As though it had been their plan all along, Ansund saw the actions Keltin took and began his own assault once Keltin retreated. The Draeden stepped into the corridor from the closest entrance and loosed two arrows in the span of a second; each met its mark and sent a Cultivator to the floor. As Ansund prepared another arrow, the Stormheart at last flared to life again, causing the final Cultivator to stagger as it turned. Not wanting to stand by while others fought, Wyand rushed into the corridor with the stone held in front of him. The Cultivator trembled, trying to lift its flickering staff in defense, but Wyand closed the distance too quickly. In an instant, the Stormheart latched onto the wretched machine’s chest and exploded with light.
The pulse of energy flung Wyand back just as it had the first time he witnessed the Stormheart’s true power. He knew to be ready for this possibility, however, so it was easy for him to stay on his feet as he shielded his eyes. Though smoke from the curtain filled the air when Wyand surveyed the corridor a moment later, the destruction was apparent and impressive on all sides. Charred streaks glowed along the walls from the Cultivators’ fire, while the humanoid machines themselves lay scattered and broken on the floor. Keltin stepped out of the Calling Room, knife twitching in his hand as he looked from one fallen Cultivator to the next. “I assumed they would give more of a fight than that!” he laughed gruffly.
Wyand stooped to reclaim the Stormheart, but as he did this, he noticed a change in the smoke that concealed the passage to the upper levels. Behind Keltin’s back, lights flickered within the gloom; first one, then five points of deep green grew brighter in the span of a single heartbeat. Wyand’s hand hovered above the stone as he came to a stunned understanding of what those lights represented. He tried to speak, but there was no time—the Cultivators had outsmarted them.
As Wyand readied himself for death, a dark orb swirled through the smoke and soared over his head towards the hidden Cultivators. A thunder stone, he realized. Seconds became hours as he watched its flight, but a sudden surge of clarity brought hope that forced his terrified muscles into action. Seizing the Stormheart, Wyand lunged at Keltin and knocked him back into the Calling Room with a grunt. As the edge of the wall moved past Wyand’s vision, he had one last glimpse of the thunder stone before it collided with the group of lights. Then all was fire and fury.
55
“Climb!” Edan shouted as he helped another survivor onto the rain-soaked wall surrounding Aldhagen. For a brief time, the Venerates had shifted the focus of their power elsewhere—what their other target was, Edan could not say, but he had used the blessing of every second free of destruction to find survivors. Now it seemed the Venerates had once again remembered their failed creations and resumed their efforts to wipe Aldhagen clean. One by one, each structure was being reduced to ruins, then even the piles of rubble were obliterated by more fire until there was nowhere left for a person to hide. Edan knew there were still more people out there. Afraid. Injured. Trapped.
So, again and again, Edan reached the safety of the wall only to turn back to go find more of his fellow workers. He glanced at the wall occasionally as he ran towards it, and saw that many of the survivors were nearing the top. Much to his irritation, though, Adlig and Scur remained on the ground. “I told you to go!” Edan yelled to them as he approached with an elderly Metalworker named Orfrum. The man had likely shaped more tools than Edan had ever carried, but now his right hand was crushed and his left arm burnt to the point of uselessness.
“You can’t carry him up by yourself,” Scur replied, and Edan knew the Tailing was right. Of all the injuries they had encountered so far, everyone else had been able to climb. Though Orfrum’s muscles still held all the strength he’d earned over the course of twenty-five turnings or more, he would need help to reach freedom.
The old Metalworker shook his head. “I can stay,” he insisted, his voice surprisingly soft for such an imposing frame. Edan frowned as he tried to think of a solution—there had been enough death in Aldhagen already, so he wasn’t going to give up on Orfrum so easily. As Edan stared at the base of the wall, he noticed something halfway submerged in a pool of rainwater that gave him an idea.
When Feller Corfen had rushed to the wall, he was already dressed and prepared for a day of work in the forests; like any Feller, that meant he had his climbing sash with him. The Feller was already nearing the top of the wall, but evidently his sash had fallen off either before or during his ascent. Edan reached down into the water and pulled out the dripping sash; a strange smile darted across his face when he considered the unlikelihood of finding such a useful object in a time like this.
