It was a well established fact of arcane magical study that different materials reacted to magic in different ways.
Gems were one intuitive example. A pure diamond cut to shape by an expert craftspony could focus magic much better than a common river stone. Gold could be melted and poured into fine lattice shapes to enhance the power of a crafting table. But what about everyday objects? Could sewer pipes be enchanted to be more resistant to clogs? Could certain kitchen countertop materials soak up antibacterial wards better than others? Could the rubber sole of a boot be made more durable without impacting cost or feel?
This burning question was why professor Pixkin was currently climbing up the steep face of a volcano wearing a different shoe on each hoof. It was also why he had recruited a local hiker to trade in her pretty composite hiking boots for a rubber rain galosh, a sneaker, a slim running shoe, and a singular croc. He was in the business of creating such enchantments. And, hooves crossed, this little expedition would pay dividends a thousand times over.
He couldn’t help but notice how, despite his numerous explanations of the theory behind the boot enchantments, she still stepped lightly and avoided the parts of the ground that smoldered. A lesser scientist would have been offended by her hesitancy. Pixkin took solace in the knowledge that he’d saved her from a very unpleasant walk. The machine-pressed composite soles of her hiking boots would have melted half an hour ago.
The pair made it to base camp with all eight shoes intact. The camp consisted of several structures built atop a massive pad of aerated concrete, which shielded resting hikers from the ambient ground temperature. This unfortunately meant they wouldn’t have an opportunity to test any more shoes until they departed for the next leg of the journey. To add to the unpleasantness, the place reeked of sulfur and sweat and floral notes of burning garbage. Hikers seemingly oblivious to the heat and smell lounged on every available surface, swilling kombucha and munching stale granola while swapping trail stories. Pixkin steered clear of them. He wasn’t here for leisure. He was here for science.
“Cozy Glow, could you please remove your hoofware?” Pixkin asked. Cozy Glow didn’t seem to hear him. Her eyes were glued to the distant crater of the volcano and the red glow within.
Pixkin waved a hoof in front of Cozy Glow’s face. Her nose wrinkled. She stepped back. “Gosh, sorry. Did you say something?”
Pixkin chuckled. “Your shoes,” he repeated. “Let me take a look at them.”
“How come you can just slice them open like that?” she asked as Pixkin dissected her digs. “Aren’t the wards supposed to protect them?”
“Against heat, yes,” he said as he sawed open the heel of one unfortunate croc. “But a sharp rock doesn’t cut using heat. It uses a jagged edge.”
“So if I had stepped on a sharp rock, and the rock pierced the shoe, I’d still get hurt?”
“Yes. And the gap in material would also mean a gap in the enchantment.”
“Shouldn’t you like, I dunno, make a ward that protects against everything?”
Pixkin chuckled. “An everything ward can only be sold once.” He finished taking samples and sealed the spent shoes in plastic bags. “We’ll have to wait until tomorrow to make the rest of the climb.”
“Awww. That’s forever away!”
“Don’t worry. You’ll be adequately compensated for your efforts once I take these enchantments public.”
“I’m not worried about that. I just don’t know how I can sleep down here with it being as hot as it is.” Her wings twitched. “Could you enchant my primaries?”
Pixkin shook his head. “This spell could be unsafe for ponies. I couldn’t do that in good conscience.” He offered a reassuring smile. “Here. Take these.” He hoofed her four more random shoes. “Let’s try and get some rest. We’ve got a big day tomorrow.”
Home that evening consisted of a two-room aerated concrete shelter lined with bunk beds. Cozy Glow was lucky enough to snag one of the three pegasi hammocks—really little more than a bolt of fabric chained to the roof of the shelter. Professor Pixkin’s back ached watching the young mare nestle herself in.
As the professor was getting ready for bed, he heard Cozy Glow’s voice and looked up. Her head was partially peeking over the hammock’s edge. She looked down on him with wide, curious eyes.
She pointed at the professor’s backpack. "Which ones are the best so far?”
"So far the galoshes are faring best.”
“Why’s that?”
“I think that's because they aren't made of mesh, like the sneakers and the joggers. And they don't have big holes in the side like the crocs."
“Wouldn’t the crocs have better heat dissipation though? Because of the holes?”
“You’d think that. But the enchantment can’t enchant what isn’t there. Most of your hoof would be fine. But if you were to, say, submerge your hoof in magma, you’d have a whole mess of circle-shaped burns from where the material isn’t.”
