Valkwitch (The Valkwitch Saga Book 1)

by Michael Watson

  Kexal’s voice brought Tyrissa out of her surveying. “Hand my scope back, will you?” She lowered the glass and passed it back to him with care. The device was clearly a cherished possession from his homeland, expertly bound in reddish leather and brass casings. The lenses bore a few faint scratches, the only evidence that the telescope had been tearing across the continent with its owner for years. Kexal raised the scope to his eye and focused on the central ruin.

  “Don’t suppose you could be of any help here Hali?” Kexal said, scanning the lower slopes of the city. Their group was perched atop a ring of higher ground built up against the base of the sheer cliff walls, as if much of the debris of the Fall had been swept out of the center of the crater. Kexal and Hali sat near Tyrissa while Garth sat ten feet down the steep slope. Garth was, as usual, fiddling with the finished ‘dust box’, tweaking his invention ahead of its maiden and final use.

  “This is the first time I’ve been past the rim.”

  “Really? I’d have thought that you of all people would have gone to see the sights once or twice.”

  Hali gave him a hard stare.

  “Don’t give me that look woman, it’s a joke,” Kexal said without looking away from the city. “Well, I reckon we’ll just have to make a run for it and hope for the best, unless Wolef gets back with word of a better choice. We’ll hug that borderline between the spines and the flats. Looks like the safest route.” He lowered the glass and pressed each end inward, collapsing it to a shorter tube a little wider than his palm. Kexal then replaced it in the hard case sitting to his side, the interior padded and shaped to fit the telescope. The case closed with a metallic click.

  “I don’t mind running across,” Tyrissa said, “But improvising is best done when you have an idea of what to expect. What’s the worst that could be out there?”

  Kexal cleared his throat and said, “Pebble fields that’ll swallow up your foot and at the least break your ankle, crevasses that open a few feet in front of you, no appreciable cover, and probably the attention of the local wurm population.”

  “Oh, is that all?”

  “No. Winds that can knock you flying without warning, birds of prey that care nothing for size differences, and knowing that all you can look forward to is doing it all again on the way out.”

  Wolef clambered over the boulders downhill of their perch, breathing hard with lines of sweat running down his face. Garth tossed over a canteen.

  “Well?” Kexal called down from above.

  “Many dead ends,” Wolef said between swallows. “I found one that leads into the ruin proper, straight across, a little way south and about a hundred feet uphill.”

  “There a catch?”

  “Whatever lives there might not welcome us tromping through its lair. It was away when I Slid through, but that could change.”

  Kexal reached above his shoulder to pat the hilt of his sword. “It’s our only option, so we’d best introduce ourselves as we barge on in. You good to go out again?”

  Wolef nodded, “I only need to swap in a fresh pair of rods.”

  “Good. Saddle up folks, we’re heading out.”

  They descended to the floor of the crater and began to thread a course between the spine forest on their left and the exposed flats to the right. Garth took point with his crossbow out and readied, eyes constantly scanning the nooks and crannies around the towering spines of rock. A reedy cry sounded above them as they passed near the first of the spines. Tyrissa looked up and saw a pair of beady black eyes glaring back. The creature was the size of a hawk but looked to be more lizard than bird, with gray and brown scales running along its serpentine body. Its head ended with a sharp black beak and when it spread its wings, they were translucent. Oversized black talons adorned each spindly arm and leg. Tyrissa had no doubt that they were sharp as razors. It gave out a warble and received a dozen responses.

  “Breeze raptors,” Hali said. “Pack hunters and scavengers. The crater’s lousy with them, though their range beyond that is limited.”

  Tyrissa looked to the tops of other nearby spines, and could make out others of the pack, all keeping a close watch on the five travelers. “Native?” she said lightly.

  “Planar. Though they’re native now. Showed up during the Fall and had quite the feast.”

