***
The four sat inside the house in what looked like a slightly messy living room. This room was small, clearly not meant to house many at once, but there was enough space for about five people to be comfortable. From where Glint sat, he could see a corridor going to his left and behind, presumably towards the kitchen, if a wafting scent was any indication. In front of him narrow stairs going upwards to a second floor of the house lay encased between two white walls. It was strange for Glint to see a house that was taller than it was wide, but he guessed that explained how so many people could fit into a small number of buildings in a small area. Azrael had mentioned something similar earlier, he remembered, when he had spoken to him once about “apartments” or something, a living system which existed in Brittania.
Vladimir snapped Glint out of his thoughts, introducing the woman sitting next to him in the sofa. “This is Natasha, my sister.” Looking closely, Glint was able to tell the similarity between the two, for they had the same high cheekbones and short rounded noses. His sister, however had a darker brand of blond braided hair, more a golden colour than Vladimir’s pale mustasche, and her lighter blue eyes seemed almost grey behind her work goggles. Azrael’s eyebrows rose next to him, and Glint understood the man’s slight surprise: why would the bard bring his companions here, instead of to his house? And what was all the commotion about?
“She has delivered to me some troubling news,” Vladimir added, and Glint’s attention peaked. “It seems that something is happening in the Crystalline Caves, less than a day’s ride south of here. People have reported hearing... cracks.” The man’s face looked pained as he uttered that last word. The woman next to him also had a troubled visage, and she bit her peach coloured lips. “We have contacted the Sparrow’s Tail at the borders for help, but members are not going to be here for another few days. They lack resources, you see, and were almost disbanded a few months back. We cannot wait, these caves are a treasure to the people of Mekh and all of Krava, and we cannot allow something to happen to them. But the people are afraid, for the mountains of ice do not simply crack. No, there is something different behind all of this, I am sure of it.”
“Hmm... you think someone or something is causing this. A malevolence?” The necromancer asked this in a low tone, and Glint could sense that Azrael was also angered by the happenings here. He wondered how precious these caves could be, to cause so many people such worry over a few cracking sounds. “And you need someone to investigate,” the man concluded with a face deep in thought.
Vladimir looked about ready to go on hands and knees. “I’ll pay you for your job immediately, plus as much money as you wish for this. The town will help as well, they’ve already told my sister so. I will even take you there myself if you so wish. Please make haste and find out what is causing this evil! We simply need you to investigate and report. The guild can then take swift action once its members arrive, for our mayor, despite being a magician, is not cut out for such things.”
The crow was already sold on the idea, Glint could tell. He wanted to help as well. His instincts told him to go to those caves no matter what, for his friend’s sake if for nothing else. “And your family?” asked the necromancer.
“They... I do not wish to alarm them, so I shall not see them now. If it truly turns out to be something dangerous behind the cracks, then it is better if I go with you and then return to them. However, I do not wish to be a burden, so I will simply guide you there and come back, rather than venture inside.” Azrael nodded his agreement, and it dawned on Glint how important this is to the townsfolk, that Vladimir be willing to escort them there before even seeing to his family.
They didn’t even stop for anything but a few rations, but Vladimir made good on his words and placed the coins for their earlier mission in Azrael’s hands before taking them south. The man had practically insisted on it, and neither of his friends felt like insulting him by not accepting his sign of good will. It was a gold coin that he gave to Azrael as a down payment for accomplishing their mission. “All we need from you is information. The guild should be able to take care of the rest. It’ll be much help for them if you do this.”
Thus, the three travellers arrived before the mouth of the crystal caves in less than five hours. Far to the east Glint could see a wall of darkness cutting the world as abruptly as if it was where the realm ended. It was the first time he’d seen anything like it, for it was like a blanket shed upon the horizon itself. With his remarkable eyesight he could see dots that sparked in the sky there, like jewels scattered on black velvet. “Is... is that the Rift?” he asked Azrael, and the necromancer nodded.
“Aye, that’s where this artificial sunlight ends and the night begins.”
“It’s amazing,” remarked Glint.
