Chanyeol opening up the Neuma whorl was a much more comfortable experience than each of the previous times Seoyeon had been through one.  It probably had a lot to do with her not being terrified or under attack, but it also felt like the whorl was much calmer and much more under control when Chanyeol opened it up.  None of that stopped her from clinging onto him tightly as the shrieking winds and flames engulfed them and swept them away.

The first thing Seoyeon noticed about the new place they were in was the heat.  It washed over her like warmth from a fire she was standing far too close to, and it didn’t go away.  The air was so stuffy it was actually a little difficult to breathe.  Deciding it was probably best not to have Chanyeol’s cloak anymore, she took it off and silently passed it to him, looking around.

The landscape was so unlike anything she’d ever seen that Seoyeon couldn’t help staring.  The ground around them was charred black, cracks all over it like jagged veins and arteries.  It wasn’t flat, either — to her left it sloped down, and to her right was a steep incline, scorched rocks and cracked earth and crevices and ravines all the way up.

Everything was covered in a malignant orange glow that made her shudder.  It came in part from the sunset behind Chanyeol that had stained the sky every shade between ochre and rust and that had set his hair glowing as though it was on fire (he didn’t seemed as bothered by his surroundings: he had already stepped away and was busy consulting his little metal orb), and in part from the slow-moving, steaming orange rivers bleeding their way down the mountainside they were on.  The top of the mountain itself was belching out smoke and sparks like it was alive.

Seoyeon was still trying to figure out how a mountain could even do that when there was suddenly a sharp hiss like a rasaki snake’s, and Chanyeol abruptly looked up.  A second later, the ground between them burst and a plume of boiling water shot straight up into the air, several feet above Chanyeol’s head.  Shocked, Seoyeon stumbled backwards and tripped, landing in an uncomfortable sitting position on the ground.  The sound of steam escaping, familiar from Minseok’s kitchens but much, much louder, accompanied the water.

Chanyeol came round the gigantic spout to find her and hauled her to her feet, giving her a worried once-over.  Once he’d checked she was okay, he tucked his orb back inside his tunic.

“We want to go up,” he said, tilting his head at the cloud of smoke and sparks at the top of the mountain.  Seoyeon eyed it anxiously.

“It looks dangerous,” she managed in a small voice.

“You’re with me, it’s fine.”  He turned away and took a couple of steps up.

Seoyeon hung back, dubious.  “What kind of mountain…?”

The ash cloud lit up brightly as something streamed out the mountain peak.  Seoyeon’s jaw dropped as she watched it pouring down the blackened mountainside.  Chanyeol turned to her in shock.

“You don’t know what a volcano is?”

“Volcano?” she repeated blankly.

The look he gave her might have been one of concern before he managed to school it into something more neutral.

“Never mind,” he said.  “Just stay away from the orange stuff — it’s lava and it’ll burn right through you.”

Seoyeon gulped.  “Okay.”

“And watch out for geysers.”

She nodded.  He smiled faintly at her and beckoned for her to follow.

It was tough going up the mountainside.  Because everything was scorched and blackened, it was sometimes difficult to make out uneven ground or loose stones, and Seoyeon often found herself stumbling.  The higher they went, the worse it got.  Before too long, Chanyeol started turning to her to warn about screes or help her over particularly difficult ground.

By the time the sun had dipped over the horizon and the only light was from the still-hot lava and sparks being spewed from the volcano and travelling down the mountain, they started encountering another problem: the lava streams themselves.  The heat that came off them was shocking, but most were slow moving enough for it to be possible to steer clear of them.  But when they found themselves trapped between two that had separated around a large rock, Chanyeol turned to her with a serious expression.

“Watch your step really carefully,” he told her as they stood by the narrower of the two lava streams.  Half-hidden behind him to protect herself from the heat, Seoyeon peered at the garish orange lava.  Her anxiety must have been very obvious, because Chanyeol looked between her and the stream again, and then took her hand.

“Let’s just do this one together,” he mumbled.

It was like walking through one of Minseok’s vast kitchen ovens — not that Seoyeon would ever actually have done that.  The air was distorted from the heat and she had to close her eyes for fear they were going to dry out, even though the stream was only a couple of feet wide and it was easily jumped over.  It also stank heavily of sulphur, and she nearly gagged.

But it was worth it, because Chanyeol forgot about letting go of her hand on the other side when they continued walking.  She wasn’t sure if it was that or the fumes that made so dry.

