A Gleaming Path

by Jeffrey Pawlak

  Dayneth apparently doubted that they could escape it any longer. She stopped and drew her arm back as she clutched one of her bladed rings.

  “Joth, duck!” she cried, not even waiting for the man to heed her words before she flung the glimmering weapon. Dayneth’s aim was true—even if Joth had not dipped his head in time, the bladed ring never would have struck him as it spun through the air and eventually scored along the Kaivu’s snout.

  The beast bellowed a rage-filled growl as it stumbled and slowed for a few moments. But even as it nearly toppled, it still ran on, seemingly impervious to any pain that Dayneth’s bladed ring may have caused it.

  Raissa seized the chance to gain more ground from the Kaivu, pushing her already sore and weary body to move even faster in her flight. She thought her legs might finally submit to the exertion before she spotted a deep crevice that ran into one of the walls of rock around them.

  Joth evidently spotted it, too. “Into that cut!” he instructed, echoing the idea.

  Raissa hurried into the gap, which could not have been more than a yard across—wide enough to contain a person, but too narrow for the Kaivu to follow them inside.

  As soon as Raissa entered the crevice, she spun around to make sure that Dayneth and Joth joined her. The Aesur woman sped into the cut just moments later, while Joth was only a few strides behind.

  But so was the Kaivu. It lunged after Joth just as the man dashed into the crevice. Even though he avoided the beast’s prodigious pounce as the Kaivu was blocked by the narrow walls, the tip on one of its tusks reached just far enough to lance into Joth’s backside. The man fell onto his stomach as if he been struck by a battering ram, bowled over even by a grazing blow from the powerful predator.

  Raissa and Dayneth hurried to his side and helped him back to his feet, at the same time pulling him further away from the relentless Kaivu who still tried doggedly to pursue them into the cut.

  “That was a close one,” Joth said alongside a sigh of relief. He seemed to hold back a shudder. He peered over his shoulder to where the Kaivu’s tusk pierced him. Merely the boney tip had been enough to lance through his chainmail and bore a shallow gash into his flesh. “If I had been running just a few strides slower, that probably would have been the end of me.”

  “Does your wound need any attention?” Raissa asked.

  “Not right now,” Joth answered. “It’s hardly bleeding. I wouldn’t mind cleaning it out at some point, but we have a more pressing concern at hand.” He lifted his eyes back to the Kaivu, who still tried in vain to follow them into the crevice.

  “Can’t we just wait to see if it grows bored with us and leaves?” Dayneth offered.

  Joth shook his head. “No, because that thing can wait us out for longer than we can stay cooped up in here. Besides that, we can’t give it too much time to catch its breath. Kaivu are fast, but their stamina isn’t the greatest. Our best hope of escaping this thing is to start running again until it tires itself out.” He positioned his rounded shield out in front of him as he began to carefully step toward the Kaivu, his curved saber tightly in hand.

  Raissa looked at the Kaivu as it repeatedly snapped its jaws through the air in a futile attempt to claim one of them. For a moment, she noticed a shallow groove in its thick hide along the side of its head—the only semblance of damage that Dayneth had inflicted with her bladed ring.

  “Joth, don’t!” Dayneth said. “You won’t be able to hurt it!”

  “Not if I hit one of those tentacles on its head,” he assured matter-of-factly. “Its skin may be hard as rock, but those tentacles are soft. They’re used to store water, and their bases are pretty sensitive, sort of like a nerve point. If I hit that, it’ll forget all about us for a few seconds.”

  Raissa stepped forward; she was already calling to her Serenity. “Let me help you with that,” she said. “I’ll blind it, first.”

  Joth initially raised an eyebrow, but he quickly deduced Raissa’s plan. “You mean like Tiroku did to those Narogas under Sleekleaf Forest?”

  “Exactly like that,” Raissa answered, her hand glowing with golden light. “My magical reserves aren’t at their greatest right now from all of the signals I’ve sent to Alamor, but I’ll have enough for one great burst. In a cramped space like this, it’ll seem even brighter. Make sure both of you close your eyes, because it could blind you, too. When I yell for you to open them then, Joth, that’s when you can strike.”

  Joth and Dayneth obeyed. As Raissa cautiously inched closer to the persistent Kaivu, she lifted her hand and pointed it at the creature.

