She glanced over to Eva. “How bad is the attack?”
“Not bad yet, but they continue to move. They’ve targeted the dular and they’re damaging their enchantments. There’s a limit to how quickly the dular can replace them, and if they destroy them . . .”
Jayna knew what would happen then. If they destroy the enchantments, the dular would not have any way of defending themselves.
They raced around until they reached the narrow streets of the outskirts, the shops where Raollet would be. The moss glowed softly, its greenish light guiding them. Her breath was hot and heavy in her ears, and she needed to slow, stop, gather herself, but at this point, she didn’t trust herself to do that.
Up ahead, the moss seemed to glow brighter.
That’s not moss.
“Oh,” she whispered.
“What is it?” Eva asked.
Jayna nodded. “Something happened here.”
She pointed in the distance, and as they approached, she could see Raollet’s shop had been destroyed. Again. At least this time it wasn’t her fault. The entire front of the shop had collapsed. The moss glowing on the stone had taken on something of a brighter form.
Jayna approached slowly. She felt for magic and prepared a spell, using it to try to track something, but she didn’t feel anything. She looked over to Eva. “Who do you think did this?” Increasingly, she thought Raollet had been attacked by an actual Ashara. Who would be responsible for this now?
Whoever it was had smoke, nothing more than that, and certainly not enough power to destroy the entirety of the shop.
She wondered how many of his enchantments were still inside. And what about his books? Jayna stepped forward, into the rubble. She pushed power out through the dragon stone ring, blasting at the stone and crushing a section of it, clearing it away.
As she moved deeper into what had been the shop, she found there were enchantments scattered all around. When she leaned down, she noticed they had already been activated. Every single enchantment she came across was triggered.
Jayna stared, feeling the power within her and looking on with frustration.
“Somebody powerful came through here,” she said.
“How do you know?”
Jayna picked up a spear-like object and handed it over to Eva.
Eva traced her fingers along its surface. “This isn’t an enchantment.”
“It’s a spent enchantment. It’s no longer active. And all of these are like that.”
The hundreds upon hundreds of enchantments that had filled Raollet’s shop were all spent. There was nothing remaining, nothing here that she could even access.
Where is Raollet?
He wouldn’t have abandoned his shop, which meant that whoever had attacked here had done so with enough power to overcome him. But could they have killed him?
She picked through the rubble more carefully and used the energy of the dragon stone to strengthen her. She only rarely used the power that way, but as she did, she pulled massive blocks of stone out of the way.
Eva joined her. Smoke trailed from her hands, snaking through the rubble. It took only a moment, but then she shook her head. “He’s not here.”
Jayna climbed over the rock, reaching the back section of the shop. From here, she found the room that had been used to contain the El’aras. It was crumbled as well. Some of that was her fault. She had destroyed the walls, revealing the outside, letting the El’aras escape. But not all of the damage was her doing. Some of it came from whatever had happened here, whatever attack had destroyed this place.
She found the hall leading to his old shop and wove through it. There were sections where the walls had crumbled, crashing into heaps of rubble, and Jayna had to pick her way around them, but this area wasn’t completely destroyed.
Then she reached the doorway at the end of the hall.
The walls had mostly remained upright here, though some of the stone crumbled inward, collapsing against them, and she pushed outward, using a mixture of sorcery and energy from the dragon stone to stabilize and secure the walls, placing several patterns as she walked. She didn’t want the stone to crash in upon her, and didn’t know if she could hold it up. She lingered there, standing in front of the doorway.
“There’s another door just like this inside of the outpost,” she said softly.
“Why would they have one?”
Jayna shook her head. “I don’t really know.”
Would there be places like this throughout the city?
Jayna pushed a burst of painful power through the dragon stone, cold shooting up her arm and across her chest, and sent it crashing into the door, unlocking it. There was no point in holding back now; she needed to get in and see if Raollet was here, and if so, if he was injured. She pushed outward with a ball of flame, creating a pattern that floated in front of her. She let it drift downward, illuminating the stairs on the other side of the door.
Eva stayed behind her, smoke swirling around her and also climbing around Jayna.
Strangely, this time it didn’t feel like it burned and constricted the way it had the last time. This time, there was something almost comforting within it, as if the power Eva used were meant to fortify her.
They started down the stairs.
When she reached the other door at the bottom, Jayna tested it, finding it locked.
She focused, pulling on power through the dragon stone, and when that wasn’t enough to open it, she blasted at it with even more energy, using the natural augmentation of the bloodstone.
The combination slammed into the door, shattering it open.
“I need to get better control of that,” Jayna muttered.
“I thought you’d avoided using power like that.”
Jayna held out the ring and tapped on it. She had been avoiding showing it to Eva, concerned about how she might react after learning that she had added the bloodstone to the ring, but maybe that was a mistake. “There’s something in this. I don’t really know what it is, but the combination of the bloodstone and the dragon stone has allowed me to access even more power.”
Eva frowned, staring at the ring. “That’s how you call the power away.”
Jayna nodded.
“Bloodstone is connected to what I can do. I don’t know how or why, but it is connected,” Eva said.
“I’m not trying to misuse your power,” Jayna said. She didn’t need Eva thinking that, especially since Eva already struggled with how her power would—and should—be used.
Eva nodded once. “I know you aren’t.”
They started forward into the darkness.
The cold washing around her began to build, and she pushed out through the bloodstone the way she had before, layering a fog of smoke around the room, muting the enchantments that were meant to limit her power, which allowed her to move through here without fear of losing control over her magic.
When she reached the next door, she paused.
“You might need to open this one,” Jayna said.
Eva held out her hand and a drop of blood dripped to the ground. Then she summoned the smoke, turning it into something like a spike of power, and it streaked into the door where she twisted it.
The door opened with a click.
Jayna chuckled to herself. “That certainly is easier than what I’ve been doing.”
“Not for me,” she said.