, unless it’s a life-threatening injury, we don’t get Doc to heal us, and we won’t until we’re safe.

If we did, we would risk depleting his magic and putting him at a disadvantage, and none of us is willing to risk that.

The banks of the giant lake are far too far away for any of us to be able to jump it, so that option is immediately out, and we need to figure out another way to get to the safety of the banks and to complete this trial so that we can get back and check on Neith.

“Are we just assuming that we need to get to that bright spot on the bank in the distance?” I ask, just to make sure that we’re all on the same page.

Evander nods, his expression grim, “It looks like it. I can’t see any other obvious thing that it could be.”

“Unless it’s a trick?” River points out, bouncing on his toes and looking more excited than worried about the situation that we’re in.

At least there’s nothing new where he’s concerned. He’s still the same old River, no matter what kind of situation that we find ourselves in.

“Let’s just focus on figuring out a way to get over there and out of the huge lake of lava first, before we worry about whether it’s a trick or not,” Ransom suggests.

“Good plan,” River agrees with a smile.

“We could fly?” Raiden suggests and then adds. “It would take a couple of trips since only Reed and Griff can fly, but it might be our best bet to get over there.”

“Yeah, that’s a good idea actually,” Van starts and as he opens his mouth, no doubt to suggest that the others are taken over first, the small piece of rock that we’re gathered on starts to rumble and shake hard enough that I struggle to stay standing up.

“What the fuck is happening now?” Doc asks, sounding more pissed than worried.

None of us have the answer since we have no idea what is happening either, but fortunately it doesn’t matter because the cause of the earthquake makes itself known as a giant snakelike creature, its head is the size of two double decker buses side by side, shoots out of the lava before diving back below the surface.

“Shit,” River curses.

“Lava snakes,” Raiden confirms grimly.

“That’s a kind of on-the-nose name for them,” I point out.

Raiden smirks, “Well, their actual name is really complicated, really long, and pretty much just translates to lava snakes, so it’s much easier just to say that.”

“It’s going to make it a lot more difficult to fly out of here, at least there’s only one,” Griff says thoughtfully as he watches the snake rise out of the lava, shooting ridiculously high in the air.

It’s getting so high up, and moving so quickly that if someone were flying they would have to move fucking quickly to get out of the way of it.

“Don’t they move in packs?” Ransom asks, looking at Raiden.

Raiden grimaces and nods, “Yeah, they do. We should probably try to fly out of here before the others show up. It will be impossible to do otherwise.”

“Erm, I’m sorry guys, but I’m not sure that I’m going to be much good,” Griff says. “My wing was damaged in the fight before we got here, and I’m not going to be able to fly quickly enough to get out of the way of that.”

“I can heal it,” Doc suggests.

“We’ve run out of time,” I say urgently as I point to where the lava is showing that there are several big things swimming just underneath the surface.

The rocky pad that we’re standing on rumbles again, and this time the force is so much that it starts to crack beneath our feet.

“The ground is splitting apart,” Van exclaims urgently, spotting what I have. “It’s not pulling apart yet, but we don’t have long.”

“That’s not the only problem,” River points out as he moves away from the edge of the rock. “The lava is getting higher, we’re going to run out of rock in a minute.”

We’re all tired, we’re all hurt, and we seem to be in an impossible situation.

We’ve lost one of our fliers, and even if we could fly, we wouldn’t be able to all go at the same time.

Which means whoever gets left behind is pretty much being sacrificed because there is a minuscule chance that we would be able to get back to them and save them.

Raiden’s expression becomes contemplative, and as he opens his mouth, I interrupt, “Don’t even think about it.”

The others glance at Raiden and immediately catch on to what he’s thinking.

“Absolutely not, it’s not worth it,” Van replies firmly.

We’re all being really careful about what we say and how we phrase things because we don’t want to give too much away, and we especially don’t want to let on about Raiden’s wings.

Raiden’s frown is dark, but he nods, “Fine, but Doc needs to heal Griff.”

Doc nods and heads toward Griff, putting his hands on him and making a show of it, taking a while to call his magic and using words to trigger the healing.

In all, it takes around five minutes to heal, which is still incredibly quick, but is about four and a half minutes longer than it actually takes him to heal someone.

The whole time that he’s healing, I’m keeping an eye on the creatures that are swarming in the lava around us, making it look like the lava is boiling and bubbling violently.

“Why aren’t they attacking?” I ask.

“I have absolutely no idea,” Raiden replies. “I didn’t think that was something that I needed to do a lot of research on since they only exist in the Inferniolea realm, and we would know before we went there.”

“I don’t think we should be worrying about that right now,” Doc points out. “They aren’t attacking, and that’s good. We don’t need to figure out why they aren’t attacking. It gives us a few extra moments to figure out how to escape.”