Gaze of Fire

by Melissa Kellogg

  One of the deckhands flipped a rope ladder over the starboard side of the ship and flicked on a spotlight beam. He started shouting that there was something on the mud bank that they had skidded onto. They flanked him, and peered over.

  At first, it looked like tangles of pale and yellowish sticks in the mud. There also seemed to be tattered pieces of cloth stuck to them. Suddenly, Karena knew what they were. Shock swept through Karena. She swayed from feeling faint. Her head reeled. The stick-like objects were human bones, and they were wearing the remains of clothing that had the seal of Archelm City on them.

  The deckhand moved the spotlight around. There had to be at least fifty of them. Obviously, they had floated down the Ranarra River, which flowed through Archelm City on its way east, and washed up on the mud bank. There could be many more which hadn’t come to rest there.

  “What in the gods’ names is this?” Garth asked.

  Unable to handle the sight, Evelyn turned away with a hand to her mouth. Hadrian comforted her. Karena took in the scene before them. The mangled, aged remains couldn’t be dismissed as accidental. She tuned out the talking around her. Something was seriously wrong. The skeletons had come from Archelm City.

  She remembered when the Oaksvale Cemetery had flooded, and how she and Hadrian had discovered that there were empty coffins. Her memories jumped back to that one assignment at headquarters, and how she had babysat the front desk while the receptionist had helped the rest of her team with those scorpion flies. The phone had rung, and a brassy woman had started berating her about seeing corpses floating down the Ranarra River, and how they should be burying their dead and not throwing them into the river.

  Then there had been that whole incident where something had clawed its way out of a dirt wall inside a lady’s basement. The owner’s house had been built and occupied by vampires during the Vampire Regime.

  Karena thought about the feud and how it was four hundred years old. The feud had started a century after the Vampire Regime had ended. Because of her relationship with Asher, she saw past it now. Instead of being blinded by it and believing that Fires and Airs were murderous, Karena saw them as people just like her. The reoccurring deaths of elementals seemed to come from out of nowhere, without a buildup of escalation to lead up to them. The victims were mostly Chaos elementals.

  She remembered what Rose had said, and Rose was right, there should’ve been as many Chaos elementals as there were sorcerers and sorceresses, but as it was, there were only five in the entire city. In the Sundarin Nation, Chaos elementals were the number one threat to vampires, not sorcerers or sorceresses, because vampires were resistant to magical attacks. However, out of all the elementals, vampires despised Fires the most, because they were the ones who had burned vampires to death when everyone had overthrown the vampires, which had first started in Archelm City, and had ended the Vampire Regime. The first death of the feud had been a Fire elemental, and he had been a Chaos too.

  The feud couldn’t do away with all of the Chaos elementals, not without causing suspicion. There was a supposed curse that had befallen Chaos elementals, where they died young or were involved in tragic accidents. It didn’t make sense for elementals that powerful and gifted to die like that.

  She remembered her meeting with the Council. Three out of the five had been deathly cold to her, and had outvoted the others in letting her research hex locks, which she had found on coffins inside of the couch crypts of Oaksvale cemetery. From what Captain Valmar had said, hex locks dated back to the Vampire Regime, and had been made by hags and warlocks. Vampires loved positions of power. It would make sense that they had found a way to infiltrate the top of their government structure.

  Everything clicked together inside of her like one horrifying puzzle that had completed itself. She grabbed onto the railing, but even that couldn’t steady her. She fell to the ground, and Hadrian knelt down to her. He rubbed her arms and looked into her eyes to ask her what was wrong. She saw his lips move, but couldn’t hear what he was saying.

  “They’re back,” Karena said, breaking out of her momentary spell.

  He frowned. “Who’s back?” he asked.

  “The vampires.”

  Hadrian shook his head. He said, “What are you talking about? Vampires are extinct.”

  “That’s a lie. We were told to believe that for generations. After a while, no one questioned it and it became an accepted fact. We have been brainwashed.”

