‘You can’t go back that way.’
‘I’ll fight my way through them,’ Larn said, his voice growing shrill.
‘There’s too many of them.’
‘I’m sorry if combat is not your speed, but I will persevere.’
‘Is this because you’re scared of heights?’ Rangrim laughed cheerfully.
‘Insolent fool!’
While Rangrim and Larn continued to argue, Corinne had been preparing a spell. She held her flat palms out in front of her and the others watched as a torrent of water burst from them into the passages they had walked. They listened to the gallons of water rushing through the cave.
‘That should take the pressure off slightly,’ she smiled.
The bandits’ jeers and shouts had been momentarily flushed away, but it did not take long for them to return. Vadania held one of her swords up to Larn’s chest, nudging him backwards.
‘Move.’
They each ran across the bridge one at a time, the bandits in close pursuit. Arrows flew over the chasm, but Osrik held up his shield to protect those on the other side. Once Vadania had crossed, they continued into another cave.
This one elevated as they walked, the paths sloping up very steeply in places. They avoided sharp jagged rock protrusions and around further tight passageways until they came to a dead end. A giant slab of gneiss. Larn felt it, looking for anything that might give way, but it was immovable.
Back down the slope, Vadania and Osrik were doing their best to hold off the bloodthirsty bandits.
‘I’ll die fighting. Maybe I’ll regain some of my honour,’ Osrik mused as he smashed his mighty battle-axe, knocking down three bandits together.
‘We will not die here,’ said Vadania through gritted teeth amid her slashing swords.
At the passage’s end, Corinne traced through the pages of her spellbook.
‘I need time to practice. I’m concerned about the consequences if I get something wrong in this enclosed space.’
‘Here, take this,’ Rangrim said. He tossed Ruby’s bag to the mage, and lifted Sawwse down from his shoulders. Reaching to his back, he unsheathed Slǣpan Gigas. ‘Get back.’
The others moved back down the slope as Rangrim roared, drawing the zweihander in a large arc overhead and crashing it down into the gneiss. The slab of rock in front of them fissured. It began to crack and widen as the cave floor vibrated.
The bandits stopped their assault on Vadania and Osrik. They stared, horrified, as fractures began to appear on the walls, ceiling and floors. The bandits frantically clambered over each other to run back across the bridge.
‘That’s done the trick,’ Rangrim declared with a smile.
The gneiss had indeed split, allowing passage into a further path. A faint white light glowed in the distance. Larn sprinted through the newly formed gap. The others swiftly followed, dodging the sharp rocks that fell from the ceiling. The fractures along the floor had grown and joined, so that the adventurers jumped from one side of a gaping void to the other in order to avoid being eaten by the mountain.
The white light grew stronger and stronger until they burst out of the cave back onto the mountain’s outer skin, now covered in snow. Sawwse watched the cave consume itself and disappear into rockfall.
At this height, the wind whipped them with its chill. The peaks of the knight’s helmet and shoulders lay ahead of them. They would have seen the layer of heather far below them had it not been for the thick mist.
‘Phew, I’m exhausted,’ said Sawwse, collapsing back onto the blanket of snow with the tiny goldcrest Ruby still clutched to her chest.
‘You were being carried the whole way,’ Larn said, standing over her.
‘Yes, but the tension was palpable,’ the gnome teased.
‘Perhaps Sawwse is right and we should rest,’ said Corinne.
‘Soldi be damned!’ Vadania swore. ‘We’ve lost Mirrah… and with her, our route to the Ancient Device. Who knows what she’ll do if she finds it.’
This rare outburst from Vadania was enough to disquiet the others. No one spoke for a short while.
‘We’ll never find her in this mist,’ Sawwse began. ‘Let’s at least wait here until it clears and start searching once it does. She can’t have gone far.’
Vadania studied the mist and then let out a long sigh.
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘But we will walk further this way first.’
The elf moved them away from the former cave entrance. The terrain was more uneven here and they had to be watchful of their footing, a wrong move leading to sudden fall. Vadania found a flat area and began to pack the snow into a makeshift floor. The others joined in and then put up two of their tents, ensuring they were heavily weighed down.
Inside, they quickly put on their thick cloaks and huddled together to stay warm. Transforming back to her human form, Ruby took out a potion from her bag. She added a few sprigs of heather and shook the jar. Each of the adventurers drank the potion, which fortified them and renewed their vigour. Sawwse hadn’t realised that her breathing had become shallower, until the deep, deep breath she took after the potion.
Vadania noticed it first. As an elf, she tended not to need sleep, preferring meditation instead. However, a few moments after taking the potion she felt her eyes grow heavy.
‘Ruby. What type of potion was this?’ she asked, sternly.
‘It was meant to strengthen us,’ Ruby replied quietly, stifling a yawn and looking worriedly around the tent.
One by one, the adventurers shut their eyes and fell asleep. Vadania glared angrily at Ruby, until she too fell under the potion’s effects.
--
Sawwse snapped awake, wiping the drool from her chin. She shook the others awake and opened the tent onto the mountain. A white wall of mist stood in front of her. The gnome took a few tentative steps outside, but the whiteness engulfed them. They were obnubilated.