  “Be ready to run,” Joth warned.

  With the Kaivu staring directly at her glowing palm, Raissa expelled a bright flash of light. The flare swallowed up every inch of the crevice, showing no mercy to the Kaivu’s eyes. The desert beast uttered a hoarse, agonized cry as it was momentarily blinded, and it began to backpedal out of the crevice.

  “Now, Joth!” Raissa yelled as the harsh light dissipated.

  The man was already in motion before he opened his eyes. Joth’s curved saber flew ahead and stabbed deep into the base of a tentacle appendage. Raissa felt her bones rattle as the Kaivu let out a piercing shriek. It ambled back onto the ridge, almost collapsing more than once. It began to shamble about madly, wobbling with each step as it shook its head in a desperate attempt to rid itself of the awful pain and discomfort that Raissa’s and Joth’s attacks brought to it.

  Joth exited the crevice first, but he stopped to let Raissa and Dayneth hurry on ahead of him. They ran in the same direction as they had earlier, before they encountered the Kaivu.

  Their escape continued to test Raissa’s physical limits. The time they spent hiding in the crevice was not enough for her to rest her tired lungs and legs, and now their path took them uphill, making each stride more demanding than the last. Just as well, her magical burst of light had been a potent one, putting further strain on her innate energy.

  Still, Raissa ran on, hopeful that the Kaivu’s stamina would eventually fail it, just as Joth suggested. She eventually looked back, where she saw the beast chasing after them once again. It had recomposed itself following Joth’s strike, and although its sight was distorted following Raissa’s spell, it seemed to pursue them through its acute senses of smell and sound. The Kaivu was a fair distance behind them, but Raissa knew that it would close the gap quickly, even when it was partially blinded. She pushed harder, determined not to let the desert predator end her quest on the ridges.

  Then she saw Dayneth’s face twist in horror.

  “Princess, look out!” Dayneth shouted.

  Raissa heard a savage growl ahead of her. Another Kaivu pounced onto the ridge’s rocky floor no more than a few yards from her. Had Raissa kept running, the beast would have captured her in its vicious grip. Instinctively, she pointed her palm at the beast and summoned another flash of golden light, although the burst was nowhere near as intense as what she cast inside the crevice. Her spell startled the Kaivu, allowing her to back away safely as Dayneth rushed to her aid, but it did no more than that.

  Dayneth brandished her remaining bladed ring as the Kaivu lashed out. The Aesur woman jumped away in time to evade most of its powerful swipe, but the Kaivu’s long nails scraped against her breastplate and knocked her flat. Dayneth was quickly back to her feet and threatened several slashes of her own—action that was just enough to hold this new Kaivu at bay for a few moments.

  Raissa began to panic. A second of the desert’s fiercest predators had found them, and the one that they originally ran from was swiftly closing in on them. Her Serenity was too depleted to ward off the creatures any longer. She saw nowhere to run; to one side, the ridge rose up in a sheer wall of stone, and to the other side was a steep drop over the cliffs.

  They were trapped.

  But then, without any warning, the gentle breeze that had swept throughout the desert that day inexplicably became a roaring wind. It was joined by an unfamiliar energy which Raissa knew to
be magic—a form that she had never encountered before now.

  Raissa was almost thrown off her feet when the unheralded gale raced over the ridges, lifting sand into the air and tossing it about into a gritty miasma just like the sandstorm from the night before. She threw an arm over her eyes to protect them from the whirling clouds of dust and sediment, although she was baffled as to how the squall could come about so abruptly.

  She briefly saw the shape of the Kaivu that Dayneth fended off amble about aimlessly, the creature clearly lost and disorientated within the storm. She heard what she thought were voices, calls being uttered within the screaming winds. Raissa saw other shapes emerge within the blowing sands. They were people who soared like birds as they came upon the ridges.

  Before Raissa could try to discern any more about them, Dayneth came back to her side. “Hold on to me, Princess,” the Aesur woman said. “We have to leave, now.”

  Raissa was hopelessly shocked and baffled by the situation, but the urgency in her guardian’s words told her not to waste time, and simply to obey. She wrapped her arms about Dayneth’s body, and a moment later, Dayneth leapt off the cliff.

