"Skylands: The Third Gate" chapter 1 (NaNoWriMo 2015)
Skylands: The Third Gate, chapter 01©2015 Sylvan ScottAches and pains were six years gone, now. Provided the landscape of his life was not a tapestry rewoven by insanity and delusion, Adam hadn't felt this good in ages. Physically, he never could have run so far, pushed himself for so long, without stopping for rest. And yet, he was in agony. What, at his age, would typically be called "aches and pains" were replaced by honestly earned agonies of stress, flight, running, and fighting. Unlike his past life, a life spent making columns add up to a predetermined number, his pains had been acquired not by walking up and down stairs or taking an extra-long walk at lunch but by chasing those who had taken Eris. Her absence had spurred in him a rush to action he'd not experienced since college. But that was the fact of it, wasn't it? Here he was, climbing over tumble-down rocks in a tremor-wracked landscape of wind-worn hills and rising peaks, in a body scarcely beyond puberty. But sometime, in the years since arriving in this exploded-view version of a world, he'd crossed the line into fifty.Halfway there.His brother would have said he was "halfway there".It was what everyone had said when he had turned forty. He would have expected his fiftieth birthday to provide the same joke.But that would have been a joke for humans in a human world. It would have been a joke to a member of a species that spent the first sixteen, eighteen, twenty years of life coming to grips with adulthood only to die in their seventies, eighties, or nineties. Those rules no longer applied. He was of dragon blood, now, and scarcely into adulthood as far as his body was concerned.So his ten-day journey in pursuit of Eris and her kidnappers felt like it should be impossible. But his young body made it exactly the opposite. Not only was this chase possible, it was inevitable.And Adam hated Eris for it.Northeastern Dorath was sparsely populated. He hadn't seen anyone since crashing here. The crew of the Amberglass had put up a fight as soon as they had spotted him. The cloud cover had been too sparse. But if he hadn't attacked, hadn't shredded their sails and ripped several air crystals from its hull, the airship would have been able to get out into the Deep Blue.Adam wasn't strong enough a flier
to take on that kind of pursuit.Imperfect sky cover, scatterings of grey against a dawning day of light rain, had been his only true protection. The scraps of leather he wore might turn an ill-aimed arrow but a direct hit would pierce his hide almost as easily as if he wore nothing. But the crew of the ship had known how to handle fliers. The fought back and put three bolts through his left wing; another through his right.They went down, too; just later than Adam had. The damage he had wrought had been at least that effective.Yesterday, he had caught up to the torched remains of the ship. Apparently, they had decided to leave no evidence. To Adam sight sent a chill of foreboding through him. The burned husk meant the raiders were committed. It meant they had another way out. They could afford to put their ship to the torch to not risk being judged for participation in the illegal slave trade. In short, they had a "Plan B".And with injured wings, Adam had pursued them on foot.Why they had come this way, why they pushed so hard to reach the mountains, he didn't know. But they were getting dangerously close to the edge of Dorath. He could only assume they would meet up with another ship. Eris and the rest would be taken to sell in far-off lands. They would be as good as dead to him if he couldn't catch up.He wouldn't let that happen. Eris was the last connection to home that he had.The island, barely the size of one of the lightlands high above the rest of Kellendar, was criss-crossed with fractures in the north. As such, only the deeply-buried earth stones kept it together. But every now and then, several times per day, the ground would tremble as the thin layers of rock shifted and tried to give in to the ever present pull of gravity. But the chunks and plates would shift, twist, meld, and reform keeping it whole while the air stones kept it aloft.The constant tremors kept few from living in this part of the island. It was probably why the raiders had chosen their flight path over this landscape. Few of the mounted or aerial knights that patrolled Dorath would be likely to see their ship or report on its illicit cargo.There were a few long-abandoned farms, here and there. Adam spied several tumbledown remnants of cobblestone fences and deteriorating homes dotting the wilderness. But the settlers who had made them had long-since given up hopes of taming this land. At least, today, there had been no quakes.Foothills rose in cracked majesty. Filled fissures criss-cross the land more frequently as he progressed northwards. Their contours both paralleled and crossed the boundary from plains to mountains leaving cliffs in their wake. But game trails, left by the seldom-seen
