Chapter 356: Closure (1/2)

Chapter 356: Closure

ARTHUR

The aetheric blade in es—drove into a winged creaturepartway, not yet able to withstand the impact

My hand wrapped around the creature’s throat It looked like a bat with a petrified squashed face and a huge mouth Its wide jaws snapped crazily just inches in front ofinto my arms in a desperate effort to pull itself closer

Holding the gargoyle back with one hand, I conjured the blade again in ed it into the beast’s head, which split apart with a resounding crack

The blade broke and faded away, leaving oyles plummeted toward argoyles, and the swooping beasts exploded Their rubble clattered to the ground like hail and sent up little splashes where it landed in the strealanced back to see Caera holding her ar the silver bracer she had taken froainst her wrist, barely s

Two narrow silver shards were revolving defensively around her, blazing with dark light In the next breath, they began to dim as they drifted back to the bracer and reconnected to it, fitting into the pattern of engravings

Regis loped toward us, spitting out a chunk of rock from his mouth

Behind him, the zone stretched out far into the distance, covered with the wreckage of our passing

We were in a canyon with sheer, rocky cliffs to either side They clih that only a sliver of sky could be seen above us, like a reflection of the thin, clear strea the canyon floor Loose rocks and rubble—the reoyle creatures—littered the canyon floor

“That rocked,” Regis said, deadpan

“I ad,” Caera replied, carefully htest quiver of her lips “In fact, it was rather…uess fun, like beauty, is in the eye of the boulder…” Regis answered, his voice tre

I faced the exit portal with a deep sigh “I’ht you two”

Caera stepped up beside me “Oh, don’t be so stone-faced, Grey”

“Yeah, Princess You shouldn’t take us for granite” Regis broke, barking with laughter

Ignoringat a question I’d been carrying withthe Coenerator that took us in and out of the Relicto back to the djinn As difficult as it was to believe, they had designed and built this place They h it, and I already knew that the Compass could interact with a Relictoe flashed in my mind, the false e to me The clarity of the memory had faded with ti toward the next djinn ruin

So far, I had stu that this place was guidingblindly to the -dead race of aether wielders didn’t suittomemory that Sylvia had left me with as I activated the half-sphere relic It thruulfed the portal, replacing the oil-slick shi+ like a curtain inside the cut-stone frame with a clear view of my room back at Central Acade off the flow of aether into the relic, causing the portal to shi+ft back to its original appearance

“Protein paste for your thoughts?”

I looked up to see Caera holding out nutrient-filled rations stuffed in an insulated tube packaging

“Just thinking about how to properly use the Co smell it emitted “How do you eat that stuff? It s the contents from the tube into her mouth “Unlike you, I actually have to eat to survive This stuff is easy to carry around in bulk for long ascents”

“I guess I’the sed and swatted her hand away, ainst the silver cuff around her wrist “How does your new artifact feel?” I asked, eager to divert her fro,” Caera pouted “It’s like I’ve grown a new liround up”

“Eh, he does that all the ti his lupine shoulders

I cla “It looked like you had the hang of it by what I saw back there”

A faint sed at the corner of Caera’s lips before it disappeared just as fast She held up her silver bracer as she turned toward the portal “Do you think the Compass works kind of like o of Regis

“When I first channeled ht it was just a defensive item because of the way the shards barely hovered in place around the bracer It took me days of constant experimentation to realize that the shards were able to be controlled independently,” she explained, tracing the grooves etched into the silver bracelet “What if the return function of the Compass is the default and for you to do uidance?”

Caera’s expression softened “It seees would let their people traverse these zones ai trapped, wandering haphazardly to their deaths?"

I watched as she unconsciously fiddled with the silver bracer around her wrist Her gaze was e about djinn, or me, or even herself Because it wasn’t about her

“You’re scared of the possibility that the Relictombs sent your brother so a surprised look fro minds another of your otherworldly powers?” she asked in horror “Please tellthe fact that you can—”

I let a s people, but it’s not h of relief “I’ve been wondering for a while noas that zone you found his dagger and cloak in someplace…”

“Someplace only I could escape?”

She nodded hesitantly “Like the e of faces would not have been escapable without your…”

“We’ve been calling it God Step,” I filled in

“Without your ‘God Step’ ability” She gave is nah that resounded off the canyon walls “How’d you know?”

She srandiose in the nareat na his rip ‘And two, you used to use a spell called ‘Absolute Zero,’ so…’

“No,” I said in answer to her original question “The zone where I found your brother’s dagger wasn’t like those It was deadly enough to claim the lives of many ascenders before I found it, but it didn’t require the use of aether to escape”

“That’s so chance, even if he didn’taway

Regis remained by my side as I returned my focus back on the half-sphere relic in my hand Like what Caera had said,est impact on me, the one I could recall with utis said with disbelief before he let out a groan “You just had to pick that one”

I pried one eye open to see the s, and rune-covered doors capping both ends…along with the ar both sides of the hallway

“It actually worked,” I huffed, feeling the drain from my core as the Compass continued to siphon aether out of me in order to hold the new destination open

Deactivating the relic, I began recalling the details of our destination in is on his side “Get Caera We’re leaving”

By the time the portal had stabilized to the next zone ould be heading into, Caera had arrived with Regis, wide-eyed in awe

“I can’t believe you actually figured it out so quickly,” sheout a hand as Regis disappeared back inside o”

With a deep breath, the two of us stepped through, iust of wind Around us were dense trees growing fro, speckled with the occasional colors froled roots spread endlessly beneath our feet

“Well, this definitely isn’t your room,” Caera observed “So this is one of the zones you need to visit on this mysterious quest of yours?”

“No,” I said quietly, turning to her “It’s where your brother died”

The Alacryan noble’s head whipped towardbefore she turned away, letting her hair fall to shi+eld her face “Thank you, Grey”

Ignoring the prickling sensation of Regis’s taunting grin, I stored the Co forward “Don’t thank is and I had killed the giant s so that we didn’t destroy the delicate ecosysteely in the Relictombs, so we didn’t knoe would find here

Scouting the nearby trees, I found one with strong branches and began hoistingfruit and the invisible creatures that used them as bait Once I was seventy feet in the air, I scouted out our surroundings, looking for thehole that opened up into the low that e to find It was less than a h, htmoved beneath theh tofroround in seconds I held a finger up toto Caera in a bare whisper “The creature is out of its den It’s a couple ofan to lead the way, taking each step carefully to avoidunnecessary noise

‘Why are you so tense? We’re a lot stronger than hen we first cais noted with a scoff

I know, but it’s hard to let go of the kind of fear that grows in you when you’re weak It grows along with you

The jungle was quiet Even the heavy footfalls of the millipede were too far away to hear The lack of birds chirping or insects buzzing felt unnatural But, aside from the voracious millipede, the zone was home only to the two-tailed monkeys, and they had adapted to be completely silent Even as I listened for the the dense trees Aether-rich fruit hung like fat pears all around us, but there wasn’t a single two-tailedaether into ren like clinging vines Although I scanned the distant shadows for a ?” Caera whispered, her head swiveling fro,” I ad at all”