It kept on doing so, a violent upheaval that rippled outward from our position across the camp, flattening most of it. The rest of the tents collapsed, fey everywhere were knocked off their feet, and the remaining trees fled for cover through the suddenly churning soil. I clung to the dirt myself, feeling it move like liquid under my hands, a truly disturbing sensation. One that made my insides feel a little watery, too, because some part of me, some ancient, instinctive part, knew what was coming.

I guessed the fey did, as well, because they were leaping to their feet, were grabbing the prisoners, were preparing to run—

Too late. Because the ground heaved once more, a violent, aggressive motion, like a giant fist was being thrust up through the soil. And a sound tore through the night, hitting the surrounding tree line and echoing back to us, over and over, until I wanted to scream, because once had been bad enough.

It was so loud that it was felt as much as heard, vibrating through my body as if I’d just been thrown from a speeding truck and was rolling down the highway. Which considering how much the ground was bucking underneath me, wasn’t that far off. Fey were also hitting down everywhere, but they no longer looked like I was a top priority.

It would have been a good time to run, but there was just no way. And that was before a huge fissure slashed through the middle of camp, rupturing the ground and almost swallowing several fey. And allowing a column of lava as wide as a bus to spew skyward.

It was bright red and gold and flying everywhere, along with a ton of noxious gasses that threatened to choke me, and highlighted the formerly stoic guards’ panicked faces. But the fire didn’t stay that color. Because the lava, still fountaining up everywhere, also started raining down—on fleeing trees, on scrambling fey, on the remaining tents.

And on something else.

“Seriously?” I yelled, although I couldn’t hear myself. I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of every munition’s box anywhere near the eruption going off, all at once.

Multicolored explosions shot deadly missiles in all directions—including at us. The few surrounding fey who had tried to resume their feet promptly hit the ground again, as an army’s cache of magic lit up the night in every color of the rainbow. It was so bright and so loud that, for a moment, I just lay there, literally stunned.

But then Arsen was jerking me up with one hand, and savagely gesturing at the guards with the other. I couldn’t hear what he was saying; I couldn’t hear anything, even my own thoughts. But I guessed the fey could.

Because they moved as one, forgetting about their prisoners, throwing up shields, and wading into the deadly mass explosion—

To rescue their king.