  “Why would we be brainwashed into thinking that?”

  “Do you really think that they left for good? Vampires can live for centuries, and sometimes for even a thousand years. They can lie dormant in the ground for long periods of time. Nothing evil ever truly goes extinct; it just goes into hiding. Remember our training, remember what Captain Valmar taught us?”

  “Yes. He taught us that it may look like a dangerous cryptid has gone extinct, like the targarion and the irkarius, but they haven’t. He said that it’s never wise to assume that a cryptid as gone extinct, even if it appears to be within the Sundarin Nation.”

  “What level is a vampire classified at?”

  His eyebrows pushed together. His mouth gaped open and shut. “That’s not in the books,” he said, startled by his revelation. “Why aren’t they in the books?”

  “Because they removed themselves. They know that if they alter our history and catalog books in a discreet enough manner, we won’t be able to tell. We don’t live as long as they do, and therefore, we have to keep written accounts in order to know what happened in the past, otherwise, it’s just word of mouth. If you think about it, they should be classified as a level eight or higher, which is the same classification as a human and elf because they have a consciousness.”

  “Shouldn’t they be labeled higher?”

  “No. They are a parasitic race, which is why they aren’t bumped up to a level nine. Being a parasitic race means that although they are cruel and dangerous, they have serious flaws and weaknesses due to their inability to exist independently. They can’t function without being used by another race or taking advantage of a weaker one,” Karena said.

  Elves would’ve been a level nine, but their reclusiveness kept them at a level eight. They were highly dangerous when provoked. However, they could be extremely peaceful. Level tens were god-like beings, who were capable of mass destruction. Demonic forces could reach level ten, but so could angelic forces. Angelic forces always beat the demonic forces because the angelic forces tapped into powers that the demonic ones couldn’t.

  “What are you two talking about?” Garth said, butting into their conversation.

  Garth knelt down to join them, as did Evelyn and the rest of his crew who had gathered there. Karena quickly explained what she knew and suspected. They all paled. They shook their heads, not wanting to believe what she had to say, but as gearcrafters, they had more to fear from vampires than even she did. During the Vampire Regime, gearcrafting had been banned, and anyone who had been caught practicing it had been publicly executed. They were dark times for nonmagical folks, especially for those who seemed to have a natural affinity for tinkering with metal parts.

  When she was done, silence fell on them, disturbed only by the buzzing of insects.

  “There’s nothing we can do about this at the moment, except retrieve a couple of those corpses as evidence. When we get back to the Sundarin Nation, we can make our case to those you know and trust,” Garth said.

  “I agree,” Hadrian said, and helped Karena up. “We have to get moving or else we’ll never make it in time to the sacred ruins.”

  “This changes everything,” Karena said, still in a daze.

  “Karena?” Hadrian said, and gripped her shoulders. “Focus. Listen to me. We’re not in Archelm City. We’re in the middle of the Markhan Territory. It’s great that you realized this because no one else would’ve. You figured it out, but we can’t do anything about it while we’re out here.”

  Karena met his gaze. His calm, emerald-
green eyes helped pull her out of her despair. She returned to the task at hand and looked towards the distant, obscure form that Evelyn had said was the Cattail keep. The ruins were underneath it. She had to save Asher. Time was ticking.

  Garth rubbed his tired face with his hands. He said, “There are planks down below that can help you walk over the mud. After you cross the mud bank, it looks like you’ll have to swim to get to the river’s shore.”

  “Thank you, but I have an easier solution,” Karena said.

  Being nonmagical had to be a pain. She could see why they were naturally inclined to being inventive. They had to come up with solutions for things that she could take care of with her elemental powers.

  “We have to make it to the keep quickly. The longer that we’re out in the swamplands at night, the more in danger we’ll be,” Evelyn said. She hopped onto the railing, about to take off into the sky.