  “We have a plan for them,” Kexal said, “Soon as Garth—”

  Garth’s crossbow thrummed once, the bolt whistling through the air and impacting flesh with the wet sound. A creature screeched among the spines, the sound of an injured wurm. The rest of the party turned their heads in unison. At the base of a spine, a wurm twisted in its death throes with a bolt embedded in its head. This species had smoother skin of smaller joined scales, like a snake. The raptors raised a communal chorus before swooping towards the kill on broad diaphanous wings. They formed a circle around the wurm as it died, a few bolder creatures jumping atop the wurm’s back to rip away the first bites.

  “Creates a distraction,” Kexal continued, “We won’t have to worry much about them. The blood on the air will keep their attention them.”

  Garth repeated the process twice by the time they were halfway across the crater floor, the mountain that once was Hithia looming ever higher ahead of them. The raptors seemed to recognize their game and followed along, politely waiting for the next gift. Aside from side stepping a few narrow crevasses and pools of pebbles, the trip through the crater was more hype than danger. Tyrissa could feel the winds here growing stronger with each step towards the center, the elemental air filling her with a reservoir of steady but unsatisfied earthen energy. She wanted to use it.

  The Hithian Crater complied and the ground shook violently, causing her four companions to stop in their tracks and fight for balance. Reaching through the potential to Shape the rock below her feet, Tyrissa could sense that a significant section of stone was shifting underground, like a cavern collapsing. Dust burst upward through the countless cracks in the ground all around them, the air thickening with clouds ejected from below. A pebble pool to their right exploded upward in a shower of rock and four pointed snouts of wurms emerged from the pool. These weren’t like the soft skinned ones Garth had been killing. These were as big as wolves and had the bony ridges and wide, tooth lined jaws of hunters. Swarms of locust-like insects and more wurm species ranging from hand size to as big as the bony hunters emerged from rifts in the ground. A cross-section of the underground ecology of the crater was driven to the surface, and the five of them stood in the middle of the menagerie.

  “Let’s go!” Kexal shouted above the screeches and cries from dozen different monstrous mouths. Already the pack of hunter wurms surged toward them, deciding to make the most of their sunlit situation. Garth loosed a trio of parting shots as they broke into a run.

  Aided by the trembling earth magick within, Tyrissa quickly surged ahead, dodging aside hazards and calling them out to her allies. Behind, the dust clouds thickened and swirled, the winds of the crater sending grit and sand everywhere but doing nothing to clear the air. Through the haze, beyond the swarm of wurms and more, she caught sight of a massive beast rearing up from the ground. Its roar overwhelmed the myriad cries and crashes of the menagerie that had boiled to the surface. The monstrous sound echoed through the crater but as it faded, so too did its source return the depths from whence it came.

  Probably for the best that I didn’t see what that was, Tyrissa thought.

  Tyrissa shot a look over her shoulder and frowned. The others were keeping pace well enough but behind them was a pursuing swarm of contorting shapes among a growing dust cloud. Wurms were slower than a human at a sprint but had enough endurance eventually run you down. Tyrissa returned her attention to the ground beneath her feet just in time to pivot away from a finger of pebble churn, her Earth-powered stride not missing a beat. The base of the central ruin wasn’t much farther but there was no promise that the wurms would simply give up when they reached the rubble.

  Tyrissa paused near a spir
e, one of the last before the ruins, her breath coming in heavy, controlled puffs. Wolef and Garth were furthest back, the wurm swarm at times quite literally snapping at their heels. But each time the two men dodged around one of the fresh crevasses, the wurms would gain on them a little more. The silhouettes of raptors circled above, watching the spectacle unfold. Occasionally one would fall into a screaming dive, spearing out a smaller wurm from the pack and carrying it a short distance before letting its prey fall to a blunt death.

  Rapidly growing cracks forked out across the flats from the spine forest, threatening to turn the remaining distance into an impassable plain. Tyrissa seized upon the immense weight of earth magick she had built up over the run. She smoothly knelt and drove a clenched fist into the ground, unleashing her supply of magick into a powerful Shaping and creating a long walkway of smooth, solid ground among the fracturing terrain.