After Osrik was roused, he told the others to keep still and wait it out.
‘It’s too easy to get lost out there, and not safe on this terrain.’
The little gnome felt it impossible to tell how long they waited in those tents. Time seemed to dilate, stretching infinitely in all directions. They were too cold to do much of anything. They teased out the last of their food supplies, but even then they waited for a long time. Osrik and Vadania guarded the exits of each tent, ensuring no one tried to muddle through the mist.
Eventually, Vadania poked her head out and saw something curious. The others followed her out of the tents.
‘Well, let’s get going before the mists return,’ Rangrim eagerly suggested.
‘Wait,’ Vadania said, holding her hand up and gesturing around them. ‘Look.’
The mists surrounded them on all sides bar one. A mistless corridor stretched out in front of them.
‘Hmph, that shouldn’t be possible,’ Osrik grumbled. ‘There’s something odd about this.’
They packed up the tents and journeyed on, guided by the absence of mist. Over a ridge and a short scramble up a rock face, they came to a long, flat pathway. Curiously, the ground here was visible, no snow lay at their feet. At the end of the path sat the cave mouth from the map, instantly recognisable as Mirrah’s depiction. The snow all around this cave had melted as well. It glowed invitingly.
The seven adventurers wandered into the cave. They warmed themselves in the sudden heat and shook off the cold. Sconces along the walls were filled with burning wood. The atmosphere felt different here.
‘We’re no longer on Slǣpan Wiga,’ Corinne said. ‘This must be...’
‘Unnatural. Impossible,’ Osrik warned.
Vadania’s eyes darted around.
‘Where is she?’ the elf said.
‘We’ve come this far,’ Sawwse said, shrugging and walking forward.
This had to be the heart of the mountain, and so the Ancient Device had to be nearby. They wandered further into the cave,
climbed a short path and emerged into a large chamber. At the far end stood something the likes of which Sawwse had never seen before.
A gigantic metal machine seemed to have been built into the craggy wall of the cave. The main body of it was circular, with modules and pistons protruding from six legs. Rust had eaten large swathes of the device, but its bright centre still shone menacingly. Ancient runes glowed across the machine’s body as it appeared to sense a new presence in its chamber.
The group stood mesmerised in front of the device, staring at its glowing heart. Suddenly, Vadania spotted something in the reflection of the metal. She spun around, but it was too late. The thick mists had entered the chamber and a hiss sounded from one of the machine’s legs.
As the mists engulfed them, the machine spread out its shadowy tendrils and clawed hold of each of their minds...
Chapter 23: The Ancient Device
Pale moonlight filtered through a grove of ash trees. A gentle stream ran silently into a pool. A thin layer of milky white mist covered everything.
Vadania Avindico saw herself sitting by the water’s edge. She remembered clearly every moment of that day: the white, loose-fitting robes, Soldi’s symbol painted on her forehead, and the cold, cooling refreshment of the soaked cloth on her face.
Gathering water for the temple had once been her favourite activity. Sitting alone by the pool had brought her great peace over the years.
Knowing this moment as well as she did, she also knew that the peace would be shattered very soon. Vadania watched her younger self sighing contentedly, before picking up the bucket and walking back to the temple.
The shadow appeared sooner than she had realised. Vadania chastised herself for not sensing it. It lingered over the woods, blocking out the light. She looked up and for the first time, saw it clearly. It filled her body with dread. The massive scale of the dragon had been lost to memory’s trickery, but here it was presented as clearly as on that fateful day. Its huge scales still glistened green and black under the moonlight, but Vadania now also took in the malevolent, malicious face.
The elf willed her younger self to run and run and run back to the temple in time. But it was futile. She watched the dragon outstripping her, and she again scolded herself for her lack of power.
The dragon reared its head back and screamed into the night sky, a merciless roar.
Vadania expected to open her eyes and return to the cave. Was it not time for the vision to be over? Instead, she was forced to watch her youthful clone pointlessly running after the monster, wide-eyed and panic-stricken.
The younger Vadania was far too late.
The temple was ablaze, the village crushed.
Vadania had revisited this night over and over again for many years, but for the first time she was finding it too difficult to watch. The vision usually stopped once the dragon appeared, maximising her rage and bringing her to wakefulness. But now, forced to remember reaching her village, she felt choked with grief. She remembered turning over each and every burnt body, desperate to find someone left alive, but the dragon had spared no one.
The accumulation of these feelings, blocked out for so many years, collapsed in on Vadania. The fierce warrior slumped to her knees, broken.
It was then that she first heard the voice. Perhaps more of a noise than a voice. A deep grinding of cogs and a screeching of metal on metal that resembled words in an ancient language. Somehow, she comprehended exactly what it asked.
‘WILL. THOU. RETURN?’
The white mists swirled around Vadania Avindico. When they cleared, she found herself standing in front of her temple holding an empty bucket.
--
Through a layer of mist, Larn could see a ring of light encircling his younger self, who knelt on the floor. Forbidden books lay open, sprawled across the room. Watching this scene unfold from the perspective of a spectral essence, Larn understood immediately what was happening. He looked at the chalk circle, the occult books and the gold with scorn.
