Forged Destiny [Book 2: Ch. 7]

Weiss gasped and halted before me, so suddenly that I almost collided with her. "Weiss?" I asked.

She was shaking.

"Hold!" Kaedin yelled and flung one arm to the side. "I felt it too," he added in a softer voice. "There is… something in the air."

"Felt what?" Pyrrha sighed, apparently as clueless as I. "I didn't feel a thin-" She cut off with a startled cry as a grinding noise filled the air. It lasted for but a second, followed by an ominous crack, as though a boulder had been split in two.

The ground began to shake a moment later. With a gasp, the snow beneath me roiled and I was thrown from my feet to crash back into it.

"Stay in the open." Viktor roared. "Stay together!"

The entire mountain shook before my eyes, and it was with horror that I realised it wasn't the mountain, but the ground beneath me which caused me to vibrate. It cracked and groaned, the noise horrifying, as though the solid rock below was alive and twisting in agony. A loud noise further up the mountain reached our ears.

I looked up in time to feel my stomach fall to my feet, as a great wall of white raged down the mountain towards us. It kicked up great explosions of rock, tree and white foam – like a great wave on the ocean. I pointed at it dumbly, lost for words.

Not everyone was.

"Avalanche!" Ruby screamed.

[...]

"Another disaster," Pyrrha murmured. "Is this what the Archmage referred to?"

"It was indeed," Kaedin said. "I was able to detect a magical surge just before it, as did Miss Schnee, I believe?"

"I felt it," the white-haired Mage nodded. "It felt chaotic and sudden and came from further up the mountain. It definitely caused this."

[...]

"Weiss…? Weiss, what's wrong!?"

My eyes darted to Ruby, crouched down by the Mage, who was on her knees. The white-haired girl reared back and vomited onto the snow. "I-It's coming," she gasped.

"What is?" Ruby cried, "What-"

"Be ready!" Kaedin yelled, and it wasn't until he spoke that I noticed he too was on his knees, supported by his Sentinel. "There's another wave. It… it feels…" He couldn't finish.

He didn't need to.

My stomach rolled as something, some miasma, seemed to wash over me. It was cloying and sick, like thick, black tar that seeped into my lungs, even if my eyes told me there was nothing at all. Blake gagged and fell to a crouch beside me, and the others were all visibly affected in some way. What the hell was it? It felt… dirty, sickening.

The ground vibrated too. The wave; they must have meant the magic – the phenomena that was causing the disasters. Another earthquake meant more danger, and I spared a prayer for those in the village we'd just left.

—Forged Destiny [Book 2: Ch. 7]