“Oh.” Cozy Glow nodded. “I’m glad I didn’t submerge my hoof in any magma today.”
“Quite.”
The professor rolled over to go to sleep, but Cozy Glow continued, “I’m also glad you’re working on this. And that I’m helping you work on this. You’re going to save a lot of hikers from getting sweaty crispy hooves.”
The professor laughed. “Tomorrow will be the real test. The heat will only get stronger as we approach the lip of the volcano.”
Cozy Glow’s wings buzzed in excitement. The chains groaned as her hammock rocked from side to side. “I can’t wait to get out there. It’s so cool getting to participate in real science!”
A lightness fluttered in the professor’s chest. He remembered what it was like to be young. To be thrown into the deep end without a paddle and actually swim. Cozy Glow reminded him a great deal of himself. Imagine his good fortune to have run into her randomly at the trailhead! The world was full of happy coincidences like that.
Early the next morning, he was awoken by a soft fluttering sound. He cracked his eyes open and found Cozy Glow rummaging through the bag of shoes from the previous day’s hike. She took two pairs of galoshes out and stowed them away in her personal bag.
He considered sitting up and asking her what she was doing. But he already knew the answer. They woke up for real a few short hours later. Cozy Glow pretended she didn’t have the galoshes, and Pixkin pretended not to notice they were missing.
Jutting from the rock surrounding the lip of the volcano were thousands upon thousands of bones.
A thousand years ago, two armies had met here. The battle raged for years. In a desperate effort to break the stalemate, sappers had burrowed holes into the earth and laid explosives in the tunnels. They thought that if they could only destroy the enemy camp from beneath, they could finally achieve the route that had eluded them.
The sappers dug deep and laid their mines with care. On the appointed day, the general gathered with his cabinet and lit the fuse personally. But the sappers had missed something important—something they couldn’t have possibly discovered during their construction efforts. There was both a faultline and a powerful leyline running beneath the battlefield. An explosion of just the right size at just the right depth could disturb the leyline, which in turn could rip the faultline apart. This had the potential to trigger, among other things, large volcanic eruptions.
Histories of the battle tell of how, as the fuse’s flame raced deeper into the mine, the general and his soldiers heard the sound of laughter coming from the depths.
Cozy Glow tripped over a femur.
“Rrr—stupid little—” Her heavy pack of shoes and focusing crystals and stolen galoshes shifted painfully on her back. She bit her lip before any curse words could come out. “I mean. Fascinating.”
Professor Pixkin plodded behind her at a glacial pace, pausing periodically to check on his various pieces of hoofwear. His gait shifted awkwardly from one side to the other, the result of one of his test shoes being a four-inch platform boot.
“Fascinating indeed!” he said, bending over to pick out a chunk of tibia that had become lodged in the sole of one ballet flat. “Looks like the top quarter is missing entirely. This pony’s leg must have been blown clean off.” He looked around at the bubbling wasteland. “I wonder if we can find the pelvis.”
“Think your enchantments would work on bones?”
“Pssh, certainly not. And the ethics of such a thing... hmm...” Pixkin quietly slipped the tibia shard into his pack. “Hmm.”
While Pixkin’s back was turned, Cozy Glow yanked the bone out of the ground and hurled it into a nearby magma river. It hit the surface and shattered. A moment later, it was reduced to dust and ash. The molten magma hadn’t even bothered to eat it.
She would share that femur’s fate if she wasn’t careful. The sparkling trail of magic that had guided her from the Secretkeeper’s shrine now led right to the lip of the volcano. The message was clear: go in.
It took them well into the afternoon to pick their way through the magma field. Their efforts finally paid off when they arrived at a relatively flat spot at the lip of the crater where the magma lake could be observed directly. Using one magically-enhanced pump, Cozy Glow scraped away the bits of molten rock and ash to make a space for their equipment.
Pixkin looked down into the chasm with awe. The near-gale force wind pouring out of the cavern whipped his greying mane back into his face. “Isn’t this incredible?”
“It sure is something,” she replied.
Together with Cozy Glow, Pixkin removed a bundle of shoes from his bag. The aim was to toss them one by one into the volcano and see how long the enchantment lasted before it inevitably succumbed to the heat.
“I’ve been meaning to say something since we started this climb,” Pixkin said, “but the climb left me so out of breath I wasn’t able to get it out.”
