Firestone

by Ryan Carriere

  Roeg stopped rubbing his hand. “We are looking for the gnomish folk.”

  “Well, you’re looking at one of them,” Minnoa replied as she held her hands out like she was holding a long hide covering. She bent one knee over the other and bowed her head.

  Roeg wasn’t sure what she was doing with her knees, so he continued, “We are from the Great Spirit Clan. Unn Truthsay’r sent us.”

  Minnoa’s face changed; she squinted her eyes then tilted her head. “Who?”

  “Unn Truthsay’r,” Roeg said.

  Minnoa scratched her head and looked to her feet. Her whole satchel jingled, the trinkets banging and clacking together. “Hmmm, I know that name…”

  “What are you saying?” Ookum asked. “All we hear is sounds. Well, sounds like birds chirping. Are you doing that Jarbletongue thing?”

  Roeg looked back and nodded.

  “What did Firehair say?” Minnoa asked.

  Roeg looked to Ookum and chuckled. Then he looked to Minnoa and said, “They can’t understand you like I can.”

  Roeg looked to Ookum, “She called you Firehair!”

  A wide grin spread on Ookum’s face, and he stood taller. Tsisa crossed her arms, scowling. She elbowed Ookum.

  “We are looking for Jexif, King of the Gnomes,” Roeg said.

  Minnoa squinted her eyes, raised an eyebrow, and her mouth scrunched to one side of her face. Her round cheeks bulged even more. “What do you want with him?”

  “He can help us. My father, Unn, foretold of a Great Sadness that is coming. We are looking for the Bloodstone.”

  Minnoa’s eyebrows shot up. “Ha, well then you’re in luck. Jexif just happens to be my father.”

  Roeg bent down on one knee until he was eye-to-eye with Minnoa. “Can you take us to him?”

  Minnoa turned and walked toward the trees, then called back at the trio, “Follow me.”

  Minnoa’s small legs tramped through the thick, overgrown forest with ease, leaving the main path behind. Roeg felt the burn in his legs and realized they had been slowly climbing uphill. The trees grew larger and became even more bent and gnarled. Darkness fell, and so did the daysing’rs—the nightsing’rs took their place. Their chatter was even more menacing than the daysing’rs. Roeg thought of the glowing blue treeswing’rs and shivered.

  “Are we there yet?” Ookum called out. “My legs hurt. I’m tired, and I need food.”

  “Are we sure we can trust… it?” Tsisa said.

  Roeg twisted. “‘It’ is a her, and her name is Minnoa.”

  Tsisa rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Whatever. How do we know we can trust… her?”

  “We can’t. We need to trust Unn. He said he came here once as a youngling,” Roeg said.

  Ookum passed by while Tsisa and Roeg spoke. He stood by Minnoa, who was scanning the face of a charcoal-colored rock wall. He tossed his long, red hair to one side and peeked to see if Minnoa was looking. She didn’t see, so he inched closer and tried again.

  She jumped and slid her arms and head into a small crevice in the rock wall. Her legs dangled and kicked as she tried to gain leverage.

  Ookum looked at Minnoa’s dangling legs then glanced to Roeg and said, “Uh, should I help her?” He pointed to her little blue legs.

  CLICK.

  The sound of stone grinding on stone rumbled out from the rock wall. Minnoa hopped down and brushed the dust from her coat. “There.” She looked to Ookum then said, “You might wanna step back.”

  Ookum’s wide grin returned, then he tossed his hair again.

  Minnoa poked at his knee. “Uh, you should move—now!” Minnoa jumped back away from the rock wall.

  Roeg looked to Ookum. “Minnoa says to move.”

  As the words left his mouth, he saw Minnoa jump back again, and the rock wall split open. A huge slab of it swung out, slamming Ookum in the face. He crashed off the ledge and tumbled down the hill.

  “Ookum!” Roeg called out.

  Roeg, Tsisa, and Minnoa raced down the hill after him. He cursed and yelped all the way down. He stopped rolling and lay flat on his back, letting out a long, low groan.

  “You okay?” Roeg said, out of breath.

  “Uh, I think so.”

  “I told him to move!” Minnoa looked pale.

  “What is she saying?” Tsisa motioned to Minnoa.

  Roeg looked to Minnoa then to his friends. He did not like having to explain everything to everyone. He wished they could speak to one another. “Ah. She said that she told him to move.”

