by Greg Curtis
Now she was alone in the Temple. The sprites were on the terrace – trapped there. Unable to break in and unable to leave. And hopefully looking forwards to starving to death. Normally they would simply summon whatever they needed from another realm. But there could be no other portals and no summonings on the terrace other than the grand portal. So they went hungry. And then they tried to break in to the Temple, forgetting the basic principle of this world. Prima was real. All other worlds, and therefore all other magic from those worlds were mere shadows. Nothing they could do could harm any part of Prima. But what else was there for them to do? So they still kept trying to break in. And they still kept failing.
As the long days had passed, she'd begun to think that there was nothing the sprites could do. That all their attempts to break in were without hope. And yet still the magic they were unleashing on the other side of the entrance, was immense. Sometimes they shook the entire volcano as they cast their spells. And she didn't understand even a fraction of the magic they were unleashing. But whatever it was, it kept failing. And she lived in hope that it would always remain the same.
Unfortunately, while they battled the Temple's defences, she was trapped here too. Everyone was stuck. They couldn't get in, no one else could arrive and she couldn't get out. But at least she had food and drink. They had neither and without a portal or a way in or out of Prima, no way of obtaining them.
From now on it was just a waiting game. She had to wait for them to either die of starvation, or else make a desperate rush through the endless forest and try to make it to the road. They would be very unlikely to succeed if they tried that. The endless forest was endless because it didn't really have the same dimensions as a normal world.
This was Prima – the only true world. All the other worlds were shadows of it. And as such they were limited. They had boundaries. The worlds were giant balls in space circling the stars. You could only travel so far on them before you ended up back where you had started from. On Prima you could travel forever and still never make it back to where you had begun. And worse, no matter how many leagues you had travelled you might not be any further away from where you had started. Distances did not work the same way on Prima as they did anywhere else.
To enter the endless forest was to almost certainly never be seen again. Even if you survived.
But what did she do while she was waiting for the sprites to die? That was the question that most troubled Elodie as she spent day after day waiting for the end of the siege. She had disposed of the dead as best she could. Cleaned the Temple and purified it according to the ancient rituals. She had sent a message out to all the worshippers telling them what had happened and that the Temple was closed until the attack ended. What was there left to do?
Mostly these days she spent her time reading. Either in her chambers or in the roof terrace garden. She regularly checked to see what the sprites were doing – for the most part they were sitting or lying out on the terrace doing nothing. And every so often she visited the Heartfire. But she wanted someone to speak to. She wanted her friends back. She wanted to stop weeping. And she wanted to know why the sprites had done what they had. She understood that they believed the Heartfire would restore their wings to them. Make them who they had once been. But she didn't know why they thought that. Most people didn't even think that they had been these ancient lords of the sky to begin with. It was just a legend. A tale told at night around a fire to entertain. Certainly she had never thought it was any more than that.
It was time to check on the sprites, she decided when she finally got to the end of the page once more and realised that she couldn't remember what she'd read. To see if they had finally started dying. They had to be growing extremely hungry by now. Weak. It had been a week and a half since they'd eaten anything. And if it hadn't been for the rain that kept falling every so often, they would have surely died of thirst already.
So she closed her book and laid it down on the chair as she stood up. Then she straightened her robes and headed back inside. It was lucky that the sprites didn't know about this high terrace. Though she could lock this entrance down too, she would hate to lose her daily access to the garden. And she would hate it even more if they found enough food in it to keep going for longer. But thankfully they hadn't. They might have wings, but the sprites couldn't fly, and it seemed that they weren't in a hurry to explore the outside of a volcano by scaling its sides. Naturally they couldn't see it from the terrace. So for the moment it was safe as they continued their relentless assault on the entrance to the Temple.
Inside, things weren't as they should be though. Something was wrong, though she couldn't quite have said what. Everything looked the same, but it just didn't feel the same. It was almost as though the Temple had become nervous. As if it was waiting for an axe to strike. Elodie didn't know what that was. But she didn't like it.
Had the sprites finally found a way inside?!
Worried she hurried for the front entrance. Walking quickly down the sloping passageways and then almost running along the rest of them, until she finally found herself at the great stone door, breathless. And there, staring out through the glass porthole above it, she saw the sprites hard at work.
They were doing something – but she couldn't see what. The glass porthole above the door was at least three feet thick, and though it had been well made, it still tended to make things look a little distorted.
But they were drawing something on the terrace. Using chalk stone they must have brought with them. It had to be some sort of enchantment, she knew. A new one. But she didn't recognise any of the symbols she saw being marked out on the enormous terrace. It wasn't in the traditional arcane script that the Temple taught all its visitors. It had to be in the script of the sprites themselves – Viarnee – except that she had seen a lot of that over the years and it didn't look much like that either.