“May I try something?” Edan asked Metalworker Orfrum. The man nodded, his expression faintly skeptical when he saw the wet climbing strap. Edan placed the strap against Orfrum’s back and carefully ran its ends under the man’s enormous arms. “Will you be able to stand the pain if some of your weight is on this strap?”
The old Metalworker laughed sadly at that. “I have enough pain elsewhere, I doubt I’ll even notice.” He lifted his right hand as an example, but winced and shut his eyes a moment later when faced with the terrible reality of his injuries. Edan wanted to weep, imagining all that Orfrum had lost, but he chose instead to remain focused. The tragedy would only be amplified if this man now lost his life simply because Edan allowed himself to succumb to sadness, justified though it was.
“Adlig. Scur,” Edan waved the two Tailings over to him. “I need both of you to wrap an end of this strap around your waist and secure it tight. You won’t exactly be carrying Orfrum, but you will be keeping him upright and close to the wall so he can still use his legs to help with the climb. Do you understand?” The boys nodded, but both of them looked worried. Before their questions could begin, Edan continued. “I’ll climb beside him. If there are any issues, I can hold him in place until we’re ready to move again.”
While the Tailings checked the strap, Edan turned to Aldhagen a final time. More than half of the living quarters were gone now, and orbs of green death still flowed from the top of the Hall to finish the task. After one of the explosions, Edan called out into the stillness. “Is anyone else alive?” His words echoed among the remaining buildings, but there was no reply. With a resolute nod, Edan turned his back on the ruins of Aldhagen—there was nothing left for him to save.
The wall was steep and slick, but there were enough gaps among the stones that climbing was a relatively easy task. Adlig and Scur fell into a steady rhythm and Orfrum was quick to follow their lead. The first ten strides passed without incident, but a sudden sound from the direction of Aldhagen made Edan’s blood run cold with worry.
“Depthcarver!” someone shrieked, and Edan paused to look back. At first everything appeared just as it had been: destruction, fire, death. “Depthcarver!” With the second scream, Edan noticed a figure crouched behind a section of the living quarters that hadn’t yet been leveled. It was one of the younger Fieldsmen, a boy somewhere between two and three turnings of age, whose name Edan did not know. He was alone, and he was making no movement towards the wall.
Edan only thought for an instant before looking up to Adlig and Scur. “Keep climbing. We’ll catch up to you in no time.” Before the boys could protest, Edan began scrambling down the courses of stone. Explosions resonated in the rocks beneath his fingers; each blast marked one less building before the Venerates would reach the Fieldsman. Edan leapt from three strides up and landed with a splash at the base of the wall. He scanned the remaining buildings quickly until his eyes locked with those of the terrified Fieldsman.
“Run!” Edan yelled. “You have to run!” The boy shook his head and began to sob when another explosion thundered against the ground within the adjacent row of living quarters. I can’t make it there and back before the Venerates strike him down, Edan realized with painful certainty; this would have to be something the Fieldsman did on his own. Edan stepped closer. “You can do this! I’m sure you’ve run to the Hall plenty of times. Y
ou only have to do it once more. Come on!”
Surprisingly, the boy took a tentative step towards the wall, but another burst of Venerate fire sent him back to his hiding place. “Please!” Edan begged, his legs aching to race to the boy’s side but his mind fully aware of what would happen if he went back out there again. In Edan’s desperation, a new tactic suddenly occurred to him. “I order you to run to me immediately!” The young Fieldsman was stunned, but a look of determination then came over him. He straightened and took a deep breath before sprinting onto the path towards Edan.
“Yes!” Edan cheered. “That’s it!” One more, he prayed. Now that the boy was within twenty strides, Edan was struck by how much this Fieldsman reminded him of a younger version of Keltin. Fifteen strides. Memories of turnings past surged into Edan’s mind as he recalled sprinting alongside Keltin and Wyand after a day of hard work. Ten strides. Though Keltin and Wyand were gone now, Edan vowed to look after this boy with the same care he would have shown them; he knew that’s what both of his friends would have wanted. Then, within the span of a second, a burst of green light took all of that away.