  “We can’t understand her! Does she know that?” Tsisa growl-clicked.

  Roeg nodded. “I’ll try to pay more attention, and let you guys know what she is saying when she talks.”

  Ookum stood and touched his split eyebrow. “I’m okay.” He smiled, and his teeth were covered with dirt and bits of green leaves.

  The group laughed. Ookum grunted and hobbled up the hill towards the secret door.

  SEPHONEI

  The Map

  A

  bil walked ahead, following the footprints of the giant ape that came down the mountain. The moon was a sliver in the dark sky, and the air was crisp. Clouds of misty elk breath blew past Sephonei’s head as Pery clomped along behind her. Ku-aya walked beside Sephonei.

  “What’s he doin’ up there?” Sephonei asked.

  Ku-aya turned to her and said, “He’s scoutin’. He’s keepin’ an eye on the footprints of that thing you saw. We don’t want to run into anymore of those things. Judgin’ by the footprints, that thing must have been huge, yaa?”

  Sephonei nodded. She looked ahead and lost sight of Abil, who had blended into the darkness.

  Ku-aya reached to her neck and brought her goggles to her face, looking through them. She squinted.

  “What are those?” Sephonei asked.

  Still squinting through her goggles, Ku-aya said, “These are far-sight goggles. They help me see far, an’ in the dark. I got them from the Quartermaster. Didn’t you find anythin’ useful there?”

  Sephonei thought back to the harpoon the Quartermaster had offered her. Maybe she should have taken it. The dagger she had taken was neatly tucked into her sash; she pulled it out and showed Ku-aya.

  “I found this, an’, these feel nice.” She said, kicking up to show her boots. “A bit heavy, but they’re comfy.” She outstretched her arms to showcase the long coat. “An’ the jacket isn’t too bad either.”

  “Ha, you look like a Crystal Hunter now! A little more trainin’, an’ you’ll act like one too,” Ku-aya said with a laugh.

  Sephonei reached for the goggles. “Come on, lemme see.”

  Ku-aya swatted Sephonei’s hand away. “Should have got your own.”

  Sephonei persisted. “Come on! I just wanna see,” she reached again.

  Ku-aya smirked. She grabbed Sephonei’s arm, crouched, and twisted Sephonei over. Sephonei landed with a thud.

  “That’s called the Atlantean twister!” Ku-aya said. “When you get up, I’ll teach you tha—”

  Pery snorted and swung his massive golden antlers at Ku-aya, barely missing. Ku-aya dodged and stumbled back. Sephonei lurched in front of Ku-aya and held her hands up. “Pery, stop! I’m okay, see? I’m okay.” She patted herself to prove it. He stopped and snorted, turning his head indignantly.

  Without taking her eyes off of Pery, she reached and punched Ku-aya in the shoulder. “See? We’re playin’.”

  “Ouch.” Ku-aya rubbed her shoulder. “Too far, kid. Watch it,” she said through clenched teeth, though she didn’t take her eyes off Pery.

  Sephonei read his aura; it flashed from red to green. She lowered her hands. “Okay, he’s good. Let’s go.”

  She turned and strode up the mountain.

  Abil poked his stick in the fire. Three small pieces of skewered meat sizzled and smoked as the flames licked the cool night air. It was warm around the fire, but if you leaned back too far, you
escaped the cloak of warmth and immediately regretted it. Abil had scouted a good campsite that halted their day’s trek. Ku-aya leaned on a rock by the fire and thumbed her map. Ever since the outpost, she had been scrutinizing it constantly.

  “How long till we get to the Land of Darkness? Where is the Land of Darkness anyway? It’s pretty dark now,” Sephonei laughed.

  Ku-aya kept her face to the map and hummed.

  “Ku-aya,” Sephonei repeated.

  Ku-aya turned the map sideways and tilted her head, not taking her eyes off of it.

  Abil turned his stick so he could burn the other side of the skewered meat. “She gets like this every time. The maps we get from the Quartermaster are not the most accurate, so Ku-aya likes to—well, ai, she needs to fix them.”

  Sephonei turned to Abil. “Why aren’t they accurate?”

  He sneered. “You know nothin’, kid. It’s like you were born yesterday.”