But what they were drawing troubled her less than the looks on their faces. There were probably seventy or more of the sprites engaged in the marking, and all of them looked like they were facing the end of the world and writing their wills. She doubted that they were though. sprites never really thought about death. It wasn't their way. They only ever thought about their next victory or their next laugh. After all they called themselves Nabris Ne Yall – the Rulers of the Skies – and rulers, especially those that ruled the skies, did not die. They were gods – or as near to such things as they could be. At least in their own minds.
Elodie stood there for an hour or more, watching them as they worked, trying to understand what the enchantment was. But nothing in what she could see made sense to her. Nothing in it looked like any enchantment she'd ever seen. But the Temple clearly didn't like it. She could feel its moods, and it was clearly uneasy. Maybe outraged. She could almost feel it recoiling from what was beig written.
Eventually, when she'd had enough of just standing there in ignorance, she went to the Heartfire. Maybe it would be able to tell her something more.
Others, those who weren't guardians, assumed that the Heartfire was simply a raw energy of some sort. That the magic in it was nothing more than fire or lightning or any other energy. But it wasn't just that. It was more. Magic had a life of a sort. It was a living thing. And this Temple, this very volcano, built or grown somehow to contain it, had a sort of life. Not a consciousness. But enough that it could feel things. And as a guardian she could feel it. She was attuned to its emotions. Sometimes, when she was extremely quiet, it could even show her things.
But what she could feel from the Temple and more from the Heartfire at its core, was something between fear and offence. Maybe horror. Whatever the sprites were doing, it didn't like. Not at all. And the horror was growing stronger. Building.
By the time she reached the Heartfire itself, she could see its outrage and alarm. The normally calm if bubbling lava was boiling as she had never before seen it. Great spurts of burning hot molten fury were shooting up into the air, thirty or forty paces. Almost
shooting out of the stone cauldron that contained it. Black smoke was rising above it as the air itself seemed to catch fire. And the ground was shaking. Trembling with rage.
That scared her. She had never seen the Temple in this sort of state before. Never even heard of such a thing.
But this close she could feel its fear. She understood a little of what it felt. And it was the fear of being trapped. Of being enclosed into a small space, unable to breathe. More than that she didn't understand. But maybe she didn't need to. Because it brought her enough understanding of what they were doing.
The sprites, the winged vermin, had given up on trying to seize the Temple. They'd realised there was no hope. So now they'd decided on a new course. If they couldn't have the Temple for themselves – no one could. So they were going to try and wall the Temple off. This enchantment was some sort of barrier.
The Temple understood that clearly. But it didn't tell her what to do about it.
Elodie took to her heels again, running back through the passage way to the entrance and then climbing the ramp up to the port hole above the door, trying desperately to think of something to do. But by the time she made it there, it was already too late.
The sprites had finished their great enchantment and were standing well back from it, concentrating, putting all their magic and all their will into activating it. And even as she saw them, the first part of the magic burst free.
Black fire suddenly burst from the ground, streaking up into the sky for as far as she could see, and the sight of it chilled her to the bone. This was primordial flame. The darkness from which all had emerged. She recognised it instantly even though she had never seen it before. No one had. There were only representations of it in books. Images that had been copied and recopied a hundred or a thousand times so that they were actually older than all known history.
How could the sprites know how to summon that? No one knew how! And surely no one who did, would ever call forth the destruction of the very beginning! It was suicide! But the sprites had, and now chaos reigned outside. Chaos and darkness that only grew thicker and stronger. Nothingness that claimed the far end of the terrace and the sprites themselves. They had foolishly stepped back from the enchantment when they'd cast it, obviously not wanting to get caught up in the magic as it was released, and instead been captured by the void they had created behind them.
She stared at that in horror and tried to deny it. To tell herself that everything her eyes and her soul was telling her, was a lie. But she couldn't. It was all too real.
And somewhere beyond that darkness she could hear the screaming that she knew was the sprites themselves. Even though she knew her ears could hear nothing, she knew their terrified screams. They had been caught up in their own primordial fire and become no more. Less than nothing. They had become part of the void.
Meanwhile the Temple itself, the Heartfire, had responded. She could feel its power, its living fury standing tall against the darkness, as the first war started anew. Light against darkness. Creation against nothingness. Order against chaos.
“Lady save us all!” She murmured her prayer, not even sure to which of the Lady's she was offering it. All of them probably. But it didn't matter. This was one thing that even the gods and the goddesses could do nothing about. The void was older than them. It had come before. The gods, all of them, were part of what had emerged from the void. They too were created.
After that she just stood there at the window, staring at the flaming void covering the furthest part of the terrace, and wondered what happened next..