deer and askanabi, provided him some path to follow.That and the corn husk doll he'd crafted and wore on a string around his neck that pointed in Eris' direction.Some times it seemed he had lost her. But a few hours of running, later, and the fetish would twitch to life and point, anew. He didn't know how long it would last. He feared the time it would falter and never pick up the trail again. At least, now, he had an overland path to follow as ten to twelve raiders herded their captives higher and higher.The morning crept into noon as the sky cleared. The sun warmed him and made his patterned hide gleam, dully, in the cold light. Red and black stripes and whorls covered his shoulders, hips and torso. Spots of deep blue, resembling scales, completed his look. His long neck and narrow-muzzled face echoed these colors although his eyes were slitted and flecked with metallic green. Small raised ridges, almost akin to vestigial horns, crowned his brow and travelled down the back of his neck. There, they spread along his injured wings.But although he resembled a human crossed with a dragon, he was neither mammal nor reptile. Honestly, he didn't know if the classifications from back home could identify exactly what he was. He was warm-blooded with external sexual characteristics but had a thick scale-free hide, instead of skin, and wings that sprouted from his upper back like a stained-glass image of an angel....Or a devil.Strange that this world had those concepts, too. Its pantheon of gods were plagued by infernal forces from below and aided by servants from above. Similar to the religions of Earth, it surprised him. Eris would often tell him not to worry about such things. But he couldn't help it. Everything, here, was like a patchwork of beliefs with new and unsettling things thrown in for good measure.And that was the nature of a world like Talvali: it was all a patchwork.And he was merely one of the most recent patches in that tapestry.The passage of the raiders led up. It twisted and turned around the fractured foothills until, finally, coming to a broad arroyo flanked on both sides by unbroken cliffs. For the first time in his ten days of pursuit, Adam stopped in startled awe.Large steps were carved into the far side of the arroyo, leading up into the hills. Each was carved with bas relief skulls around which ancient, spiraling letters served as an unintelligible frame. Moss and gross covered them, making spans of the stairs resemble miniature, terraced farms. But while small cracks and breaks appeared in them, the large,
heavily-hewn blocks were, for the most part, intact. Some twelve or thirteen of them proceeded up an incline until they became flanked by tall spires of enormous, carved skulls. Still shadowed by the cliffs, these also seemed undamaged save in the most superficial of ways.He slowed his pursuit. It did not look like a place in which an ambush could take place but Adam didn't want to take any chances.As tall as he was, the stairs were still a challenge to ascend. He climbed slowly, casting his emerald gaze about, carefully, looking for any hiding place the raiders might have selected. There were none that he could see and eventually, he reached the spires. Here, he saw he was wrong before. There was damage. Stones that he had taken for another step were obviously the fallen remains of a crossing arch that had once joined the spires. In centuries past it must have crumbled and scattered across several of the winding stairs.His quarry had definitely come this way. The few animal tracks that had led him this far also ascended the fractured stones but were mostly rubbed-out by the passing of many feet."Kastri-fathi; mo'uon si templis car sorathes." He intoned the words under his breath and focused his will to bend the ambient energies of the arcana majiere to his will. Drawing his blade, almost reverently, he pointed its tip at the rubble. "Mastani-arath; koe mun a' lasatar. Hovath car sumnali si savasti'is."While the doll at his neck pointed onwards, up the stair into the hills and mountains, the sword in his hand throbbed with an inner heat only those versed in elemental magics could detect. To his mind's eye he could see the footsteps and shadows of the feet that had cast them. Stone had a long memory. And although much of it was cracked and reduced to sand, it virtually sang when he tapped into it. He saw them, at last: the raiders and their captives. Like phantoms captured in amber they hiked upwards. The spell he had learned to reveal the past gave him hope. They had passed this way less than six hours ago. Further, there were fewer slavers than he had thought: eight, by the looks of them, and with seven chained captives. Eris was among them.His eyes rested on Eris' image. He felt a twinge of guilt. No more human, anymore, than he was, she was small, covered in brown fur set with badger-like markings of tan and black. Scarcely an inch over three feet tall, her normal clothes had been replaced with tatters and rags. She was chained between two others: an auranathi man with an injured leg and a strange, surreal creature that looked like a slapped-together construction of avian and feline. A whimsey, no doubt. Constructed by magic for specific labors but considered free and independent people here in Kellendar's Dorath client-state. He looked at Eris' face for a long time. She didn't look concerned but he knew she often hid her feelings beneath a blustery bravado that typified