Noticing what must have been massive structures, to be seen from this distance just under the Rift, he asked, “And those?” drawing Azrael’s attention to the east again. They looked like coloured specks. The man smiled and said, “Those are the palaces you asked about, on the day we met Vladimir.”
Glint looked upon the seven buildings with their surely high walls with wonder, imagining the vast libraries hidden in their domes that he’d heard stories about. “Are they as amazing as he said?” he asked, and Azrael answered, “Even more so, but they are also guarded by one of Sklaver’s three sacred beasts, and few dare approach their knowledge nowadays. However, I think you should focus on the closer wonders, Glint,” The man remarked gently, nodding to point south. Glint turned his attention to the crystalline caves.
Glint knew that if anyone asked him about the caves from then on, the best way to explain their beauty would be to say, “It’s a mountain made out of glassy ice, mostly transparent, with networks of caves winding inside it looking like white lines. It was so high that its top vanished into the clouds high above, and so deep that you’d think it an ocean.” However, such a description was lacking for this mountain’s peak, which momentarily became visible as clouds cleared, for the point gathered sunlight and scattered it like a prism. It ended up looking like the clouds up high were dropping down coloured boons of light upon onlookers. It shone bright, so bright that some parts of it made Glint’s eyes water when he looked at them. Sadly, there was no such thing as perfectly transparent ice, and so Glint could only see about fifty feet into the mountain with its network of caves before it became too cloudy for him to make out what was inside. Still, it was one of the most beautiful things the warrior had seen in his entire life.
While Vladimir excused himself and headed back to see his family, as well as help arrange things for the guild to send members in aid as fast as they could, the two looked around the surfaces of the hard cold ice. There was nothing strange to be seen. However, they couldn’t look deeper into the caves without entering them, and trying to circle the vast mass from the outside would be lunacy. To combat the darkness inside the caves Azrael had reached into his cloak beneath the fur jacket and pulled out sort of special light set inside a globe, which was cold to the touch. The globe looked to Glint like it had a tiny fireball inside of it. This Azrael lifted high, peering into the increasingly dark expanse of the cave entrance. The clouds above them seemed to multiply, and Glint realized they could block sight completely. The lanterns scattered along Mekh’s roads suddenly made sense to the warrior. Still the duo stood at the entrance, eyeing the mountain of ice.
“I don’t think standing outside shaking in our boots is going to help anyone, Glint,” the necromancer said finally, standing up from his kneeling position next to an almost see through wall and dusting off his knee. Glint had to agree with the man.
“Yeah, let’s get done here and go back, this cold is killing me.” Both of them grinned at that, and they stepped into the gaping maw, feet crunching as they stepped into cave filled with scattered light.
At first, all was silent and quiet inside, but as they went farther down, the warrior began to hear noises, like the miniscule sounds of something sli
thering on the ground, coming from a distance. This Glint told Azrael as he was the one with the keener ears. “Are there snakes that live in this area?” he demanded of the man. Hearing his tone caused Azrael to smile, possibly realizing that his younger travelling partner didn’t like serpents very much. Glint had only ever seen one, back when he was with the Boar. It had looked at him with dead eyes.
“Relax, I don’t think any could survive this sort of cold. Not if they’re normal animals, at least.” The last part of that theory was murmured but Glint still caught it and he shivered involuntarily.
In about ten minutes, the cave started to split into increasingly darkened forks, and Glint remembered Vladimir warning them about how complex the maze truly was. Still, this was not a large problem for the warrior. He simply allowed lightning to suffuse him, put his head to the side and listened for the sounds, which were starting to grow disconcerting. Then he pointed left and walked that way. “It’s good that I have you here, Glint,” said Azrael, and Glint thought he wasn’t actually being sarcastic for once.
“Thanks, glad to be here,” he replied, hearing the man’s footsteps behind him. The tunnels began to fork in more complex ways, but Glint always followed the clearest sound he could hear, over and over. Their path went deeper down and the warrior became quite glad that his companion had thought to bring the light along. Without it his imagination would have conjured countless beasts in the growing darkness. Then something happened that took his mind off the darkness entirely.
