by Greg Curtis
And it was only the beginning. She found three more of her friends dead in the scrying chamber beyond where the guardians searched the worlds for fresh new people with the gift who should be invited to the Temple. Two more in the gardens on the terrace above the temple where they grew their food. Though at least there she found one of the sprites lying dead with a silver shaft through his head. Someone had managed to fight back.
Everywhere she went there were bodies. The bodies of her fellow guardians. And only a very few dead sprites. But then the advantage had always been with the sprites. In magic, far more so than in any other form of combat, the advantage always lay with the one who struck first. And if you had the advantage of surprise, you were almost unstoppable. The sprites had struck without warning. There had been no chance for her friends to defend themselves.
Elodie wanted to weep for her friends. But she also wanted to destroy the foul breathed bastards who had done this to her friends. And just then, anger won through.
She phased and started running through the walls, looking for more of the enemy to hurt. And she found them.
A woman with a pair of diamond elementals prowling the hallways in front of her was the first. She barely even let out a sound when Elodie stepped out of the wall behind her, grabbed her and smashed her into a wall. And after that she didn't make any noise at all. She just fell to the floor and lay there in a lake of blood.
Then there was a man with a fire elemental. She just picked him up and threw him right into the embrace of his own creature. He screamed quite a lot before his badly charred body found the floor. Then he lay there, dying in pain and cursed her.
But he did more than that. He told her why they'd come – in between cries of pain. Mostly he only told her it so he could promise her a terrible death. This was about power. And not just the power that they craved over others. The power to regain their wings and to rule the skies. The sprites' ancient legend. For some reason they believed that the Temple's Heartfire could grant them that.
She would have asked why, but he stopped talking before she was able to. Instead he just lay there and quietly passed from the world.
And so it went on. One after another she found the sprites in the Temple and she broke them as she wandered through the endless hallways and chambers of the temple, until finally she had reached the outer terrace. And there it was that she saw the rest of the invasion.
And it was an invasion.
The accursed sprites had come in numbers. She could see hundreds of them on the terrace, gathering together as they waited to enter. No doubt they were waiting for word from their advance party as to how well the attack had gone before they entered. Their warriors.
But they wouldn't receive that word she silently promised them as the anger in her heart ran wild. And they wouldn't be entering the Temple. They were murderers! Cut throats and outlaws! Brigands of the worst sort! They were not welcome! Not in the Temple. Not even on the terrace. They had to go.
Wind! The idea came to her as she stood there just inside the entrance, concealed by shadow, staring at them, hating them with every fibre of her being. They were small people with gossamer wings. Wind, she realised, would be her friend. And luckily there was always plenty of wind circling the giant volcano. It took seconds for her to find it in her thoughts, and then redirect it down the steep sides of the volcano. To magnify it until it hit them with the full fury of a hurricane.
The sprites stood there and stared as they heard the sound and tried to work out what it was. Then when the truth came to them they braced themselves and desperately started casting. But it wasn't enough. They had been too slow. The wind smashed them in the face like a tornado, picked them up and then blew them away. And seconds after that they were gone from the terrace, beginning their long falls to the endless forest below.
The entire terrace was empty. Free of the winged vermin.
Some would survive, she assumed. Some might even make it back to the terrace in time. Maybe most of them. The rest, if they survived the fall, would find themselves lost in a forest filled with ancient and powerful beings who didn't like mortals very much. That would be unfortunate for them. She didn't know what lived in the endless forest below. No one was stupid enough to enter it. But she knew she didn't want to meet them.
Elodie didn't care about that though. She cared that the terrace was empty. And that the portal was hers to command. She wasn't going to allow that. There would be no more sprites arriving. Coming to take control of the Temple and murder her. It was the work of a moment for her to close the portal down. In fact it was just a word. The portal responded to the commands of the guardians.
But she wasn't done. Some of them might have landed on the road or the path leading from it around the side of the volcano to the terrace. They might walk the rest of the way. But she wasn't going to let that happen either. So with another word she closed the road, letting the sides of the volcano simply roll over it. If any were on the road and determined to reach the terrace, they would have to climb.
But if they did, they wouldn't find what they were looking for. She walked back inside, put her hand on the stone wall and told it to close. Moments later instead of an entrance behind her, there was only stone. And like all the rest of the Temple, it was impenetrable to both magic and force. Only the guardians could command it.
Elodie let out a small sigh of relief. The Temple was closed. No one was coming in or leaving. The invasion had ended and the sprites had lost.
But she had lost far more. She had lost her friends. All of them. She was alone.
It was then that Elodie let that terrible understanding fill her. She was alone here. Her companions, friends and fellow guardians were dead. All of them as far as she could tell. Maybe there were a few left, hiding in the temple's extensive network of tunnels and chambers. Just as there were surely a few more sprites and their creatures. And in time she knew, she was going to have to go back in and see if she could find them.
