On the next level, Safar disappeared up, but I had to stop and stare. This too was the entire floor of the tower and, judging by the big bed, was likely Szerain’s chambers. Hundreds of foot-high statues in wood and stone lined shelves and niches in the walls. Mostly humans with a smattering of demons mixed in.

The tassels of hair, the paintings in the shrine, and now this. Did he grow attached to each and every human only to watch them age and die? How could anyone survive such repeated loss?

A tumble of books and papers overflowed a huge table and littered the floor around it, making Tessa’s library look as tidy as an evidence locker. Frowning, I took a step closer. Everything else in the room was in a modicum of order, but the table’s disarray had the feel of having been ransacked. I hadn’t seen any indication of that anywhere else in the palace despite its being all but abandoned. Not that there was anything I could do about it even if I wanted to. For all I knew it had been like that since his exile. Still, I made a mental note of it.

A draft of fresh air flowed over me, and Safar bellowed from above. I headed up the stairs and found him outside an open door that led to the top of the tower. He bared his teeth at me and bounded to the wall, bellowing again. I closed the door and followed, taking in the sights.

The tower rose above the palace roofline at the end of the west wing. To the west, wooded hills rolled, spiked with random fingers of stone, and mountains hunched on the horizon. To the east lay the courtyard with the columns, the other wing with its melted tower, and beyond that…holy fucking shit.

My steps slowed, and all sense of déjà vu vanished. Elinor had never seen this before, and I’d only had a partial view of it from the balcony on the first day with Mzatal.

In the distance, a crater the size of a small city dominated the utterly barren terrain to the northeast. From it, a great rift sliced across fractured stone, losing itself in a jumble of too-sharp, angular mountains. Gouts of arcane flame leapt and fell from the rift in an eerie dance of chaotic color. Blackened hills devoid of vegetation undulated southward in a widening swath as far as I could see. I had the sneaking suspicion that the odd rock formations in the forest to the west were shards from the disastrous event in the east.

I reached the parapet and spread my hands on the pitted stone. “It looks like a bomb went off,” I breathed.

“The cataclysm,” Safar said as he hopped onto the wall and crouched. “Very bad. Much destruction.”

I struggled to comprehend the forces that could have wrought such devastation. And I…Elinor did this? How is that even possible? “Is it like this all over the planet?”

“It is most evident near the domain of the Lords, where the ancient valves shattered,” he said, “though it is everywhere. The fire rain here was the worst.” His wings drooped. “The primeval forest is gone. These woods are young, reestablished only a century ago.” He tapped the mottled and pitted stone of the battlement. “Traces yet of the burning.”

Nausea roiled my stomach as I ran my fingers over the rough surface. “What about the groves? Were they destroyed as well?” A weird pang gripped me at the thought.

“Dahn. The groves retreated.”

“Retreated?” I asked, frowning.

“Retreated into the soil,” he clarified. “All survived intact save one that was lost to a chasm, though none could be used for near a hundred years.” He huffed. “And the one here closer to a hundred and fifty.” Safar gestured toward the crater with a claw. “That was the first valve to go. The rest followed within a day. That was a very bad day.”

“Gestamar said that the ways were closed and the humans all died.” I looked up into his face. “How many?”

He gazed out over the blasted landscape. “There were near six hundred here with the lords. Most who did not die from cataclysmic events died within a year. A few survived almost two.” He shook his large head. “With the ways closed so completely, the humans could not balance the potency within themselves and burned out.”

“Wouldn’t they go back to Earth? Make it through the void?”

Safar grunted and shook his head. “Dahn. No. With the ways closed, there was no passage.”

I gripped the stone hard. I knew damn well why Mzatal had suggested I come up here—so that I could feel exactly how I was feeling now. But why? What purpose did it serve in his game? I hurriedly wiped away my tears. “How were the ways opened up again?”

The reyza turned on the wall and resettled into a crouch facing me. “Szerain and some of the demahnk, the Elder syraza, worked for over two hundred years to correct the inter-dimensional ruptures and arcane distortions enough to reestablish a valve.” His eyes slid to mine. “In one nine zero eight on your calendar, in the area you call Siberia.”

“Oh…wow. So, do you need valves to equalize the arcane pressure or something?” Tessa had a small one of these valve things terminating in her library, and I’d speculated that it functioned as a pressure release valve.

Safar gave a nod. “Simply stated, yes. After that, more were possible, and with less impact.” He snorted, lifted his face as if to feel the sun on it fully. “Fifteen years later, at the age of fourteen, Katashi performed the first summoning in centuries.”

“Katashi?” I blinked in surprise. Katashi had mentored Tessa in summoning for nearly a decade, and I’d spent a miserable couple of months with him during which I learned zilch except that he was an intolerant, inflexible asshole. I’d assumed he was in his seventies, but if Safar was right, Katashi would actually be over a hundred years old. Damn. Well, that explained why so many summoners had been trained by him. I hadn’t realized that he was pretty much the grand poobah of modern summoning.

Safar snorted, “Kri, Katashi. He summoned Gestamar in his near disastrous first summoning. Had he been slain by the recoil rather than merely injured, it is improbable that you would be a summoner now.”

Holy crap. Summoning an ancient reyza like Gestamar as an untried and unmentored summoner was a mind-boggling accomplishment. Katashi must be a fucking genius. Not that he’d shared any of that with me.

I stared out at the horrific view, skin crawling from the feel of it. Did the demons hate me—Elinor—because of all of this? So far they didn’t seem to be holding a grudge, and, for right now, I was okay with not knowing the answer.

For that matter, the demons had been downright accommodating. “Not that I’m complaining, but considering I’m a captive, why are y’all being so nice to me? Apart from Mzatal, who’s pretty much a dick.”

Safar lowered his head and peered closely at me. “It serves no purpose to cause you unnecessary distress. I have read Earth books, seen Earth captives, so I understand your question, though I do not understand causing distress without purpose.”

Earth. I hugged my arms around me, suddenly feeling horribly homesick and isolated. I wanted my own bed, real coffee…hell, I’d even take some of Tessa’s weird fruity tea at this point. I wondered what “necessary” distress they’d cause if they decided they had a purpose.

The groan of hinges pulled me from my self-pity spiral. I looked back to see the young blond man stepping out through the doorway. He smoothed down the front of a way-cool belted tunic-coat; a faintly Indonesian-looking thing of a color that flowed from purple to green to black as he moved. Definitely not Earth off-the-rack. He ran his hand over his hair with the supposed aim of taming it a bit, though it immediately sprang up again into the unruly blond cloud.

Straightening, I turned to face him. He stepped forward and cleared his throat, fidgeting slightly and not looking at all like the focused summoner of the previous night. I still pegged him at around twenty, but right now he was doing a great impression of a nervous teen. “Greetings,” he said with a lift of his chin as he quite obviously fumbled for something resembling poise. “I am Idris Palatino.”