All of a sudden the caves cracked, as if lightning had exploded right next to them. The sound was akin to an enormous dragon’s roar and caused Glint to fall over, hands covering his ears. Almost simultaneously the floor rumbled dangerously for a few seconds. When it subsided, Azrael was similarly sprawled over behind him, and the two got up cautiously, pushing off the icy floor and looking around them. They hoped there wasn’t going to be a cave-in anytime soon, but Glint decided to be more cautious with his hearing, just in case.
The two kept silent for a bit after they stood, then Azrael pointed forwards. On we go.
Keeping a lookout on their surroundings as they went, the two started to step further downwards into the depths of the mountain as the cave they were walking through dipped. The sound of slithering was becoming eerie when Glint tripped over something long and round, about as thick as his arm. Behind him the warrior heard Azrael get ready to attack or defend and he rolled as he turned and came up with his armour ready as well, ready to strike at the damned fanged lizard. Instead of a snake, he saw a tree root, and he sighed relief in his helmet. A large, brown tree root with miniature shoots coming out of it, coming from further down the dark icy caves.
The necromancer was standing over the thing, looking more shocked than Glint had ever seen him be. “Impossible,” he said, and Glint remarked, “Yeah, what’s a giant tree root doing in a place with no soil or sunlight?”
“I guess we need to go on ahead to figure that one out.” With that, the two went further and deeper into the now almost warm insides of the caves. The place was starting to get filled with tree roots, spreading out like ivy shoots or the reaching hands of a madman. The few roots that had curved upwards looked like fingers, and they seemed to beckon to Glint, asking him to enter deeper inside.
“So, what do you think is causing all of this?” the warrior asked Azrael, who was at the moment busy investigating a plant root that had at some point shot all the way through the ceiling of the cave they were currently traversing, punching a hole in it. It looked as if it were something that had existed for hundreds of years, as a tree branch was growing out of the root horizontally. The warrior found it difficult to believe that such a thing could be new.
“Fact states,” Azrael replied to the question with his hand touching one of the trees, “that all monsters in our world are manmade in some way or the other. This is undoubtedly the work of an Ability user. The real question is who, and for what purpose?”
Glint waved the man’s concerns away, growling, “As long as it’s a fight with a human, we can take care of whoever it is together. I’ve come to realize that you leave most fighting to me because you can’t be bothered to take care of things yourself. You’ve actually never showed how strong you really are, have you?”
The pale one grinned at that, ignoring the accusation. But then he glimpsed the root again and turned serious, fiddling with his fur coat. “I am more worried about the cracking, Glint. If these roots have damaged the caves enough,” The necromancer pointed at the root he was just examining, “then they might be all that’s keeping this place up. If that’s so then I don’t think we should destroy it. If we even can, that is. Don’t forget that this is something that has enough life force to grow this far without any soil.”
That was true, thought the warrior to himself. It could be that these caves will never be the same ever again, and that the people of Krava would be forced to be content with losing one of their cultural treasures to a plant. With that grim notion, the two pushed on in silence. Neither knew what to expect and both were absorbed in their own thoughts despite the gradual thickening of the roots around them. They were now thicker than a man’s torso, spreading all around them, and from the roots different kinds of plants and trees sprouted, almost covering their sights with green and brown. As they went deeper, the temperature also increased, despite the icy walls and floor, and they left their fur coats behind. Glint could hear dripping somewhere, and even the other caves around the two were starting to get overrun.
“This is ridiculous!” exclaimed Azrael finally when they started to need to move hanging vines in order to progress. “The place is more like a jungle than a cave by now. Anymore and I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw a tiger jumping around!” A half hearted bark of a laugh was all the man got from Glint for trying. Both were too nervous to be laughing at jokes, each wondering what they were going to find eventually. Just then the warrior glimpsed a light, far away at what seemed to be the end of the cave. He drew a guardless single edged wide blade, almost a scimitar, out of his armour and the two walked towards the exit, which dropped off into a large cavern as wide as Glint’s home village, with roots far thicker than he could possibly imagine, curving and winding against each other from the different cave entrances they were reaching towards. The icy floor with its deep tunnel like grooves was almost covered by them.