‘Was I really this primitive?’ he spoke into the mist.
The Larn from years gone by was rifling through his notes. He gathered them together, but then tripped on something, sending them flying.
‘And this pathetic?’ spectral Larn sneered.
Once he had gathered the notes back together, the younger Larn began to read from the exiled language. This speech had been forgotten, ancient as it was, but Larn had pieced together fragments from various artefacts over the years, and now breathed fresh life into the language, the first to speak it since it had become extinct. The Larn of the present was still a little proud of that, at least.
A light breeze began to blow, and the books began to turn their pages. It came from a space directly in front of him, within the circle, and it was accompanied by a loud sucking noise, like a drain capturing water. Picking up speed, the wind vortex whipped at his clothes and bit at his fingers, ears, nose. He held onto his notes with one hand and steadied himself with the other. Then, an ear-splitting pop from the centre of the vortex.
Larn looked on at his younger self. He laughed at the panic spreading over his face and through his body.
‘Don’t worry, it’ll be over soon.’
Shelves snapped, candles melted, glass smashed under the incredible force. The memory of the demon’s dark eyes and pale face was summoned up. It laughed as it arrived back in the world from which it had been banished.
Larn watched the rest of the scene play out: the contract was given, that he hadn’t read; payment was taken, his legs and his soul; and his room was destroyed, set ablaze by the callous monster.
A bright orange glow flickered in Larn’s spectral eyes as he stared at his cowering younger self. Then, the image changed. The white mist swirled around, resetting the scene. A pause. And then the deep, guttural machine language spoke.
‘WILL. THOU. RETURN?’
Larn smirked, looking around the room once more. He spoke aloud,
‘I don’t know, what do you think?’
A cold, menacing voice issued from deep within the researcher.
‘Interesting gambit, little human,’ the demon said.
‘Yes, I thought so too.’
‘This magic is ancient. It predates me,’ the demon reflected.
Larn, of course, already knew all this. It was why he had been so focused on this mission to retrieve the idols and reach the Ancient Device. There would be nothing the demon could do to stop his reversing of time. Okay, so it wouldn’t be ideal if the machine fell into the wrong hands, but he was here for this moment. And it was a moment he took great satisfaction in.
‘It’s time to renegotiate the terms of our contract,’ he sneered.
--
The white mists whirled and spun around Ruby. What was it that she had been focused on? For some reason she couldn’t think clearly. When the mist cleared, she found herself following a little girl through a sedate village.
The girl ran her fingers along vibrant lavenders that shot out of the gardens along the path. It was only a short walk from one end of the village to the other, but the little girl made it last as long as possible, turning over every rock, comparing the hue of every petal, making friends with all the birds.
Ruby was aghast when she realised where the girl was walking to. The misshapen small house was built into the hill. It was slanted from roof to cellar, and surrounded by a hedge which did its best to block out the light. No birds ever visited its garden, and the bees could find nothing to pollinate.
‘No! No, don’t go in there,’ the spectral form of Ruby squealed, but nothing issued from her lips.
She tried to turn away from the image, spinning around wildly, but the mists twisted again, and now she was inside the house. Ruby watched as her younger self’s shoulders hunched and her arms tightened to her sides. She felt the tension in unison. It came from this depressing, dangerous place.
‘Please, no. I don’t want this,’ Rub
y pleaded.
The mists whipped round once more, and the girl was now sitting in front of her father at the dining table. Ruby tried to look away, but it wasn’t possible. She was trapped in the memory. It was not the only time this conversation had occurred, but the others certainly didn’t end in the same way.
‘Where have you been?’
‘I was in school,’ the younger Ruby replied meekly.
He gestured slowly with his finger.
‘After.’
‘No, no no no no, I won’t watch this,’ Ruby’s spectral form shouted.
She tried to shut her eyes, but without a corporeal form, there was nothing she could do. Even trying to imagine hands with which to wave away this memory was futile. The scene played on and she helplessly watched. Her mother’s words cut through her like razors, even now.
‘Are these the same friends we’ve told you not to spend time with?’ Her mother’s tone was icy.
Ruby watched her younger self bow her head. She knew the anxious thoughts spiralling through the little girl’s mind so clearly. The desire to be ‘normal’. She began thinking them once again, focusing on her skin.
‘Look, look. She has normal human skin,’ spectral Ruby pleaded with the ghosts of her parents.
‘I am normal, I am normal, I am normal,’ Ruby and her younger self thought in unison.
The mists swirled and whirled. Ruby saw her mother’s scream, and the look of disgust in her eyes as she looked at the young girl’s transformed hands. She saw her father’s fury, as he marched her into the cellar.
‘Human beings do not transform,’ her mother hissed.
‘I am normal,’ breathed Ruby as she looked on.
‘Please don’t,’ young Ruby pleaded.
Her father reached for the long cane.
‘You need to know that we’re doing this out of love.’
‘I am not sick.’
‘We just want for you to be normal.’
‘I am normal.’
Her father raised the cane above his head before smacking it across the young girl’s hands.
In the Grip of Time Page 26