by Greg Curtis
This was bad, she knew. This was very bad.
“Please! Calm!” She called out some more. But no matter how she called for peace, no one heard her. Between the anger and the emotion and the memories of their past lives resurfacing somehow, she was forgotten.
Then the terrace fell off! She couldn't see exactly what had happened. The Terrace was out of her line of sight as she was on the garden terrace around the side from it. But she heard it, she felt it, and she saw some of the rubble fall sideways down the volcano's slopes. And she knew that something catastrophic was unfolding all around her. The volcano was waking up and the Temple was being destroyed.
“Stop!” Elodie screamed with all her might, but her fragile mortal voice simply wasn't powerful enough to be heard over everything else. She could barely hear herself scream. And all the time there was more rubble sliding down the volcano's slopes. Rolling into the towering walls of dimensional chaos surrounding them and vanishing into the void on the other side.
“You have to stop this!” She tried again. But by then she knew it was too late. Not only weren't the thrones listening to her, or even able to hear her, they were losing themselves in wild emotion. Crying, screaming in anger, cursing and swearing at no one, and even laughing hysterically. They were falling apart.
Then the first of them vanished as thunder and lightning above tore loose from what had been a calm and pleasant day. One moment the throne had been there, the next he wasn't, and she had no idea what had happened to him. But even as she was trying to understand it, a blast of wind picked her up and tossed her into the side of the volcano hard enough to stun her.
After that she fell to the stone floor, and lay there for a time, trying to make sense of things. But there was no sense. Only the fury of the gods raging all around her. And the Heartfire below, exploding into life.
By the time she finally made it back up to her feet and could stand there on the shaking ground, there were only three thrones left. Had the others vanished, she wondered? Or simply gone away somewhere? And why were they still screaming? Throwing their heads back and yelling at the sky?
They vanished before she could ask them. One by one they just disappeared, leaving her alone on the unstable garden terrace, trying to keep her footing as everything shook.
Then the volcano exploded, and she knew that standing didn't matter any more. It was all about the running. And her legs powered by fear, she ran inside and started down the stone stairs as fast as she could.
It wasn't easy. With the ground constantly moving underneath her she didn't so much run as stagger in all directions. And she hit things. Walls mostly. She tripped and she fell and sometimes she was simply thrown into them. But each time she got up and ran some more. And somehow she made the main passageway, even if she immediately found herself diving face first straight into its stony floor.
Fear let her get up and even ignore the blood she could feel flowing from her nose. And then she was off again, sprinting through the darkness with all she had, for the main terrace – and hoping it was still there.
Naturally she fell some more. At times she even found herself crawling. While all around her pieces of the ceiling crashed down. But she kept running because she knew if she didn't, she would die. It didn't matter if she was hurt, or if she kept being sent running off course, or even if pieces of stone smashed down on her. She ran. And eventually the main entrance was in sight – and a section of the terrace beyond.
The sight brought her strength, and she pushed herself harder to reach it. She didn't want to die in the darkness.
But when she finally managed to emerge from the tunnel, it was to discover that her hope had gone. The stone path she had created to carry her around the side of the volcano to the grand portal was gone, along with most of the main terrace. She couldn't get to the grand portal! She was trapped!
“Ladies grace!” Elodie wanted to break down and cry. And to wonder how everything could have gone so wrong. Because she had no hope. She had a volcano erupting just behind her and a towering wall of primal chaos in front of her. It was only really a question of which would be the one to kill her. Unless of course it was the smoke that was filling her lungs, choking her.
Until the smoke cleared a little and she suddenly realised that she didn't have a wall of primal chaos in front of her. It was gone! Another portal wall had come down. And she hadn't even realised it, as the smoke had robbed her of her sight.
For a heartbeat she almost managed a smile. Until she heard something even louder than everything else behind her. Foolishly she turned around to look back in the Temple, and saw flame. And then even more foolishly she stood there and stared as it grew closer, racing through the tunnel. Until finally her legs decided of their own accord what to do. They started running. And somehow they ran her right off the edge of the broken terrace.
After that there was falling. Smashing into the side of the volcano, then rolling and tumbling and sliding, while somewhere above her the sky turned orange with fire. And it didn't stop. She tried to control her tumbling, but there was no real control. Sometimes she was sliding on her front down the steep slope, sometimes she was bouncing and rolling, and sometimes she was on her backside. There was pain too as her body took impact after impact. But all the time at least, she was getting further and further away from whatever was happening behind her.
Eventually she did stop, her mad descent ended by a tree that appeared just in front of her. And the pain as she smashed into it, left her dazed and confused. But when she was finally able to turn her head and look back it was to realise that the volcano had completely erupted.