Those roots all went back to a single tree that was far too large to be possible. This tree was evidently the source of the cracking sounds the two had been hearing, as it was so tall and thick it struck against the roof of this great cavern. It was an oak with a trunk so thick a person could hide a house behind it, and so tall Glint had to arch his neck back to be able to see its highest branches. While he was absorbed with the tree, another ear splitting crack came, followed by screeching as the branches struggled against the ceiling, growing beyond constraints in leaps and bounds, searching for greater heights. Shards of ice longer than a man crashed down to the floor below the two, and some pierced the tree in places. A soft white glow came from some of the branches, and their reflected light gave enough luminescence to allow both men to see well enough even without the light in Azrael’s hand. He promptly pocketed his orb into his black cloak.
“Look,” whispered Azrael to the warrior, “There’s somebody standing there, right next to it.” He pointed and Glint saw a person standing in the clothing of a townsperson from Krava, right next to the centre trunk of the great tree. The figure was stroking the trunk softly whilst whispering to it. The person had a rather feminine voice but Glint could tell it was male despite that. He wondered if this was the culprit they had been expecting. Then he heard a moan and his heart sank in horror as he understood what was going on.
“Pyro’s skull, I think there’s a person trapped inside that tree!” He wondered how that was possible.
With that he saw Azrael’s face grow pale. “It’s all starting to make sense.” He turned to the warrior and grabbed him by
the shoulders, looking him deep in the eyes as if looking for support. “Glint, we need to go there now.”
Of course, Glint could feel the need to help as well, and smiled. “My thoughts exactly,” he agreed.
The two climbed down into the floor of the cavern, which was covered with roots taller than a man. When a few of them moved in response to their touch, Azrael put his hand out and in a few seconds the ones who were closest started to drop still again. The moved forwards a few more feet and Azrael repeated the action, causing more roots to go limp. Thus the process continued a few more times until they got closer to the tree trunk and the two people. They were still quite far, however, when suddenly the feminine voice rang out. “Who’s there?” it demanded, and Azrael said, “A curious third party,” just loud enough to sound unconcerned with the situation. Still, Glint saw it for the ploy that it was when Azrael whispered. “I’ll deal with him, you go for the tree trunk and take care of the other one, the one supplying the tree with its power. I’ll support you however I can.” The footsteps of the feminine voiced man were coming closer now, as he walked on roots above them as if walking a tightrope. Glint could see him now, and saw that he looked quite young, with fair features and a goatee. He had brown gloves and a matching leather helmet, which couldn’t completely cover his black straight hair. He also had a long white double buttoned trench coat and thick boots. He was giggling to himself as he tiptoed, as if he were playing a game, and Glint could plainly tell that this villain was stark raving mad. In the lull, Glint allowed his inner storm to rage and grind, filling him to the brim with tendrils of the sky’s own snaking white hot flame.
Not waiting for the stranger to reach them, Glint leapt up and sprinted for the tree, jumping the many feet from root to root to cover more distance over the ice. He was still more than a hundred feet from it when a giant tree root lifted up suddenly and struck him right across the chest, lifting the warrior clean into the air and flinging him across the room, where he smacked into another tree root hard enough to knock his breath clean out of him. He could hear the person who was –presumably- the cause of all this mess tell Azrael to go away. “Don’t interfere with my lovely!” he bellowed in a way that he suggested that he was just realizing that they weren’t here purely for his amusement, and Azrael answered him with some infuriating Azrael antic, most probably. Lifting his ringing head, Glint took in some more of the culprit’s features: neck length straight black hair, a petite nimble body, and a face painted in a chequered black and red pattern under his right eye but above his extremely sharp beard. The tree roots began to go wild, swinging this way and that in order to create a storm of whipping vines. The sound was a deafening roar. The only place free of attack was around Azrael and the stranger.