  Karena climbed over the side and down the rope ladder. Her feet sank into the mud. All around her were the skeletal remains of the deceased. It was like something out of a nightmare. She half expected one of them to twitch and come to life, so she kept an eye on the ones closest to her, which were not even a foot away. Cold air billowed off of her.

  Hadrian landed next to her. She struggled to lift one of her boots out of the mud. Her foot felt like it had twenty pounds strapped to it. The mud was like thick glue. She iced the mud, and stepped onto the icy walkway that she had made. The thin ice crackled under her weight.

  With Hadrian following her, Karena walked across the mud bank and to the water’s edge of the flowing river. She didn’t want to swim across it. The water was cloudy from sediment and decaying vegetation. She threw out some ice near the bank, layered it like a cake, and stepped onto the small platform that she had made. Hadrian got on too, and clung to her waist. By using her mind and her influence over the ice, she scooted the platform into the water and it floated down the river like a mini iceberg with them on it.

  Behind her, Hadrian asked, “How are we going to steer?”

  “Uhhh, I’m not sure about that part yet,” Karena said. She couldn’t manipulate water unless it was frigid cold or had turned into ice. Their platform drifted along without a way to steer it or push it unless she used a lot of her energy to do so.

  She eyed the vague form of the keep in the distance. They needed to keep floating in order to narrow the distance between them and the keep as much as possible. It would save time and energy spent going over the difficult terrain.

  Having anticipated their needs, Evelyn flew towards them with a rope that she had taken from the airship. Evelyn tossed the end of the rope to her. Karena caught it, and Evelyn gently tugged them towards the shore. Her feet slipped across the mini iceberg, but she covered them with ice in order to cement them down.

  A stone’s throw away, a scaly head popped out of the water to look at them. It bared its teeth like a dog would. Judging from the size of its head, it wouldn’t be a threat to them. It disappeared back under the water.

  A minute later, something bumped against the ice underneath them. Karena had an uneasy feeling about it. Before anything could happen, Karena reeled themselves in towards the shore with Evelyn’s help as fast as she could. Her arms burned.

  When their iceberg knocked against the shore, they hopped off. She kicked it back into the river. To her horror, a swarm of those lizard-like creatures converged on the iceberg. They tore it apart with their claws, and tried to bite it. The sound was like metal nails scraping across glass.

  Hadrian tugged on her sleeve and pointed. Sticking up out of the mud were broken, stone pillars. Their ornate features hadn’t yet been completely worn away by time. They went up to them and stared through the large entrance that they formed. Peeking out of the mud, reeds, and water was a shattered landscape of carved rock.

  Even after many centuries, the swamp was still in the process of digesting the ruins of what she knew had once been the Cattail Fortress. The land had caved in underneath the abandoned fortress, and it was slowly sinking away out of sight. The fortress’s walls had crumbled to head-height, and was now serving as a trellis for invasive vines to climb up and drape over. Some of the towers stood in the distance like aging soldiers. They were held up by only a few rotting beams and stone innards. Their outer, circular walls were pitted and giant fistfuls of their stone bricks had gone missing.

  The keep stood on a slight rise. It was boxy in shape, and was six stories tall with small windows and a battlement on top of its roof. Unlike the rest of the fortress, it seemed to be intact. Karena figured that it had been built on bedrock.

  The moonlight filtered through the cypress trees like a silvery, omnipresent ghost. Tattered curtains of moss hung from the trees’ branches. Creatures crashed through the brush and around their trunks, playing hide-and-seek it seemed like with her imagination.

  “Luck favors us,” Hadrian said in a hushed voice. He was equally as spooked by their surroundings as she was.

  “How so?”

  “We have a road to walk on, or at least what’s left of one,” he said, and gestured to what was before them.

  Between the stumps of what had been the gatehouse, which lay just beyond the two broken pillars, were the crumbs of what had been a road. Mud oozed between the stone pavers. Shoots of sawgrass and scraggly trees had taken root to further the road’s destruction. Next to what was left of this road in the distance, remains of houses and buildings pitched to one side, or had cracked open and caved in.

