by Halie Fewkes
“Yeah, I’ll be there.”
“Great. I’m going to start wandering aimlessly and hope I can find my room in time to make it down. With any luck, I’ll see you there.”
“Yeah, hopefully.” I replied. He started toward one of the caves, and after a few seconds I realized I hadn’t moved. I needed to get a grip, so I shook off everything that was wrong with me and proceeded into the next tunnel over to find my room before the festival of the decade. Maybe I could be friends with the new stranger after all.
Chapter Seven
My gravelly tunnel almost immediately split into two more. Liz had said left and then right. Did that mean left as soon as I stepped inside? I hoped so. I turned left and then as soon as the cave forked, I took a right. I wasn’t exactly sure what she had meant by go up, and I was still wondering minutes later when I saw a hole in the roof of the cave above me. Was that up? Must be.
Two or three turns later, I knew I was lost. I just couldn’t tell which fissures in the wall counted as places to turn and which would compress into crevices I couldn’t fit through.
The entire place looked abandoned as my current choice of tunnel cut steeply upward then spiraled back down. A gaping hole swallowed the rocky path in front of me, and I knew it was time to give up and backtrack. Except when I turned around and climbed back up the spiraled gap in the rocks, I came into a spacious new tunnel that hadn’t existed before, and neither direction held any familiarity.
Oh no.
I couldn’t even get myself back to the Wreck. Each new fork in the tunnels forced me to make my best guess, and my guesses swallowed the next hours of my life. For as long as I wandered, I never came back across another hole in the floor and never recognized a single rock. I couldn’t even fathom how I had gotten so deeply lost.
I knew the mages of the Dragona would track me down if I went missing, but I needed to find my way out before the Eclipsival began. Maybe it already had. Time passed strangely underground, leaving me unsure of how many hours I lost in the rocky depths.
I tried to induce a sense of panic in myself, hoping some instinct would kick in and show me the way out. Any memory at all would have been appreciated, yet I got nothing. My life didn’t depend on escaping, and so my instincts weren’t rising to this occasion. This was just dumb. The old Allie would have never wasted her time getting lost in her own home.
I heard a faint Allie echoing through the tunnel, and the first thing I shouted back was, “I’m lost!”
A guy halted his momentum next to me within the next second, so fast I knew he had to be a mage. Built lightly for speed with thick and steep eyebrows, he shouted, “I found her first!” He glanced at me cautiously and said, “I’m Michael. Your next door neighbor?”
“Right. Hi.” Without anything else to say, I stretched my hand out to shake his. I needed some sort of protocol to follow for reintroductions, because this speechless handshake went beyond awkward.
I hadn’t met many girls taller than me yet, but one appeared in the air and landed both feet beside me. “Hey, Allie. We heard about what happened. How are you feeling?” She had a hoarse voice that sounded seasoned by years of yelling.
“I’ve had better times,” I said, this time leaving the handshake out. “Sorry… but I can’t remember who you are.”
“Terry.” Based on appearance and muscle mass alone, I would guess this rugged girl would be more eager to wrestle a hog than receive a compliment. She wore her dark hair tied back like I did. “Michael and I live on either side of you.”
“Ok, but how did you find me down here?”
Terry grinned and said, “The second we found out you had taken Liz’s directional advice, we knew you’d be lost.”
“So we had a race to find you,” Michael said. “Which I won. Because I’m awesome.”
Terry raised her eyebrows at him to let him know his ego wasn’t as impressive as he thought. To me she asked, “Were you trying to get to the Eclipsival? Because they’ve already started on the tower building, and Shadar the storyteller has got everybody laughing and crying at his tales.”
“I was trying to get to my room first, but never mind that. Yes. I don’t want to miss it.”
Michael and Terry glanced at each other, clearly wanting to ask more questions before offering to help get me there. I sighed and asked, “How much have you heard about me?”
“Well, the entire Dragona knows what’s happened by now,” Terry said. “Word spreads fast, but we don’t have any details.”