Ignoring the two for now, Glint trusted his back to Azrael and went for the tree trunk again, leaping as far as he could with each bound, landing on both feet and hands, then going again. His chest pained him, but the warrior was not the same person he was before he took Azrael’s training: He was stronger, faster, and more durable. He was also able to fight more creatively, as well use his ability faster. Thus by the time the next root came at him Glint had stabbed his blade into his own armour, melding it into the silver, and drawing another weapon out, which looked like a long anchor without the chain. Using his new weapon, the youth latched onto the root as it came at him. He let it take him high with it as he hung on tight, wind whistling in his ear as his friend battled below, but just then he was almost speared by tree branches growing out the vine at incredible speed.
Glint could hear the moans coming from the tree trunk reach turn into a long blood chilling scream at the same time as the tree accelerated its growth, and he renewed his determined grip on his weapon. He was starting to doubt that whoever was inside the tree was an accomplice of the painted faced man’s, for the person sounded in a great deal of pain. In fact, Glint couldn’t tell the gender of voice’s owner due to how inhuman the screams sounded. He flew higher and farther as the root started to lash around until he became certain that a fall would kill him. The agonized whimpers of whoever it was behind the tree grew more disconcerting by the second as Glint was swung in the air, and a sharp tree branch went right through Glint’s thigh with the speed of an arrow, eliciting a pained groan from him. He was amazed it could go through his armour. Still, the warrior gritted his teeth, filled himself with power, and broke the branch off with the other hand while still struggling to keep his grip on his hook for dear life. His thigh didn’t seem to be bleeding too badly due to battle fever, which sometimes even allowed those with severed limbs to continue fighting without losing a drop of blood.
Below him the battle went on between Azrael and the mysterious stranger, but it was mostly invisible to Glint. He could only see hazes from where the two exchanged shots of spiritual energy, although he believed Azrael had the upper hand. He knew that it was Azrael’s ability which caused the tree’s movements to be slowed down, and so he realized he needed to end things quickly, for he could feel the necromancer expending more power than he thought possible just in keeping the tree relatively sluggish. Added to that, Azrael was simultaneously fending off another Ability user. All this went through his mind as he sailed through the air, holding on for dear life, and the warrior disengaged his grappling hook from the dark brown root at the right moment, causing him to fly away. He allowed the momentum of the fall take him towards the tree trunk. He shot towards it with the speed of a diving bird of prey as vines and huge roots whipped past all around him. Wind went into his eyes through the Y shaped slit of his helmet, and he cursed. He was going to overshoot the tree.
In reaction, Glint did the only thing he had time to do and shot out with the grappling hook in his right hand against the rough surface of the tree trunk with its massive linear grooves, digging deep into it. He halted to a stop immediately, and the whiplash was so great that he would have lost his entire arm if this was but a few months ago. As it was his shoulder was sprained and a tendon in his arm hurt immensely as he clunked against the tree, exhaling in pain, suspended fifty feet above the icy, root covered ground. The tree’s massive roots and branches continued to writhe and whip about, although less vigorously than before.
The warrior ignored his pain and went the rest of the way down by dropping off a few feet at a time then striking out with his tool again and again to halt his fall. Less than a minute later he dropped off unto the ground with a groan, and started to limp towards where the now incessant crying was coming from, cradling his arm. The tree became still, and the warrior assumed that Azrael had taken care of his opponent and was devoting all his strength to it. The scale of the thing was enormous, almost beyond comprehension, for even the grooves on the tree’s bark were wider than his hand. It stood as a titan would, surveying the icy cavern in dissent. He was amazed that the necromancer was able to seal the giant tree’s movement and growth this effectively. Not for the first time, Glint wondered exactly how powerful Azrael could be.
Coming around behind the tree with his right shoulder clutched in his left hand, Glint noticed the radiant glow’s centre coming from a point in the tree’s trunk, at his chest height. It was almost too bright to look at, and little orbs of white light, not larger than a fist, came out of it, escaping slowly with small sparkling afterglows such as the tail of a floating shooting star. In each of their centre was a different coloured light. Sometimes green, blue, orange, or even red, they painted the white light with extra variety and lit up the entire cave. Right in white glow’s centre, there was the face of a weeping man, only half poking out from bark. The rest of his body was sucked into the tree, or perhaps melded with it. At first the features were hard to make out, as the face twisted with pain and insanity. Still it didn’t take long, for Glint could recognise that face anywhere, with its scraggly greying wisps of hair and usually blank expression. The eyes were their usual brown, the nose broken as he remembered it, the lips dirty with the after-effects of too many years of tobac
co smoke.
