by T. A. Creech
Storm Crow
By T.A. Creech
Published by JMS Books LLC
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Copyright 2018 T.A. Creech
ISBN 9781634867436
Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com
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All rights reserved.
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
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To my sprint buddies, you all made this one so easy to write. Thank you. <3
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Storm Crow
By T.A. Creech
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 1
Jagged black rock blotted out the sun in a tapered monolith. The indomitable Fire Star Toa. A great fiery heart of power disguised as a massive volcano.
The deck under his feet rocked in time to the lapping waves, another great heart of power under Alegan’s feet, one he couldn’t harness to his will. In a way, it would’ve been easier if he were a water mage, a Runner, instead of a Fire Dancer. The Vensalin Ocean was vast and simple to access, and he only had to dip his toes in the water at any part of the coast. Less dangerous too, if he was honest. This was madness, from top to bottom.
But that empty pit in his soul pushed him on.
Orders volleyed around him as the ship captain made for the sturdy docks in the cove they sailed for. As Alegan understood the layout of the island, one of four Fire Stars clustered together, the sole village on Toa lay to the west of the volcano, and they had built the miniscule port far away from them in a northern cove for quarantine purposes. It was a good strategy, but it served his purposes in a beautiful fashion. No one would notice when he slipped away.
A rumble made him turn and glance over his shoulder. Graynight huffed out a thin stream of sulfurous smoke from the corners of his mouth, flint gray eyes darting between Toa and Alegan. “So, you really plan to carry through with this insanity?”
Somehow, without any intention to do so, Alegan had made a friend of the dragon in front of him. They had sailed from Rethkrul together, Graynight on an errand to Aelcua for a visit with family. On their first night at sea, underneath the vivid stars and black sky, Graynight had found him huddled and miserable on the ship’s bow. He had asked Alegan why he wore a cloak of chrysanthemums, of sorrow and death. The whole sorry tale spilled out of him in a rush, and Graynight had kept his company since.
“I’ve come too far to back out now, Graynight.” Alegan offered a grim smile, tinged with real humor at the edges, and turned his eyes back to the looming Star. “And I feel something good about to happen here. I can’t explain it better.”
Graynight snorted, hot tendrils becoming thicker for a second. The dragon’s voice was always a surprise to hear. Nasal and midrange, but it also held a hint of a purr. Alegan put it down to the natural rumble his creature form had, if he’d ever been treated to the sight. “I see. You are, of course, expected to come see me if you survive this mad venture, am I understood?”
“If?” Alegan twisted around so he faced his friend full on. The faint red pattern of scales peeking around his coarse travelling clothes blended in with newly sea-weathered skin and it gave Graynight a rough look about the edges. The dragon was pretty stout, unlike the twiggy height of most dragons wearing a human form. The temptation to ask about Graynight’s other shape itched in the back of his mind, but Alegan crushed it under his metaphorical boot. Such questions were unbelievably rude.
Graynight’s eyes wandered from Alegan to the great height behind him. “A warning, Mage. We dragons know the burning heart of the world and its power. You want to capture that heart and use it, where not even the Gods would dare. If is the very best I can offer when it comes to the chances of your survival.”
The numbness around his soul dissipated for a second, and he shivered. Alegan hitched a bittersweet smile on his face, though the dragon’s eyes weren’t on him. “Better I die in a failed attempt, than continue on without them.”
“I don’t understand,” Graynight conceded as he focused back on Alegan, “but I wish you luck all the same. You need all I can spare.”
“Don’t I know it?” The smile firmed into something a little more genuine.
A shudder ran through the old wood beneath their feet. Graynight grinned, sharp fangs bright in the morning light. “We’ve made port. Good.”
Alegan smiled, happy for his friend. Since becoming acquainted, Alegan learned about Graynight’s annual pilgrimage to the Fire Stars. A small cadre of dragons guarded the people on the islands, though they kept out of sight unless there was danger. Both the people and the dragons were happy with the arrangement, but it was Graynight’s duty, as the elected leader of Eyrie and its various non-humanoid inhabitants, to make sure the Fire Star dragons fulfilled their end of the treaty. It also gave him a chance to take back requests for aid and supplies outside of the normal and emergency shipments. The little things, after all, mattered to the comfort of anyone so far away from home.
The captain called out the final orders to drop anchor and tie off the lines. Alegan stepped forward with his hand out toward Graynight. His friend met him with a huge hand of his own and engulfed Alegan’s. They didn’t need any words after a month together at sea, despite the calm trip.
Graynight turned away once he dropped Alegan’s hand and disappeared below deck by way of the stairs splitting the center of the ship. He took one last look at the old ship that had brought him, sturdy yet it creaked with every slight breeze, and sighed. Alegan would miss the days he’d spent on the water. Though surrounded by the anathema of his innate power, it was a calm sort of life. Maybe he would return to it, after his task was done, if he succeeded. Gods, he hoped this worked. There was nothing left for him if it didn’t.
