As soon as they stepped through, the portal snapped closed behind them like a slammed door.
The six of them stood on the edge of a volcanic cliff. Across the distant horizon rose a massive volcano crowned in firelight, surrounded by ice-capped mountains—a clash of elements that should not coexist. Jungle stretched beneath the volcano in a thick green sprawl.
Hyran stepped to the ledge, peering down.
He immediately stepped back.
"I can't see the bottom enough to make a portal," he muttered. The drop was completely smothered by thick churning steam rising from below. It was a white, boiling void.
Fin exhaled slowly, dread prickling his spine.
He knew that look on Nova's face.
"Nova, wait—" he said, already tensing to run.
Pointless.
She was already sprinting at alpha speed—hair flying like moonlit silk—before the word "wait" left his mouth. Fin cursed, launched forward, and dove after her, catching her midair just as she disappeared into the steam.
The world dissolved into blinding white.
And then—fwump—a golden parachute exploded into existence above them, shimmering and translucent, secured around the both of them like a protective cocoon. She had channeled his magic to form it.
Nova wrapped her arms around his neck, grinning and kissed him.
"Don't worry," she said against his lips. "I wouldn't let you jump without one."
Fin's breath hitched. Part awe. Part exasperation because she absolutely could have warned them. But mostly something sharper, something that hit him low and fast—the abrupt, impossible urge to kiss her right back.
His hand slid to the back of her neck, drawing her in as their mouths met again. The kiss was fierce, consuming, a release of every held breath and every unspoken thought he had shoved aside for the past day. She answered him with the same fire, closing the space between them as the golden parachute carried them downward through the white steam.
He felt her love and adoration towards him through their matebond and he surged love back into her.
Up on the cliff, the others saw a flash of gold through the steam but nothing else—until four more glowing parachutes erupted into existence around Aeron, Hyran, Rex, and Jax, all forged from Fin's magic without him realizing he had powered them.
Rex and Jax exchanged a single look.
Then they jumped. Immediately. Enthusiastically.
Before Hyran or Aeron could attempt a portal home, a hard gust caught their parachutes and yanked them forward, dragging them into an involuntary descent.
Somewhere above them, faint through the steam, Hyran's voice came shrieking down after them.
"Nova, stop using Fin as a magical battery you menace!"
The parachute carried them down in a slow, glowing drift until at last their feet hit solid ground.
Jax and Rex landed shortly after Fin and Nova, both grinning. The moment their boots touched the jungle floor, the golden construct shimmered, vibrated, and then dissolved upward into glittering fragments that vanished into the canopy.
Aeron landed next, stumbling once as his own parachute evaporated.
He dragged a hand down his face. "I swear on every star in the archive, teaching her Aether Fabrication was the single greatest mistake of my professional life."
Rex snorted.
"Most prodigies test boundaries. Push limits," Aeron snapped, leaves sticking out of his hair. "She shoves them down the stairs. I've seen tyrants with better impulse control!"
Nova fought the urge to laugh. Fin, Jax, and Rex all felt it ripple through the bond. Her face and voice gave nothing away. "I'm sorry if that scared you, Aeron."
"Don't look innocent over there," he shot back, arms crossed. "You knew exactly what you were doing. You probably thought of that days ago and couldn't wait to try it."
He brushed leaves and ash from his sleeves with sharp, irritated motions.
"That," he snapped, "was curiosity having an orgasm."
Nova's face went bright red. Annoyingly, he wasn't wrong. She'd seen Ashbane do it in her dream and had been itching to try it ever since.
Fin turned away from Aeron and coughed, the sound doing absolutely nothing to disguise his laugh.
Hyran's boots finally touched the ground, his parachute giving one last offended judder before winking out. He landed unceremoniously on his ass in the underbrush.
He groaned, staring up at the canopy. "By the gods… she's innovating with it."
Hyran had barely regained his footing when Nova's eyes flashed silver. She broke into a sprint with the others thundering after her. Roots twisted across the ground, vines swung low, and the whole place smelled like damp leaves and trouble, but she didn't slow for even a heartbeat.
She skidded to a halt at the edge of a suspiciously smooth patch of earth.
She stopped mid-stride, the others skidding to a halt just behind her.With a sharp flick of her wrist, golden magic flared outward and a bridge snapped into place.In the same instant, the ground where she'd been standing gave way, the smooth path dissolving into a churning pit of quicksand.
Rex swore under his breath.
They crossed fast and silent, each of them acutely aware that if she'd been even one second slower, they'd all be buried.
They ran only a short distance before Nova stopped dead, her arm snapping out instinctively as a shield flared around all of them. She didn't know why—only that something was wrong.
She looked at Rex. His eyes narrowed; he felt it too. A memory trying to surface, but neither could grasp it.
Then the jungle answered for them.
A vine dropped like a noose, smashing straight through her shield as if it were parchment. It snagged Hyran by the waist, yanking him off the ground so violently he shouted on the way up.
More vines shot down at the same time—too many to track.
One coiled around Fin's ankle and ripped him upside down into the air. He had his sword out in a flash, slashing it clean through, dropping him a few feet before another vine tried to take him.
Rex barely had time to twist as a vine snapped around his waist. He spun out of it, slicing it with a brutal downward stroke.
Jax wasn't as lucky—two vines hit him at once, one around his arm, the other his ribs. Rex pivoted, carving one off him, giving Jax the second he needed to cut himself free.
Above them, Hyran's eyes ignited blood-red. A fire dragon erupted from red magic, roaring as it spiraled upward. It incinerated the vines clutching Hyran and Aeron and severing several reaching for Rex and Jax.
Still more descended—thick, thorned, relentless.
Fin's blade flashed again as he hacked through another vine curling around Nova's waist, dropping her just long enough for another to wrap her ankle. He cut that one too, jaw clenched, eyes glowing.
Hyran kept his fire-dragon circling above them as they ran—a blazing serpent of smoke and flame that hissed at anything green that so much as twitched.
After a while, when the vines finally stopped coming for them, the dragon dissolved into ember-dust.
"Behave," Hyran warned the foliage, as if the jungle cared.
It did not.