Page 59 of Spirit Storm

"But why can’t it find her? Does that mean she’s…"

"It doesn’t mean anything. She’s probably just too far away, or the mountain range is dampening the spell, or the guardians have their territory warded. It could be a dozen things.”

Okay, yeah. It could be any one of those things. “So, what do we do?”

Mica points through the trees. “We keep trying. Come on, let’s get out of these trees.”

We push through the forest at a jog, the ground uneven beneath our feet. Roots surface at odd angles, the moss thick enough to swallow sound.

Sprites scatter and chitter at us overhead.

Arcana Academy's pocket dimension has its own ecosystem and its own logic. It’s a world where magic is baked into the soil, the water, and the air, and everything within its borders is fueled by it.

Under other circumstances, I could spend weeks in here just looking at things.

Under these circumstances, I nearly snap an ankle on an exposed root and choose to watch where I'm putting my feet.

We break through the treeline, and I get my first full view of the foothills.

Okay, wow. “They’re farther than they looked.”

“Not a problem.” Asher takes my hand and Mica’s. “We’ll hop along the foothills until your crystal picks up Violet’s signal and we know where to go.”

And so we do.

Asher portals us along the edge of the foothills, and at each stop, I funnel my intention into the pendulum and wait to see if it gives us a direction to follow.

On the fifth try, it does.

When the chain tightens and the tip of the crystal pulls off to the left, my heart almost beats right out of my ribcage.

"There." Mica nods at the cliff face.

It looks impassable. Sheer rock, no breaks, nothing but a vertical face, thin trees clinging to ledges they have no business on, and high above… a sky churning with stormclouds.

“It’s Violet.” I point to the swirling dark mass. “And if she’s still freaking out, she’s still alive.”

“Yeah, she is,” Asher agrees.

“So, how do we get up there?” Mica asks. “It’s really far and, no offense, Asher, but I don’t trust you to land us on a plateau five-thousand feet in the air.”

“No offense taken. I don’t want to be responsible for that, either.”

“There's a trail. See? It goes up to the left." I point at the narrow switchback trail, barely a foot wide in places, cutting into the mountain face in tight zigzags.

"Ash, do you think you can jump us up that?"

He looks at it. Looks at me. Looks at it again. "Pops, I can't see where half those ledges go. If I mis-jump us into the rock face⁠—"

"Yeah, no," Mica says flatly. "We’re definitely better off making the climb."

I look up at the mountain and sigh.

"This is going to suck."

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

“Don’t look down.”