“Oh yeah?” Cozy Glow started to rummage around in her own bag. “And what’s that?”
“Thank you.”
Cozy Glow paused. She turned around slowly. “Uh. What?”
“What indeed! What if we had never run into each other? What are the odds of two explorers meeting at the impasse of a daring ascent? The fact that we are here at all is an extraordinary miracle of chance.”
Cozy Glow beamed. “Gosh, that’s nice of you to say.” She removed a flip flop from her hoof and tossed it playfully in Pixkin’s direction. “You should be congratulating yourself for all your hard work!”
“We’ll see about that. The awards I get are dependent on the quality of data I present.”
“So true.” She risked a glance down into the volcano. The heat made her eyes water. “So how does this enchantment work, anyway? Like, the specific magical bits.”
“I’m not sure it would be productive to share the arcana specifics with a pegasus.” Here he quoted a line from an old magical textbook that had since fallen out of favor with general educators. “The horn is the larynx through which magic is spoken.”
“Oh.” Cozy Glow’s face fell. “So I’m not smart enough to get it?”
“No, no—not at all.” The professor realized his error and backtracked. “The different pony races feel magic differently. It’s not to say you couldn’t.”
Cozy Glow’s mile returned. “So you’ll show me?”
Pixkin’s face contorted into a wink. “I only share proprietary arcana with my grad students.” He sighed audibly with relief. “Yes, it takes intense study to understand this level of arcane depth.”
“Oh, okay. I understand, professor.” Cozy Glow started rummaging through her own bag. The professor was surprised when, a moment later, she removed one of the galoshes she’d pilfered the night before. Then another. Then a third and fourth.
“I stole these,” Cozy Glow said. One by one, she put them on. “I knew we were gonna be at the hottest part of the volcano, and you said yourself the galoshes were the safest shoes you’d tested so far. I guess I was just nervous.”
The professor’s face softened. “Cozy Glow—”
“Please don’t make me take them off!” She took a hesitant step back. “I just... I don’t know. I’ve seen how your spells work. I trust it. I trust it so much. Please, just let me keep these on. Just for today. I’ll give them back, I promise.”
Professor Pixkin considered Cozy Glow with his watery grey eyes. “In truth, I saw you take them last night. I suspected such was the case.” Cozy Glow opened her mouth, but Pixkin cut her off. “You’ve been doing a great service to me, helping to test my enchantments. I can hardly fault you for leaning on a safe bet in a dangerous place.”
“So you’re not gonna throw me into the volcano?”
“Heavens, no! Even if I did, I’m fairly convinced you could tap dance on the magma down there without burning your hooves.”
Cozy Glow’s shoulders relaxed. “Thanks, professor. Your students are real lucky to have someone as nice as you as their teacher.”
“Actually... I’ve been thinking about that, too.”
“About what?”
“Cozy Glow, you have shown an incredible acumen for adventure. You’re a top-rate climber and a sharp thinker. The New Yorky-Terrier University could use a mind such as yours in our magical studies department.”
“Woah, wowzers! Are you offering me a spot?”
“Well, you’d have to apply first. There’s a standard to uphold.”
“I don’t have a lot of formal experience.”
“If an application with your name on it happened to find its way onto my desk, I see no reason why I couldn’t help it along in the process.” He smiled at her, his eyes expressive and alive in the magmalight. “Do you understand?”
Cozy Glow smiled back. “I understand.”
She flared her wings and took to the air.
Pixkin let out an audible gasp. “No! Get down here! The thermals will cook your wings!”
Before the words were even out of Pixkin’s mouth, Cozy Glow had finished drawing the rune from the Secretkeeper’s scroll. She’d practiced it several hundred times since she’d first committed it to memory. The edges were sharp, the lines precise. The magic fed off the clarity of the rune and shone an order of magnitude brighter. Cozy Glow passed through the light and felt it cling to her fur like static electricity. Magic a hundred times more potent than the professor’s pitiful protective ward encased her body.
“Thanks for the boots,” she said over her shoulder.
She turned to face the volcano. The reality of her impending descent hit her like a wall of superheated air. Fear nipped at her hocks. But even gods could feel fear.
She snapped her wings tight against her sides. She dropped like a stone.
Pixkin watched her fall into the volcano, his face frozen in slackjawed horror. “Wait!” he screamed after her, “I changed my mind! I want those boots back!” But the reverberating roar of the volcano drowned him out.