There was black smoke climbing for the heavens. Clouds starting to fill the sky. And fire emerging from the top of the volcano and running down the sides. Lava.
Meanwhile she was standing at the edge of the endless forest, a land she knew little about and which she wanted to know less of while the land trembled with fear and the smell of brimstone filled the air. She couldn't stay. Elodie knew that. Gravity had helped her escape the slower moving rivers of lava, but they were going to keep coming, and with them there would be fire and toxic air. She had to run. Before she was overcome.
So she caught her breath, put aside the pain of her battered and bruised body, wiped the blood off her face, brushed down her robes for some reason, and started marching into it as fast as she could. She would have run if the ground wasn't so uneven or shaking so badly. She had to get away from the volcano.
The last Guardian, she realised, had left the Temple. And somewhere in the distance she could hear a drunk dwarf snoring happily, satisfied with his work.
Chapter Forty Seven
Another day another town freed. Fylarne was pleased about that as he sat on a tree stump and stared at the people, most of who were lying on the ground, or sitting up and looking around, confused. Over the last week or so they had surely had to have freed thousands of slaves. And they weren't alone. Dozens of other groups of liberators as they called themselves, were doing the same. Using their one spell to free the slaves. And extending the spiderweb of portals through N'Diel.
Others, those with dimensional magic, came after them, bringing the freed slaves out of the realm to others where they could recover. And he prayed every day when he opened his eyes that his family were among them. The other prayer he whispered each morning was that the damned harpies wouldn't catch them. He hated those things! Even though it turned out that the human rifle was exceptionally good at destroying them.
One shot, once the harpy could be seen, and the floating monster went up in flames as the bullet somehow carried the fire deep into its body. The humans said it was a high velocity incendiary round. Fylarne wasn't completely sure what that was. But he didn't have to understand that. Only know that the damned creatures could be killed by it. Maybe there was something to this technology of the humans and the dwarves?!
For the moment though, there were simply people to watch, slowly working themselves clear of the cl
ouds in their minds. Little by little realising that they weren't where they had been. Not where they had been before they'd been abducted by the sprites. And not in the fantasy world they thought they'd been living in for however long.
It was the same thing every time. They woke up from their dream. Then, quickly or slowly they started taking in their surroundings. They started looking at themselves too. The thinness of their bodies, the scars and open wounds that covered them, the extreme length of their hair, and the rags they were wearing. And then they started asking questions. Mostly of others who were in exactly the same condition.
He could do nothing about that. None of them could. They freed them. Rescued them from their captivity. And then had to move on to the next town or mining camp. That was their job. But they always stayed long enough to answer a few questions and explain to those who were first to wake to reality, what had happened.
And that was a hard time. Waking wasn't a pleasant thing for these people. Most especially because the first question out of so many of their mouths was – where were their loved ones? And of course they couldn't tell them. They could be alive or dead. They could be anywhere else in the entire world. Or maybe they had never even been brought here.
It was actually worse for the sprites. They had spent their entire lives lost in this imaginary dream prison. They'd been born into it. They had no idea what was happening. And to make it just that little bit worse, their wings, whether they were normal or the huge gossamer ones of the overseers, began falling off almost immediately. Whatever magic they had had, faded with them. It seemed that the sprites had never had any true magic of their own. They had only had what had been bestowed upon them by the wings.
When this was ended eventually, N'Diel would be a ruin. A land with no hope. Because how could a land full of people who had no magic, little practical knowledge, only the most rudimentary structures and primitive farms, and litle even in the way of true memories, prosper?
Sometimes he felt sorry for them.
“There's word.” Dah appeared in front of Fylarne and handed him a mug of tea.
“Word?”
“Of the Temple,” she explained.
“They've finally found it?!” Fylarne was excited by the news, and surprised. This was a world like any other and even with as much of it as they'd crossed, it was only a fraction of what was. He had thought it would be many more months at least before they finally found the temple and ended this nightmare.
“Not this temple.” She shook her head. “Yours.”
“Oh?”
“It's been destroyed.” She broke the news to him. “The volcano has erupted.”
Fylarne was shocked by that. Stunned and overwhelmed and confused. How could the volcano have erupted? That had never happened before. And it had destroyed the Temple? He wasn't sure how to even begin to feel about that. A huge part of his life had just gone. It was almost as if someone had just cut his legs out from under him. Again.
“Elodie?” He finally asked.
“No news. But the portal wall barrier that surrounded the volcano has fallen too. She could have got out.”