Michael said, “West has threatened half our lives for bothering you with questions, but we figured you might make an exception for your neighbors and tell us what happened?”
I smiled hopelessly and told Terry and Michael the briefest of tales. I ended by saying, “Sorry, but I don’t remember a thing about either of you. I have absolutely no idea what’s happened, why I was in Tabriel Vale, or what I did to gain the Escalis’ attention.”
I noticed Michael peek behind himself, as though making sure Escalis hadn’t invaded our abandoned tunnel. “Do you think we should be on the lookout for danger?” Michael asked. “We do live right next to you.”
I shrugged and found myself gripping one hand with the other as I replied, “Maybe. The Escalis made it clear that I’ve angered them, but Anna says they don’t know where we are.”
“They don’t,” Terry said, “so how can the Escalis know of you?”
“It’s killing me that I don’t know that,” I said, feeling my nails biting into my fingers. I pulled my hands apart and fidgeted with the ends of my hair instead. “I must have done something. I’m told I used to wander off a lot, but I don’t know what I was doing in the woods. Alone.”
“We could ask around and see if anyone knows why you traveled to Tabriel Vale,” Terry suggested. “We really should get to the Eclipsival before we miss half of it though.”
“Race you there?” Michael asked, already gone by the time his challenge reached our ears.
“Here, take my hand,” Terry said, extending hers to me.
“Umm… Why?”
“Because the Eclipsival is a fair distance from the Dragona, and we certainly aren’t walking all the way there.” I still had my hand reluctantly in the ends of my hair, so Terry grabbed it from me. “Now, when I say so, you’re going to jump forward with me and we’ll be there. Don’t feel silly about it, because if I jump and you don’t, I’ll probably take your arm off. Ready?”
“I guess.”
“Go.”
I jumped forward, feeling ridiculous, but instead of landing a cubit away, my feet hit the ground on a crowded hillside. Thousands upon thousands had gathered on the hills of a valley, around the tables and massive stumps with incredible food spread across every surface. Our appearance caught the attention of those sitting on logs and on the ground around us, but they turned their eyes back to the dead field below, watching a spectacle which caused my jaw to drop.
Nearly fifteen mages in the center of the field combined the powers of water, freezing, flying, and maybe levitation to build a massive tower of ice over a base pyramid of logs. The logs alone nearly reached the sky, but the ice reached far higher, and I watched as two mages leapt from the top, plummeting toward the ground. One mage streamed water as he fell, and the second froze the stream into another icy spindle, connected to the delicate masterpiece.
“There you are, Allie,” I heard Liz say, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the mages who slammed onto the ground. The pair stood unharmed to add more supporting ice to the tower’s foundation, and another pair of mages leapt from halfway up to add more intricacy.
Shadar the storyteller stood in the very top spire, telling the crowd an amplified story I had missed half of already. His face was so animated I could see his smile from the hillside as he said, “Then I told the Tekadan, Sir, you’re in Dincara now!” The entire valley howled with laughter, and I moved over to sit by Liz, knowing the joke was lost.
“You got here right at the boring part,” Liz
said. “They’ve already spent ten minutes building this ice block.”
“Boring?” I watched the team spiral glittering frost down the tower’s edges. In ten minutes, our mages had built a tower fit for royalty, tall enough to scrape the bellies of low-drifting clouds.
Liz replied, “There are more exciting things we could be doing. I already got to fly a dragon without a saddle before everybody stopped to watch the tower building. It threw me right off, and I was fine. And I got to pet a bear!”
“Can’t believe I missed it.”
The whole crowd cheered and stomped on the valley’s hills, stifling their enthusiasm because the man on the ice balcony in the sky had started a new story, apparently a world favorite.
“Nobody can fathom the power of an Everarc Crystal,” he began. “Nobody…”
The entire valley fell silent in anticipation. “With more magic than the three moons combined, so condensed that brushing against a chipped shard could bring dreams and nightmares into reality, Humanity was warned never to go near the Everarcs. Some say they remained buried for thousands of years, encased in a rock their magic couldn’t escape, but Humanity was too curious. Never has a rule remained unbroken in time, and so we dug them up.”
