Chapter 149: Impossible
Simon charged through the knots of people on the road where he couldn’t run around them, outrunning the insults and the outrage even before he could really hear them. None of that mattered. There was no time for politeness. While part of him hoped this was a false alarm, the rest of him was sure this was an emergency, and he charged heedlessly toward it.
He wasn’t thinking about how, if he failed, he could do this all again. He wasn’t thinking about the hundreds of hours he’d spent making the perfect tools for this encounter. He wasn’t even thinking about saving Ionar, not really. He’d like to, of course, but that was secondary to something even more important: finding out what in the fuck was going on.
Right now, all he could think about was that damn paper crown and those mocking notes that monopolized his mind as his legs rose and fell and his lungs began to strain. Normally, it would take him half an hour to walk up the steep street that led past the palace and to the uppermost reaches of the city. This time, he did it in less than five.
Even before he reached the end of the street, he could see someone up ahead, where the wide streets with their dark paving stones turned to a narrow goat path that led up to the strange little shrine halfway up the volcano. The fact that whoever it was that was up there had gone past anywhere that made sense so late in the day only deepened his certainty that he’d been right to throw caution to the wind. Whatever happened was going to happen right now.
That gave him the motivation to keep pushing himself, and he made it to the trail before the other man made it to the altar. After that, he had to move a little slower, but he went as fast as he could. By the time Simon reached his quarry, though, it was too late. Well, it might have been; he wasn’t sure.
The man had produced a dark orb, and then, after a little fidgeting, the thing began to glow. First, there were dull orange lines, but then, gradually, they began brightening to a violent yellow. That light was bright enough to reveal some familiar designs to Simon as well as make him wince and shade his eyes.
“Stop… Whatever you’re doing… ”Simon gasped, completely out of breath.
The man ignored him and instead tossed it up in the air. Simon fumbled with the words of force to slice the thing into pieces, but by the time he got them out, the man must have used a similar spell because it rocketed into the air and toward the caldera, making his spell miss entirely. Instead of being dashed to pieces, the thing arced high into the air and over the top of the caldera, where it disappeared from sight.
Well, not entirely. The man was wearing a dark cloak, and the gust that came with a spell that had so much force behind it blew the man's hood back, revealing the crown that Aikolas mentioned. That was enough to make him ready another spell. This time, he’d use lightning to smite the man, and then…