by Kyle West
Chapter 31
We informed the Elder Council of what we were doing, so that they could give the news to the commanders and Lord Harrow. The last thing we wanted was for rumors to start that we had abandoned the battlefield when all we were trying to do was save lives.
It still felt like fleeing, however one sliced it. We got to fly north, away from the battle, when the rest had to stay and fight. And it felt wrong to do it sneakily so that our passage would go unnoticed, by flying under darkness and out of sight of the fighting soldiers.
And of course, if this didn’t work, then it would have all been for nothing.
But there was nothing that could be done about that. We flew north, away from the din of the battle, swerving our way through Guardian Mian’s ships, all of which were pointed toward the Southern Pass and ready to go into action at a moment’s notice.
Soon, we had passed all the ships and were flying over the north rim, and then we were soaring over the dark forests. The sounds of battle, save for the odd cannon shot, were all but silent from up here. The scene would have been almost normal. The large Silverwoods north of the canyon housed entire villages, all of which were completely dark. Those trees were empty, now.
For my plan to work, we needed more distance from the reversion Odium had made. Though its pull was weaker from here, we were still not far enough to escape its influence entirely. We had to not only find a pool or lake of ichor but find one that was not too close to be influenced by Odium’s aura. At the same time, it couldn’t be too far away from the battle, or it would require too much energy to combat Odium.
Are we close to anything? Shara’s voice said, entering my mind.
I’ll know it when I find it, I said back, making sure everyone could hear the conversation.
While there were no large ichor lakes this far south, there were still places that had spiritual significance for the Elekai people over the generations, and especially for the Wilder tribes. Usually, these sites had ichor springs and an unusually large profusion of xenolife. The Seekers’ Sanctum was one such place, but that was too far away. Isaru and I had found such a place ourselves on our way from the Sanctum to Colonia, all those months ago, and with luck, maybe we could find it again. And if not that place, then some other.
I’d have to follow my senses, trusting Anna to guide me there. For now, it felt as if she were leading me deeper into the Westwood, a forest so thick and wild that there were no roads going into it. The Wilders had their own version of the Selvan, designed not only to keep out the Covenant, but also to protect them from the more settled Elekai people to their east. The Wilders liked to keep to themselves, and had a long history of independence.
We flew on for another half hour, until the night and moon were both full under a canopy of stars. It was no longer possible to see the canyon or airships from here, or to even hear the cannon fire above the wind blowing past our faces.
This far north, I felt something pulling me. The feeling was undeniable, as if I were being called home. I recognized that home to be the Xenofold.
Almost there, Flame. You’re flying fast.
I sense your need, Elekim, he said. I’m flying as hard as I can.
In the distance, at last, I could see the focus of the power I was seeking. On the surface, there didn’t seem to be anything special about the dark, forested hill ahead of us, seemingly no different from any of the others around it. At the same time, the power it produced was unmistakable. Whether it was on the surface, or within it, I didn’t know.
That hill in the distance, I said. Set us down there, Flame.
I feel it, too, he said. This place has been here since the birth of the Red Wild. And it has been mostly undisturbed by men.
Well, that would change tonight. Flame glided down toward the base of the hill. Hopefully, there was enough of the Xenofold’s power contained within it to create our own reversion to turn on Odium.
* * *
The dragons landed us in a small clearing on the south side of the hill. The night was filled with the sounds of insects, birds, and wildlife. Though we weren’t far from Haven itself, the trees and gentle wind made it impossible to hear the battle going on to the south. After that chaos, it felt as if we had landed on a different planet.
I led the ascent uphill, following what seemed to be a natural trail. Though Flame had said this place was little disturbed by people over the years, it was clear that people still came here, at least on occasion. I reached out for the source of the power, to double check whether I was going the right way. The source felt stronger here, with each passing step.
Stay under the trees, Flame, I said. Keep yourselves hidden from any potential enemies.
The last thing we needed was for Radaskim patrols to find us. Though Flame didn’t respond, I felt his agreement.
The trail wove up the hill. I led the way while my friends trudged up behind me. I kept a hand on the hilt of Katan. For some reason, I had the feeling that we weren’t the only ones here.
We climbed until the path evened out and the trees grew less thickly. We found ourselves standing before the mouth of a cave, lit on the inside by a dancing, orangey light that could only have come from a fire. Someone was here, then.
I motioned for my friends to draw their weapons. There was the ring of cold steel as Isaru and Fiona drew their blades in tandem, while Isa nocked an arrow to her bow. Shara drew her own blade and nodded at me.
I was the first to enter. The path descended a small ledge, at the bottom of which roared a bonfire, surrounded by men in leather clothing and women wearing multicolored, shimmering ichor-woven dresses, dazzling in the light of the bonfire. There were maybe forty of them. Almost every head turned in our direction. There were cries of surprise at our entrance, and some of the men reached for their weapons – crudely made axes, from the look of it.
“Wilders,” Fiona said. “Seeking shelter in the cave, most likely.”
I decided to speak to them, before any mistakes were made. “Forgive us for intruding. We’re looking for a power that can help us win the battle to the south.”
