by BJ Hanlon
He ran after her, he sprinted, but the land rose as if a terestio was changing it. The rocks grew looser at every step and his feet began to slip. He climbed higher and higher. Edin watched as Arianne crested the rise and disappeared, the sounds of her and the child crying were gone.
“Arianne,” he cried out. “I’m coming.” Why was she running from him? Where was she going?
Then he heard movement below. Edin looked back and saw what she’d been running from. And not just her, but he should’ve been fleeing also.
The valley he’d been in was now swarming with dematians. The black demons were racing toward them and in their midst, he spotted stone giants, wyrms slithering on the ground, and others flying through the air. But at the center, surrounded by the largest dematians Edin had ever seen, was the monster from the tunnel.
Edin turned back and started climbing again. A giant thunderwyrm, possibly the same one he’d slain in the Battle of the Northlands, landed at the top of the stony mountain before him. On its back was the dematian king. Even kings heeded their gods, Edin thought.
The king raised a hand and Edin saw the staff. Inside it was the red stone. The Rage Stone.
It spoke in its chattering tone and lowered the staff toward Edin. It was going to shoot something out toward him. Like his ball of lightning in near Carrow.
Edin dropped to the ground and pressed his body into the stone as he clamped his eyes closed. The brightest red and yellow light flowed around him like he was staring directly at the sun. He screamed as he began to feel warm, then hot, then like he was on fire. He was going to die.
The pain erupted, he felt his skin starting to singe, then it blistered a moment later. It popped. He felt every pain, every pustule popping like bubbles below a waterfall.
Then the pain was gone. Everything seemed to disappear. Edin looked. He was still on the mountainside. Below him, the horde was gone. Above him the king disappeared. The land somehow wasn’t as crumbly either. That was a plus.
He stood and was able to walk up the rest of the slope now. It took barely a minute before he reached the peak and stood above the landscape.
Before him, the land dropped into a greenish yellow fog. Edin swallowed. The mist was thick and absolute and there was no movement, at least at first.
Then he saw something. A giant black appendage. At first he thought it a vine of some sort but then saw it sway and move and lash out at something unseen above the fog. The smell hit him, putrid odor like rancid eggs and fish that’d been covered with rotten vegetables. A meal fit for a draugr.
Another lashed out, this time very close. It leapt from the fog like a flying fish from a pond.
Edin barely had a moment to think. It slapped him in the stomach causing him to double over. Then, it dropped and wrapped around his leg. It squeezed. The pressure was immense like he’d put his foot in a vice that kept tightening. It burned and he felt the bone cracking and being crushed as he was being pulled forward and down and into that deadly fog. The swamps of old.
Edin tried to reach back and grab hold of something. His hands didn’t work. He tried to summon a culrian to shield him, then a knife to slash the tentacle.
But he had no talent. He was bare, as if everything had been taken from him. He saw something coming at him from the mist. And he felt a gust of humid air blow up on him like a volcano exhaling. The intensity of the draugr stench grew sevenfold and he nearly fainted. A giant gaping black opening came toward him. In it were giant teeth dripping with yellow spittle.
“Edin, get up,” a quiet but hurried voice said. It took barely a moment for the dream world to disappear and the real one to come back. And in that new one, he saw Berka standing before him, his sword drawn. “There’s something near.”
It was early morning with a yellow glare rising to the east.
The ground shook and Edin got to his feet. Rocks began to rumble and roll across the ground as if they were tumbleweeds caught in a windstorm.
Edin looked the way they were heading but saw nothing. Then he spun toward the clearing behind them. Berka was looking that way too.
Something was there, in the center of the small clearing.
Edin drew his sword but he had no idea what he was looking at and what to do about it. All thought of that creepy nightmare fled him as the form in front of him began to move.
It was made of rocks, hundreds of rocks, some were pebbles others the size of his head. They were forming a circle, a ball of sorts, and they were rolling around and cracking into each other almost like a vortex. The sound became deafening, the clatter of stones sent shivers down his bones as they were locking together. It was almost like the building-log set his mother had given him as a child.
The pieces formed quickly, snapping together. A long piece of at least six rocks, each the size of a melon, jutted out from the left. Then another from the right.
The twisting of the vortex and the snapping of the stones continued. Berka stepped back, Edin followed. Then something leapt out from the bottom, then another.
It was forming into a humanoid-like object. Something he’d never seen. “A giant,” Berka hissed though it didn’t look exactly the same as the one they’d seen on the bridge.
The head popped up, then it seemed to turn toward Edin. The torso continued in that vortex of stone that didn’t form fully.
Suddenly, a bulbous, white glow appeared in the upper middle of the rock head like a cyclops. It looked down at Edin and Berka and took a step toward them. The way he or it or whatever the heck was behind that glow peered at them, made Edin certain it didn’t have kind thoughts.
Edin glanced around. He had no idea how to fight a rock. “Run?” Edin said.
“Sounds good,” Berka said.
They twisted around and sprinted. Hunger, thirst and everything else was gone as the adrenaline pumped through his body. They sprinted through the forest much like the night they nearly died with the crillio, the night he became the Abomination of Yaultan.