  Sephonei heated, and it wasn’t because of the fire. “You know, I saved your life. The dragaodon would have eaten you if I hadn’t been there. You laid on the ground, while I saved you. You drooled and looked like an idiot. I even thought of lettin’ it eat you but didn’t. You owe me.”

  Abil straightened and shot her a fierce glance. He snorted. “I don’t drool, and I owe you nothin’, li’l fistler.”

  Sephonei glared at him. “What’s with the eye, anyway? Why do you have the scope?”

  Abil stopped sneering and poked his meat stick farther into the fire. “You really care about my scope, don’t you?”

  Sephonei rolled her eyes. “I find it different. I’ve never seen anyone with one before. Traders an’ most folk in the commons don’t walk around with metal melted to their faces.”

  Abil laughed dryly and shook his head, then his smile vanished. “It happened last year.” He leaned in. “Ku-aya an’ I were on a hunt to find a secondary stone, one of great power. It was night, and we had been travelin’ several days in the Sa’ha’ra Drylands.”

  Sephonei leaned closer. “Where is that?”

  Annoyance washed over Abil’s features, skewing his face. “Don’t interrupt. It’s on the other side of the mountains, north of here. It doesn’t matter to the story. Now listen up.”

  Sephonei huffed but stayed quiet; Abil was finally opening up to her.

  After adjusting himself and leaning back, he continued, “Ai. We were trekkin’ through the Sa’ha’ra an’ had to travel at night because it was so hot in the day. It was said that a large sandworm guarded the secondary stone, so we prepared for the encounter. Along the way to the dunes, we were attacked by it.”

  Sephonei, arms now wrapped around her legs, inched closer to the fire. “What happened?”

  “Jeez, you li’l pillock, quit interruptin’!” Abil said, nodding his head in anger. “A sandworm is huge. It makes your little ape friend look like an ant, an’ it eats its prey in a foul way—it spits venom an’ melts the prey, then it sucks up whatever remains.”

  Sephonei squirmed at the image and scrunched her nose.

  Abil saw her squirm and grinned, then he proceeded to explain in gory detail the venomous sandworm.

  Ku-aya looked up from the map and noticed Sephonei wincing. “Get on with it, Abil, yaa?”

  Abil smirked and leaned back. “Ai. It chased us for a bit, then it reared out of the sand almost right under us. It wanted to catch us off guard, but we were prepared. You see, we studied it beforehand an’ knew how it attacked, so we were able to anticipate it. But it launched its venom at us an’, well, a stray gob caught me in the eye.”

  Sephonei gasped and brought her hands up to her face. “Ew! Did it hurt?”

  Abil shook his head. “Nah. I held it in like a soldier—”

  Ku-aya barked a laugh and slapped her knee loudly. Sephonei jumped back. “Did ya now, boyo? The way I remember it, you cried like a sucklin’ baby. Bloody bull horns, tell it like it was, yaa?”

  Sephonei turned to Ku-aya and gave her a half-crooked smile.

  Abil grimaced. “You would have cried too! Sandworm venom is nasty stuff. It hurt somethin’ fierce.” He shifted in his seat, pulled the meat stick out of the fire, gave it a sniff, then stabbed it back into the fire. “We had to abandon the plan an’ turn back. We came back to Outpost One and travelled back to Atlantea, where I had the pleasure of being acquainted with the mech techs, who patched me up. The fusions are a new mech invented recently under Sin’s orders, I believe. The mech techs held the photonic energy in a new type of metal called ‘orichalcum.’” He pointed to his metallic scope. “They fuse it on your face. It healed my eye an’ gave me better sight than I ever had before. There you have it. That’s why I have the scope.”

  The tone of his aura changed, but Sephonei couldn’t read it; it went from a flat gray to a flat gray with several tonal specks of gray. A knot tied in her throat, and she felt a bit queasy. For all his teasing he had laid on her, she had teased him about something that wasn’t under his control. Her cheeks flushed with shame, and she struggled to make eye contact with him. Haha, “eye” contact. She shook the thought and turned her head away, smirking. She scolded herself for smiling.

  Ku-aya started to speak then paused, turning the map right-side-up again. “From what I understand, we have a week’s journey to pass over this mountain. Then there is a huge lake, an’ I can’t find a way to pass… then the map gets sketchy…”

  “What do you mean ‘sketchy’?” Sephonei asked.

  “Sketchy, as in I don’t know where we’re going after that. The map… well, look.” Ku-aya offered the map to Sephonei.