members of the tahvic race that she had become.The mental image flickered and died as he resheathed his sword.Adam glanced at the tall spires, remnants from a long-forgotten civilization, and frowned. Once, he would love loved to explore the remnants of the towering stones. But, now, he had to catch up and figure out how he was going to overpower eight skilled raiders and free Eris.At least none of the raiders were physically intimidating. He had that going for him. None were fliers and most looked like they had at least some form of injury: probably owing to the crash of their airship.He considered his options as, galvanized, he resumed his pursuit.The cool, dry air of the foothills chilled even more as he ascended the stairs. A few wind-twisted trees lined the recessed climb. Stripes of umber and black threaded through the cliffs on either side showing layers of epochs, before. Dust swirled in dust devils as the wind blew off the plains, below, and was channelled up the stair after him. The fallen, yellow and brown leaves along his route grew less common as the hills gave way to the more sheer heights of the barrier mountains.If he had had his wings, as uncomfortable as he was with flight, he could have ascended the slopes quickly and gotten ahead of his quarry. As it was, he knew enough about his new biology to bind his wounds but not easily treat them. Nor did he know any magics or rituals that could stitch himself together. There were ungents and enchanted dusts for such things but they were expensive and relatively rare. A farmer, the head of a large
family, would often buy one to see their way through a growing season as a way to address unexpected emergencies. But Adam was, at best, an apprentice ... unemployed in any real sense of the word. In fact, his abrupt departure in pursuit of Eris probably meant he would have no apprenticeship to return to. What little money he had would probably have to be spent on getting Eris back home. He doubted he'd be fit enough to fly her the sixty-or-so miles from the floating island of Dorath back to the larger aerial continent of Kellendar, proper.Still, the stairs twisted and turned, ascending along natural contours in the black stone of the mountains. Here, the fractures from the plains and foothills, below, were less common. But Adam knew the edge had to be getting near. He could see the twisted and torn clouds, high above in the peaks, reacting to the conflicting winds both rising off the plains below and to the east as well as from the shell of winds, ahead. The mountains had probably been sheared in two when the island first came to find itself in Talvali. He doubted these stairs had been built after that so it seemed likely he was traveling in a truly long-forgotten ruin from some alien world, far away.A forbidden thrill beat in his heart and he pushed it down, guiltily. Focusing on his mission was the most important, the only thing, that he should be focusing on. Adolescent fantasies of adventure were far before his time. Even if he was barely an adult as a dragonkin, with possibly centuries of life ahead, he couldn't help but feel guilty every time he indulged an enthusiastic distraction or fantasy.That was more in Eris' nature.As the autumn day wore on, shadows crept down the face of the mountains. He took a risk, resting for just a few moments, and tested his wings. The crossbow bolts had torn through their leathery membrane, barely missing structural bone and maneuverable muscle. But scabs had formed along the holes. Adam had patched them with bandages and gum resin mixed with a numbing sap. It was a simple curative and helped prevent infection. It was something he'd learned early-on. But even though his wings had gotten two days of rest, they were nowhere near being able to fly, let alone support his weight.Broad, talons spreading across old, worn stones for support, he resolved to finishing his trek on his feet.As the sun set beyond the heights ahead of him, he could see the mountains' shadows stretch across the fractured grasslands behind him. Above, though, he saw something glint as the sun waned. With the small, blue moon Kormoran rising ahead of him, he caught sight of what, in a moment, looked like metal armor glinting against the sunset near a pass at the summit. The larger, red moon of Briac would be rising closer to midnight while Shotef and Khetef had already gone by during the day. But even as the light faded and blue washed down over the cliffs, Adam saw it: another pair of pillars.At his distance, he found it hard to see them, shrouded as they were in the shadows of twin peaks to either side. But, squinting, he thought they,
too, were carven skulls reaching up to an intact arch. It looked like a giant gate without bars. He would doubtless find out more as he got closer. As good as his sight was, he was no gryphon. And although he no longer needed glasses or bifocals, he was ill-equipped to see in the increasing night. Wolfen, like half the raiders he pursued, would be seeing things far more crisply and clearly than he could. Like the leonine auranathi, they were at home in twilight and dusk. It was something more he would have to take into account.As for the glint of metal, it was gone as quickly as it had come. He hoped they had reached the summit and were now making camp. Perhaps it had been a glimmer from one of the raiders' armor. Possibly the glint off a shield. If they were camping, Adam could catch them by pushing on.Despite how tired he was, he resolved himself to do it.Making his way in the dark was difficult, even with the soft blue light of Kormoran coating the stair.Another hour passed.Then, another.With perhaps two more to go before