The higher up they got, the more cracked the ground became.  Chanyeol was careful to point out cracks that could trap Seoyeon’s feet, but they soon found themselves having to jump small crevices and then ravines.  Some of them had lava flowing at the bottom.

Eventually, Chanyeol called a halt.  Sweating, Seoyeon collapsed on the ground where she was, ignoring the dirt her skin and clothes immediately picked up.  Chanyeol was slower to sit.  Perhaps he hadn’t even intended to, Seoyeon realised guiltily, and this was only supposed to be a quick breather rather than an actual rest, but he didn’t say anything about it.  Quietly, he unstopped his water flask and passed it to her, looking out over the darkening landscape below them.  Seoyeon gulped the water down gratefully, only passing the flask back when she realised she was in danger of draining their supplies completely and that she didn’t know when they’d next have access to it.

Chanyeol took the flask absently and stowed it away, fiddling with his Borderlander orb.  Seoyeon stared at him.

“How can you not need a drink?” she demanded.  When he opened his mouth to reply, she cut him off.  “Is this a Borderlander thing?”

A wry half-smile tugged at his mouth, though he didn’t look up from his orb.

“Probably,” he admitted.  “I don’t dehydrate easily.”

Seoyeon nodded awkwardly.  “How much further are we going today?  It’s already dark.”

He took a little time to reply, studying something closely on the orb and then tucking it away.

“A few more miles.  We want to get round to the other side of the volcano.  It hasn’t been affected by eruptions, so there’s actually life there.”

Seoyeon nodded again.  “I was wondering where we’d camp in this,” she mumbled.  “I mean, if we fell asleep and lava went straight over us—”

Chanyeol laughed.  “I’d wake up, I’m too sensitive to heat changes.”  He glanced across at her.  “The place I want us to stay in is a Borderlander hideout.  It’ll have rations and clothes and it’ll be very safe.”

“You have hideouts?”

“Mostly on the shallower planes, yes.  The first and second strata have them every day’s walk in most directions on all the planes.  There weren’t any where we’ve been because it’s very unusual for a Borderlander to go deeper than the eighth neuma strata.”

“How deep were we?” Seoyeon couldn’t help asking.

“I think,” Chanyeol said slowly, “that the first plane we were on was in the twelfth.  Definitely the eleventh if not.  We were quite lucky we had so little trouble.”

Seoyeon thought back over the various things that had attacked them on that first plane and gulped.  If Chanyeol considered that “little” trouble, she didn’t particularly want to know what he thought “a lot of trouble” looked like.

“Do you want something to eat,” he asked her abruptly, “or are you good to move on?”

Seoyeon’s heart sank at the prospect of more walking, but she pushed herself to her feet.

They were about five hundred feet below the summit when they turned, heading round the side of the mountain instead of up it.  The only thing Seoyeon could compare the landscape to now that it was dark was a glowing coal fire — lots of black, bare mountain, and highly visible lava here, there and everywhere.  Geysers sprang up occasionally, but they were usually obvious because of the hiss of air beforehand.

After a while, a glowing stream of lava in the distance became a constant, and as it approached and grew steadily thicker, Seoyeon wondered how they were going to cross it.

All too soon, they reached it, and Seoyeon was surprised and frightened by what she saw.

It was different from the other lava flows they’d come across.  This one was fast moving, more like a boiling, sulphur-smelling river that glowed orange.  It was actually slightly lower than the level of the ground they were on — maybe a metre or two down — though the banks were cliff-like, as though the ground had split and the lava had run down into the crevice.  It was at least a couple of metres wide, and there were no obvious points to cross or stepping stones.

She peeked nervously at Chanyeol, who was looking up and down the lava river thoughtfully.

“Do we have to cross this?” she asked, her reluctance clear in her voice.

“Yes.”

Seoyeon grimaced.  He gave her a sceptical look.

“We jumped worse when we were crossing that estuary on the rock stacks.”

“No, this is definitely worse.”

Chanyeol scoffed.  “How?”

He was right — jumping the stacks had been much more dangerous than a single leap across molten rock, even if the leap was quite a wide one, but Seoyeon didn’t want to concede the point.

“It smells.”

He burst out laughing.

“I’ll go first,” he managed, trying to straighten his face.  Pinching his nostrils shut, he took a quick run up and leapt, clearing the distance easily.  Seoyeon looked back down at the churning lava river below, wondering if there was some way around it, but Chanyeol had already turned to her from the other side and was calling for her to hurry up, and she knew the longer she delayed, the more likely her nerve would fail her.  She backed up for a small run-up and jumped.