  Sephonei took the map. Ku-aya had marked their journey with small dots; Sephonei saw the rings of Atlantea a way off the coast. A line of small dots started there and moved to the coast, stopping at the outpost. She had some notes on the map about their journey, and she had marked some landmarks not on the original map. Sephonei followed the dots eastward to Bentwood Forest, where she found notes about the giant ape, then the dots continued up the mountainside and stopped. The mountain range seemed to go on forever. It was daunting. At the end of the range was a large lake, and there appeared to be no passage across it. Then the map was blurred, almost as if something was spilled on it or burnt; Sephonei couldn’t tell. Either way, it was unreadable.

  Sephonei handed the map back to Ku-aya. “Where is the Land of Darkness on that map?”

  “See the smudgy area? That’s the Land of Darkness,” Ku-aya said, taking the map back and tucking it in her satchel.

  “Ai, lucky us,” Sephonei said. “What exactly is the Land of Darkness?”

  Ku-aya squinted at Sephonei. “You don’t know?”

  Sephonei shook her head. “No, never heard of it.”

  “Really? You’ve never heard the stories? You’ve no lay o’ the land?” Ku-aya now leaned in toward Sephonei.

  Abil brought the meat stick to his face and gave it another sniff. “Ai, did ya live under a rock as a kid?” He frowned at the char of the meat and stuck it back into the fire.

  Sephonei huffed. “Ai, apparently. Can you tell me, please?”

  Ku-aya sat back. “The Land of Darkness is a fabled place, said to be home of An’nuna’ke.”

  “What’s An’nuna’ke?” Sephonei interrupted. “Didn’t Sin say something about the Gates of An’nuna’ke?”

  Ku-aya looked to Abil then continued, “An’nuna’ke is said to be the demon of blood an’ bone, an’ its power is trapped in the Bloodstone. It’s said that if someone were to learn how to extract the power from it, they could be immortal. My guess is Sin has developed the technology to do that, an’ that is why we are retrievin’ the Bloodstone, yaa. The Gates are… well, they are said to be the only way to get to the Land of Darkness. But the part about the demon is just an ol’ crone’s tale. I don’t believe it. The power in the stones is not because of some demon. Photonic energy is known by our mech techs, an’ they’ve written volumes about its power. Not on
ce did they mention a demon.”

  Sephonei scrunched her nose as she thought of the demon. “Immortality? I don’t feel good about giving Sin—the guy threatenin’ my parents—immortality. Seems like a bad idea.”

  Abil scoffed and shifted, then leaned in. “If not Sin, then who? Our job is not to question. Our job is to find the stones an’ let the Order decide how to best use the power of the stones. Followin’ orders is what we do. Don’t forget it.”

  Ku-aya stared a long time at Abil before turning to Sephonei. “The more I think about it—” she paused and looked down to her feet, “the less I like the whole turn of the tides, to be honest. I was brought up a soldier an’ learned at a young age to take orders from my superior officers, so that’s how I became a captain so fast. But now,” Ku-aya shuffled her feet in the dirt, “I… I need to think on it, yaa.”

  Abil shifted uneasily on his rotted stump that he used as a seat. “We’re here on a stone quest that’ll set us up for life. Don’t you forget that, Ku-aya. You’re the one who says we’re a team, and you’re the one who is always wantin’ an even keel, so now I’m tellin’ you that is what you need—slow an’ steady, an’ we will get this done.”

  Ku-aya didn’t look at Abil. She only shuffled the dirt around her feet more.

  Sephonei sat back and thought about Sin. “So, is Sin—” Sephonei paused. “Has he always been so…”

  “Intense?” Ku-aya said.

  “Ai. An’ what happened with the chalice? The whole room shook. You mentioned something about blood magic on the boat, but I didn’t understand fully. I’ve never heard of a blood mage before. It seems kinda sinister.”

  “Ai.” Ku-aya paused. “Sin is a blood mage. A blood mage shifts the tides of blood an’ bone to their favor. They use a form of necromancy an’ blood to call on that power. All the High Priests have been blood mages. That’s how he found the location of the Bloodstone. It’s a powerful magic that I don’t fully understand. Nobody but the blood mages do.”

  “So, Balin said there are three primary stones. Why does Sin want the Bloodstone? Is it because he’s a blood mage?” Sephonei asked.