The voice of her father filled Cara's head as clearly as if he were standing next to her. He had felt the same ripple of power as she but had instantly known its meaning.
The moment Ohman had been waiting for all his life had finally arrived. Despite his excitement, his voice was steady and controlled as always. Cara, Melanie, and Chris were to stay in the testing lab, and Ohman would call them once it was safe to come to the surface. Before she could argue, her father ended the call.
Chris and Melanie looked at her with questioning stares.
A film of perspiration covered her skin. She knew what her father was talking about—the only thing it could be. The surge of magic she had felt had nothing to do with Chris or his interface. It was something both more exciting and terrifying. The second Son of Earth and Fire had awoken from his slumber, and her father was going on his own to find him before the first Son of Earth and Fire did.
Even with all his power, her father was going to need her help. She had to get out of the building before he activated the security wards.
Without saying anything to Chris and Melanie, Cara sped out of the room and ran down the hall. She hurried to the elevator doors and slapped the up button.
She tapped the wall impatiently as she waited for the elevator doors to open. Her father had recited to her the ancient prophecy of the Sons of Earth and Fire and of Sigela’s return many times.
Two brothers would be born—each with the blood of Earth and Fire running through his veins, but one would be ruled by Terrada and the other by Sigela. They would be abandoned at birth as aberrations, separated from one another, wanted by neither of their clans.
The first brother would devote his days to finding his lost sibling, while the second brother would spend his life as if in a dream, unable to remember his true self. It was foretold that they would one day find each other and that their magic would merge and become so powerful that the dragons themselves would be forced to obey their will.
Together, the brothers would release Sigela, the Fire Dragon, from her exile in the heavens and the world would be consumed by fire destroying all but her followers.
A soft chime sounded. The elevator door opened, and Cara stepped inside. She heard Chris and Melanie running to catch up to her, but she hit the close button without waiting.
“Hey, hold up,” Chris shouted. “I’m not getting stuck in here again like the last time the old man ran off on one of his emergencies.”
Chris and Melanie dashed into the elevator just before the doors closed, and the car began its ascent to the Rune Corp lobby.
The ride to the ground level was quiet except for Chris and Melanie’s labored breathing. The elevator doors whooshed open and the three of them entered a massive atrium filled with multitudes of greens and browns from plants and trees growing throughout.
A thick yew tree stood like a sentinel in the middle of the lobby, its evergreen branches reaching almost completely to the steeped glass ceiling five floors above. Cara sped past the tree as Chris and Melanie followed behind her.
“I know you can’t tell us what’s going on, but is everything going to be alright?” Melanie asked as she struggled to keep up.
Cara kept herself focused as she ran.
“I have no idea,” she said gravely as they came to the row of glass doors leading to the outside.
Cara slapped her badge up to the door’s scanner plate and glanced upward. Beyond the glass of the atrium ceiling, clouds glided across the full red moon as the sky lit up with washes from distant lightning. The floor vibrated and hummed with the rumbling of approaching thunder.
The storm was close.
The security door clicked. She jerked it open and stepped into the vestibule. As soon as the glass door closed behind her, the outside door clicked open and she rushed into the open air.
Behind her, she heard the crackle of the security spells being activated one by one. She breathed in the crisp pre-storm atmosphere. The dragons were already restless in anticipation of the events to come.
Cara watched as Chris and Melanie stood anxiously in their respective vestibules listening to the security warning that played every time a regular employee left the building.
They had no way of knowing that another soundtrack was playing simultaneously below their conscious hearing range—a set of dragon words that would cloud the details of their workday, effectively burying their knowledge of Rune Corp’s true nature and its work until they entered the building again.
Just before the last security ward sizzled into place, Chris and Melanie stepped outside. Their memories had been suppressed, and their life forces restored by the spell as well. Despite the rapid aging that came from working so intensely with the cubes, Chris appeared young once again.
They both looked up at the approaching storm and then at Cara as if she had appeared from the ether.
“Hope you’re not just coming into work at this time of night,” Chris said.
Cara smiled.
“On my way home just like the two of you as a matter of fact.”
Chris and Melanie seemed puzzled for a moment, but then they said goodnight and started walking to their cars.
Cara tried to ignore the rippling of the elemental fabric around her until they were both pulling out of the parking lot. As soon as she was alone, she closed her eyes and released a deep harmonic sound from her throat.
Her voice reached out to the unseen web of dragons, intertwining with the natural discord of the encroaching storm that encircled her. She felt her way across the concentric ripples of the echo from the magical blast she had felt earlier until she found the epicenter.
She opened her eyes, ran for her car, and within seconds was speeding away. She knew that the second Son of Earth and Fire was one of the most powerful Drayoom ever to be born, but she guessed that after being asleep for all his life, he would also be one of the most vulnerable—at least until he remembered who he was.
