Alera lifted her eyebrows. “Yes. But they are not mortal, young Gaius. They will take vengeance for being bound, and they will not show you the least gratitude.”

“Binding can be done even by someone like me,” Tavi said. “I mean, I could make Garados sit still if I had to. That’s what happened at Kalare and Alera Imperia—and with you, to a degree. Someone like me bound them not to act.”

“Correct,” Alera said.

“Then show me how to break the bond.”

Alera inclined her head and reached out her hand. Like the rest of her, it, too, was covered in opaque grey mist that one could mistake for cloth if one didn’t look too closely. She touched his forehead. Her fingertip was damp and cool.

The means simply appeared in Tavi’s mind, as smoothly as if it had been something remembered from his days at the Academy. And, like much of furycraft, it was quite simple to implement. Painful, he suspected, but simple.

Tavi touched the stone with one hand and stretched the other up to the motionless sky. The principal furycraft used in the binding was watercrafting. It formed the foundation of the effort, while the appropriate craft related to the fury was added atop it: earth for earth, air for air, and so on. But water was the foundation. He had to cancel the watercrafting with its opposite.

Tavi bowed his head, focused his will, and sent fire, fire spread so fine that it never came to life as flame, coursing down deep into the rock of Garados and up in a broad, slewing cone into Thana Lilvia’s misty presence. There was a flash of pain as the two forces collided, a kind of cognitive acid that felt like it was chewing clean the inner surface of his skull.

The Queen’s head snapped toward him as she backpedaled lightly from Kitai.

The reaction from Garados and Thana was immediate.

The ground shook and swayed, and the Queen and Kitai both staggered several steps in the same direction, their bodies slamming against a rock shelf as the mountain tipped back its head and let out a bone-shuddering roar. An instant later, the darkness grew until it was nearly as black as night, and a storm blew up that made the worst weather Tavi had ever seen feel like a gentle shower. The wind screamed through the rocks, howling in mindless rage. Sleet fell from the sky in half-frozen, stinging sheets. Lightning writhed everywhere, a dozen bolts coming down around them in the space of a few seconds.