midnight, he spied the flickering of firelight reflected off the inward-facing surfaces of the spires. The illumination lent a ghastly, infernal cast to the skulls.The stairs were leveling off with small side trails and paths winding off into narrow meadows and passages. Adam set his jaw and decided to take a risk.Setting off to his left, he followed several paths to get closer. In an hour, he had found them.Perched at the terminus of a narrow rise, still fifty or sixty yards from the stone gate, he saw their camp. Five raiders surrounded even more captives. A trio of lean-tos had been set-up against the howling winds that moaned up from the dark night on the other side of the mountains. There, as Adam had suspected, was the edge of Dorath. The floating island just stopped, maybe a hundred yards from the peak where the arch spanned the ancient stair. Below was darkness: the Great Blue. Beneath floated larger continents and, below them, the dark, savage world of terrestrial Talvali.Whether or not the slavers had known about the ancient stair was irrelevant. Clearly, they had made their way here, to the edge, to meet another ship. And if it wasn't here, yet, it would probably not be far off. Proud that he'd caught up to them, Adam now faced the difficult choice of what to do about it. Where the missing three raiders he'd seen in his vision, before, had gotten to, he wasn't sure. Possibly taking posts along the lower stair watching for pursuit; Adam figured they'd eventually make themselves known. But by then, all eight may be in the same place, again. That would make the odds much worse.He had his sword, his tough hide, his magic: but that didn't make a fight with eight enemies any more even. Even against five, he was out-numbered. He had to even the odds.Carefully, he watched and thought.The captives were corralled opposite the lean-tos, near the edge of stairs leading down to open air. In little danger of going over the drop-off they were, nonetheless, positioned there for a reason. Shackled together with iron chains, every small move made noise. The five raiders were huddled around the fire which leapt and blazed like something alive in the cacophonous winds. He couldn't hear what they were discussing but doubted it would help, anyway. At one point, one rose and went over to one of the lean-tos. Adam wasn't sure but he thought he saw a slumbering shape in its shadows stir, slightly, when the wolfen approached. The shaggy man retrieved something small from a pack and went back to the others. Shortly, thereafter, they began playing cards.So, either the missing three raiders were in the lean-tos or watching for pursuit further up the trail on the other side of the arch. Still, Adam wasn't sure he could take five of them.He looked at the captives.They huddled together in the cold darkness at the edge of firelight. He briefly considered how he might be able to glide down in relative silence beyond the illumination of their camp and, perhaps, unchain the captives. But then what? The other side of the stairs did descend but they descended to a drop-off several miles high. Besides, even if fully healed, he doubted he could fly in this wind.There had to be a different solution.A clatter of falling stone snapped his attention to the darkness behind him and to his left. He didn't move but inhaled deeply through his nostrils.Back home, he had owned a Basset Hound named Twofer. He knew how the length of a dog's nasal cavity allowed for more surface area to analyze scents. So much more of the canine brain was dedicated to processing smells and sounds. Similarly, a dragonkin had a preternatural sense of smell. What he detected made him swallow, hard.A wolfen.While the gusts blew back and forth, taking the smell away about half the time, he definitely smelled it. Oiled leather and steel mingled with fur and the salty smell of one of the men he had been following. He couldn't hear the
man approaching but he doubted his proximity was a coincidence. He had to have been spotted and the guard was moving in for the kill.Adam tensed. He had to act.Another clatter of small stones and he spun about, unsheathing his sword.His night vision was no better than a human's but he still caught the outline of a mayrene wolfen crouched in the lea of a stone shelf some twenty feet away. Outlined in Kormoran's faint blue light, he realized his position had been made, and launched himself at Adam, two short blades, bared."Malderia invocem da sali," he intoned, trying to keep his cool, "Si elephais-elephais car novicium!"To his credit, the red-furred wolf closed the gap much faster than Adam could have imagined. The level of speed and ferocity were unsettling. It was hard to focus his words into the field of magic that infused the world and channel the spell down the length of his blade.