  Even if the air had not been filled by churning sand, Raissa would not have been able to keep her eyes open. She tightened her embrace about Dayneth even further as she felt the Aesur woman catch the powerful winds with her plumage and sail along their path. Raissa clung to her guardian’s torso with every measure of strength in her arms while they glided in union with the mysterious gale. She refused to look down to see just how high her feet dangled above the ridge’s rocky tips far below.

  Not long after, Raissa felt the storm begin to dissipate. The mighty winds slowed their advance over the Arid Reaches, and the air started to be freed of the choking dust and sand. When Raissa eventually opened her eyes, it was as if Dayneth had flown completely beyond the storm’s reach; she now sailed over a calm and undisturbed desert.

  The Aesur woman glided for just a short time more before alighting gently onto the Arid Reaches’ flat, sandy floor. At once, Raissa looked back to the ridges that were now nearly half a mile behind them. The chain of mountainous rock formations remained encapsulated by an enormous cloud of sand and dirt, but even that appeared to be receding.

  “Dayneth…what happened?” Raissa asked, unable to take her eyes off the fading haze, and just as much unable to wrap her mind about the strange occurrence.

  “We were saved,” she heard Dayneth answer, a note of joy in her voice.

  But by who? Raissa wondered, and before she could verbalize the question, she spotted several shapes appear within the settling dust cloud. They must have been the same ones she saw before, for they glided through the sandy cloud just as they did when she stood on the ridges.

  Only now, these shapes were heading in her direction.

  Soon, they emerged from the haze, soaring like birds through the sun-drenched air. Raissa noticed that Joth was with them, holding on to two of the flying beings by their belts as they carried him along in their graceful flight. While she was relieved to know that Joth escaped the ridges unharmed, Raissa committed little, if any, of her attention to the man as the flying beings finally landed just a few yards from her and Dayneth.

  She counted at least twenty of them in all as her widened eyes scanned their group. Each one of them stood like humans, but had long, slender limbs that wore bands of glistening white feathers. Their skin was bright blue, and their features narrow, their faces resembling formidable birds of prey.

  Almost all of them were dressed in glistening, silvery armor over their torsos, not so different from what Dayneth wore. The only one of them without it was a young woman, seemingly Raissa’s age. Her body was wrapped in teal robes that were closely fitted to her slight frame. Streaks of cerulean ran through her wavy, white hair that dangled far past her shoulders. Her face was narrow, like the rest of her company, but decidedly the most human-like of them all.

  The young woman stepped toward Raissa, her smile glowing with admiration. “You must be Princess Raissa Hokara,” she declared in a soft voice, and bowed reverently. “It is a tremendous honor to finally meet you.” The rest of her group all bowed at once, and remained in their stances of respect even as the young woman stood and looked at Raissa once more. Her smile had not wavered. “I am Elisstriss; I have come to the surface world on behalf of the Aesur and all of Skyscape.”

  15

  Raissa gasped. “Elisstriss? Then you are…” She could not finish the thought with her words, and instead looked back at Dayneth, who smiled gently.

  “These are my people, your Highness,” Dayneth confirmed. She indicated the one who had introduced herself as Elisstriss, waiting for Raissa to look to her before speaking once more. “This is my younger sister, daughter of the Highfeather.”

  Elisstriss approached Dayneth slowly. As she came to Raissa’s sworn guardian, there was a pang of wonder in Elisstriss’s eyes. She seemed to marvel at her older sister. “It is great to finally see you after all these years,” she said in a meek tone, as if she was not worthy of standing there. She reached behind her back and produced one of Dayneth’s bladed rings—the one which Dayneth had thrown at the Kaivu earlier.

  Dayneth smiled as she accepted her weapon. “And it is an honor for me to see you, Elisstriss,” she replied. “You have grown into a fine young woman; our people are in very good hands with you as the future Highfeather.”

  Elisstriss’s smile remained after the praise that Dayneth bestowed upon her, but her joyous radiance fled from her features. “I appreciate your approval, sister, but I would not be here this moment if all was right with our people.”

  “I assumed as much,” Dayneth said, her expression darkening. She seemed aware that the conversation would move to graver matters. “What has brought you to the surface world?”

