by Jason Alan
After a few more miles had passed, the scorched plains ran into a land littered with giant bones. Here, the victims of war had never been laid to rest, for the ground had not the stomach to swallow such gargantuan dead. Here, mile tall titans had grappled enormous demons amidst sorcerous flames as tall as castles. All who had fallen were still entwined, their skeletons locked in deathly embraces. Tens of thousands of remains conjoined for countless miles to either side, and ahead they piled into hills that climbed high into the night.
Thus, they had come to the foundation for the Mountains of Might. Herard leaned his head back, squinted his eyes, and glimpsed the grand range’s outline far up through the storms. “Stay with me, Zraz, our refuge shouldn’t be too far away.”
“I’m with you,” she returned between increasingly laborious breaths. She toiled upward, flew over the skulls, and soon the mountains appeared in full view.
Ah, now here was a range like no other!
Herard never ceased to be amazed by their sight, for their magnificence was inimitable. Taking up the entire eastern sky, they were the largest mountains in the galaxy. They rose up and up until the storm clouds themselves lingered beneath their peaks like dirtied halos. Long ago, they had existed in tranquility, their bases wrapped with emerald evergreens, their liquid crystal waterfalls nurturing the countryside around them. Now they were burned, black and bleak, with the mighty dead at their feet. Over the ages they had turned volcanic. When riled, rivers of lava leaked from their sundered summits, further scalding their stony faces and veining the surrounding lands with glowing tributaries. This led some to refer to the range as the Volcanoes of Volcar.
Herard pointed forward, said, “Do you know what they say about this place?”
Zraz turned her head slightly aside.
“They say the spirits of all the dragons killed in the first war with the Dark Forever rest beneath those mountains. That even in death their fiery breath ever burns, thus igniting the Volcanoes of Volcar with boundless fury. They say—” Herard cut himself off, rolled his eyes, immediately regretting his rather grim choice of stories. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned that.”
Zraz shook her head. “No, no, it’s good to hear.” She coughed, cleared her throat. “I’m comforted by the thought of my ancestors. It will be an honor to join them someday.”
“I’m sure it will be,” was all Herard gave in reply, for he did not want to dwell on the subject any longer.
They carried on, the winds whirling around them, the rain intensifying, and the howls of a haunted Phatian night echoing through the clouds. When they flew into the shadows of the mountains themselves, it was as if the sky had closed in around them. At first Herard felt comforted by this, but his comfort soon evaporated, for he knew there were no shadows that could hide them from enemy eyes. And then, as if to validate his thought, a growl came from somewhere behind them.
“Zraz,” Herard said.
“I heard it.”
“They’ve found us!” Herard swung his head around. He saw only darkness riven with streams of grey clouds. “Damn these endless storms, it’s always so difficult to see anything!”
“What course, my Lord?”
“Can you assume cloudform?” Herard grimaced, knowing it was much to ask of his wounded dragon.
“Perhaps, but I do not have the strength to keep us misted for long.”
“I know, I know, I’m sorry. Damn this night and those infernal elves of the sea! Just get us as far up into the mountains as you can. The Fallen Angel should be able to spot us soon.” He let his words trail off, for his concentration was focused on searching for something he hoped he wouldn’t see. He twisted in his saddle, looked all around, continuously grumbling at the terrible visibility. And then, when a branch of green lightning illuminated the sky directly behind them, he caught a glimpse of something racing through the clouds over the Wicked Plains—something shaped like a diabolically disfigured dragon…only larger.
Much larger.
As if the thing knew it had been spotted, it let loose a high-pitched shriek. The sound was terrible, like the cry of a thousand tortuous deaths crammed into one malicious voice! It was a sound I cringe just to describe, a sound that shook Herard to the very core of his soul. It echoed on for long seconds before finally fading beneath the thunder. As Herard watched, the lightning around the shadowy beast lessened, and it disappeared into the clouds.
No matter, Herard had seen enough.
He knew what pursued them.
Trembling, he turned about. I must keep my wits.