Faint runes, barely perceptible, glowed on his longsword's naked blade for a moment as the raider closed with him. A similar glow enveloped his quarry's arms and legs. In a flash, he fell forward, a strangled rasp all that could escape his throat as his muscles locked. Adam leaped over the wolf as he crashed into the spot where the dragonkin had stood. Unmoving, the man lay there, faint gasping wheezes the only sign that he was still alive.The paralysis would not last for more than a few minutes but Adam doubted he had that long. He couldn't trust his sense of smell to save him a second time. Further, the energy he had spent to cause his opponent's muscles to seize up had exhausted him. There could easily be others in the shadows. He had to act, now.The camp, below, still had the five around the fire. The paralysis invocation would only affect one at a time. They were within range, he thought, but it wouldn't be enough. In the time he would take to freeze one in place, the others would scatter into the shadows. He would have wasted his only advantage.While trained by several spellswords over the past six years in self-defense, he was by no means a master. Even the spell that evoked the memory of stone in his mind was one seldom in use by the arcane order of mercenaries. Most of their magics were combative or practical and tailored towards one-on-one fighting. He needed allies. There was really only one course.He took off his belt and bound the still-paralyzed wolfen. Then, with a glove and a silken scarf, he gagged his would-be attacker. A moment later, he began to climb down the rough rocks on the side of the drop-off.Adam knew how to climb. He's scaled Wyoming's Devil's Tower with a group of enthusiastic free climbers back in his college days. But, there, he'd been aided by a trained climber and travelled a well-traversed path. Here, it was in the dark, alone, and in unfamiliar territory while winds battered him. If he fell, he doubted he'd go over the edge but he would definitely be in a world of pain and quickly captured. Despite this, he descended quickly.Thirty feet from a ledge, he heard rustling from above. Doubtless the wolfen was breaking free of the paralysis. He wasn't calling out, however, so Adam hoped he had time to finish his descent.Twenty feet and a scattering of gravel came down over the rocks as he descended. He looked up, but saw nothing but a dark shape on the edge where he'd left his attacker. Gritting his teeth, Adam dropped over the edge to slide down a steep incline some twelve-or-so feet to another ledge. His large, bare feet gripped the edge, talons providing piton-like assistance. Tail swishing behind him to provide balance and wings pressed flat against his back, he glanced down.Almost there.A cry split the night from above: feral and full of fury. Adam didn't wait any longer. He jumped the remaining distance.Landing outside the firelight, just beyond the fettered captives, he felt his ankle turn and send a shock of pain up his left leg. He bit back a cry and saw the five slavers leap to their feet, looking up at the ridge from which he had spied on them."Adam? Is that you?"Eris. Her small body was crouched on the edge of the firelight and he realized she had probably spotted him early on and followed his descent. Her black eyes were wide and sparkled in the blue moonlight with reflections of stars."Who else?" he hissed. "Tell the others we'll have to fight.""I already have," she said.Tahvic were renowned for being scrappers and fighters. Maybe, on some level, that was why when Eris had been bathed in a flash of storm dragon breath, she'd become one of them. He hadn't seen it happen but how she behaved told him that she'd never been a particularly large woman. Now, of course, she looked like a cross between a ferret and a badger with a barrel chest and narrow, blunt muzzle. Her small, rounded ears were in constant motion, listening to all the sounds the night could provide.Adam held his blade forward, an incantation to harden the edge on his lips.Eris stood up, chains dropping. He blinked and looked at the others. Several of them were already freed. He felt he shouldn't have been surprised."Ready?" he asked."No," she replied. "But when has that ever stopped me?""Never."A garbled cry, strained and rasping, echoed from the cliffs above them. It sounded like a wounded coyote trying to howl. If his would-be ambusher was able to make that much noise, the paralysis in his limbs would be gone in moments. Adam looked to the raiders around the fire.Like their comrade, three