I did the only thing I knew to do.
I laughed.
I laughed long and loud.
I laughed full and clear.
I laughed as I whipped.
I laughed as I darted.
I laughed as I tumbled.
I enjoyed myself.
Until this moment dashing behind and above Lucius, I had never truly known the joy and freedom of true flight.
I relished the moment.
I savored the joy.
I was filled with liberation.
I did not care if the dragons above mocked me or looked down upon my frivolity.
I did not care if the el’amin thought me daft or unworthy.
There was but one moment, and I was living it.
As a kite.
“Noema’lun, you must make ready. We near the lands of the el’amin.
“Though it is protected, juel’dara have made incursions far into our home.
“Your current form is…inadvisable.”
I really had little grounds to argue with Lucius. He knew his business.
Trying to enter a fight with demons as a kite would be like trying to carve a dragon with a butter knife.
In the end, it would be short, ineffectual, and messy.
I was not prepared to be the mess.
I was messy enough already.
Imagining my intent, clearly expressing my need and my will, I begin to gather power into myself. This time I took care.
With a jarring wrench, my spell was completed and I slowly sank toward the ground.
No longer a kite, I was once again a rock.
At least now I could take a beating.
I anticipated getting a few.
The land around us had not changed significantly.
The mountains here were high enough that the peaks were above the tree line, though magical entities still thrived in the heights covering the rocks and outcroppings with fantastic formations and haunting colors. The wide, deep valleys were brimming with life in countless forms, but the signs of demonic incursion were present.
There were blighted regions on the slopes where all vegetation had died or was dying.
Whole swathes of forest had been burnt, wracked with disease, vilely desecrated, or tortuously mutated almost beyond recognition.
Despite the damage and signs, we saw no demons.
Their damage, like their efforts, was now concentrated principally on Noema’jin.
A Nightmare Reborn
I stood alone atop an intimately familiar rocky escarpment. The threatening, bilious sky seethed turbulently overhead, its movements provoked by some internal upheaval, the low clouds looking near enough to touch, ready to descend from the heavens and blanket the earth in a gray brume.
I did not fear the clouds or what might or might not lie within them, for I knew this was a dream.
And though dreams were sometimes portents of what might come, I did not anticipate anything coming for me from within the roiling mass above.
I was coming for what might lie within.
A hellish wind, as fierce as the heat exiting a blacksmith’s forge, lashed savagely across my face, eagerly pulling the moisture from my eyes, mouth, and nostrils, leaving my vision blurred, my eyes unable to stop blinking, my lips chapped, and my nose burning and inflamed.
My clothes whipped about me, the fabric too short to become entangled but long enough to be caught by the savage wind, the fabric cracking with every mercurial turn and furious adjustment of the currents.
To slake my thirst, prepared for this moment, I drank some water from the waterskin I had placed inside my robes.
I drank deeply.
I would not be here again.
I adjusted my footing, the rough rocks cutting into the soles of my feet through my boots as I balanced atop the wind-sharpened stones.
Parched, denuded plains stretched to the horizon, the landscape as fissured as my afflicted lips, as dehydrated as my nose.
There was no life visible within its reaches.
The land, for all its harsh emptiness, had a pure, bleak beauty.
Just as I remembered it.
The acrid, nauseating smell of sulfur filled my nostrils, a reminder of my purpose here and what must be done.
I would be the counter to this stench.
By remedying its source.
Thereby preventing myself from ending up here ever again.
As much as I enjoyed dreams, I loathed nightmares.
And their sources.
I smiled, perhaps lightly touched by a certain madness, my lips cracking further.
I could taste the metallic tang of blood on my lips.
It would not be my blood that would be spilled this day.
Or so I hoped.
Eldritch forces coursed through my veins, overfilling my etheric channels with unbounded potential, the raw essence of arcana seething through my soul, longing to be released.
I was afire, an empyrean being descended directly from Heaven prepared to enact divine retribution upon the legions of Chaos.
I was a mortal man, ready to ensure my people’s survival on a world threatened with extinction.
I was a guardian, willing to give my life that others may live.
I was just a person trying to make a difference.
I was ready to make this dream—one of a safe, shielded Uërth—reality.
I would help create a future brighter than the past, reality improved upon over the dream.
My eyes fixed on the broken plains, I no longer saw the end of an era.
I imagined the beginning of a new one.
I would not watch Uërth’s greatest tragedy unfold again. I would remake it, recast the vision given to me into something more, something different, and something of my own choosing.
As I watched, the very fabric of existence above the bare earth on the plains began to warp and contort disturbingly, bulging and shifting in ways my mind rebelled futilely against, ways that I could not follow or understand, assaulted by some extradimensional force.
I could sense the titanic, unholy malevolence on the other side, whole universes away, striving to break through, a demonic god struggling to be unleashed, the world ready to shatter beneath its incomprehensible weight.