Through the trees, almost like a beacon of hope, he spotted the large mountain ahead of them. The valley began to slope up to the left, or down to the right if Edin was being objective, and more forest floor vegetation began to appear.
Behind them, the pounding of the feet, the clattering of the vortex, and the smashing of trees echoed through the mountains.
Then the angled forest floor began to rise on the left a bit more precipitously. Then on the right.
Edin was huffing as they followed a small dry riverbed into the shadows in a rocky ravine. He glanced back and saw the thing, twenty yards or more behind and matching their speed.
It was more than ten feet tall and the one eye glared at him. He wondered if it was going to shoot something at him from that eye like the burning light beam in the nightmare.
The thing rumbled on. One of its legs clipped a stone, but instead of tripping him, the stone latched on and rolled up into the vortex at its gut. The giant seemed to grow larger.
“Blast,” Edin said under his breath and looked forward again.
Berka was leaping over fallen trees and dead branches. There were bones too, many of them. He saw skulls, what looked like a dog skull, a human skull, and others. To the right he saw a black cavern and floating eyes peering out of it. Yellow and vicious eyes but the owner of those eyes didn’t move.
The thundering of the thing behind him was growing closer. Edin could feel a slight tug on the back of his cloak as the ravine continued on a gradual turn almost north. It began to rise also. Very slowly but it was going up. He could barely see anything beyond Berka’s huge body.
His friend was starting to slow. Edin could see the sweat on the back of his bright pink neck. Edin figured they’d ran at least a mile through terrible terrain. Despite that, Edin still had energy.
From above, he heard noises and glanced up to see shadows leaping over the wide gorge. More bones, stones, and debris were on the ground. Other stones and boulders tumbled over the edge.
Th
ey leapt over the corpse of a bird’s half eaten body.
A cliff raptor far from the Great Cliffs.
The gorge continued to rise and suddenly, from ahead he heard Berka holler back, “There’s open air ahead,” though his voice was barely heard over the whistling, stomping, and clacking of the giant behind them. They climbed, Edin’s foot slipped on a loose rock, and he fell but caught himself with only a slight scrape into his palm. Edin pressed on. What could they do?
Then beyond Berka, Edin saw an open gap. The gorge and the world just seemed to be sliced off. Berka appeared for a moment, framed in between the land and the open sky beyond, then his arms began to spin like he was trying to stop his momentum from going forward.
Edin barely had a moment to process this when he ran into Berka’s back. They tilted forward and nearly fell. Edin saw for a brief instant that they were on the pinnacle of another ridge. A very thin ridge and on the other side there was a valley with evergreens, oaks, and a long earthen slope to a lake.
But before that, there was a stony descent, very stony and it was about as rough as a drunken brawl in any one of the pirate towns.
A moment or two later, he realized they were on a rock that apparently wasn’t stable and Edin’s momentum carried them forward. The front of the thing tilted downward as the back rose. Edin grabbed Berka and tried to reverse that momentum.
He fell to his butt as the rock was dislodged and for a moment, it teetered precariously on the edge of the gorge and the rocky slope downward.
Then there was another stamp of the giant stone beast’s foot.
The rocking stopped because now they were sliding on a path toward the lake. The flat stone spun slightly, crashing and running over more things and picking up speed.
Edin screamed as he gripped Berka hard. Now he remembered the terrible fall heading into the Susot Valley. Déjà vu.
Could this be it? Could they have somehow found it?
“Hold on, I’m going to…” Edin felt for his talent and the culrian. They needed a barrier; something that could stop—
But just then there was something that caught his eye. It appeared in front of him and was odd. It was a dark cloaked form that was to the right of their path and seemed to be approaching very fast.
The form was on some sort of boulder and seemed to be standing perfectly straight on it. The weird thing was the boulder seemed to be sitting at a forty-five-degree angle.
Then Edin noticed the figure was resting on a gnarled staff like he was waiting for a friend at a tavern.
Edin tightened his grip on Berka as they were about to pass. Suddenly, an arm snapped out of the cloak and a strong hand grabbed Edin’s bicep like the tentacles in his nightmare.
Edin clamped his own hand harder on Berka’s forearm as their downward momentum turned to a sideways and then upwards. It was as if they were the hand on a clock telling the time at an extraordinary pace. They spun until they were looking back up the mountain, at the stone giant high above them.
Then they started back down, though a lot slower. Edin saw the lake below them again.
The man held on as the rock slab crashed into the trees below, flipped up, and disappeared. Suddenly, the man let go of Edin’s arm and they dropped to the hard stone that’d been carved by the sled.
Edin collapsed to his chest, laid there, and panted tasting the stone and gravel bits still settling from the disruption. Off to his left, he could hear Berka doing the same. There was no movement from either of them.
A foot touched his gut and he felt it lift him and flip him to his back. Edin looked up into the rising morning sun toward the face beneath the cloak. It was covered but he was near certain it was the hermit.
“Thank you,” Edin hissed when he’d finally caught his breath enough to do so.
“Thanks,” Berka gasped next to him.