  They took advantage of the pathway and quickly caught up to Tyrissa. She sprang back on her feet and together they reached the base of the crater’s central mountain, their pursuers breaking off as they ascended the slope built of melded rock and ruins. Tyrissa noted they each looked no worse for wear, though Kexal and Hali both wore fresh splatters of blood across their clothes. Behind them, the hunter wurms milled about between boulders and through crevasses, watching but not pursuing them up the first stages of the slopes.

  “They’re not following us,” Kexal said with relief. He then bellowed out a long laugh. “In all my days, every time I think I’ve seen it all, something like this happens.”

  Making use of a new surplus of prudence, they ascended further up the mountain, clambering over wind-smoothed rock faces and bits of Hithian buildings jutting out from the monumental ruin. Wolef led the way and soon their first destination gaped above them, a wide sheltered cave that looked to run deep into the mountain. Sun-bleached bones were strewn about the entrance and the air reeked of rot and death.

  “You smell what I meant,” Wolef said as he stepped into the shade of the cave. “I’ll check again.” He melted into the shadows with that faint mental burst of allure that marked his element. Tyrissa turned back crater floor below them and saw that the wurms still kept watch, but refused to follow them. Not into the lair of a predator. The breeze raptors wheeling in the sky began to disperse, carrying off or devouring their kills. The dust clouds thinned and revealed that the plain between the ruins and the crater wall had calmed back to its normal stillness, the various underground inhabitants having returned to their homes or found new one. Looking back on it now, it was such a short distance, a few miles at best.

  The Shade returned by the time they had all caught their breath from the climb and were rested enough to continue.

  “The cave leads all the way through, into the ruins proper,” he said. “It is… strange in there. Like a whole different world.”

  “What about the resident of this cave?” Kexal asked.

  “Still absent, so far as I could see. There’s nothing but bones and carcasses within.”

  “Pity,” said the big man. “Well, let’s get a move on.”

  Tyrissa fished out a gloworb and pressed in the tiny lever, bathing the area in harsh white light. Wolef shot her a mock reproachful look.

  “What? Caves are dark.”

  Kexal entered the cave with a casual saunter and the rest of the party followed. The interior was as promised, with plenty of carrion and discarded bones strewn across the wide, wind-smoothed floors. Hali had her waved knife out. Wolef walked alongside Tyrissa just outside the arc of her gloworb. His hands hovered near his twin black iron blades and his outline flickered between solid and shadowy, as if he was ready to Slide at a moment’s notice. Tyrissa flexed her grip on her staff, picking up on the group’s nervousness. Something felt off here. Tyrissa felt nearby magicks at work, and not the slight tugs originating from Hali or Wolef. It was an acute sensation of elemental air magick, ahead of Kexal and distinct from the crater’s winds. Perhaps it was something in the ruins beyond the cave.

  Kexal looked back at them, “Come on now, nothing in here but the smell. The sooner we get through—”

  Tyrissa saw the wall next to him move, as if the rocks had shifted in place. Something large rushed through the air and sent Kexal careening into the opposite wall. A powerful keening reverberated through the cave, and the shifting image of the walls and floors sprang toward them.

  Hali raised her free hand and a cluster of vines burst out of her loose sleeve, green tendrils that shot forward through the light of the gloworb. The vines spread and coiled around a large, camouflaged creature that crawled across the floor of the cave like a moving distortion. The vines revealed an outline of the beast, and Tyrissa guessed it was roughly reptilian. Between the vines she could see nothing but misplaced rock walls, like fragments of a picture set in the wrong place.

  The beast recoiled from the vines, circling in place and dragging Hali along with it. Now able to see a vague target, Garth and Wolef let loose their attacks, the cuts and bolts leaving bloody patches and streaks on the creature’s hide, through it didn’t seem troubled by the wounds. Its skin flashed through colors at a headache inducing pace, making it difficult to even look at for more than a second. Another rush of air cut through the cave, knocking Tyrissa aside and sending her tumbling. Initially surprised that she didn’t keep her footing against the gust, the welt of pain across her chest told her that it wasn’t a blast of air magicks. It was the creature’s tail used as a simple bludgeon.