As his vision cleared, Edan screamed in wordless agony, allowing all of the emotions he’d put aside to take full control of him now that he was confronted with the truth. The Fieldsman was gone, cut down by those he revered as gods, just like so many others. In the fog of Edan’s despair and rage, he barely noticed another large explosion behind him until debris from the Hall itself began falling around him on all sides. Finding that there was no escape this time, Edan closed his eyes as the crushing flood of stone pressed him into the cold ground of the place he had once called home.
56
A single eye peered at Wyand from the dense cloud of smoke above, then a hand slowly extended towards him. Still in a daze, Wyand lifted his left arm in response and allowed the hand to take hold of him. As he was hoisted to his feet, Wyand recognized the owner of the hand as Ansund. Thoughts slowly began to return; as they did, Wyand’s head throbbed with a pain that felt like a thousand tiny miners swinging sharp picks inside his skull. He coughed, an action driven as much by the force of the explosion against his chest as by the smoke-filled air that now burned his lungs. Ansund’s mouth was moving. “What?” Wyand asked, somewhat irritated by the muffled sound of the Draeden’s voice.
“I said forgive me,” Ansund repeated. “The haste of my actions has led to significant problems.”
“What problems?” Keltin grumbled as he, too, was lifted to his feet.
Ansund frowned, his sunken eye momentarily uncertain. “See for yourselves.” He led them out of the Calling Room and back into the corridor. Right away, the “problems” were evident.
“It’s…it’s gone!” Keltin stammered as he studied the devastation. Ansund’s thunder stone had certainly eliminated the Cultivator threat, but it had also collapsed a large section of the corridor that lead to the upper levels of the Hall. Smoke from the Calling Room poured out into Aldhagen and rain from Aldhagen poured into the Hall.
Wyand blinked and flexed his jaw to clear the haze that lingered inside his head, but he still felt like his thoughts and senses were moving too slowly. “Thank you, Ansund. We’d be dead if you hadn’t done that,” Wyand said, nodding towards the rubble. A note of hollow sadness crept into his voice. “I don’t know how we’ll reach the top of the Hall now, though.”
Keltin took hold of Wyand’s shoulder and studied his eyes carefully. “There’s still Locboran,” Keltin reminded him. His face bore an expression that Wyand knew preceded the question “are you all right”, so Wyand spoke again before Keltin had the chance to ask.
“Locboran is an option, but that’s only if we can reach the passageway behind the speaking platform again.” In truth, Wyand hadn’t thought of Locboran at all until Keltin mentioned it, or considered the fact that it had a corridor leading to the upper levels as well. Shaken by the explosion or not, it frustrated Wyand that he had overlooked such a simple detail, even temporarily.
Keltin pointed to the center of the Calling Room as soon as Wyand mentioned the speaking platform. “I don’t think that’ll be an issue,” he replied, and Wyand agreed instantly. The last tattered scraps of the burning curtain drifted to the charred floor, but already there were fighters creeping into the Calling Room from the Locboran side of the Hall. They all moved with an air of caution, weapons ready and eyes wild as they tried to discern the cause of the large explosion.
“It’s all right,” Wyand called, waving them forward. He explained the situation with the Cultivators and the thunder stone several times as more fighters made their way into the corridor beyond the Calling Room. Many stared in disbelief at the destruction while others grouped around Wyand, Keltin, and Ansund to wait for instructions. Once his thoughts cleared, Wyand sent a member of the Shroud Legion to find Aemetta and tell her to reopen the Locboran side of the Hall.
“We know for certain now that the thunder stones can break though these barriers,” Ansund said, pointing to the slabs of metal blocking each entrance. “If we pull everyone back into the Calling Room, we can open the Hall to the people of Aldhagen once again.” Wyand nodded tiredly; he was still recovering from the last explosion and wasn’t looking forward to another one so soon.
