She waited and waited. There were no more voices. No more shaking walls or showers of dust. But after a moment, she began to feel something strange—a tingling warmth in the atmosphere around her. Suddenly she no longer felt tired, and the flame that always churned beneath her skin was crackling hot and right at the surface.

The dirt floor of her cell began to vibrate so gently it was almost a hum. Then, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, a hole began to open up in the middle of her floor, revealing a staircase carved from earth, and the face of an unfamiliar woman. Her face was all brazen angles surrounding wide-set brown eyes. Her hair was shorn on one side, but long on the other, and she wore leather battle gear.

She was … magnificent. All of it was, which only made Nova pinch her arm as if to clear a dream. But the vision didn’t disappear, it expanded. From behind the mystery warrior woman, a blond head appeared and Nova gasped, her eyes immediately filling with tears before she could even catch sight of Aurora’s face. But that hair. No one had that color hair but Aurora Pavan.

“I hear you are long past due for a rescue.” The words came from the woman in front, and they only made Nova cry harder.

“This is terribly rude, but I am going to have to ask you to save that crying for when I’m not holding up an entire wall with my magic. Think you can slide forward for me? Once you reach the steps, you can move past me to Aurora, and we’ll get you out of here as fast as possible.”

Somehow, Nova listened. She stifled her tears, and scooted herself across the floor to the opening that had not been there a few moments ago. A part of her was waiting to find it all an illusion still, but as she drew nearer, her foot went into the hole and landed firmly on the top step.

“Good. Keep coming.”

Her legs shook like a newborn colt’s, but Nova pushed herself up enough to walk the rest instead of slide. That tingling warmth from earlier surrounded her as soon as she entered the tunnel, and when the flame inside her answered again, Nova remembered the woman’s last words.

Holding a wall up with magic.

No storm magic she had ever heard of could do that, which meant that this, that the warrior woman had … earth magic?