He swung his pack up onto his shoulders and stepped onto the damp wooden dock.
Other passengers and crew disembarked around him, so he went with the flow all the way into the ramshackle collection of buildings set up for temporary housing while quarantine was in effect. The whole area was less than the space the Osairan palace sat on. In a few minutes, Alegan was on the far side of the buildings, no one else within a stone’s throw of him. He took a quick glance around in a circle and slipped between two structures.
A field of lush grass and stunted trees spread out in front of him. Toa cast its shadow to the sea west of him, where the village was supposed to stand. The water boomed and broke the peaceful air with its massive voice. Alegan’s heart settled in his chest and the sense of rightness shook a little more of the numb feeling out of his bones.
This was where he was supposed to be.
The volcano itself was a giant, there was absolutely no doubt of that, but the incline was a gentle swell for most of the climb. The last quarter was jagged, broken open like an egg split close to the top. A rough river of pumice and black glass, ribbon thin in the landscape, ran down the slope of the mountain toward the ocean, close to the port. It looked old.
Alegan picked his way through the foliage. The rock stood out as the only real path up the mountain and once he reached it, he laid his hands on the cool surface. A thrum of power swirled and eddied under the reflective surface. He dropped his pack in the damp earth and sat down, senses closed to all but the fiery thread in the obsidian.
It was beautiful and warm, shifting like a flame trapped under glass. He didn’t grab at the flickering strand, but eased his mind along it, magic drawn to its source. Trees and leaves and green whipped by as Alegan sped up the power’s current, until he came to the hole in the ground, glowing like a ruby in sunlight. Perfect and just above the tree line, if he had to guess. A day’s walk at the most.
The current carried him back down in a tumbling rush. An urge to chuckle came over him from some deep corner of his heart. He loved magic, in any form. The rush and flow and eddies and pools of energy were found all over, not just inside mages. So far, in every concentration Alegan had found in his life, the power was warm and playful; the stream of volcanic power he was immersed in was no different.
Graynight was wrong. There was no dangerous power here. And it certainly wasn’t going to hurt him.
Alegan teased his mind out of the magic he’d ridden and stood, pack settled in place on his shoulders. The walk up looked a little daunting, though. A day of hiking over a mountain, no matter how gentle it seemed, was going to exhaust him. Another day waiting to finish what he’d come to do was both depressing and no time at all. Besides, he couldn’t do such delicate spell work in the dark.
One foot in front of the other, Alegan started up the natural road he had found with one goal. The world around him faded away.
* * * *
Damp and stiff wasn’t the most pleasant way he had ever woken, but there were worse ways. At least the little hollow of rock he had found to sleep in was weathered smooth and formed a shallow bowl. If he hadn’t known better, Alegan would swear the dip was carved and polished for this exact purpose. The air was hot and humid well above the place where trees tapered off into scraggly brush and crab grass, the only plants hardy enough to survive the harsh air.
No ash drifted on the wind, which Alegan thanked the Powers for, though the smoke from the little vents pocked the ground as far as the eye could see. It smelled the same as Graynight, a faint scent of sulfur, on a much greater scale. He swore the odor was trapped in every inch of his skin and heavy wool clothes.
Alegan sat up and reached for his ankles, trying to loosen the stiffness in his muscles, and then stretched his hands up toward the impossible blue sky above, broken with trailing wisps of smoke from Toa’s caldron high above. None of his motions helped. Ah well, such was the price of his forty winters living. Once he was done and returned home with his family, he would have his comfortable bed with his beautiful wife for all the rest of his days. Discomfort meant nothing in the face of that promise.
The vent he found the day before lay a handful of steps from his stone bed, better than a campfire. Better than his own fire. He dragged his pack up when he stood, not too lumpy or damaged from its use as a pillow in the night, and settled down with it in his lap right in front of the glowing hole in the mountain.
With a deep breath, Alegan eased open his pack and pulled out the top items with reverent hands. The tarnished bronze star his wife, his Gadal, wore in her sunshine hair every chance she got. Jasa’s favorite drawing book, his eldest girl, filled to the brim with fantastical work from her own hand of machines and gears and the great works of the world. One final item and his breath hitch on a wet choke of emotion. His Tima, their youngest little girl, with only a handful of springs under her dainty feet, had loved her little stuffed butterfly almost to death. It bore the colorful marks of repeated repairs, the thread from whatever knitting project his wife had in progress at the time.
He held them cradled in his lap while he drew out the very few aids he needed to call on both the power of Toa and the presence of Serena, the great Death. A thick twig of willow carved with the Goddess’ sigils, a plain clay bowl in which Alegan placed severed strands of his wife and girls’ hair, and the traditional offering of belladonna. At the very bottom, wrapped carefully in Tima’s swaddling blanket was a flask of his own blood.
The tokens of his family went back in the pack and he set it aside, far out of reach. There was no reason to risk their incineration. His girls would cry if they were destroyed.