As Shadar spoke, three gigantic red crystals dislodged themselves from the ground and rose into the air. “The illusion mages almost make them look real,” Liz whispered as the hovering Everarcs began to circle the tower.
“The unearthing of the first Everarc Crystal, some say thousands of years ago, cursed our world with Escalis.” Brutal shadows of the monsters with spiked arms leapt across the clouds, and from the way they jerked and moved, I imagined their snarls and growls. “More predatory than the fiercest animals and with added intelligence, Humanity stood no chance against them. They tore throats open, ripped the limbs off their victims, and chased Humanity from this continent. We were forced to live on Tekada for hundreds of years afterward.
“Not much is known about the second Everarc, only that it was unearthed in the middle of the Breathing Sea. Some say that only one shard of the crystal fell into the water, which is why the entire Sea now teems with eels and Sirens and all sorts of horrific monsters. Yes, you could breathe the water if you stuck your head in, but doing so would be a forfeit of your life.
“Then a band of adventurers found the third and last Everarc Crystal within the last century, in the heart of the Dragona. Humanity was gifted with the mages, our first real defense against the Escalis, and so we were finally able to leave Tekada and return to this land, whether by choice or by exile.” The shadows of Escalis fled from the sky as the images of mages appeared, flashing their different powers across the faces of the clouds. “And of course, with the creation of the mages, we witnessed the rise of the Epics. First came Wikferl, the greatest hero we’ve ever known!”
“WIKFERL!” The entire crowd shouted and whistled as the gigantic face of the legend reflected off every side of the ice tower — bald with dark eyes that spoke of accomplishment.
“But, of course, Wikferl soon met his wicked Escali counterpart, Juhdect.” A giant Escali, clad in black, appeared near the tower to the crowd’s vocalized dismay. His hands and eyes glowed with a sickly green magic, with his hair so dark that I couldn’t call it black. It was the opposite of all colors. The opposite of light. “Juhdect stole more lives, inspired more terror, and destroyed more in his path than any other Escali ever had, and as a result, the Escalis crowned him king of their race.” The recreation of Juhdect began to dart about and viciously assault the ice tower with magic, but the flat image of Wikferl reached out a giant hand to shield the work of art from every attack.
“As Wikferl battled to keep Juhdect from destroying us entirely, it became apparent that the Escalis were growing interested in the Everarc Crystals. If the Escalis gained their own mages, they would destroy Humanity for certain, so the leaders of the day turned to Wikferl to conceal the three crystals for the rest of time.”
The gigantic reflection of Wikferl materialized off the face of the tower, reached out both arms, and slammed Juhdect onto the ground. The Everarc Crystals joined together in front of Wikferl’s glowing hands while Juhdect remained motionless.
“Wikferl quickly found and bound the three Everarcs. He concealed them in a place where neither Escalis nor mankind would ever find them, and there they remain to this day — the source of all magic in the world, never to be found again.”
The giant Wikferl forced the three Everarc Crystals into the ground and vanished from sight as two new Epics clashed in the air above him, their colliding magic blinding.
“We all know how the story went from then on. The firstborn son of each Epic inherited their respective legacies, either as a royal weapon for the Escalis or a defender of Humanity. And then their first born sons after them, and so on.” Each pair of fighting Epics was replaced by a new set, but they always looked similar. The Human of the pair always stood tall and protective. The Escali always wore black, but it was never as dark as his hair.
“And the fifth generation of Epics is almost upon us.”
An anxious murmur rose around us, and Liz whispered to me, “They’re going to reveal him!”
“I doubt it,” I whispered, prompted by the strange gut feeling that he wouldn’t be unveiled tonight.
Shadar’s smile became apologetic, and he said, “I know how long we’ve all been waiting to meet Sir Avery’s son, but we’ve still got a bit of a wait ahead of us.” The entire continent released bated breaths in disappointment. “We all know the boy is hidden for his protection and ours, but believe me, it won’t be long until he is ready to join us.
