Fortunately, Molten Ridges was in the center of the Barren, so they were already headed in roughly its direction. Less fortunately, it still took almost a day for them to reach the city. Angel’s face remained pressed against the windshield the entire way over.

“How far out are we?” Angel asked for the dozenth time, squinting at smog rising up in the distance at the edge of the horizon. He spun his scribe in his hand impatiently.

“Only an hour or so,” Silver replied, his voice tense. “Asking won’t make it any faster.”

“It gives me something to do,” Angel snapped. “I can’t just do nothing.”

Silver grunted. Silence ruled the chopper over the next few minutes as they all waited for Molten Ridges to appear. A shadow started to form on the horizon and Angel glanced at Silver.

“I thought you said it would be an hour. Isn’t it a bit early to see the city?”

“The map says we’re still a ways out,” Silver said, frowning and glancing at the dashboard. “Lilian, confirm?”

“He’s right,” Lilian said. “We’re not that close yet.”

Angel flipped his eyepiece down and squinted as hard as he could. Details started to appear in the shadow. The scribe fell from his hand and clattered to the metal floor of the chopper. A Buried God loomed in the distance, its eyes burning cherry red. Smoke rose up from house sized vents along its body and magic rippled across its unnatural metal flesh.

His hands clenched into fists as fury built up in his chest. The anger was so great that words failed to form on his lips.

“Barren take them,” Silver said. “We’re too late. They beat us to it. I can’t see the city yet, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s nothing more than a smoking crater in the ground. I’m turning us around before we get spotted.”

Angel’s hand slammed into the dashboard. “They’re after my Barren cursed students, Silver. We stay on course.”

“We’ll get blown out of the sky,” Silver said, his voice rising. “What do you think we can do? That’s a fully powered Buried God, not the husk we fought in before. Do you think this chopper can take a hit from that?”

“We’re still too far for them to see us,” Angel insisted. “The only reason we see them is because the Buried God is so large.”

“So we get closer. Then what?” Silver snarled. “Are you going to fight Reave? Vanessa said he was level thee hundred and something. You’re what – fifty? Sixty? You nearly died the last time, and he was just messing around. That won’t happen again.”

“Silver has a point,” Lilian said, forcing the words through stiff lips. “Reave hates you now, especially after what happened in Icebound Valley. I can’t save you again. Our best bet is to use the Key and bring Old World Magic back before they do. At that point, the Reawakening won’t have anything left to fight for. You might still have to deal with Reave, but he won’t have the support of the rest of them and the Buried Gods.”

“You are both deeply misunderstanding me,” Angel said, his voice dangerously low. “They aren’t attacking Molten Ridges for no reason. They want my students, or more likely, to bait me back with them.”

“Then they need them alive, then,” Silver said. “Better that than dead.”

“I will not allow the Reawakening to touch my students,” Angel snarled. “Soul took too much from me already. I will give no more concessions. I have no doubt that they are just as bad as Soul if not worse, and you have no idea what they can do to you in a short amount of time.”

His metal hand scraped across the dashboard, leaving thin furrows as he tightened it. “Take me closer. I don’t care if you help, but my board is slower than the chopper. Just get me in range.”

Silver held his gaze for a few moments, then cursed and lifted his hands from the dashboard. “Fine, you fool. What in the Barren did Soul do to you? I thought he was just your instructor?”

“More than I could or would care to describe,” Angel replied. “His methods largely involved a pinpoint artifact.”

“I’ve got no idea what that is,” Silver said.

“It’s an old tool that was used to locate catacombs,” Lilian said softly. “It emits a beam of magic. When it reacts with any other magic, it lights up. They weren’t very efficient, and there were a few drawbacks.”

“I fail to see how that can be used to train anyone.”

“One of the drawbacks was that the controllers kept getting injured,” Angel said. “If they accidentally touched the beam, the magic in their body reacted. It feels like you’re getting burned alive and the aftereffects can last for days. If the magic reacts long enough, you can literally explode. A lot of people lost fingers just from touching the beam. They weren’t very accurate and you had to know the general location of what you were looking for, so they fell from practice quickly.”

“Wait, you mean–”

“Every time I got a rune wrong, Soul would use a pinpoint artifact on me,” Angel said. “He found out that, by putting a band of metal around my neck, the magical reaction could be stopped before it reached the brain. That meant it couldn’t accidentally blow my head up, so there was no risk of killing me.”

“Barbaric,” Silver breathed. “But how did it not destroy your body? You said that just touching the beam was enough to blow up body parts.”

“Metal diffuses magic. The band on my neck limited the damage to pure pain for the most part,” Angel said with a bitter laugh. “But he didn’t avoid destroying my body. About a month before I killed him, I made one too many mistakes on a runeset I was working on. He took it out on my right arm.”

“Oh,” Silver said, finally at a loss for words.

“What about you?” Angel asked, turning to Lilian. “Still have anything to add about how Soul was a decent person?”

“Nothing,” Lilian said. “I believe you. He was better at hiding his true self than I ever could have imagined.”

“Then you both understand why I refuse to allow the Reawakening to touch my students,” Angel said. “I don’t care what it takes. I won’t let them do this to somebody else.”

“To the grave, then,” Silver said. “I can hardly turn around after such a tale.”

“Nor can I,” Lilian said. “We’ll follow you, Angel. But how can we do anything against this? I agree that we have to save Alison and Tilly, but Silver was right about that being a fully powered Buried God, likely with Reave and maybe another Reawakening member within it. There are probably also clone soldiers in the city or the Buried God.”

“You need a distraction,” Silver said. “They’d probably want to capture Angel since they know he’s got the Key. It’s better than making the kids solve it for them. That means the Buried God won’t attack if it knows that he’s on the Chopper.”

“If I get captured, they might kill Tilly and Alison.” Angel shook his head. “I won’t play games with their lives.”

“Then don’t be on the chopper,” Silver said. “Send a transmission acting as if you’ve lost it and you’re coming for them in the chopper. Their attention will be on the chopper, and you might have an opportunity to get into the Buried God without them noticing.”

“If the ship just flies in a straight line without responding to messages, they’ll know what’s going on,” Angel said.

“I’ll stay on it,” Lilian said. “Silver taught me enough of how to fly, and I’m very hard to kill. I’ll be able to buy time for you. You can’t drain the entire Buried God with your hand, but if you can get its power source, the whole thing goes down.”

“Then I’ll go for the girls,” Silver said. “If Lilian keeps Reave tied up, I can handle myself. I know enough about the other Reawakening members that I think I can at least run around like a headless chicken until someone backs me up. We’ll probably all end up dead, and I’ll be cursing your blasted sob story to my grave, Angel.”

“You can still just drop me off when we’re closer,” Angel said. “I need your help, not your life.”

“Too late,” Silver said. “I’ve always fancied myself a gentleman, and I can hardly leave two lasses with the Reawakening after what you told me.”

“Then we go together,” Angel said. “Today, we kill a god or die trying.”