It was Old Crab, the poor madman who was turned into an Ability user by a mysterious man and confessed it to Glint more than a year earlier. On the day that Glint awakened to his own powers, he was the reason behind the warrior’s fateful disagreement with Kob and Blitz, as well as everyone else in the Boar. Then, the man had been able to manipulate trees, yet was not completely in control of himself. Glint could find no words to say, for the shock of seeing old Crab again numbed him.
“Glint?” the man asked, then mumbled, “Ah, it doesn’t matter, I’m sure you’re a dream. Nobody will save me here, I’ve already come to terms with that. He won’t let anyone save me. Master Sasha will kill anyone who tries, he will.” Glint looked to his left where the mysterious man was lying face down on the floor a hundred feet away. Azrael made his way towards them, hopping from root to root slowly with a satisfied look on his face. Still, the necromancer’s expression was slightly strained, which was all there was to show for the impossible amount of power he was using up to keep the tree still.
“I can’t control it, Glint, and he kept feeding us more and more power. He called me his perfect creation, his work of art, his lovely. It hurt so much when he was doing it to me, but now it hurts so much more. I can feel everything that happens to it. We’re connected,” Crab sobbed, closing his eyes as if to hide himself from the world, and horror dawned upon Glint when he realized that the man felt every branch broken against the ceiling as if it were a shattered bone. Every stab against a root, every push and pull and feeling of cold that would come from slithering against the icy floors of the Crystalline Caves, was anguish to him. How much had he already endured? “Crab. Look at me. Crab!” the man slowly opened his eyes, looking surprised to see Glint still there, “It’s all going to be alright. Okay?” He said those words with fake conviction, for there was nothing left of the man except a face sticking out of the massive oak. He knew Crab wasn’t fooled, for the man continued to cry bitter tears that Glint struggled to wipe for him.
Suddenly he asked, “Can’t you kill me? That would make everything alright.” There was a plea in his eyes, a sickening hope.
Glint was shocked. “I-”
He was going to say, “I can’t,” but he thought about the man’s position. How could they extract him from the tree without causing him more anguish? How long could he wait, when each second was this pain filled? What if the people in Krava decide to keep the tree alive so it doesn’t destroy their treasure, the caves? The tree was already intricately rooted into the mountain, its roots reaching deep and its branches holding the ceiling up. Glint thought about the way Vladimir’s eyes had gleamed as he spoke of the caves, and had no doubt that his town, if not he himself, would condone such a thing if they thought that the tree was holding up the place. “I... I’ll wait for my friend, he’ll know how to help.” He sounded overly hopeful, he knew, but he had to believe it. Azrael always knew what to do, it was simply so.
Looking over from the man, he glimpsed the necromancer still walking over to them, stepping with confidence. From the outrage in his face, Glint assumed the mysterious stranger had told Azrael at least some of what he’d done here, and that he was thinking of a way to fix this mess. But the anger on the man’s face was not a smouldering determined brand, rather the hot roar of helplessness. Seeing that look in his eyes filled Glint with fear.
Over the necromancer’s shoulder, Glint saw sudden movement. The stranger began to stand slowly with the unsteadiness of a strung up doll. He pointed over at Azrael with a look of triumph on his painted face. Glint yelled, “Watch out!” but it was too late, Azrael stumbled forward as if struck by something and the stranger began to cackle in triumph, his black hair swinging in triumph. He began to shriek “See? Nobody beats Sasha! My lovely is going to grow big and strong, and you two fools can’t change a thing!” he then turned his attention to Glint and screamed, “You there! Stay away from my lovely!” looking cross, he stepped towards Glint, and the warrior started to prepare himself for the upcoming fight despite his injuries, before stopping suddenly. He noticed something strange.