At this moment, I noticed an old man among the crowd, standing nearer the fire than the others, who had seemed to be the focus of their attention before we came in. His eyes, blazing white, stared up at us. He stood too close to those flames for comfort, though he showed no signs of being burned. His tanned, leathery skin was cast in its orange light. He held out his hands toward the flames in a sudden, jerky movement, palms outward. His eyes were completely white as he muttered under his breath, while those hands glowed like coals.
The man withdrew his hands, shaking them a bit before stepping away from the flames. A large man, with a wide face and scraggly beard, approached us from the crowd.
“The ritual cannot be interrupted,” he said, his voice harsh and accented, as if he did not speak Espan often. Many of the Wilder tribes’ native language was closer to English, the way it had been spoken in the Old World.
The firelight danced off the oddly shaped interior of the cavern. Was this old man trying to draw out the Xenofold’s power, too?
Before I could ask anything, the old man looked directly at me. His white eyes became unglazed, revealing orbs so dark that they were almost black. He opened his mouth to speak.
“You’ve come,” he said. “Elekim has come. The flames have spoken true”
The people broke into hushed whispers as all of them looked at me. I walked down the path to join them at the fire. They parted as I approached, their eyes wide and heads lowered. My friends followed from behind, waiting at a distance.
“There’s power here,” I said, to the old man, placing a hand over my heart, in greeting. “I need to use it to fight against our enemy.”
The old man returned the gesture, giving a gap-toothed smile. “Yes, Anna. There is much power here, though I can’t draw it out.” He lowered his hand, as those black eyes seemed to stare right through me. “I would save my people, Elekim. Give them a s
afe home in the Xenofold, before this land is overrun with the darkness. For I have seen that, too.”
“Even the Xenofold can’t save us if we don’t defeat Odium,” I said. Several people gasped at that, while others babbled in their own language, probably asking for a translation of what I had said. I continued speaking to the old man. “If we do nothing, it could mean the end of the Xenofold as we know it.”
“I’ve seen as much in the fire,” the old man said. “The old wound is still there, the wound as old as Elekim, the wound older than Odium.”
“What wound?” I asked.
I reached out to get a sense of who this man was. From him radiated a power that wasn’t often found among the three original tribes. I knew that Wilder blood could run strong, but I didn’t realize it could be this strong. He was almost as strong as any of us, with a lifetime of experience communing with the Xenofold. The man smiled, his face a maze of wrinkles. There was nothing comforting in that smile, however. If anything, the smile was cold and made me suppress a shiver.
“If only you had listened to the Xenofold, Elekim, you would know what I’m talking about. It is something I cannot tell you outright. It is a knowledge locked in dreams, and I haven’t the power to pull it out. I only know that it will end us all . . . a poison that works slow, but a poison that works just as sure.” He stepped back a bit and gestured toward the bonfire. “Stare into the flames, Elekim. See if they speak to you that which I cannot.”
“Why would they do that?” I asked, unsure.
“They are a focus for thoughts and dreams,” he said. “In a place like this, flames can have great power.”
I knew flamecraft was practiced by some Wilder tribes. The scholars of the Sanctum derided its efficacy, saying that at best, the fires could merely serve as a focus for one’s innate abilities. But something in the old man’s gaze insisted that I do it, and I couldn’t resist the temptation. What he had said intrigued me. How had I not listened to the Xenofold?
Without having to be told, I reached out for the Xenofold. Its power encompassed me in a flood. I heard someone from behind me telling me to be careful – Isa, I thought – but in my altered state, the words seemed to come from another dimension.
Instead, I stepped forward until I felt the heat of the fire burning hot on my skin. I stared, until my consciousness became one with the flames.
Chapter 32
The flames swirled until images formed within them. At first, I thought I was only imagining it, but as time passed, I could see that the images were just as real as reality. More than mere images, I could see everything – past, present, and future. The flames were no more. There was only prophecy.
What is this?
A familiar voice answered from the flames. The history of Us, from our first wakening upon the Cradle of Askalon.
Though this voice was familiar, I still couldn’t place who it was. The voice faded and I soon forgot it. All I could see were the visions.
I was high above the planet’s surface, so high that its ground curved beneath me in swaths of pink and red. Interspersing the landmasses were its indigo seas, the surface as glassy as a mirror. I lowered toward the world, into its sultry, tropical air tinged with the sweetness of foliage. I lowered until I was floating above a tangled, green and pink jungle filled with alien trees, rising from the crystalline water shallowly covering the surface. Submerged in that water was a rainbow of coral and sea life, swirling among the tree roots. Stands of trees floated on small, living islands, islands which themselves floated with the gentle oscillations of the currents. Twin moons hung in the sky above, one pink and small, another purple and large. The sun was red, the sky a burnt orange, everything producing a barrage of colors bewildering to behold.
On the horizon, a swarm of dragons, hundreds of them, was entangled in combat. I didn’t know how I knew, but I was witnessing the final battle on Askalon, the battle that would decide the dominant species: Radaskim, or Elekai.