Then, he felt the thumping of the stone feet pounding down the path.
Edin shot up, his body on fire from the run. The stone giant was coming down the new path toward them. Its single eye staring at Edin.
It wanted to attack. It wanted to kill them right then and there.
Edin began to scramble to his feet when the old man held up a hand and the giant stopped before them with the vortex of wind and stone being the only movement. Then slowly, it began to drop. The head, arms, and legs fell in on each other and then into the vortex. Then the ball of stone and wind slowed down before them.
Edin stood, his mouth hung open while rocks began to tumble out and stop and form a pile of about twenty stones. Most were the size of his head, sitting silently in a tomb-like memorial.
The tomb of the stone giant.
“You control them?” Edin gasped after a few minutes of trying to get saliva in his mouth and his tongue to work.
“It was an elemental, not a giant. A stone giant is different, cruder,” the old man said. Then he whipped his cloak back and started heading west across a stone path. Edin and Berka looked at each other, they looked at the pile of stones, then at the crystal-clear lake and valley below. It was gorgeous. And he saw the animals on its banks and the trees beyond. It was almost the place of his dream, his vision. Or maybe it was the same place only at a different angle. Not as low, not as westerly.
“This is it.” Edin stood, gaping. “Arianne, is she here?”
Edin saw the man stop and turn back.
He shook his head and then turned away. Slowly, he started along a trail that was almost invisible but cut like a blow across a mound of potatoes toward the north.
Edin hadn’t had much hope when he asked and now he was certain. It wasn’t her in his dreams. Despite his body crying for a rest, he stood. He started after the man down the path. Behind, he heard Berka hustling and panting.
The trail headed straight for a few hundred yards curving slightly northwest. Then they reached a crossroads of sorts. A cross-stairs really as a set of steps ran both up and down from there. The man turned up and they started climbing.
There was something about this valley that seemed serene. Edin looked toward the lakeside again and saw the beasts down below, large bovine creatures, hogs, monkeys, rodents, thin deer and possibly even crillios. It was like a vision of the peaceful paradise.
Between them were men. The outline of people who were drinking from the lake, fishing or lounging.
Then he looked down to Berka who looked wearily back at Edin. Something in his demeanor said he didn’t like were this was going. A sort of ‘is this really a good idea’ look.
Edin shrugged and followed the hermit up the wide stairs.
After a while, he noticed the man was barefoot and stepping on rough stone. His brown cloak hung over his ankles and he wore a single threaded rope around his stomach like some of the more devout Vestion monks that live in monasteries. But his was gold.
Was he a monk? No, Edin thought, he made an elemental disappear. No monk could do that.
Finally, they reached the top and what looked like sheer cliffs with a path through it. It looked like a dark and intimidating path. Like the entrance to an abandoned graveyard.
Edin swallowed and then above it, he saw they were on the southern side of the grand, central peak. It was almost sheer for thousands of feet and he could see the same general type of apertures as the city in the ravine.
The peak was taller than Erastio’s Rise.
The old man moved through the gap with the two weary travelers behind, trying to keep up with the old man’s swift pace.
Just before they entered, Edin felt a tug on his arm and turned to Berka turning and waiving his hand out toward the landscape down below.
They were a few hundred feet above the valley and the long lake that went as far as the eye could see. It was like they were standing on the precipice of heaven and staring down at the earth for the first time. Edin’s mouth dropped.
“That’s,” Berka said.
Edin just nodded. He remembered looking out over the mountains in Erastio’s Rise so long ago a
nd being completely awestruck by it.
“Ahem.” Edin turned back to see the old man standing before the opening in the rock. He wasn’t looking at them but Edin still felt like he was watching somehow.
They began forward again and approached the gap.
As it grew closer, Edin became aware of a cold, hollow feeling. The feeling grew with his every step. Then as he entered it, Edin felt a probing. As if there was someone or something searching him. He opened his mouth to say something but didn’t. What could he say? How could he describe it?
Edin wanted to turn and run. To flee like a child from a big angry dog. His feet were growing sluggish and tired, his eyes wearier.
“I feel,” Berka said but didn’t finish the thought.
The crack rose thirty feet like a castle gate but there was no gate or portcullis, at least none he could see. The feeling coming off these stone walls was oppressive. The darkness was like evening on a cloudy, stormy day.
Then, he saw the sheer end of the wall and as he stepped passed it. It was as if he’d crossed into a whole new world. A wide open one and there was sun. The oppressive feeling disappeared and he was struck by the place. A landscape that was huge, a hundred acres of farmland with an orchard and vineyard and the mountain as the backdrop.
Built into the mountain’s face was a castle-like building, a Vestion Monastery actually. They are monks.
Turning back, he looked through the gap. From here, it was clear and light and the valley was heaven. The darkness completely gone.
The parapets were empty and the towers were silent but there was still a feeling that they were being watched. That and the feeling that if one of them took a wrong step, they’d die.
A flock of birds cackled above them. They passed a small shack with a closed door and a hoe leaning against it. To the left he saw a stable and a paddock and grassland. Inside the paddock were the horses but there were no people.