Why had they done this? Even more than the how, the reason for it confused her. This was a monstrous evil that the sprites had unleashed. And she couldn't understand why anyone would have done it. The cost was simply too great. Surely. And there could be no reward.
If their intent had been to destroy the Temple, it would not work. The Temple would stand. The Heartfire would continue. Because the Heartfire was what had first emerged from the void. It was the beginning while the void was the before. But even if the primordial fire could not advance on the Temple, it would not be bound. It would not be held by any wards. Not mortal wards anyway. Not those of the gods either. And though it could not consume the Temple it would spread. It would grow outwards and slowly consume the endless forest and the rest of Prima. And when Prima no longer existed, neither would the shadow worlds.
In the end there might once more be only darkness left, and the Heartfire within it. And of course her, trapped within it all. An insect trapped in amber. Lost in an eternal prison. While all the others, the worshippers, the people, her family and even the sprites themselves, would be consumed by the void. They would all die.
This was literally the end of all.
Chapter Fourteen
Fylarne tramped along the river bank as he had been doing for the past two days. And as he did so he tried to keep his thoughts on the task at hand – finding the road. Because every time he let them wander they followed their well worn path back to his guilt and shame and grief, or to his endless unanswered questions. Actually it was just one question. Just what had the winged vermin done?
Elodie's most recent sending had been very clear. And it had been good to know that she was still alive. That at least someone was. It was even good to know that the sprites were gone. That they had been consumed by their own magic. But the Temple had been surrounded by the void? That didn't make any sense. It wasn't what had been supposed to happen.
He had worked hard to reshape the books he had stolen from the sprites. To make them show something that was very close to what had originally been written in them, but not perfectly so. The winged vermin had wanted power. The magic they believed had once belonged to their ancestors and which had somehow been stolen from them. So he had worked hard to change just the sections of the books that dealt with the flow of magic. Rewriting the enchantments he knew that they would have to cast.
It was such a simple thing. They should have cast their enchantments, thinking that the magic of the Heartfire would flow into them. Fill them up and cause them to be reborn as their ancestors supposedly had been. Naturally their plans should have gone wrong and the Heartfire should have stolen back all the magic that they had and left them helpless. But instead they'd somehow brought the void to Prima? Surrounded the Temple with it? And perhaps even brought about the end of days?
How could that happen?! More importantly, how could what he had done have led to it? And what could he do about it?
More troublesome though was the sky. This was Prima. The first world. All other worlds were but shadows of it. It was vast at least if not endless. He wasn't truly sure which. It was the real world. The one from which other worlds were born. This was a stronger, tougher thing. A world that could not be destroyed. And yet the sky was yellow and orange, even in the middle of the day. Strange winds howled above him and every so often lightning crashed though there was no rain.
Whatever the sprites had released in their madness, it was tearing at the very essence of Prima itself. And if it was doing that here, on Prima, what was it doing to the shadow worlds? Did they even still exist? Or had they already been consumed by the void? He had no way of knowing. Not until he finally found the path that ran between worlds and followed it all the way back to the gate where he would hopefully be able to see what lay on the other side – before he risked stepping through it. If there was only void on the other side, he would know – probably.
But then if there wasn't, what would he do? Elodie had said that the grand portal was gone, lost to the void. The road leading up the side of the volcano to the terrace was also gone. And if the shadow worlds were gone too, that left only the road with no destinations weaving its way between bits of void that had once been worlds, and Prima. His universe had just become far smaller. His options fewer. And in time if Elodie was right, they would become none. Everything save the Temple itself which he couldn't reach, would be consumed.
Fylarne tried n
ot to think about that as he wandered along the river bank, heading he hoped, in the direction of the road. And he tried even harder not to think about what this meant for his family. Trapped on N'Diel, bound into slavery by the sprites, and now perhaps lost to the void. Not even dead but uncreated. Not even a memory. Because of him. And when he failed to put it out of his mind, he walked harder, pushing himself until it hurt.
Snapping sounds though were a useful distraction. And when he heard them, he stopped in his tracks and started looking around hurriedly.
Fylarne knew what they were. He had heard them periodically ever since he'd found the river and started walking alongside it. They belonged to big, green reptiles. Four legged monsters that would burst out of the muddy water at high speed and try to bite his legs off. They had horrible long snouts full of dagger like teeth and every time they closed them, he could hear the sound of bone smashing onto bone.
Strangely, despite everything he had done and the guilt he felt, he didn't want to die. Fylarne couldn't quite understand why he wanted to live either – perhaps it was just a reflex of some sort – but he didn't want to die. Least of all at the hands of these river monsters. It would surely be a painful death and maybe he was just a coward.