A troubled expression suddenly darkened Keltin’s face. “What if there are people just on the other side of the door when the thunder stone hits it?” he asked, and neither Ansund nor Wyand had an answer for him. Keltin raced to the jagged opening beside the rubble pile and peered out into Aldhagen. He stepped back a moment later, shaking his head in shock. “There’s no one near the Hall—no one alive, at least.” His skin paled as he spoke from whatever he had seen. “Wyand, it’s bad. Worse than we could’ve imagined.”
“The workers are still out there,” Wyand said with certainty—Hirst’s words had proven true too many times for Wyand to start doubting him now. We can save them. “Ansund, let’s open a door.” A few moments later, the small force had assembled in the Calling Room and was waiting behind the rows of seats. Another thunder stone was brought forward by a Bloodsister; this time, Wyand covered his eyes and ears before the orb ever left the Draeden’s hand. He still felt the explosion, but it was a small jolt compared to the earlier blast. When Wyand opened his eyes, he was excited to see the grey light of a stormy morning waiting behind clouds of settling dust.
Wyand’s excitement decreased with each step he took towards the doorway, until he soon understood Keltin’s look of total horror and confusion. Where the rows of living quarters had stood, now only piles of smoldering rubble remained. Beyond those, Aldhagen’s once-great spineleaf forests blazed in the distance, casting the glow of their firelight onto the clouds above. Though the destruction was incredible, the loss of life was much more horrific. Everywhere Wyand looked, bodies or portions of them dotted the ground amid charred craters and tendrils of smoke. Images of the attack in Cynmere rushed forth from the depths of Wyand’s memory, until the faces of the dead seemed to peer at him from every side.
“This can’t be it,” Wyand breathed as he struggled not to weep. Even as he spoke, more flashes of green soared above his head towards the few remaining structures in Aldhagen until those, too, were nothing more than mounds of debris.
“We can’t help anyone out there until that Cultivator weapon is destroyed,” Ansund said from Wyand’s side as he surveyed the devastation. “I’ll organize our forces here to hold this entrance. As soon as the threat from above is gone, we’ll search the entirety of Aldhagen for survivors.”
Whether the Draeden actually believed anyone could be alive amid the ruins or not, Wyand didn’t know, but his words reignited Wyand’s resolve either way. To stay in this place, to waste precious seconds mourning all that was lost, would only worsen the situation. Wyand straightened as he looked away from the wreckage. “Thank you, Ansund,” he said with conviction, and they both knew it was for much more than simply offering to stay behind. Before anything else could be said,
a surge of cold focus sent Wyand sprinting back towards Locboran with Keltin by his side.
As Wyand crossed the Calling Room, shouts suddenly erupted from the corridor beside the speaking platform. Though the words they carried were unintelligible at first, the sensation of mounting panic they inspired was almost tangible. Recently-arrived fighters called to Wyand, urging him onward with cryptic calls of “Hurry!” and “They need you!”, but it was difficult for Wyand to piece together many details beyond that. He hadn’t intended to leave the main force for this long, and from the growing sounds of distress, it was clear that they were now under attack. Work this time, he silently begged the Stormheart.
Soon, the passage curved and Wyand once again stood on the speaking platform in Locboran. A flash of green cast shadows onto the curtain as one of the Cultivators’ orbs hurtled through the spiraling corridor beyond the Calling Room. Wyand flung the curtain aside, and to his relief the Stormheart flared to life. The scene here was better than Aldhagen, but not by much. People crouched for cover beside each entrance, some were injured, and their cries of both fury and pain echoed eerily in a space supposedly dedicated to peace.
In the corridor, a relentless barrage of Cultivator fire ripped into the exposed Cynmeren and Smokedwellers, pushing them back towards the Last Calling chamber. Suddenly, Wyand spotted Aemetta as she sprinted towards the line of Cultivators—in her hand was a thunder stone. “Aemetta!” Wyand shouted, but she didn’t slow. “Aemetta, no!” The passage on the Locboran side of the Hall was the only remaining route to reach the upper levels. If it collapsed too, Wyand knew there was no other option.
Kingdomturn Page 106