“Wikferl’s descendants have protected us for generations, and perhaps Wikferl’s great-great-grandson will bring an end to the Escali torment in our lives. He may be far away, training to be our sentinel someday. He could be out among you, listening. But rest assured that when he joins us, his name will shine in the sky with the light of a thousand fires.”
The center of the ice tower began to flicker dimly, and I noticed a slow drumbeat resonating, though I couldn’t remember hearing it begin. The drumbeat gained momentum while the flicker grew brighter, until the entire structure seemed to be alive. The blazes inside the ice exploded outward to the cheers of the crowd. Birds of flame flew into the sky as the beautiful tower of frost collapsed, and exciting music joined the drumbeat.
“You have about ten minutes left of immortality!” Shadar hollered. “Enjoy it while it’s here!”
The falling ice flashed into steam as it crumpled onto the heat of the great bonfire. On top of the burning mountain stood Anna, her hands outstretched, and joyful power burning in her eyes. She shot flames into the field, exploding into all colors. Other mages sent flaming snakes across the sky and created waves of green and purple fire. They were doing a fine job of lighting the field on fire by themselves, yet several bolts of lightning struck the ground, on cue with the music, as though to help.
It seemed to me that people should have fled as the dead field ignited, but instead they all rushed toward it. “I think I’ve been waiting my whole life for these fire dances!” Liz said as she attempted to pull me down to the field.
“Ummm,” I said, “I know we’re immortal right now, but I don’t think our clothes are.”
“Didn’t I tell you to wear clothes you didn’t mind destroying?” Liz asked.
“I never made it back to my room to get them. Look, you go have fun. I have something I’ve got to do.”
Liz shrugged and took off to join the jumping and hollering in the wildfire. On the crest of the valley hills, I saw my danger of choice — the dragons Liz had mentioned flying and falling from. Tethered outside a ground cave, I could see people taking off and landing the horse-sized beasts, but never flying above the tree tops. If I could grab one now, then I could keep it for ten minutes until the danger became truly life threatening.
Despite my fixation on the scaled creatures, reflecting every color
on the forest spectrum, a group of kids still caught my eye, probably because Leaf played among them. Except, I realized he was in the center and not happy about it.
I found myself stopped, torn between the danger of the dragons ahead and the anger that rose in my chest as the kids I recognized from Tabriel Vale had their fun. Leaf had clamped his hands tightly over his hat, but one of the boys was still trying to steal it from him, laughing as though it was harmless.
“Come on, Jog, leave him alone,” one of the little girls said, but her added giggle rendered her words meaningless.
As soon as I saw tears in Leaf’s reddening eyes, the idea of dragons fled my mind and I veered off my path. Jog, the largest of the kids with a round face and strong arms, was still only half my size. He had Leaf’s hat halfway off when I grabbed the front of his leather jerkin and found him light enough to lift with one hand, an act which terrified the rest of the kids. Leaf jerked his hat back down, almost to his eyes, but I had already seen the shock of orange hair he was trying to hide.
“Listen,” I said, holding Jog at eye level as he gripped my hands and tried to squirm free, “you are going to stop being a mean little brat, right now. Got it?”
Jog nodded wildly, and his feet were ready to tear into the ground the second they could touch it again. He fled from the group of friends, and the other kids retreated to follow him, frightened that I might do the same to them.
Leaf wiped tears from his eyes and fixed them on the ground. “Thank you.”
“Look,” I said, sitting just above him on the steep hill, putting us face to face, “you can’t let people treat you like that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he said, sniffling. “I’ve always been different. I just didn’t want you to see.”
“Leaf, you’re at the Dragona now. Nobody here is going to be mean because you have orange hair. Haven’t you seen Anna? She doesn’t hide beneath a hat.”
“Yeah, but Anna and I are the only ones,” Leaf said. “And I’m not powerful like she is. I’m just weird.”