Free The Crystal Mountain by Thomas M. Reid Page B

from his seat. “You should begin again on the sources we already have.”
    Eirwyn tried not to sigh. I’m doing that too much of late, she decided. She nodded and pulled the magic book toward her, selecting the first resource from the list and flipping through it.
    “I think he’s very near death,” Zasian said from behind Aliisza.
    Aliisza had been watching as the landform had steadily grown larger. The priest’s words sent a chill down her spine, and she turned away from the gap in the wall. She saw Zasian kneeling over the planetar, with his ear pressed to the celestial creature’s mouth.
    “He’s barely breathing,” Zasian said. “I don’t know how much longer. Not long.”
    From across the room, Kaanyr rose from the spot where he had been brooding by himself. His brief moment of affection with Aliisza had not held his bad mood in check for long, and she had left him alone. Kaanyr moved toward Zasian and his three patients and stared down. He was not frowning quite as much as he had been before.
    Aliisza knew what he was thinking. If the planetar dies, the bubble pops. One way or another, we’re forced to act. She grimaced at her consort’s impatience.
    The alu turned away and checked the confines of the bubble. It was definitely shrinking, she saw, and she took a step back from it where it formed a “window” in the broken wall that allowed her to see into the Astral beyond.
    Can we breach it and survive? she wondered. Even if we can, how do we travel?
    Aliisza wracked her brain for memories of tales of great sorcerers and demons traveling the plane. She had heard the stories, but rarely did they explain much about the magic involved in moving through the silvery void. And she had done no research at all in her years of magical training.
    And with magic behaving so erratically, who knows what’s even still true anymore?
    Another jostling bump made her stumble a step toward the border of their safe haven. She caught herself easily, but the glance she got beyond the confines of the ruined rotunda startled her.
    The argent void had vanished, replaced by a shimmering curtain of color that rippled all around them. The strange multi-hued veil blocked the alu’s view of anything else. It flashed and shifted, and it reminded Aliisza of the first moments after she had regained consciousness.
    A storm of magic, she thought, frightened.
    Then the curtain was gone, and they were falling.
    The bubble was no more, and the Astral Plane had vanished. In its place, brooding red sky met black water at the horizon. The rotunda, reduced to a collection of unstable stones no longer held together by the planetar’s magic, began to crumble apart as it tumbled toward that murky sea.
    Zasian shouted in alarm.
    Aliisza used her wings to rise up and hover, then she
    whirled to see the priest flailing as the floor beneath his feet broke apart. He, along with the three comatose figures he had been tending, became four more bits of debris falling from the sky. Near them, Micus thrashed and howled as his prison careened downward with him still trapped inside.
    In a panic, Aliisza shot forward, winging toward all of them, desperate to save them.
    Before she had time to contemplate the consequences of her act, she conjured magic. It began as a welling of energy deep in her gut, a swelling of power that blossomed and burst from her. The ominous blue glow accompanied it, swathing her surroundings in azure light. She sought control of the potent energy, shaped it and guided it, all the while bracing herself for the pain she feared would accompany it.
    Aliisza created an invisible surface beneath the four tumbling figures. It held them aloft. At the same time, she willed the magical cage surrounding Micus to vanish. The abomination took flight, veering away from the ruined chamber. The remaining stonework of the ruined rotunda plummeted away, reduced to little more than a rockfall.
    Pain and sickness filled Aliisza’s limbs. Intense