  “We are lucky for now. If something is meant to happen, then a way will be shown to achieve it. But it doesn’t mean it will be easy,” Karena said. Hadrian was right; they were fortunate, and had been so far. They had stumbled upon the main entrance of the Cattail Fortress by accident. Instead of being forced to trek through the boggy terrain, they had a somewhat clear and solid way forward.

  Hadrian swatted away some flying insects. He said, “Imagine what this place was like back in its heyday.”

  Karena didn’t care. Places went through their own life and death cycles, where there was creation and then decay. Before the decay of the Cattail Fortress, people had probably docked their boats by the shore, close to where they were standing, and gotten off to visit the markets or family. If they were spiritwalkers, they lived and trained in the keep. Those days were long gone, but yet, not. Evil was pushing its way westward again, as it had during the heyday of the Cattail Fortress. But everyone had been on the frontlines to combat it, whereas nowadays, no one was.

  Time was precious and running out. It could’ve easily have been nine o’clock already, but she figured it was closer to eight. The keep was a couple miles away, which was closer than before, but still, far away.

  Hadrian nudged her. “Can we make it?” he asked.

  “We don’t have a choice, but to try,” Karena said. However, it was likely that they would have to run through the equivalent of a gauntlet or an obstacle course, or perhaps both, just to get to the keep. They were endangering their lives by doing this.

  Hoots, howling, screaming, and strange noises disrupted the night. The reeds around them rustled, but not from any wind that was present. Karena bounded forward with Hadrian right behind her. She sprung from dry patch of road to another, avoiding the mud. Sometimes, there wasn’t a solid place to land her feet, so she splashed through black puddles of stinky water or dashed through clusters of reeds. Despite the fact that she risked spraining her ankle or breaking her leg, using the fading road was better than going over the swampy grounds. She panted as she ran. Her eyes darted from one area to another, mapping where her feet should go next.

  As she ran, nocturnal cryptids startled around her. Animals and cryptids forging for food and hunting for prey darted away. Their fast speed and human scent alarmed the cryptids for now, but it wouldn’t be long before they realized that she and Hadrian could be a potential source of food too.

  The road led to a water channel, but there wasn’t a bridge to span over
it. It had vanished into the stagnant water below ages ago. Karena skidded down the embankment and jumped onto a rug-sized lily pad. She hopped from lily pad to lily pad until she made it to the other side. A giant frog on the shoreline leapt towards her. Its brightly colored body oozed poison. She dashed away with Hadrian close on her heels. The frog croaked in complaint behind her.

  Nearby, some kind of a snake raised its head seven feet above the ground. Horn-like protrusions adorned its head. Its eyes glowed green in the silver moonlight. It dropped down, and they heard the sounds of it coming for them.

  “Run ahead of me,” Karena shouted to Hadrian.

  He sprinted and overtook her. She frosted the ground behind her and to her left, where they had seen the huge snake. The coldness would deter it. An amphibious, catfish-like lizard wiggled across the jagged, tilted road ahead of them as it made its way to another pond. Karena skidded to a stop before it. The bushes and reeds to her left thundered with noise as the snake approached. She froze two of its fins to the ground in the hopes that its struggles to get free would entice the snake more than them, which would require more energy to chase after. She left it behind to meet its fate, whatever that might be.

  After ceasing to hear the snake, Karena concluded that it had given up on them. A putrid stench wafted around. It smelled like rotting cabbages. Just like Hadrian, she was forced to inhale it. It only added to her discomfort. Her pants were soaked past her sore and scraped up knees. Her legs ached and were tiring. She envied Evelyn, who didn’t have to partake in their earthly toil. Evelyn simply flew ahead of them, perched on a stone column or some other structure, waited for them to pass, and then repeated the process.

  “What I……wouldn’t give….to have…. wings right now,” Karena rasped between pants.

  “I’m still wondering……if she was born….in an egg or not,” Hadrian replied.