“I see,” he nodded. But he didn't really see at all. The only questions running through his mind were whether she was still alive. And if something in what he'd done had led to this new disaster. Had he killed the last guardian? Destroyed everything? Despair began to fill him. But he did his best to work through it.
“And how do we know what happened?”
“The ogres. They saw the volcano appear from behind the portal wall, already on fire. Then they had to flee. And now there are enough portals across Prima that word spread.”
That made sense, Fylarne supposed. At least something did. Including the fact that when he looked around their small camp it was to see that they had been joined by others. By those who would lead the former slaves back to somewhere that they could be cared for until they had recovered and then hopefully begin their journeys home.
“Are you alright?” the sylph asked, a note of concern in her voice. “Is there anything you need?”
“Just to be alone and to think.” And really that was all he could do for the moment. “I thank you for the tea.”
Dah stood there for a moment, studying him and thinking, but eventually she made her excuses and left. She was a sylph. Caring and emotion weren't the way of her people and so she would struggle to find a way to bring comfort. But that was alright. He could drink his tea and carry on. That was all he could ever do. He could not rebuild the Temple. If Elodie was gone from the world he could not bring her back to life. And if this was all his fault there was no more penance he could pay save to keep doing what he was already doing.
And so when the call was made, he stood up and followed the others on to the next destination. His heart might be broken. There might be a crushing weight on his shoulders. He might know nothing but guilt and shame for his actions. But he could help to free the slaves. That was all there was.
Chapter Forty Eight
Dragon flies were pretty insects. Chy had always thought so. Especially when the sunlight glittered off their wings making them glow a thousand different colours. But they weren't so pretty when they bit you. And they were even less pretty when there were thousands or millions of them trying to bite you. Which was why he was using his magic with the wind to try and gather them all together in little funnels and spin them around so quickly that they got crushed together and their wings got ripped off. It was a good strategy he thought. There was only one downfall with it. There were just too damned many of them.
And the wood stank! It smelled as though all the demons of the world had made their home in the ground. And they were rotting!
Wherever this woodland full of now stagnant rivers and puddles of foetid water had come from, it wasn't a place Chy wanted to go. And it wasn't a place the people of Port High wanted to be near either. When the damned insects had arrived in their swarms, they had called for help and he had come. Even though he'd never heard of the town and it was on the other side of the world from his home.
But that was his life these days. It had been for months.
If he was honest though, what was really bothering him wasn't the dragonflies. It wasn't the smell of corruption and decay. It wasn't even the terrible number of bites he'd taken. It wasn't that he was tired either. It was just that he was worried for Elodie. He had been for days. Ever since he had heard of what had happened to the Temple.
He knew she was alive. He'd used the portal of sending to try and send her a message of hope. And though he hadn't been able to speak with her, he had felt her presence. But she could be hurt or in danger. He didn't know. She might be too far away to get back to him – though he suspected she was actually somewhere in Prima, running through the forest, trying to get away from a volcano. But he didn't know if there was a portal anywhere near the Temple or if she could get to one if there was.
It was worrying. Frustrating. And most of all it left him feeling helpless. He wanted to do something – but there was simply nothing he could do.
“Piss!” He swore as another damned dragonfly got him and then slapped at his face. Then he added some flame to his latest wind spout and sent another few thousand of them to the underworld. Of course ten thousand more immediately joined in the attack. Bastards!
Where did they all keep coming from? He wondered about that as he advanced another few feet into the woodland and readied his next wind spout. But he had no answer save to keep killing them.
And so it went on as over the hours that followed he walked back and forth across this new piece of the world, blasting and burning every damned dragonfly he could see. And cursing the ones that got through his walls of wind to bite him. He was luckier than many though. He had a few score of bites. When he'd wandered through the town on his way here, he'd seen people covered from head to foot in bites. They looked like they had some sort of pox. There was a reason he'd been called.
Mid afternoon though br
ought a change in tactics to his fight. By then he'd criss crossed the new piece of the world so many times that the number of dragonflies had been reduced to something almost manageable. Though of course their bodies lay like a carpet of burnt cinders over the dirt and he had to crunch them underfoot as he made his way through them. But he'd finally realised where they'd come from. The clutches of their eggs on the undersides of the leaves over the now stagnant waters.
This new patch of woodland that had arrived in Port High, had been here for weeks from what he could gather from the locals. It hadn't been a problem before. But the weather was getting warmer. The water in the streams didn't have anywhere to flow to, which was why it was becoming stagnant. And the eggs were hatching. He had to get the water flowing. And keep it flowing. That would cool things down, wash away lots of the eggs, and keep the numbers from climbing again.