“Just keep flying for the mountains,” he stammered.
“Yes, my Lord.” Zraz was panting now, grunting with every pull of her wings.
The horrid shrieking sounded again, louder than before.
“They’re closing,” Herard said, rather unnecessarily.
Zraz pushed through her pain and exhaustion, ascended the foothills of skulls, and finally soared up into the mountains. Herard thought he heard them rumble. Perhaps they’re unnerved by the arrival of the Gauntlets of Loathing Light. He might have been right, for in some places the ground glowed. The restless lava that lay beneath its rocky hide bubbled, boiled, and began to bleed. Gullies filled with liquid heat. Fissures gasped, and the ground trembled. Rocks jumped and fell in little avalanches down the mountainsides. Zraz darted through the clefts and passes, making her way farther up into the range.
The rumbling intensified.
“Go, go!” Herard urged.
Way up over the peaks, a light as bright and red as Phate’s sun flashed, and a dozen volcanoes simultaneously spit fire, roaring as even the sea could not, shaking the entire Continent Isle of Volcar!
Herard and Zraz were aghast.
They were caught beneath fountains of flame that no storm could extinguish, a sweeping umbrella of hellish geysers that shot thousands of feet into the air…and then rained down. The clouds rimming the mountaintops flickered with a red glow, then exploded. Pyroclastic flows blasted down the mountainsides—wild, boiling rivers of liquid rock melting everything they touched. Stones ruptured and burning boulders bounded into the air as if thrown by enemy catapults.
“Up, up!” Herard screamed. “We must make for the high sky!” He double-wrapped his wrists with the reins and squeezed the saddle with his legs, intent on not being unseated again.
Zraz searched for a break in the firestorm, but there was no way around it.
They would have to fly through.
“My Lord?” she called back.
“I’m with you!” Herard returned. “Go! Go!”
A wall of heat hit their faces, and molten chunks of mountain rained down upon them. Zraz kicked her hind legs out and twisted aside in a desperate maneuver to dodge a showering stream of lava. She managed to avoid it, but thereafter the molten onslaught only intensified. Fiery trails shot down all around her. She shot up, then wrenched hard to her right, flaming rocks streaking by. Then she went left to dodge yet more glowing trails. Up and up she went, shifting back and forth, back and forth, every movement agonizing, every stone that pelted her feeling like a burning brand as she ascended through the storm of fire.
Finally, she flew up over the lava plumes, but the pain of all that movement caught up to her and she let out a bitter cry. “Herard! I can’t…I can’t anymore.”
“Hang on just a little bit longer!”
“I can’t…” Her adrenaline was spent. She was burned all over, and the debilitating poison from the dark elf blades had all but overcome her. Her head rolled to the side, her wings spread wide, and she glided on the winds, her breathing lapsing into an unremitting moan. But somehow, she still managed to hold onto the gauntlets.
“Oh…my Lord…”
“Easy, Zraz, easy,” Herard said as his own pain became apparent. What was left of his battered armor was so hot he felt as if he sat in a stove, and a myriad of cuts and burns lined the exposed places on his skin. He shifted in his saddle, grunting with discomf
ort. At least they still flew; if it hadn’t been for the strength of the air currents, his injured dragon might have already plunged them into a mountainside. And that was a most distressing prospect, for when Herard took a quick glance down, he saw that the entire range was being swept over by a hurricane of flames.
Oh, if we had lingered any longer beneath those fiery peaks!
And then something happened that disturbed Herard even more than the sight of the flames.
The terrible shrieking returned.
And this time it was from much closer. It was so loud, so piercing, like a great gate with rusted hinges squealing as it slowly closed. Herard shot a look aside, and his heart quickened with fear, for the shadowy dragon beast was coming right at them.
Gods, it was impossibly huge! It was as if the storms had banded together, grown wings, and come alive. It rose up through a great plume of smoke, a shrouded black monstrosity come to tear them from the sky. And as horrid as the creature was, Herard knew the thing that rode it was even more ghastly.