  Elisstriss turned her eyes northward, where the vague shapes of the Tower Mountains rose just above the horizon. “Our home is being threatened by a wicked force,” she answered. “The clouds which rise from Heaven’s Bay have been corrupted by a destructive energy, one that is gradually spreading in a terrible wave over Skyscape. It kills anyone that it touches, and it is impervious to anything that the Aesur have tried to stop it with.”

  “Even the Airtamers’ magic has failed?” Dayneth asked.

  Elisstriss nodded soberly. “When we left Skyscape, the clouds had become so large that no number of Airtamers could overwhelm them. Our magic has proven to be but a small hindrance. We have been able to break through it, but the dark force always reforms and continues its advance over our realm. Even my own magic could not stop it.”

  As soon as Elisstriss finished, Raissa felt the realization strike her. “If you are an Airtamer, then you were the one who made that sandstorm on the ridges, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “I am,” Elisstriss answered, turning to Raissa. “You sensed my magic, I assume?”

  Raissa was somewhat taken aback by Elisstriss’s keen intuition. “Yes, I did. How could you know that?”

  “Because I have been able to sense your magic in the last few days,” Elisstriss explained. “When we first fell from Skyscape, we set out through the Tower Mountains. We planned to travel to Heaven’s Bay, to perhaps learn why the rising clouds had been poisoned by dark magic, but then I was able to detect your power here in the desert. I believed that it was worthwhile for us to investigate.”

  Raissa was amazed by what Elisstriss told them. Tiroku, the great Champion of Light, had been unable to sense her magical beacon, and yet Elisstriss—who was not even a Spiritcaster—perceived it accurately enough to discern their location in the vast Arid Reaches. “Your magical ability is astounding,” Raissa said, still trying to make sense of the extent of Elisstriss’s power.

  Elisstriss appeared to take little pride in the adulation. “Even still, it has failed to vanquish what imperils my people. Mine does not compare to the magic that you harbor, Princess Raissa.”

  Raissa’s jaw tightened.
“Unfortunately, my magic is also not enough to protect my kingdom.” She paused, and briefly spared a dispirited glance at both Joth and Dayneth. “That is why you’ve found us here, wandering the desert.”

  Elisstriss’s expression hardened. She already seemed to empathize with Raissa’s plight. “Then, the rest of Tordale is also in danger?”

  “It is,” Raissa answered, her words grave. “A man named Baldaron has gained mastery over the ancient, destructive magic known as Scourge. A few weeks ago, he attacked our capital city and drove us out, but he will continue to move across the land until he has conquered all of Tordale. Based on what you tell me threatens Skyscape, I believe that he has directed Scourge to sweep over your home, as well. This has compelled my allies and I to seek out two sacred vessels known as the Radia. They are the most powerful source of Serenity in our world, which is the only power that can stop Scourge. With the Radia, we may stand a chance of striking down Baldaron.”

  Elisstriss’s eyes widened. “It is exactly as described in the Legend of Light…”

  “We are hoping that we can fulfill its words,” Raissa said. “But to do that, we first need to reach the Spirit Shrine in Skyscape so that we can travel to the Hallowed Plane to meet with Ralu and Xogun. We believe that they can help us better use the Radia to defeat our enemy.”

  A shadow fell over Elisstriss’s face. She looked back at some of her fellow Aesur. When Raissa followed her gaze, she saw that each Aesur soldier was just as dour.

  “I’m sorry, Princess,” Elisstriss began, “but the Spirit Shrine in Skyscape has already been overtaken by the waves of Scourge which suddenly appeared.”

  Not even a breath managed to escape past Raissa’s lips.

  Only Dayneth dared to speak as the rest of their company fell silent. “Then, for both of our worlds to be saved, it seems that our fates have been joined.”

  * * * * *

  Raissa spoke with Elisstriss and the Aesur soldiers for only a little while longer before they set out across the desert, now a unified party. She was more than glad to have Elisstriss and the Aesur by her side, as it offered immeasurable benefit to both parties. Not only would it ensure greater protection for all of them as they continued across the unforgiving Arid Reaches, but it also seemed that, at least to Elisstriss, Raissa and the Radia presented hope to destroy the advancing darkness that threatened to consume all of Skyscape.