Page 129 of Only Cold Depths
And just like that, the answer came to me. Of course. I should have realized it sooner. I was always so focused on fixing things—broken appliances in the lab, the overheating Techwave cannon, even my truebond with Kyrion—that I never considered the other side of my power.
As a seer, I could fix things—but I could also destroy them.
“You’re right about one thing,” I called out, still holding on to my psionic nexus in my mind’s eye.
“What’s that?” Esmina asked.
“People do make their own destinies.”
She gave me an amused look. “If you’re trying to lure me into a trap by agreeing with me, it won’t work. You don’t have anywhere else to go, Vesper.”
She was wrong about that. Ididhave one more place to go. It was just the one place no one in their right mind would go, which was probably why she hadn’t thought of it and why her magic hadn’t whispered a warning about it yet.
I laughed, and the sound bounced off the cavern walls. Esmina frowned, but she slowly closed the distance between us. She was so focused on what I was doing that she never looked down, so she never saw more of those spiderweb cracks zigzagging through the bridge with every step we both took.
That’s it, I thought.Keep coming this way.Just a few more feet. That’s all I need . . .
Esmina stopped, wary of a trap. Her frown deepened, and she brandished her dagger at me. She knew I was up to something, but she still wasn’t looking down, so she hadn’t seen the real threat yet. I kept my sword up, even as I subtly rocked back and forth on my feet. The vibration caused even more spiderwebs to appear in the glass, although the rush of the waterfall masked the cracking sounds.
I rocked back and forth again, and one of the spiderwebs snaked into another, and they spiraled out, zipping faster and faster through the permaglass. I stopped moving. There. That should do it.
“Do you know what your problem is?”
“What?” Esmina snapped, still suspicious.
I grinned. “Even with all your magic, you can’t fly any more than I can.”
Confusion creased Esmina’s face. Then magic sparked in her eyes, and she lunged toward me. “No! Don’t!”
Her dagger arced straight toward my heart. She wasn’t playing around anymore. She knew exactly what I was plotting, and she was determined to stop me.
But this time, I was ready. I sidestepped Esmina’s attack, dropped to my knees, and slid across the slick glass. I made it back to the center of the bridge and stopped, right in the middle of all those clear, tiny cracks. Through the glass, below the bridge, I spotted a stone ledge sticking out from the side of the waterfall. Hope rose in my heart. Maybe I could actually survive this after all.
Esmina screamed with frustration, whirled around, and rushed toward me.
I ignored her frantic charge, wrapped both hands around my stormsword, and raised it up as high as my arms would go. In my mind’s eye, I plunged my hands even deeper into the sapphsidian pool of my psionic nexus, gathering up as much of my magic as possible. Then I drove my stormsword down into the bridge.
Flames exploded out of the tip of the lunarium blade and rushed through all the cracks, and for a moment, the dark blue burn of my magic lit up the entire bridge.
Then, with a thunderous roar, the permaglass shattered, and the bridge collapsed.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
KYRION
Irantotheright, trying to sprint into the next chamber where Vesper was fighting Esmina. Pollux’s blows hadn’t shattered the floor here, but the cavern tunnel had collapsed.
“You’re not getting through that,” Zane said, stopping beside me, a worried note in his voice.
I growled, snapped up my hand, and reached for my telekinesis. I’d fling every bloody rock in this place aside to reach Vesper—
“Hey!” a voice called out. “Up here!”
My head lifted. Asterin was still on the second level, clutching a blaster. “This level is still intact! We can get to the other chamber this way!”
I glanced around. So did Zane. But if any stairs or ramps had been in this section, they’d crumbled away during Pollux’s attacks. So I ran over to the largest pile of rubble and started climbing. Zane also started climbing. Together we scrambled up to Asterin’s level, which was littered with dead mercenaries.
“Come on!” she said. “This way!”