“Zraz!” Herard yelled. “Go to cloudform! Do it now!”
Zraz could only moan in response. The poor dragon was barely conscious, barely aware of the oncoming doom. Her wings folded inward and she plummeted toward the volcanoes. Herard tugged on the torn reins, screaming, “Zraz, listen to me! If ever I could lend you whatever strength I have, it would be now! You must go to cloudform! You must!”
Zraz stirred, whispered: “Ever does your heart empower mine, my Lord. I will try.”
Her belabored breaths calmed.
Her moans went silent.
And although she had retracted her wings, she no longer fell.
Her wings weren’t the only thing that enabled her to fly…
You see, it is the dragons’ immortal strength that their spirits are connected to the very fabric of the universe. As much as Zraz was a creature of the sky, she was also a citizen of the stars. At certain times, she could disperse some of her atoms into other dimensions, thus softening her solidity and enabling her to soar through the winds of Phate as a cloud. Now she had begun this transformation, but couldn’t complete it, for it took a tremendous amount of energy, and the Gauntlets of Loathing Light continued to sap what was left of her strength. They nearly succeeded in severing her connection to the universe and, for a time, Zraz was in danger of losing herself beneath the planes of existence.
But she persevered.
With one last burst of effort, she pushed through the dark power of the gauntlets, and with a quick puff her body diffused into a misty white vapor.
She was in cloudform.
The gauntlets themselves were dragged beneath the surface of physicality, but ever did their determined power try to pull Zraz’s body back into Phate’s sky. Eventually, inevitably, they would succeed…but not yet.
Herard was also engulfed in Zraz’s magic.
His body lightened. He lost consciousness and sank into an immortal sleep. There he experienced immortal dreams. And in those dreams, he was given a fleeting glimpse of a blessed universe. He saw alien skies so thick with healthy stars they blazed with solid bands of white light. He saw solar dragons soaring alongside starships, flying for planet-sized cities that encircled artificial suns. He saw lives and love unfold on the shores of nebula seas, he—
Ah, the images faded, and Herard fell deeper into his sleep.
A mortal man given a tiny taste of eternity, he would never remember those dreams. In all his years with Zraz, he had never recollected a single one.
For some, my friend, dreams are as elusive as the sleep in which they dwell. I hope it is not this way for you…
Zraz’s cloud ascended.
The nightmare beast that pursued her flew in uncertain circles, groping for its prey, but could find nothing. The wounded dragon was gone. All about, the fires were fierce; perhaps its quarry had been taken by the flames.
A great, angered shriek echoed through the mountains while Zraz floated up into a glowing mist that had descended from far above. The mist consumed Zraz, then rose back up into a tremendous, oddly shaped bank of clouds that hid above the storms.
Herard Avari Fang slowly regained consciousness.
He shook his head, rubbed his eyes, and looked around. He was in a world of billowing white. It seemed unreal, as though he still dreamed, or he was in the middle of some optimistic artist’s representation of the Seven Glories. Whatever this place was, it was massive, spanning miles above and before him. It was a sky in itself, a great rectangular space surrounded by titanic walls of cloud.
Walls of cloud…
His eyes brightened with realization. They had made it! It was their destination, their refuge, this realm carved out of sorcerously fabricated clouds. “The angel must have found us, must have pulled us into her domain. But, where is she?”
The place appeared to be empty, almost as if it had been abandoned. It was eerily calm. There was no rain, no wind, and the only sound came from the crackle of blue lightning that periodically coursed through the cloudy walls. Herard shook his head again, tried to unclutter his thoughts. What had happened?
There were the volcanoes and fire and cloudform and…
His mortally wounded dragon.
Herard flashed a look down.
“May the Gods return! Zraz!”
So engrossed in his surroundings, he hadn’t even realized that he still sat in his saddle. He was leaning slightly to the left, with Zraz lying tilted and silent beneath him. He dismounted, slid from her back to land on a floor of polished gemstones. He was horrified when a widening pool of blue blood flowed from beneath her to meet his feet. And he was even more horrified after he ran around and finally saw the terrible damage the dark elves had inflicted upon his dragon.