Cozy Glow hit the magma pool at terminal velocity. The magic kept her from being instantly burned alive, but the force of the impact knocked the air out of her lungs. She breathed in sulfur and choked. The spell didn’t provide oxygen. The realization sent a jolt of panic through her body. The magma closed in around her. She reached up, grasping for what sliver of sky she could see. The molten living earth consumed her. She sank.
The river flowed with surprising speed, carrying her deeper into the mountain. She held her breath as long as she could, but she couldn’t last forever. Toxic fumes saturated her lungs. The momentary relief of breathing gave way to an awful burning sensation, like someone had lit a roaring bonfire in her lungs.
Just when she thought she would smother in this undignified dark corner and be consumed by the flames, she broke through. Or rather, she fell through. The magma river spat her out headfirst into—guess what—another pile of bones.
The protective rune saved her from being cut to ribbons. She slid down the side in a shower of bone shards, finally coming to rest at the base of the pile. The spell burned through her magic reserves and faded out. She couldn’t tell if it had held for two minutes or ten. She couldn’t see. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t move.
When she had hacked the toxic air out of her lungs and gulped in some of the new fresh air around her, she got a second wind. The first thing she did was stomp around in the bone pile under her. Pixkin’s magic galoshes had miraculously survived her journey. Their grippy outsoles provided an excellent platform for her to exercise her anger.
“Losers!” she screamed at the pile of bones. “Dumb stupid losers!”
Something stirred in the walls. She whirled around. The cave she’d been dropped into was at least a hoofball field long and just as tall, with leering stalactite pillars clustered around the middle. Magma flowed through the walls, lighting the cave from within. The earth rumbled continuously, an unbroken song of creation and destruction.
The rumbling got a little less poetic. The walls moved again. Something was under the surface, pushing up the stone like a hyperactive cat trapped beneath a bedsheet.
“You’re not hiding from anyone,” Cozy Glow said, unamused. Speaking made her woozy all over again. She staggered. “Come out here.”
Solid folds of rock shifted aside. The cavern groaned as the rock compacted, making way for its master. A sharp face of patchy brown fur gave way to armored scales and a slender snake’s body. On its face was the proboscis of a star-nosed mole. The fleshy fingers probed the air. Probably to smell her.
“Gross,” she said out loud.
The molesnake coiled into a tight knot. Its scales shimmered ruby red in the magmalight. Its voice was deep and cacophonous, the sound of tectonic plates colliding. “You are trespassing.”
“You look like you got hit by a carriage,” Cozy Glow said.
The molesnake looked momentarily taken aback. Its tail flicked from side to side. Barbed scales glanced over the ground and sent sparks sailing off into the dark.
Cozy Glow waited patiently until it opened its mouth to speak again, then interrupted it a second time. “Actually, no, you look like you got hit by a whole caravan of carriages.”
A rock came free from the wall. It was, ironically, about the size of a carriage. Cozy had only a fraction of a second to duck. It clipped the top of her mane and slammed into the far wall with a reverberating bang.
Cozy Glow turned her head slowly towards the molesnake, one eyebrow raised in challenge.
“I know who you are,” the molesnake said in an accusatory voice. “You killed the Secretkeeper.”
“Were you two friends or something?” Cozy replied.
“I am bonded to him. When you drove the dagger through his heart, it was as if you were killing me.”
“Ugh, so melodramatic. Why do you demons always have to be like—” She threw her voice low and gravely. “We are boooonded. We have maaaaaagic. Grow up!”
“I am older than time itself. Eons passed me by before your kind dragged itself from the primordial mud.”
“All that time, but you still couldn’t fix yourself up enough to get a better looking boyfriend!”
The molesnake slithered towards her. Cozy Glow tensed.
“You’re scared,” Cozy Glow said. “Ha! You’re scared of a little filly.”
“I fear for the world if I fail to contain you.”
“Yeah,” said Cozy Glow, “you should.”
The demon seemed to teleport. One second it was swaying in front of her. The next it had already sprung into the air. Its tail whipped towards Cozy Glow.
She leapt at the same moment, but she was not as fast as the demon. One of the barbed scales on its tail caught Cozy Glow in the leg. She was swept off her feet and flung into the far wall like a ragdoll. Before she could react, a shower of smaller rocks flayed her back and bent the feathers of her wings.