I also knew how that battle would turn out.
I wanted to affect things from here, but this was only a vision. I drew closer, flying over waves of violet water, time seeming to advance quickly until the battle was over. As the passage of time sped up, the living islands died, the mangroves fell and rotted in their shallow pools, and the sky turned gray and lifeless. The oceans lowered as that gray sky became transparent, revealing a darkened canvas upon which thousands of stars arranged themselves in exotic constellations. All that was left of the world was a barren, lifeless plain, without a trace of the lush world that had once been.
In the space of minutes, eons passed. What was left of the Elekai was gone, and the Radaskim seemed to be gone, too. It had been millennia since a dragon had flown the skies. Indeed, it didn’t seem as if there was a sky anymore, or even air to breathe.
But deep in the heart of the planet, I felt a trace of life. A beating heart that belonged to something.
Could it be?
I was drawn into a cavern. Long ago, this had been a place of refuge for the Elekai, an underground network extending for thousands of miles in all directions. Now, only a fraction of that expanse was left. Time had changed not only the surface, but the interior as well.
Somewhere deep in these caves was the answer, the oldest remnant of the Elekai. But did I have time to seek it out, when what I really needed to do was to find a way to stop Odium and win the battle? At this point, that concern seemed far away, as important as I knew it to be. Perhaps there was an answer here, in this vision, that could help me.
I floated through the darkness of the caves, sinking deeper below the surface. Though I could not physically see anything, I could still feel all the contours of the cave, the piles of bones and skulls of dragons deceased for thousands of years. I felt even more of those bones beneath the rocks and dust, so that I knew that what I saw was only a fraction of it. A genocide of the distant past.
They made their final stand here, in these caves, I realized.
I went lower. There were no more bones, no more evidence of the life that had once existed. Some great calamity must have befallen this planet, a calamity that went beyond the Radaskim’s ancient victory.
The answers are below.
The voice seemed to come from outside myself. I didn’t question it. I only went on. Like a dream, I wasn’t in full control. I could only be pulled onward, to the inevitable end.
Hours passed, until I was miles underground. I crossed a certain point and suddenly found that I was no longer immaterial. I was standing on the ground, wearing my usual pants and shirt with a cloak thrown over. Even my blade was there, where I would have usually kept it.
I took a few steps forward, stepping off the dust and rocks and onto living xen. The cavern I found myself in was covered in it, along with being warm. I questioned whether I was even on the same world, but deep down, I knew it was the very same. There was life cocooned in its center, somehow preserved. I didn’t notice anything blocking this air from the outside vacuum that permeated the rest of the planet, but something must have been blocking it. I felt light on my feet, as if this world’s pull was lesser than Earth’s.
But the world’s interior held a magnificence which almost rivaled the surface’s distant past. The interior caverns were massive, an entire world unto itself, far larger than even the Caverns of Creation on Earth. Perhaps the lessened gravity made such scope possible. Xen grew along crystalline formations rising from the ground, creating a forest that seemed to be made from glass. I caught my own reflection multiplying hundreds of times upon the jagged, clear surfaces. I felt my way forward rather than trusting my eyes. This place was beautiful, but in a dangerous way. Whatever I was looking for, I knew it was close.
I wandered among the maze for hours, not only turning left and right, but climbing up and down through arches, walking along canyons carved from ichor streams, and finally, finding myself at the edge of a massive cliff, over which the streams fell into a vast, pink sea that might have been bette
r called an ocean. And sitting in the middle of this gargantuan expanse was a relatively small island, and on that island grew a tree. This tree was far larger than Haven, though it looked small with distance. It was completely white, its boughs wide, its ends pointed and sharp. Its foliage was shimmering white while its leaves sparkled like diamonds, catching the pink light of the ocean.
The Tree of Wailing, the voice said.
Despite the tree’s beauty, I knew it held an ancient and terrible evil. This, in some way I couldn’t yet understand, was the source of everything. Odium. The Radaskim. And something even worse than both.
It had to be destroyed.
* * *
But something was keeping this place a perfect paradise while the rest of the world was a barren wasteland. And yet, aside from the tree, there didn’t seem to be a single living creature here. Why was it being maintained if there was no one to maintain it for?
I began climbing down the cliff. Vision and reality completely blurred; in my mind, I knew this was only a vision, that I was only looking into flames, but now, it seemed as if I’d reached a point where the flames were looking into me. At times, I saw their flicker in the periphery of my vision – a sign, perhaps, that the vision was ending.
All the same, I continued to climb down, working my way methodically, fearlessly, despite the treacherous heights. When I was nearing the halfway point, I realized this was an impossible task. And it was not long after this realization that my foot slipped from beneath me.
I felt a moment of panic as I scrambled on the cliffside for a safe hold. But I kicked too hard, loosening the chalky stone further. I began to slip, the rocks digging into my palms.
There was no stopping, now. I was falling through the air, twisting around and around. The sea rose to meet me.
Flames swirled in my vision, more pronounced this time. I landed in the Sea, the surface feeling more like a cushion than anything liquid. It burnt like fire on my skin.