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Nevada had some sort of way to alert the whole city of what was going on, so while he was doing that I headed for the center of Alpin.  Nevada had admitted that he didn’t know what was there.  Most of the camps were near the borders, and most of the hunting was done near the outer edges of the city in case there were problems and they had to evacuate the snow.

I wasn’t sure why the dot had stopped moving, but all of the reasons I could think of were not good.  I barely had the energy to keep going, but I knew I had to.  The father I got into the city, the thicker the snow got.  I pulled the map out one more time, and I realized that I couldn’t see the map in front of me.  It didn’t matter, anyways.  The map didn’t tell me where I was.

“Odelle!  Where are you?” a gentle voice called. “I can sense you, but I can’t see.”

“I’m here!” I called back.

“Keep talking.  I’ll find you.”

I took a few steps towards the voice. “Who are you?”

“I’m Piren, but you probably know me as Icy.”

“Oh!” I breathed a sigh of relief. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”

She was finally close enough for me to see her now, and strangely, she looked just like she had in her fox form.

“Were you following me around Alba?” I asked.

She smiled. “Did you notice me?”

I shook my head. “The map gave you away.” I pulled it out. “See, there’s a d…wait, it’s not there anymore.”

“How long ago was it there?”

I paused. “About an hour ago was the last time I checked.”

She smiled bitterly. “It’s gone because the last quest has been done.”

“It has?” I asked in horror.

“Jungkook knew where the temple of the curse was.  He took me there, and he retrieved the gem for himself.  I couldn’t stop him.”

I stared up at her. “Where is the temple of the curse?”

No more than forty paces south and we were at the temple.  It was glowing an angry, hideous red, and I wondered how I hadn’t seen it from where I’d been standing before.

“The temple was where the curse was cast,” Piren explained. “We mystics were created here, and we were given the hearts of the land.  If they are all brought together, they can break the curse, but only one person can bring them all together.”

I followed this story as she motioned to the runes on the wall.  They seemed to tell a story, but the end of it had been unwritten.

“But…there’s only six of you,” I observed. “There’s room for seven runes in the pendant.”

“The seventh rune wasn’t given to a mystic.  It was given to the one who would birth the hero, but she didn’t know.  What colors are all your runes, Odelle?”

I pulled the pendant off my neck and listed off the colors.  “Red, yellow, green, blue, and indigo.”

“My rune was purple.”

“So…orange is missing.”

I tugged on my mother’s necklace as I pondered what Piren had said.  The seventh rune…was given…to the future mother of the….

I gasped, ripping my necklace off my neck then.  I held it up next to the pendant, and only then did I realize that it was the same size as all the other runes.

“Where was Jungkook headed?”

☀☀☀☀☀

As I stepped out of Alpin, it seemed as if time had stopped.  The sun was still straight overhead, as if no time had passed since I’d reached the mountain.  That couldn’t make sense.  It had been hours since that had happened.  I glanced up at Piren.

“He’s frozen the time,” she gasped with wide eyes. “We have to get to the border now!”

As we ran, I realized that again this was not taking as long as it should have.  Without the sun moving, I couldn’t be sure how much time had actually passed, but I knew it was less time than should’ve.  Even the climb up the mountain seemed to pass in the blink of an eye.

When we reached the top, I glanced down and gasped.  Tae, Lumi, and the rest of the people who had followed us were all still almost exactly right where I’d last seen them.  I was about to climb down when Piren stopped me.

“Don’t.  You could injure them if you disturb them.  Their bodies are paralyzed.  If you hit them on accident, they can’t react to save themselves.” She motioned to the left. “Go over there and jump.”

I’d learned to not question even the wildest of commands from the mystics at this point, so I did what she said and jumped straight off the top of the mountain that was nearly a cliff.  I landed flat on my feet with no paint when I hit the bottom, and Piren landed next to me not too long after.

I was about to head off, but before I could take a step, Piren stuck her fingers in her mouth and let out a deafening whistle.  I covered my ears as quickly as possible, but the volume with which she’d whistled was sending my ears ringing.

“To the border,” she repeated. “Let’s go!”

It wasn’t long before I could see Jungkook moving in the distance.  Despite his light clothing, his dark hair could still be seen for miles away just about anywhere in Alba.

“You called?” a deep voice asked from behind me, making me jump.

I glanced back to see it was Fannar who had been speaking.

“I did,” Piren nodded. “Jungkook has taken it upon himself to steal the last rune.  We need to get it back for Odelle.”

“He’s back?” Fannar gasped. “I thought he was banished years ago!”

“He appeared in Eira a few years ago and offered to help Tae with the inn.  I would’ve said something, but it would’ve blown my cover and meant even worse things than him just being in town.”

“I thought he’d only come to see me!” another voice exclaimed.  That one was Zahleh.

“Zahleh!  What happened to your arm?” Piren asked in horror.

“The bloke cut it off when he had the nerve to come see me.  Thought I’d give him the rune if he hurt me enough.  Should I have told him I can’t feel pain?”

A loud cry from the north caught all of our attention, and I turned to look ahead of me.  Findlay had appeared and tackled Jungkook to the ground.  I couldn’t imagine that had felt good.  Findlay was large and made of ice.

Jungkook tried to drive a knife through Findlay’s chest, but it didn’t work so well.  We approached the two of them fairly quickly and stood over Jungkook.

“Your time is up, Jungkook.  Had over the rune,” Piren demanded.

“I’m not letting you have it!”

“Sure, you are,” a feminine voice said.  The slap of fire across Jungkook’s face was enough to tell me who the voice belonged to.

Jungkook let out another loud cry as a black hand of rock pried the purple gem from his hand.  The rock man examined the gem in the sunlight before handing it to me.  Then he turned to Piren.

“Thanks.  I haven’t been able to leave that volcano in ages.”

“No problem, Pyrrhus.  We can’t banish him without you, you know.”

Well, now I finally knew his name.

“Sorry for this, little guy, but frankly, you deserve it,” Findlay said before striking Jungkook over the head.

“He killed hundreds of people when he cast that curse.  He deserves far worse than that,” Piren grumbled.

I noticed now that all the gems were glowing.  My mother’s amber had been placed in the pendant with the rest of the gems, and together they shot a rainbow into the air.

“It’s working.  We need to banish him before he awakes,” Zahleh grunted.

The six of them joined hands.  Findlay, Zahleh, and Fannar were on one side, and Piren joined them to Idalia and Pyrrhus.  Findlay held his hand out to me.

“We need one more human to form the path between ice and fire.”

I took his hand before taking Pyrrhus’s in my other.  I could feel the magic of the heat and the cold battling within me, but they found peace with each other as they recognized that I was one with both of them.

No words were exchanged between anyone, but the rainbow shining from my pendant seemed to get brighter with each passing second, and soon, it was all I could see.  The time seemed to truly come to a stop then.  Everything went quiet, even the wind that had been blowing around me seconds before.  And then, all I could see was white light.