The tree wasn’t moving!
Azrael turned over onto his back, then sat up, and finally stood, brushing his cloak off before he faced his astonished and slightly fearful enemy. In a blink the stranger was down again, and this time it looked like a more final blow had been delivered. However, in that one instant, the necromancer’s attention was wholly upon his foe, and suddenly the tree went insane, thrashing about and causing Crab to screech with unbearable agony. Two huge roots moved with incredible speed, going high up and then coming down like walls upon Glint. The warrior realized how much Azrael had lowered the tree’s mobility, and how much of a respite that had given Crab. There would be no rest for the man otherwise, for every second he was left alone would be pain worse than death. The tree would continue to grow, sucking at him as it did.
Glint lifted both hands against the crush in a futile attempt to protect himself, resigned to his doom, when ropes shot out of nowhere and latched onto the roots right in front of him, halting them less than a hand’s breadth from the warrior. Glint squinted and saw that they were not ropes at all. Black and sinewy and wispy, as if they were tendrils of darkness or a manifestation of shadows, hold on to the trees. The rough and extremely heavy roots, with all of the tree’s power behind them, were held stuck in place by these tendrils, and they struggled against the hold to no avail.
Looking around this way and that, Glint realized that the room was full of these black ropes, pinning down every single branch and root in the enormous cavern of ice. All of those tendrils went back and connected to Azrael’s tattered cloak, whose owner was still looking in the other direction, but with his head hung down, almost in shame. “Impossible,” Glint whispered. These ropes were solid. No magician should be able to do that. How could a spiritual energy artist create a solid manifestation of his energy?
Putting that aside for the moment, Glint went to Old man Crab, whose face had sunk even deeper into the tree and was almost up to his eyes in bark. His face bled from where the tree touched it. The remains of the man seemed to have broken down completely. He was crying like a newborn child, repeating, “Please,” over and over again, tears streaming down his face. His eyes showed no hint of understanding. It was like the man was only aware of the pain, yet he still pleaded with every breath he had for the only rest he could hope for.
Glint understood what Crab wanted. He remembered his father’s words about him being called upon to do things, and with a deep exhale he decided this was one of those times. Chaining his horror and disgust with himself, Glint focused on the task at hand. Silently, he pulled out an ornate sword from his chest plate, littered with curving patterns. He showed Crab, who’s eyes widened in a childlike smile of awe, his insignia upon the inside of his forearm, a helm with a Y shaped slit set against a dark background. His barbute. “On my word and my crest,” the warrior started, and his voice cracked. Glint steadied himself; took a breath. “On my words and my crest,” he tried again, “your tears will not be unremembered.” The oath was typical of Quicksilver, many of whose members carved their own crest on their armour to be known by.
A “thank you” as all Glint heard from the poor soul before he stabbed him right where his heart should be hidden within the tree. The man gasped, and as the light fled his eyes a rumble went through the entire cavern. The glow around the madman disappeared instantaneously, and the orbs of light faded into nothingness as tree began to immediately droop down and wither, dropping down lethal shards ice from the ceiling it had been holding up. The entire cavern was falling apart in the sudden darkness, and if they stayed any longer the two last remaining people here would die.
But just then, Azrael appeared next to the warrior in a black smoky haze, put his hands on Glint’s shoulder wordlessly with deep sorrow in his eyes, and an instant later the two were standing in a forest in the dark.
The tree types were different from what Gli
nt knew. The feeling of being outside with no sunlight was completely foreign to the warrior, after living in Shien all his life. The only light here came from a large white orb in the sky, riddled with grooves and craters, as well as some luminescent forms of plant life here and there. Glint didn’t care, for he felt hollow inside.
Next to them lay bearded beautiful Sasha, the culprit behind the whole thing. He was unconscious, almost looking peaceful in his slumber. Glint went to the criminal, filled with rage. Before he could say or do anything, However, Azrael put his hand on Glint’s back and darkness took him whole.
The Final Life Page 48