  Tyrissa felt a pool of heat on her side and rolled away to see that she had landed on her gloworb, the luminous fluid leaking from a crack. She unhooked the orb from her belt and threw into the fray, aiming for the center of the clutching vines. It struck near the beast’s shoulder and burst into a bath of shining fluid, brightening the cave further and better outlining the creature. The gloworb fluid flowed over its forelimbs and down its neck highlighting a thickly muscled body and limbs covered in fine scales. Hali’s net of vines grew, further restricting the creature’s motions.

  The beast lurched at Kexal, its unseen head striking outward. He managed to get his shield up not a moment too soon and the crash of the impact resounded through the cave. Kexal pushed back against the creature, throwing its head aside and backpedaling toward the cave entrance and away out of reach. Tyrissa jumped to her feet and ran towards the melee, bringing her staff down in a vicious overhand, then spinning the staff upward for a second blow with the lower metal band. The haft of steeloak thrummed from the impacts and knocked the creature’s head aside, preventing it from biting through Kexal’s legs.

  Kexal’s sword sang from its sheath, and he brought it down in a chopping arc through the air in front of Tyrissa. A bloody rent opened atop the beast’s neck, free of distortion. Tyrissa brought her staff down across the neck and threw her weight onto it, pinning the creature’s head to the floor. Kexal dropped in two more butcher’s chops. Hot blood sprayed across Tyrissa’s face, and after a few feeble convulsions, the half-invisible monster moved no more.

  No words were spared as they untangled themselves from the creature. Hali let her vines fall away from her, the greenery quickly withering to a dead brown. Garth yanked his bolts out, some appearing to be stuck in mid-air. Kexal pulled a kerchief from a pocket and handed it to Tyrissa. She murmured her thanks and wiped her face, the cloth coming away with bloody streaks. The gloworb fluid bubbled across the corpse, adding the smell of burning flesh to the scent of decaying carcasses. The creature’s skin continued to shift from earth tones to invisible to a bright white to match the light of the gloworb fluid. Wolef cleared his throat, looking down at the camouflaged creature sheepishly.

  “How does that saying about Jalarni cockiness go?” Hali said.

  “He said the cave was empty,” said Kexal pointing at the Shade.

  “To be fair,” Wolef said while cleaning his twin blades with a dark cloth, “I said I didn’t see anything inside. That held true.”

  “Fair e
nough,” Kexal said. “Shall we?”

  They gathered up their gear and carried on. The cave widened further, the air cleared, and they stepped into the twisted remains of a civilization laid low by elemental devastation.

  Chapter Forty-two

  Hithia left a fine looking corpse, once you were inside it. The cave emptied onto a long boulevard that bored into the depths of the ruins, the street curving up along walls, to the ceiling, then back around to the floor. The fusing of rock and ruin rose to an even greater scale here, with intact buildings built in the delicate, airy styling of the lost city hanging from the ceiling or at other odd angles. In many places, nothing but wind carved rock formations covered the walls in spiked points or wave-like undulations.

  “This was the Road of Roses,” Hali said as they descended to street level, such as it was. True to the name, coiling, unrestrained growths of rose bushes lined road and followed its path along the walls and ceiling, taking root in both preserved planters and barren rock. “It ran through the city in a spiral, passing each tier all the way to the Primarch’s Palace.” The warping effect of the Fall and subsequent centuries of chaotic, magick fueled winds left the spiraling part intact, in a manner of speaking. “That mansion was on the second tier, but those tenements at the base, in the Kynarral.”

  Tyrissa glided down the slope, throwing as much earth magick towards keeping her balance as she could. Inside the ruin the wash of air magicks felt like a five-fold increase from the already high levels outside. A wind blew up the road toward them, only to reverse direction every few minutes, as if the ruins were taking long, slow breaths.

  “Might as well follow this for now,” Tyrissa said as the rest of the group reached the stones of the rearranged road. Though the path ahead curved out of sight, she felt as if their route to Vralin was a straight line, dead ahead.