But for just then as she stared at the stone wall and the empty empty terrace and the silent portal beyond it, she was all there was. And for some reason that overcame her.
Her anger suddenly faded. Her fear ran away as if it had never been. And all that was left was grief. Tears started running down her cheeks. Her legs failed her and she collapsed to the ground. And all she could think was that her friends were dead. Brutally murdered. And she was the last guardian.
How could that be?! It wasn't right!
Chapter Ten
The endless forest lived up to its name. It was endless. At least that was what it seemed to be to Fylarne after two days of trudging around blindly within it, heading for the Temple. Of course he didn't know which way the Temple was. He didn't even know which way north or south was. He'd been spun around so much that he had no sense of direction left to him, and then he'd been dropped in the middle of a forest of huge trees which didn't allow the sun to shine through let alone for him to spot a volcano. All he could see were trees. He couldn't see where the sun rose or set. The only way he knew it was day was that the sky directly above him was blue.
He was lost. His family were lost. Maybe they were dead – because he'd failed them. His friends were dead because he'd betrayed them. They shouldn't be. The sprites had struck too soon. There hadn't been time for him to act. And he'd had a plan. Part of a plan. A way to send his fellow guardians away before he lowered the Temple's defences. But the sprites had come too soon.
And now the only thing he knew was pain. Anguish. Prayers to the gods did not help. Nothing helped. Nothing relieved him of the soul crushing torment. Nothing ever would.
To add to his woes, he was hurting. And not just because of what he'd done. He tried to not think about that. Every time he did he wanted to die. He kept wishing that he hadn't survived the fall. But physically he was in poor shape. Just climbing down from the huge tree he'd arrived in had been an ordeal. And back then he hadn't been quite so stiff and sore. But on the forest floor his feet
had relearned standing and he'd discovered fresh pain. There was something wrong with his hip. He couldn't walk. Instead he hobbled dragging one entire leg behind him and doing his best not to twist or bend. Maybe it was his hip. Or maybe it was his back. He couldn't tell.
Naturally he'd done what he could to heal his injuries. But his gift of healing wasn't strong. He'd spent the last four years working on nothing but learning the knowledge he needed to battle the sprites. There hadn't been time to sit on any of the other thrones. The healing warmth he could send through his battered flesh was helping, but mostly only with the minor injuries. His hip was still agony every time he bent the wrong way. And his ribs and arm and face weren't much better.
Now he had a walking stick to help him get around. A sort of staff. A small tree branch he'd pulled off the forest floor, and between it and his one good leg, it was enough to keep him upright and moving. If only he knew which way he was heading. He was trying to get to the Temple, but he could be heading directly away from it.
If only the animals could tell him. The birds especially. But while he heard them, even caught glimpses of them high above in the trees, he couldn't talk to them. Others could. They could see through their eyes. But he hadn't sat on the lion throne. Only the sphinx.
Why was he still alive? Fylarne kept wondering about that. It wasn't that he wanted to die, though he knew he deserved death for his sins. It was simply that this was a dangerous place. Especially for someone like him. He was crippled. He was or had been bleeding from a dozen different wounds. He had to be the perfect prey. But nothing had attacked him in the two days he'd been here. Nothing had tried to eat him.
That seemed odd to Fylarne. This was the endless forest and it was filled with danger. At least as far as he knew. But he hadn't seen anything larger than a tree shrew since he'd been here. Or maybe a squirrel. There had been no big cats. No bears. And he certainly hadn't heard the sound of wolves howling as he would have expected. Only the birds chirping in the trees.
More than that he could keep warm. Each evening when he stopped he lit a fire – he did have enough magic for that even though he'd never sat on the dragon throne – and there was plenty of firewood on the forest floor. Meanwhile when it rained the thick canopy of trees above him kept the water away from him.
There was even food. Mostly mushrooms he found growing on fallen trees which somehow he knew were safe to eat. And berries too. It wasn't a lot. But it was enough. And water was plentiful as the rain when it came was captured by the large leaves of some of the trees and held in them waiting to be drunk. Warmth, water, food and safety. All found within the embrace of the endless forest. It didn't make sense. But he was grateful for it. And in time, he hoped, he would even find a way back to the Temple.
The way back though, was blocked. And oddly by a pile of rubble.
At first he didn't realise that. He just thought it was a collection of stones in front of him. And for some reason a winter chill. But then he spotted the straight lines of some of those stones in the huge pile, and he recognised them for what they were – blocks. This circular mound of rubble wasn't just a confused outcrop of stone. It was a ruin. Ancient beyond measure. And yet dangerous.