of them were mayrene. One was auranathi while the fifth was human.They were on their feet with weapons drawn before the last echo of pain faded into the winds. Both the human and two wolfen held crossbows but they weren't loaded. That would work to Adam's and the captives' advantage.He slid the fingers of his left hand into a pouch that hung from a leather strap at the base of his tunic and felt the smooth, cool surface of the tiny mirror inside. Focusing his will on the arcana majiere, he projected his thoughts into the mirror, seeing it replicate his incantation over and over again."Tell them to get ready," he whispered."Attack now?""Wait," he replied to Eris, "I'm arming them."Someone was going to die. That was the thing he hated most about this place. Death was all-too-common. Then again, so was its converse. It was expected of the young to travel the world, seeking their destiny ... seeking adventure. And the religious paradigm supported this with promise of not only reincarnation to try again but a waiting period, between lives, in The Great Beyond. But despite having seen the miracles of priests and the magic
of arcanists, Adam still wasn't sure he liked this system.Skepticism taught him to look for the man behind the curtain; taught him to never accept things at face value. It was a philosophy that had served him well all his life.Then he came here.Then Talvali shoved its gods in his face.Then there was actual evidence.He still wasn't sure what he believed or if he thought the system was one he could work with. The biggest problem was that the would-be slaves weren't in the best shape. Held for one to two weeks, they were malnourished and, in most cases, injured. Even armed, they weren't soldiers. People were going to die. Even if they came back in some other life, death was something he'd never come to grips with. And here he was, about to dish it out.Again."Maelitaur sum cassi," he whispered, "Sahlvenni car surissi; sahlvenni sur toramassi; ahl'vahnni sil toravasti sum caridarri."Faint, blue runes glowed down the length of his blade. But unlike before, these were piercing bright swiftly dwarfing the light of the bonfire. The attention of the guards was on them. But simultaneously, conjured, spectral replicas of his blade appeared in the hands of Eris and four others. He could feel the cold of each even from several feet away. He heard an oath spat by the auranathi raider. She snarled and raised her crossbow."Attack!" Eris shouted.Adam stood his ground and only two of the armed captives followed Eris as she charged forward. He swooned, momentarily drained by his incantation. He suspected a lot of it was nerves. But this knowledge did nothing to quiet his spirit.The raiders, although surprised, were no fools. All but one dropped the complicated ranged weapon they'd been carrying and rapidly drew blades. The one wolfen who kept his crossbow
in-hand, raised it hesitantly. Eris saw it sooner than Adam and ducked beneath a poorly-aimed blow from the auranathi raider and tackled the crossbowman.With a cry and roar of embers and flame, he toppled back into the bonfire. The crossbow misfired, sending a bolt far into the darkness over the edge of Dorath. Eris shouted a guttural cry and nimbly avoided the flames. The wolfen's fur erupted like dry grass. First blood was theirs.Adam knew it wouldn't last.Within seconds the auranathi raider wielded a short curved blade in her left hand, dark tassels snapping from its hilt. One of the captives, another tahvic like Eris, had followed her into the fray. He swung with the enchanted ghost blade that Adam had bestowed upon him to no avail. Although hers was the shorter weapon, the auranathi turned the attack aside and slid her blade down and around to cut past the pommel and deftly disarm her attacker.The tahvic shrieked in pain as blood spurted from the underside of his wrist. He dropped the conjured blade and it fizzled out, dying as a cloud of sparks caught on the wind. His shriek followed as the auranathi raider spun about and slashed upwards across his throat. One down on each side.The howling of the winds rose, moaning to match the cries of the burning wolfen and the cries of the raiders to rally.The two who had not initially run into the fray were now moving, cautiously, after the others. He hoped it would help but doubted it would. He needed time; needed time to focus.An arrow struck him and glanced off the bone of his upper shoulder and wing. He instinctively dove forward, away from the pain, as another arrow missed his head by an inch. From