Page 13 of The Hurricane Wars

The end of the Hurricane Wars was in sight. Sardovia was cornered, and cornered animals were the most dangerous. Affording them any sort of advantage at this point could spell disaster for the Night Empire.

All around us are enemies.

Sunstead had attacked Kesath when they learned about the stormship prototype that his grandfather King Ozalus’s Enchanters were building. The Lightweavers had wanted to steal the technology for themselves. They had killed thousands of Kesathese, including Alaric’s grandfather, to do it. And the rest of the Sardovian Allfold had simply stood by and watched.

If not for the Lightweavers, Ozalus might still be alive and Gaheris wouldn’t have been thrust into power ill-prepared and in mourning, his country already at war.

If not for the Lightweavers, Gaheris wouldn’t have become what he was today and Alaric’s mother wouldn’t have fled the Continent.

Alaric’s jaw clenched. His mind was once again going down a treacherous path. As he steered his airship over an expanse of barren gorges and waterfalls sluggish from the cold, so too did he steer his thoughts in a direction more befitting the crown prince of the Night Empire and the Master of the Shadowforged Legion.

Gaheris had the strength and courage to do what was necessary, even if all of Lir itself were against him. Alaric was proud to be his son.

And he needed to focus on what he had to do: get into Nenavar; kill the girl.

Talasyn,Alaric thought, the name summoned from the turncoat’s message as his wolf glided over the rocky southeastern coastline.Her name is Talasyn.

Chapter Six

On first approach, the Nenavar Dominion was exactly as the map suggested: an endless array of islands. What it hadn’t shown was how verdant they were, embedded in deep blue waters, like beads of jade scattered carelessly on a bed of sapphire silk. They glowed in the fiery light of the rising sun, beckoning Talasyn closer.

The sheer beauty of it took her breath away.

Growing up on the landlocked Great Steppe, Talasyn had often dreamed of seeing the ocean and had always been hungry for tales of water in such mind-boggling amounts, and fighting for Sardovia had taken her everywhere on the Continentbutthe coasts, it seemed. When the azure waves first stretched out below her tiny airship in the daylight, completely unimpeded by any form of land whatsoever, it had been a welcome thrill. However, at some point around the ten-hour mark, she’d started to consider that perhaps there was such a thing astoo muchwater.

Still, Nenavar more than made up for the wearisome journey, even just from the air. Its beaches alone were a wonder that Talasyn had never imagined possible: soft and gentle, curlingalong the blue-green shallows in ribbons of pearlescent sand, dotted with spiky-leaved palm trees that swayed and dropped their round brown fruits in the breeze. The water was so clear that she could see schools of fish darting amidst mossy ochre seagrass and rainbow-hued corals rippling along with the current.

This land, it—itfilledsomething in her. After being both intrigued and curiously unsettled by stories of this archipelago all her life, she had finally reached it: she was soaring over these strange shorelines that glinted like a promise, that felt as though they had been waiting for her.

And then the world turnedviolet, and in her surprise Talasyn nearly sailed her wasp into the damn ocean.

It began with a shivering at the edges, as though some great hand were tugging at the fabric of reality to expose the bones of aetherspace underneath. The airwarped. Plumes of brilliant plum-shaded magic erupted from somewhere in the heart of the archipelago, unfurling over green jungle and white sands and blue waters, setting the sky within a radius of several miles ablaze with its translucent mist that spread above the islands like flickering flames.

Once every thousand years or so, a bright glow the color of amethyst illuminates the horizon,Khaede had said. This, then, was the Fisherman’s Warning that the Sardovian Coast spoke of—and it was a Sever. But for which dimension in aetherspace, Talasyn had no idea. She’d never even heard of violet-hued magic before. When distilled into aether hearts, the Squallfast was green, the Rainspring was blue, the Firewarren was red, and the Tempestroad was white. Each of their Severs were plentiful on the Continent, but there had never been any evidence of a significant presence of their corresponding aethermancers, unlike the Shadowforged and Lightweavers.

Or theremighthave been, in times past. There was quite a multitude of blank spaces between recorded eras, times fromwhich only the barest scraps of writings or artifacts had been unearthed. Perhaps it was merely lost to history, some great migration of Windcallers and Rainsingers and Firedancers and Thunderstruck, brought about by the power struggles that had plagued the ancient Continent before the Allfold was formed. That alliance had provided only a fleeting dream of peace in the end.

Nonetheless, it was generally accepted that, aside from Enchanters, the Continent had largely only ever been home to Shadowforged, whose Severs were as black as midnight, and Lightweavers, whose Severs were said to resemble pillars of blazing sunlight.

ThisSever, here in Nenavar, belonged to a type of magical energy that Talasyn doubted anyone back home knew about. Did that mean that there was a unique breed of aethermancers among the Nenavarene as well? Her curiosity heightened along with the sunrise as she watched from her little airship while the magic unfolded. The amethyst glow was nowhere big enough to be seen from Sardovia, but there were likely several Severs and perhaps they very occasionally discharged all at once, which might have been how the Coast’s tale of the Fisherman’s Warning came about. She wondered what the effects of this new dimension were. Rather than take the form of any particular element—wind or water or fire or storm—it seemed to be pure energy, like the Lightweave and the Shadowgate. Could its aethermancers also craft weapons?

It took a while, but Talasyn finally tore her gaze away from the strange magic and coaxed her wasp into a slow descent. The odd Sever stilled, its violet glow abating, just as she pulled up level several inches above the ocean’s surface.

Talasyn was to take the circuitous route, avoiding the watchful port cities and the main inland roads. She steered clear of the central bulk of the archipelago and into a cluster of outlying islands shrouded in mist that swallowed her waspwhole. For the next several minutes, she flew low over the water, every fiber of her being tense. The rumble of aether hearts was too loud in the silence. She half expected a Nenavarene patrol to catch her or a dragon to swoop down at any moment.

But there was no sign of movement on any of the surrounding islands. None that she could make out through the veils of fog, anyway. And neither Bieshimma nor his crew had spotted any hint of the gigantic fire-breathing beasts that were rumored to prowl the Dominion.

Perhaps the dragonswerejust a myth. A story to scare off outsiders.

Once Talasyn made it to the shore of the island where the Light Sever was located, she soared higher, sails catching the breeze, avoiding the patchwork of rooftops that indicated villages and the glinting metallic towers that were obviously cities, all nestled amidst clouds of greenery as though they were part of the jungle itself. When she docked her wasp, it was inside a large cave halfway up one of the many rolling mountains—a tight fit, and she estimated that she would have to hike for several hours to reach her destination, but at least it minimized the risk of any Nenavarene coming across an airship of foreign make.

She clambered out of the well and, with the aid of her trusty compass, carefully marked the cave’s location on the map that Bieshimma had provided. Even if she were to reach the Light Sever and successfully commune with it—and that was a bigif—she would be in worse trouble if she got lost looking for her only means of escape.

She shoved a generous piece of hardtack into her mouth, chewing perfunctorily before washing it down with a swig from her waterskin. Once the meager nourishment was in her system, she began the long trek.

The miles between the cave and the nexus point were covered in dark green jungle, and the first problem that she ran into was the humidity.

Gods, the humidity.

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