The molesnake jabbed at her with its tail. She flung herself off the wall at the last second to avoid being impaled, landing hard on her belly. She got to her hooves only to have a second spray of rocks fly into her face. The flat side of the demon’s tail caught her in the side. She went airborne again.
Still fighting to fill her lungs, Cozy Glow popped up and went on the offensive. She snapped her wings out with enough speed to cavitate the air. Her hollow bones vibrated with power. Pure magic coalesced on her wingtip in the form of a finely-honed blade.
With a roar, she slashed the demon’s back with enough force to cut a pony cleanly in half. Her attack glanced harmlessly off the demon’s back. It didn’t even flinch.
The demon countered with a flurry of blows from its tail. Cozy Glow parried, then dove in for another attack. Despite being a tenth the size of the molesnake, Cozy Glow’s attacks seemed sluggish in comparison. Blow after blow yielded little more than scratches on the molesnake’s scales.
The molesnake threw another rock at her. She flinched, leaving one side open. The molesnake rushed in, wrapping her up and squeezing her with all its might. It put its nose right up to her face and let loose a deafening roar. Its star-shaped nose opened up, trembling, sniffing the air.
The demon’s body radiated a deadly amount of heat. As she smothered, she felt her skin start to blister. She tried to scream, but it had already squeezed the air out of her lungs.
Desperation turned to blind panic. She yanked one wing free. Those feathers that weren’t scoured away by the demon’s sharp scales immediately burst into flames.
She screamed and let loose a wild slicing glaive of magic. It missed the demon by a mile and hit the ceiling, dislodging several stalactites.
The demon threw Cozy Glow against the wall and dove out of the way of the falling rocks. She hit the wall and blacked out for a split second. When she awoke, she was on the ground. The demon advanced on her. She rolled over and threw another glaive of magic at the ceiling. The move bought her a precious few seconds to regain her bearings.
The repeated thunk of falling rocks gave her an idea. She aimed her next slice at the ground in front of her. The impact shattered the stone floor and threw a spray of rock into the demon’s face. Its starmole nose spasmed erratically. It hissed, briefly exposing a long forked tongue.
In the moment it was distracted, Cozy Glow sent a second glaive of magic into the ceiling. A second stalactite fell. This one found its mark, falling directly onto the demon’s back.
Shattered rock and chunks of scales fly everywhere. The demon shuddered and lurched sideways.
Cozy cried out victoriously. But the elation was short-lived.
The molesnake let out a roar that shook the high walls of the cavern. The deep obsidian red of its scales erupted into violent flashes of light. Pure magical fire coursed beneath its scales. Two seams on either side of the mole’s head split open, and the skin tore—no, blinked open. Two glowing orange eyes swiveled in their sockets. Where Cozy Glow expected to see irises, there were instead mandalas.
The molesnake closed the distance, until its long fleshy starmole nose was almost touching Cozy’s snout. The mandalas in its eyes appeared to rotate slowly, spiraling inward in perfect geometric unity. She couldn’t look away. The patterns went deeper and deeper, until she was practically falling through it.
The demon wiggled its head to one side. Cozy Glow leaned with it. It moved the other way. Cozy Glow followed.
She was trapped. Her mind screamed, break free! But the magic in the mandalas immobilized her. She scrambled backwards, but she couldn’t look away, couldn’t turn away, couldn’t even blink.
The head moved closer, mouth opening. Waves of heat washed over her. The skin of her snout blistered and peeled. She started to pant. The air was so hot it made her lungs ache.
It was going to eat her, she realized. Rage welled up inside her. The way the molesnake’s fangs glistened in the magmalight, the way the soft palate of its mouth quivered in anticipation, the way the corners of its mouth turned up as it drew her deeper into its spell—it was more than she could bear. A scream bubbled up from her throat, piercing over the rush of blood in her ears.
The molesnake breathed out. Superheated foul breath smacked her across the face. She stumbled backwards. Something hard brushed against her leg, cutting a deep gash into her flesh. The pain sent a shiver through her body. It didn’t break the demon’s hypnosis, but it gave her a split second of lucidity.
As the demon wound up to strike, she fumbled blindly for the object. Her hoof closed around it.
She leapt forward at the same time the demon struck. Instead of biting her in half, Cozy Glow passed cleanly through its jaws and into its mouth. Magma and unnatural magic fire illuminated its quivering pink insides.