Alegan centered the rust red bowl between his spot and the steaming vent. The hair was scattered in the bottom with no order at all and he splashed the blood over the locks in dark ribbons. Willow stick in hand, he etched the illegible incantation in the coarse black sand.
The spell he had found, buried in the dusty stacks of Tanchar’s palace library was from before, when the first monarchs reigned with an iron fist. When magic was bigger, wilder, still a molten force fresh from the Gods, thousands and thousands of years ago. The original manuscript was in the ancient language of humans, no longer spoken now, and Alegan had been lucky enough to find someone to translate the work into the common tongue. If he had known it was so simple, he might have thought it a waste of time.
“Hail Serena, the great Guide of the dead. I summon you to hear my petition.”
Heat built to unbearable levels and stole his breath in seconds, hot ash blistering his face and tongue. The glow of the vent blazed red and then white. Lava bubbled, splashed up over the lip of the vent. A screech picked up in his ears, behind his eyes. Pain lanced through his temples.
Power roared in a firestorm through his veins. Alegan moaned as it burned down every last vessel in his body, heart a smoldering limb of iron in a blue flame. He saw it in the darkness behind his eyes in its frantic, deadly pulsing. This was Toa? The power Graynight had warning him about not a day before?
Ragged, faint whistles rushed past his ears. Where the screech went, he couldn’t tell. Skin burned at his fingertips. Stars splattered in agonizing constellations against his face. Even the stars rained down their objections? His dream of his family was objectionable?
Hot grit scraped at his face and hands and some rancid stench assaulted his nose. Burning hair, maybe. And the ground moved under him. Below him. Cool liquid ran over his cheek. Above him, more grit and brittle crunching. Just the darkness and smell and sulfur. Pain, distant from the hot iron heart he’d somehow acquired, followed the grit. Oh, his chest was going to melt from the inside out.
Cold.
Nonexistence.
* * * *
The dull throb in Alegan’s spine eased him out of his stupor, squinting up into the sapphire blue sky above. How he ended up on his back was a simple explanation the moment he rolled his head to the side, gaze directed up the slope. Dirt was scattered in an arc where he toppled to the side and smoothed flat where he’d rolled.
Blade sharp pain shot up his arms and his fingers ached as he pushed up into a sitting position. Blisters and blackened bits of skin decorated his hands. More charred spots were peppered on his pants and shirt, the smoldering, acrid scent of hair still in his nose.
Alegan swiped at the odd trickle on his face with the side of his hand, hissing from the tender bubbles on his fingers. Blood glittered when he looked at his fingers, mesmerizing garnet in the sunlight. It was funny. His face didn’t hurt at all. He knew his face was still, mostly, in one piece, judging by the small amount smeared on his hand.
Every limb was sluggish, heavy, as Alegan staggered to his feet. His knees didn’t want to hold his weight at all, because they refused to bend more than a fraction as he made his way back up to his original spot in front of the
smoking vent. It had dropped back into its cool red.
“That’s not going to stop me, you know,” Alegan uttered through the ash clogged in the back of his throat. Who he was talking to, Serena or Toa or even the highest Malan, he didn’t know. If he had to destroy himself to bring back his family, so be it.
Alegan squared his shoulders and chomped down on the groan working its way from his screaming injuries. The bowl and sigils remained intact, though glassy black had filled in the impressions in the dirt. The willow twig was gone, probably burned to cinder or swept away.
This time, he raised his hands above his head.
“Hail Serena, the great Guide of the dead. I summon you to hear my petition.”
An incomprehensible scream shattered the air and his ears, piercing like a giant roc in the mountains. Lava spat out of the vent. It fountained, sputtering around his supplicant form in a vast circle. Sulfur burned his senses.
Alegan writhed as his whole body lit up from the inside, as if he had bathed in the heart of the volcano. Something in him snapped. His heart pounded and sizzled in his chest. It went beyond agony. It flayed him open, strip by strip.
Blood bubbled in his throat and the lights went out.
Chapter 2
Catli breathed in the hot scented air at the great entrance into the cavern above the tree line and relaxed, muscles unwinding one on top of the other in a cascade of relief. The stress of dealing with the villagers was almost too much some days. Any time he was able to remove himself to the volcano was greatly appreciated.
That wasn’t to say he didn’t love his village, or his people. Catli was dedicated to his service, to helping his village stay healthy and safe in the shadow of the First God-Child of the Powers. If asked, however, he would tell anyone without hesitation that he preferred Toa above them all. The volcano had no anger, no malice. It didn’t spit hate and anger at him.
The light of Toa’s heart shifted and flowed along the cavern walls as Catli moved deeper into the sacred space. This was why he became a Koah. The position was the only way to gain access to the vast God-Child, to commune with it. To share the churning blaze in his soul with another like himself. In essence anyway, because the volcano wasn’t a being in the same way he was.
