“No—” Keko looked unsteady as she glanced at the small beach thirty yards away.
“Think about it,” Griffin said. “If she’d touched the Source, the world would’ve known. There would be stories or legends, or geological proof of such a huge disaster. Because she was fire.” Taking her arms, Griffin turned her to face him. “And I’m water,” he whispered.
Her sorrowful gaze dropped. Then her shoulders followed.
He cradled her face, lifting it back up to him. Pressing closer, her heat enveloped him.
“I know you want to do this yourself. Believe me, I know this very well.” She stared at him with glittering, dark eyes. “But you can’t, and I won’t let you try. You will die down there. You’ll trigger something huge, something deadly. You won’t come back with any kind of cure. And your Chimerans will still lose their magic.”
She shuddered within his grasp. “What will you do? How will you do it?”
He licked his lips. “I have an idea.”
She took his forearms in that enhanced grip. “But . . . you’ve ruined your chance with the Senatus.”
“Said it once before and I’ll say it again: Fuck the Senatus. I came here for you, remember?” He touched his forehead to hers. “This will help you. And your people. Mine will be there when I get back, no worse off than how I left them. The good thing about the future is that it can always change.”
He would think about the Ofarians later. For now, he belonged to Keko.
Her lips parted, a sweet little cloud of her magic smoke leaking out. He breathed it in gladly.
He released her, gently pushing away. Her arms hung in midair. He looked at the rock and its narrow crack, his intent clear.
“No!” screamed Nem, thrashing from inside the circle of fire. It sizzled and bit at his flailing limbs. “No! You don’t know what will happen!”
Keko lowered her arms. “He’s right. You don’t know what’s down there, what will happen. You’re not Chimeran. How will you hold the magic?”
Griffin smiled sadly. “Why, Kekona. Are you worried about me?”
“I was willing to bargain my life.” She slapped an angry hand to her chest. “I don’t want to gamble with yours.”
If he touched her again, he’d never want to let go, so he took a step backward instead. “This time,” he said, “I’m going on faith. And I have to say that it feels pretty damn good.”
A sound somewhat like a choke came out of her mouth. She turned her face to hide her emotion, but he wasn’t fooled.
She murmured, “After all I’ve done to you, after all I’ve said, after how the Chimerans have acted against the Ofarians, I can’t believe you’d do this for my people.”
Griffin took one final look at her with his human eyes. Ofarian words rolled across his tongue and spilled out from between his lips, bringing up his magic, transforming his body to liquid.
He watched her eyes widen as she finally realized his plan. The humbled, overwhelmed woman disappeared. The confident, steadfast woman stood before him now, and he couldn’t have asked for a better partner.
She came closer to his watery shape, blowing orange flame across one palm and holding it out to him. “Let me do it.”
Griffin nodded his liquid head.
She touched him, her burning hand pressed to his wobbling, translucent chest. The heat from her fire, her magic, turned him to steam. It was a far different feeling, to have it done to him rather than doing it himself. It was an incredible feeling, one he wanted to experience again and again.
He gently entwined himself around her whole body. Curling his molecules next to her ear, he thought I would do anything for you. She sagged as though she’d actually heard him. Maybe she had.
Reluctant to leave, but resolved to help her, he peeled the steam away from her skin and floated toward the crack. Flattening himself into a long, thin stream, he slipped into the narrow fissure and instantly surrounded himself with dark. With earth and rock. With unadulterated magic. The world around him was shadowed and craggy, the lava rock slicing off at harsh angles, turning directions without sense, making his path crooked and dangerous. Even though he wanted to zoom ahead at full speed, he had to go slowly or else risk being drawn too thin or being broken apart. There were limits to his power; time was one of them, and the careful pace set him on edge, made him worry about how much energy he’d have left for the return trip.
From somewhere deep, deep down in the blackness, the Source sensed his presence. Maybe it knew he was water. It blasted against him. Intense heat and stormy magic sent out constant shocks. They pulsed against him like giant waves and he was the tiny minnow trying to swim against the riptide. He had to pull his steam body along as much as thrust it forward, and, like when he’d been tracking Keko across the Big Island, it drained his magic exponentially.
He kept going, kept driving on, without any indication of how far he had to burrow into the heart of the earth. He couldn’t think about it because turning back wasn’t an option. Every second brought increased heat, more treacherous maneuvering, and the dizzying counterstrength of pure, untouched fire magic.
All of a sudden, the narrow, twisting passage exploded into openness. A vast cavern yawned in the shape of a near perfect circle, a separate contained universe hidden deep in the bowels of the planet . . . complete with its own brilliant, pulsating, dangerous sun.
Only this was no sun. This was the Fire Source—a giant, blistering orb of white, with tongues and whips of blue and sparkling silver snapping out like poisonous snakes trapped behind wire. They left tiny floating flecks of flame in their wake, which flared on their own for a second or two, then died. The Source was a living thing, an amorphous beast contained in an elastic shape, constantly pushing against its constraints. It reeked of danger and power.
Griffin hovered at the circumference of the cavern, awed and petrified over what glowed before him. It was astounding that something like this existed in a human world, on the human plane. It had been born with this planet, not brought here like his own people. It would die when the Earth did. Or vice versa.
That was all the time he allowed himself to think. He had something else to do.
When he’d taken Keko beneath the ocean’s surface and encapsulated her in magic water, he’d sensed her trying to release her fire. The water wouldn’t let her. His element hadn’t killed hers, it just . . . contained it.
He had to trust in that same principle here.
The Source pulsed in a great, uneven heartbeat. It seemed to grow more and more agitated by the second, Griffin’s presence feeding and affecting it. It knew something had infiltrated its lair and it was merely biding its time before unleashing its weapons, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. It was a dragon—a chimera—stalking and teasing its prey.
Death churned inside that thing. Hope, too. And they were all tied together by faith.
Those blue and white flames continued to loop out from the surface of the Source like the solar flares in the Earth’s sun. They stretched and bowed then snapped back, leaving remnant flecks floating in the air, glowing in their wake. Griffin watched them greedily.
Then he saw his opportunity. Perhaps his only one. He prayed—to the stars, to Keko’s Queen, to whomever might be listening—that it would be enough.
A bolt of crackling blue flame shot out—straight for where he’d flattened his particles against the wall. It wanted to dissolve him. To destroy him. The whip of fire snapped before it reached him, leaving behind a web of tiny blue-white motes—pure specks of magic no longer attached to the Source itself. Residual fire just lingering in space.