I had to stop it.
There was no other choice.
“Lucius!
“To me!
“You are needed!
“Our time is here!”
Filled with resolve, I began to envision and crystallize my intent, forming the vision I wished to see, creating the possibility I wanted to express.
Filled with a calm acceptance, letting any nascent fear serve as fuel for my actions, I prepared to meet my destiny.
Potent magics burst to life around me, sheathing my form in a tumultuous cloak of incandescent, hallowed energies.
I felt like an angel.
Whether I looked as uplifting as I felt was another matter entirely.
Lucius arrived at my side, his unwavering reassurance as appreciated as a horrific nightmare’s end—wakening to discover that all is right and well…or at least far better than the terrible dream.
Arriving with Lucius, a surging oceanic tide of living rock cresting over the ridgeline, an immense elemental host gathered, ready to meet the demonic invaders should the legions of Night manage to break through from the deepest pits of the Abyss. With many a form and figure—smooth and coarse, timeworn and untouched, small and sleek, colossal and irresistible—with all the weight and might of the Uërth itself, the world’s oldest native guardians made ready to meet the juel’dara eye to eye, face to face.
The battle would determine Uërth’s destiny.
If it happened.
I was going to do everything in my power to prevent this conflict, for to do otherwise would allow untold hardship and woe to befall the people and places of Uërth.
I had no other choice.
Lucius floated beside me, his chimeric simplic
ity and elegantly subtle lines masking a puissance as great as any demon’s. Beyond Lucius, part of the teeming mass of earthen wardens, mighty obelisks thundered, towering above the raw rock formations. Within the massed elementals, el’amin that resembled the raw faces of cliffs, the smoothly tumbled stones of creek beds, and the chipped faces of fractured rock intermingled in expectant preparation. Sunlight flashed off the lambent surfaces of living jewels and iridescent minerals, while understated rocks of gray, black, brown, white, and ochres commingled with their eye-catching brethren.
All these elementals were here for one overarching purpose—to stop the infernal invasion at any cost. If successful, their efforts and aims encompassed many others, from protecting their homelands to preserving the Uërth in all its wondrous beauty and diversity, from preventing the demons from breaking through the barriers between dimensions to saving future generations from facing the suffering they might soon endure.
Whatever their reasons, the elementals were here and they would help.
I would need everything I could get.
Lucius understood my need, the words, if not the intent, unspoken between us.
He would be my conduit to the elementals’ power, allowing me to channel the Uërth’s life force to shield us from demonic invasion.
At least that was my hope.
One Lucius shared.
Lucius gave a quick motion indicating his readiness, and I began my invocation.
The power surrounding me emanated outward, quickly enveloping the elemental host in a shimmering iridescence reminiscent of silvery moonlight falling gently to Uërth during a full moon, uniting us in a single energetic halo.
As this field moved outward and coalesced, I felt a growing connection with the el’amin, one far deeper than any I had known with any group before. As the barriers around and between us fell and the coherence among us grew, I began to feel the elementals as my self, living expressions of a great unity, power stemming directly from the Uërth, her innermost reaches and her farthest shores.
The el’amin were the conduits to the power necessary to seal the rift the demons were attempting to pry open, just as they were the means that I would use to shield the world from further demonic invasion.
Exactly as Master Nomba had first done with our village so long ago.
And as he had shown me.
The power was overwhelming.
Despite the anchor of the gathered el’amin, I began to lose myself in the building tumult of raging power.
While everything I knew about myself began to fade away into something far larger, I continued on with the incantation, less and less aware of myself as seconds ticked by in endless eternities, for I disappeared into the magic and the multitude, my facility increasing with this exponential expansion.
Wreathed in power unlike any I had ever known or imagined, the demons thundering at Uërth’s doorstep, I extended the incantation outward in a shimmering wave. Despite my best efforts to control the magic’s movements, even with the combined might and expertise of an army of elementals, the energies of the incantation quickly grew beyond me, taking on a life of their own, one far beyond mine.
Though I experienced these colossal forces as part of myself, for they were given birth in the collective might of the elemental swarm, drawn from the Uërth itself, I quickly became but a witness to the fullness of their expression, my intent providing the direction and framework for their motion, but offering little or no control.
What I had done, however, appeared to be enough.
The violent perturbations in the air, the tangible signs of impending infernal invasion, abated and stilled, the once-troubled air now calm and undisturbed.
Slowly moving across the globe, felt by me as increasingly distant movements of a vibrant wall of self-reinforcing power, its movements granted greater impetus by other el’amin scattered across the Uërth, this wellspring of demonic repudiation gradually grew to encompass the planet in its entirety.
And an aegis that would prevent further infernal incursion was born.
Uërth would have its future, one of its own choosing.