above, the wolfen he'd paralyzed had gotten a bow and was aiming to remove the threat of magic from the fight.Adam ducked behind a cracked ledge of stone stair and squinted. He'd been staring into the firelight and his night vision was spoiled. He couldn't make out anything on the ridge, above. There were incantations he could use to agument his awareness in battle but he had to retain his concentration on the conjured blades.Eris ducked beneath a swing by another and, spinning about, caught him in the back. His rising howl of pain mingled with that of the burning man as he pitched out of the fire and lay, writhing, in the dust.Another arrow: this time striking the rock just before him. The archer didn't have a good angle on him, but that would change.He watched as Eris took a blow to her shoulder and bit back a cry. She stabbed in return and took the wolfen down. Three in thirty seconds.But the auranathi raider was turning on the nervous captives with murder in her eyes. "That's it, boys: it ain't worth it no longer! Take 'em down!"They had outstayed their welcome. Backed against a three-mile drop, though, Adam knew they had little alternative.Roaring with a spit of fire from his muzzle, he fanned his wings hoping they would intercept any arrows from above. The pain ripped through him as he extended them. He ran for the auranathi, seeing surprise in her eyes for just a moment."Astarra car sin'ni; shotek sum!"The words were a crutch but a necessary one. They allowed him to focus in times of stress. But as he fumbled the phrasing his thoughts, shaping ambient magics into their final form, also slipped. The flames before him roared and expanded outwards catching himself, Eris, and the auranathi raider by surprise. One of the captives cried in agony as his tattered clothes caught fire. Eris tumbled to one side, shielding her head with one arm. The auranathi woman was not so
lucky.An arrow pierced his left wing and embedded itself in the base of his long, serpentine tail, near his hip. Caught between his flame breath and the explosion of the bonfire behind her, the auranathi raider froze ... and began to burn.Her screams were piercing before they were cut short by Eris slitting her throat. All the blades vanished and Adam pitched foward, too exhausted to move.The rest was a blur.The would-be slaves rallied behind Eris as more arrows rained from above. Adam tried to crawl to some shelter, some safety, but each movement was agony.Once Eris led the captives against the roused raiders in the lean-tos, it was over.He didn't know what had happened to the one on the ledge, above, but if he was smart, he was running."Rutherford..."He blinked at the voice. It was distant and hard to hear; it pulsed with echos as if drowned in a deep, wet cavern. He looked for its source, but couldn't see it."Rutherford ... Adam ... Hite..."On all fours, he craned his neck to find its source. No one knew his full name; not here.He stopped, staring.The carved skulls in the tall spires and arch at the top of the stair, were alight with an inner fire. Each eye socket burned with a yellow flame as more light roared from their stone nostrils and gaping mouths. The winds shifted, all of a sudden blowing away from the summit and out into the void. He felt someone touch him, a soft hand covered in feathers, and dug in his talons against the torrent. He looked to see the tiny, raven-like being that had been captured along with Eris at his side. She looked at him with concern."Rutherford: you have ... abandoned ... me..."He looked over his shoulder.As the large red moon, Briac, rose on the horizon making the light of the night a wash of purple, he saw the source. A river of fire and light washed, spectally away from the base of the arch, down the stairs, and out into the void. It was if a waterfall of fire that did not burn was flowing down the missing stairs into the Deep Blue.There, in the distance, he saw the shapes. He saw the outline of eyes in the darkness; the terse, thin lips of a disapproving visage.He saw a vast image of his father's face."You ... abandoned ... me..."The voice, as judgmental and horrible as it ever had been in life, chilled Adam to the core and he shivered. The flames roared behind him and the carved, stone skulls seemed to sing with light. And, almost as
swiftly as it began, the phantasm stopped. The wind turned and blew back at them, snuffing out the bonfire as if it had been merely a candle. And in its wake, darkness embraced himself, Eris, and the few survivors.Darkness embraced him and he welcomed it.