It was worse than he’d imagined.
Dozens and dozens of blades stuck in her.
And the burns…
Oh, it was awful!
He yanked off his helm, tossed it aside, sprinted to her head. Kneeling beside her, he gently said, “Zraz, we’ve made it. Let the gauntlets fall. Let them go.”
Though nearly unconscious, his faithful cloud dragon still clutched the Gauntlets of Loathing Light. She let out a painful sigh, opened her foreclaw, and the gauntlets fell to the floor with a jarring thud. Herard winced at the sight of her shriveled, decaying palm. He stood, whirled about and cried, “My angel! Are you here? Help us!”
There was no spoken response, but directly in front of him the gemstone floor lengthened into a long pathway, row after row of smooth crystal stones materializing far across the shifting vapors beyond. The entire realm dimmed for a moment, then came back brighter than before.
Herard’s mouth dropped open.
A gigantic palace appeared at the end of the pathway.
His eyes tracing it all the way to the top, Herard guessed it to be at least two miles tall. Had it always been there, hidden behind a swirl of clouds, or had it just now materialized from out of nowhere, he wasn’t certain. Nevertheless, it was stunning. It held a beauty forgotten on Phate, a beauty of craft and care undiminished by time, a beauty few mortals had ever set eyes upon. Its architecture was smooth and rounded, its many towers twined like braids, their walls glittering with the sparkle of encrusted jewels. Dragons were perched atop the towers and soaring around the spires in wide sweeping circles. Some spread out, sailed high over Herard’s head—ice dragons and cloud dragons, soul dragons and lesser translucent dragons, all leaving a glittering wake of sorcery that rained down like a shower of crystal tears.
A sanctuary for dragons, a haven for lost spirits, this was the sky elf palace of Vren Adiri.
Herard lowered his gaze to the set of massive crystal doors set in the base of the central tower. He thought he saw some sort of motion behind them. He squinted, took a tentative step closer. Yes, there was something moving within, some glints of light. He took another step forward, and stumbled. Tears streamed down his face. Shaking, he collapsed to his knees, knelt in Zraz’s b
lood. He did not care. “Please,” he said to whoever would listen, “help us, someone, please help us.”
Just as the words fled his lips, the glints of light behind the doors flickered, and the doors swung open. Light burst forth from within, radiating outward in a widening array of beams, illuminating all the realm. Music accompanied the doors’ opening, the simple, soothing notes of phantom flutes arising from some indiscernible place.
A few seconds later, the beams pulled back and gathered together, condensing into a solid figure of light that stood in front of the doors.
The figure moved forward.
Herard, still on his knees, bowed to the floor.
Here was the Fallen Angel.
All things are enslaved to something. Moons are enslaved to their worlds which are enslaved to their suns which are enslaved to their galaxies which are enslaved to the universe which is enslaved by time. And we? We are slaves to them all.
Zan Zurahn
Necromancer of the New Order of Ill Atheon
Herard was still kneeling in Zraz’s blood as the luminous form of the Fallen Angel glided up to him. He thought her as wondrous as the palace behind her. She was a ghost of golden light, an apparition of a sun brighter than the one that now hung dying in Phate’s sky. Although she came to him in a humanoid guise, she was unmistakably angelic. Large, folded wings stood tall above her shoulders, imbuing her with a heavenly air of grace and authority. Her slender face had no apparent eyes, no prominent features, and her shining form emitted an aura that glowed like a distant dawn.
When she reached Herard, she spoke, her voice more beautiful than the phantom flutes that accompanied it.
“Welcome, Herard Avari Fang, welcome to Vren Adiri.”
Herard pushed an appreciative smile through his tears. He sat up and clapped his hands together. “Bless you, your radiance.”
“Bless you, Herard, it is an honor to welcome the Emperor of the Sky.”
Herard looked aside. “’Emperor.’ Hmm. I don’t know, I was never comfortable with that bestowment.”