Dangerous to the point where it was frozen solid. So cold that he could hardly keep warm even at a distance from it. It was a warm day, but for some reason the stones were covered in ice even where they faced the sun. Ice that apparently because of the magic radiating from it, didn't melt.
Fylarne didn't know what was so dangerous about it. He didn't know if the ice had simply sprung from the magic within the stones or if someone had cast a spell upon it to stop people going out onto the rubble. But he could feel the evil and the danger radiating from the frozen ruin. This ruin was like a spider, waiting to jump out and dig its fangs into some unsuspecting fly that was foolish enough to land on its web. A web of broken stones instead of sticky silk. But still a web.
But what sort of spider could dwell within such a place? And was it frozen solid? Or the source of the ice?
He decided not to walk out onto the stones. It was an easy decision to make when every inch of his badly battered skin was crawling. When every breath he took was filled with the stench of corruption and danger. And when he didn't have a direction to head in either. What was the point of going through such a place when he could be heading in the wrong direction anyway?
So instead he walked around it, moving slowly between the trees that circled the massive pile of ruins, and trying not to trip over the roots. Because for some reason the land the ruins were on was raised a few feet above the forest floor, and the tree roots kept emerging from the sloping ground leading up to it.
But as he walked, he studied the ancient ruin, looking for anything that could tell him what it had been. But there was nothing. Not even enough left to show him the outline of the structure that had once stood there. It could have been a castle. It could have been a small stone town or a collection of walls. He had no way of knowing.
Then unexpectedly he came across a piece of rubble that did tell him something. A massive stone block that someone had carved script into. And he knew the script. He could read what was written. It was old and weathered, and the light falling on the script didn't seem to make things perfectly clear because thousands of years of rain on it had worn the lettering away. But there was enough left to make out a few words. And they weren't words that he expected to see.
He saw the words, “gaol cells,” “warning” and “danger”. And that was enough to tell him that this ancient stone structure had once been a gaol. But if it had been, if the entire area of rubble had once been a gaol, it had surely been a massive one. And this was old script. Older even than the script in the books in the library. Older than the Temple itself. Old enough in fact that the only way he could read it was because some of those books had had translations of the text itself. And the text was similar enough. There might be a few extra whirls and tails on some of the letters, a few of the words might be spelled strangely, the pictures twisted, but it was close enough.
So this had been built by the people who had built the Temple. Fylarne couldn't believe that. For a start none of the books in the library had mentioned anything about prisons the size of towns. But he couldn't deny the evidence of his eyes.
There was more though. More words to read. And they were perhaps even more disturbing. Because he knew them. They were the words for many of the peoples of the worlds. Giants, dwarves, elves and the others.
He recognised them, even as worn and strange as they were. And he recognised the arrows. This stone was a street sign of some sort. Save that gaols didn't have streets as far as he knew. Or quarters. It was almost as though they were directing the reader to the various cell blocks. The parts of the gaol where the different prisoners were kept.
Fylarne stood there for a while, staring, leaning perhaps a little more heavily on his makeshift staff than he would have liked, and losing himself in thought.
The ancients, the ones who had come before all others, had had gaols – and it had to be more than one because what were the chances that he would have walked directly towards the only one there was – filled with the peoples of the various worlds. Why? What did that mean? And why was there another arrow pointing towards some part of the ancient gaol that was labelled only as “study”?
Was it a study as in a reading room? Or was it a place where people studied things? Perhaps the prisoners?
In time he decided that he didn't want to know. He didn't want to find out. He was shivering, and not just because of the cold flowing from the ancient ruin. Because of what lay inside of it. And try as he might, he couldn't shake the feeling that there was something inside that ancient pile of stones, watching him. Something that would do much worse to him than just kill him.
So he turned and carried on, continuing his long journey around the ancient ruin, keeping his distance from it as best he could. And worrying all the time that something was going to leap
out of it and come for him.
It was a relief when he'd completed his way around it and could finally walk away, putting this ancient evil behind him – unless of course he found out he was travelling in the wrong direction and had to come back! But even as he walked – or hobbled in truth – away from it he found himself troubled by an obvious question.
Just what else was he going to find in this endless forest?
And then of course there was always the other question that disturbed him in his sleep and left him in a cold sweat whenever he was awake – how had the other guardians done? Had they won the battle? Had they fled. Had they at least survived? Some of them? As he walked away from the ruined prison and continued his long march towards the Temple and his friends, those questions started to plague him again.
And what of his family? Were they still alive? Still enslaved? Or had the sprites disposed of them once they'd taken the Temple – if they'd taken the Temple? Or were they now free?
He would give anything to know. Even as he feared finding out. As he feared that they had all been killed. Murdered by the lying sprites. Maybe he was lucky that he didn't know. Because the not knowing was terrible. But the answer could be worse. Maybe it was a mistake to try and return. Maybe, he thought, he was better not knowing.