The demon’s jaws snapped shut, plunging the sub-cavern of its mouth into total darkness. Cozy Glow landed on its forked tongue. The landing was springy and soft, like a flesh trampoline. But the relief turned to searing pain a moment later. Its saliva was caustic. And it was everywhere.
Of course. Stupid. She should have known. She fell over with a cry of pain. The object she’d picked up almost slipped from her grasp. She dove for it and managed to snag it, at the cost of landing belly-down on the demon’s tongue.
Her underside blistered instantly. A strange flickering light filled the molesnake’s mouth. Cozy Glow looked around and realized the light came from her tail. It was on fire.
She had to act now or she’d surely die. With a herculean effort, Cozy Glow stood atop the demons’ tongue. Pixkin’s magic boots held out magnificently, protecting her hooves from the demon’s caustic tongue.
With a roar, she stabbed the object into the soft palate above her.
Boiling hot blood gushed out of the gaping wound. The demon wrenched its head upwards. Cozy Glow was barely able to keep a grip on the object as she was thrown around the inside of the demon’s mouth. Finally, there was an agonizing moment of weightlessness. Then a horrendous impact against the stone.
Cozy Glow, along with the object she’d used to stab it and about a hundred gallons of blood, spilled out of the demon’s mouth in a torrent. The sensation of solid ground beneath her hooves sent a jolt of energy through Cozy Glow’s wrecked body. She rolled out of the puddle of caustic fluid. Somehow, she was still holding the object she’d used to stab the demon. It was covered in blood and lacking its usual magical luster, but she still recognized it as a broken shard from one of the molesnake’s scales.
A sick, wretching cough filled the air. She saw the molesnake was still alive, leaking more blood, twisting its body into itself. Its head was immobile. The shard of scale must have severed some important nerve. Its eyes flickered dimly. The mandalas in its irises spun faster and faster as the molesnake’s breathing slowed. The hypnotic magic was gone. She could look freely without fear.
She climbed atop its head, wedged the scale shard between its eyes, and stomped on it.
Using a rock for leverage, Cozy Glow pried open the dead demon’s chest cavity. A thick quivering outer membrane encased the heart. She placed the scale shard against the membrane, then hammered it with a rock. Dark blood spattered everywhere. It sizzled with blistering heat where it fell on her fur. Cozy Glow growled and swung again. Pain brought her anger bubbling back up to the surface.
“You like that?” she said.The outer layer of skin gave way. The scale shard tore through muscle with a wet sucking sound. “You like that?” The scale shard glanced off the membrane and ripped through the demon’s lungs. She lined up for another strike. Her fur was on fire again. “How about you find your boyfriend in Tartarus and tell him how badly I smoked you!”
The membrane finally gave way, snapping back like a severed achilles’ tendon. Blood flooded out, drenching her hooves, seeping into her open wounds. She howled in pain and elation. The demon’s heart was hers at last.
She leaned her whole body into the open chest cavity and sank her teeth into the heart.
The heart was bigger than a Yakistani feast and twice as stomach-turning. By the time it was done, she was out of breath, retching, and covered head to hoof in burns. Bits of molten rock clung to her coat, cooling into black pumice. Her lips split in canyonous cracks. Her stomach was on fire. Blood beaded between her gums and her teeth. The soft palate of her mouth hung in ragged strips.
The endless rumble of the volcano dulled slowly, until its rumbling ceased entirely. What was left in the absence was a silence so perfect it felt dead, like the earth had ceased turning and the magnetic core at the heart of everything had finally grown cold. She felt like a god in that moment. Was a god. She had been here before, the perfect stillness before the beginning of the universe. She would be here in the stillness after, the great final death of everything. Everything but her. She couldn’t die. She was a god.
As the magma cooled, the red light faded. Cozy Glow saw the familiar trail of magic leading her back towards the rim of the volcano. There it snaked up the sheer wall of the main magma vent, illuminating a series of hoofolds she could use to climb up to freedom.
“Three hold the key,” she said aloud. The words echoed in her head. Three hold the key. Two more to go.
Cozy Glow looked down at her legs. Pixkin’s magic galoshes were singed and fraying at the edges, but they’d held up admirably. They would be a great help with the impending climb.
That was where the good news ended. What fur she had left above the boot line clung to her in patches. The skin beneath was charred. A spasm shook her, an automatic spinal cord response to impending stimulus of pain. One down. Two more to go.
She got up. She fell over. She got back up again. She walked towards the wall and started to climb.