Slowly coming back to myself, the surreal quality of the dream fading as my clarity and purpose diminished, I rested a grateful hand upon Lucius’s smooth surface, the stone of his facets surprisingly warm to the touch.
All I could muster was a whispered, “We’ve done it, my friend.
“We’ve done it!”
Offering his support reassuringly through my quivering, enervated palm, Lucius agreed.
With a weak but full smile upon my face, I collapsed in exhaustion.
Content, my purpose fulfilled, darkness overcame me and I knew no more.
And Then There Was Another
Master Nomba clapped his hands together excitedly, the exuberance catching me off guard. I was unused to significant displays of emotion from my teacher, even if he encouraged them in me.
“We’ve got one!”
In the air before him, its light casting multicolored reflections on his glowing skin, a vision from Uërth’s past wavered and flickered.
There was a small township, its walls unbroken and unblemished, resting in the center of an otherwise desolate valley. The village appeared to be located at the edge of a dry riverbed. Behind its walls, looming in the distance, great peaks rose upward in defiance of the clouds above.
The hamlet itself was finely fashioned of living crystal, luminous and pure. Within the facets of those gems, myriad plants thrived, flowering and blossoming under the sculpted gems’ protection.
Whether this was a vision from the past, an illusion, a glimpse into another place, or a trap like Luistaer, I did not yet know.
“This is our next destination, Maeraeth!
“Even if the village does not need our protection, we can ward the valley to give its people room to grow and celebrate their freedom.”
I was not so certain.
After Luistaer and the village in the mount, I knew not everyone wanted help.
No matter how much we offered or how freely.
“Is it truly there, Master?
“This looks to me to be a glimpse of another place or time.
“Perhaps this is a warp or ripple in the continuum and not of Uërth at all.”
Master Nomba did not disparage my remarks.
He understood my concerns.
“You are indeed correct. That would also explain why my previous attempts to find signs of surviving civilization did not uncover this place.
“But we must investigate it, nonetheless.”
Nonetheless.
I refrained from sighing.
I was being a rather ungracious pupil.
Instead I nodded and tried to offer my teacher the enthusiasm he deserved but that I did not feel.
Though I knew Master Nomba saw through my ruse, I also knew he appreciated the attempt.
Over the Mountain and Through the Hell
Our prosaic journey toward Noema’jin did not last long.
By Lucius’s reckoning, we were perhaps a day from the heart of the elemental refuge in the Dragon’s Teeth.
Everywhere we looked, shattered stone told me stories not of a varied geologic past but of a tragic present. The fallen elementals mirrored the desecrated valleys, blasted and stripped of most life. Many areas appeared to have been caught in wildfires or wracked by outbreaks of alien disease.
Sadly, this was not the case.
Though the shattered remains of el’amin lay scattered about the mountainsides, so, too, were there many vile demonic corpses, far more than elementals, in fact.
At least in this, my heart rejoiced.
My heart also lamented that there were far more demons to fall than elementals.
And they were pushing the elementals back.
The dragons were the first to warn us of our imminent danger.
Through my elemental eyes, I could see corruption running loose in the land, vile currents of foul, alien energ
y sullying the otherwise pure and unobstructed energy flows. Though I could see the growing effects of demons, I could not gauge their location.
Having the advantage of height, flying high above, draconic vision did not present similar obstacles to the dragons.
A dragon’s voice, an all-encompassing song ringing through the heavens, once more entered our minds. “Be prepared, for in the next valley our war begins.
“Corruption lies heavy upon the land.
“We will cleanse the earth with fire, but be prepared for the demons to counter.
“Some infernals may flee justice from above.
“Be ready.”
I was not ready, but I had no choice.
Sometimes things were better that way.
As we flew up the last rise before the next valley, I watched the dragons bank skyward, their sinuous lines rippling through the air with each beat of their mighty wings, sunlight sparking off their scales in luminous flashes.
How could such beauty be so deadly?
“What should we expect when the dragons begin, Lucius?”
I sensed Lucius’s shrug rather than saw it. “Theirs is the fire that renews the earth, that gives rocks rebirth from molten stone.
“Their breath will reshape the valley and everything within it.”
Which is exactly why we were not there when they began their act of calefactory rejuvenation.
Or superheated destruction, depending on your perspective.
Fascinated by dragons, I had studied their lore in The Big Book of Knowledge many times, progressing through associated hierarchies of academia and subject matter. But no matter how much I watched, read about, or reviewed the various draconic subjects, nothing matched watching a dragon in flight.
Or a dragon breathing fire.
Imagine having the power of the sun burning in your gullet. Or, more accurately, the ability to create a magical star and exhale its plasmic corona in controlled bursts.
Dragons were magical supernovae, spewing forth arcane energies of untold destruction, energies that gradually spread throughout the world, enriching its eldritch ecosystems with rare energetic strains and phenomic possibilities.
Legacy of the Blade: The Complete Trilogy Page 32