by S. M. Welles
From far off the granite began a third peal of cracking. A second lengthy fracture developed mere yards away from the first. Many lightning bolt shaped ones branched off it several feet in all directions.
Aerigo started for the newer fracture, but stopped after taking one step. He turned and trudged toward Roxie, a grim expression on his face. “This better be the one thing Maharaja’s right about. Hold still.”
Roxie flinched when Aerigo pressed two fingertips each over her abdomen and the center of her forehead.
“I’m teaching you how to do what I just did. It’s called ‘Blood of Earth.’” Aerigo closed his eyes and pressed his fingertips firmly against both points.
Roxie’s eyes began to dart back and forth, as if she were going through REM sleep with her eyes open. Phailon grew blurry, but she began to see nothing but every rock and pebble around her, feel its weight, its sturdy strength, every smooth and rough spot of the varying types of rock. The silent strength of the cliff on which Phailon rested upon filled her with a sense of calm. She felt like she could just stand there forever and enjoy the rock’s serenity. However, she could feel stress spots where the granite had been slowly cracking over the millennia. She could also see the newest fractures. Somehow touching those crevices with her newfound awareness caused her body to feel pain, like a full-body sinus headache. Her mind was pulled to the cliff edge, where her pain worsened.
That’s where she had to go to stop the pain.
“Rox?”
Roxie blinked several times until she could see Aerigo. The pain that had seized her a second ago was gone. Her sense of the rock she stood upon dropped to a dull awareness. “Er—yeah. But the cliff isn’t.”
“I know,” Aerigo said quickly, tugging her into a run.
They took off toward the ocean.
“Why did those big cracks that just formed cause me pain when I touched them with my mind?”
“They’re unnatural weathering. Flesh-and-blood creatures understand wrongness through pain. The earth itself understands wrongness through its own destruction or deformation. The art of Blood of Earth attunes our bodies to the ground itself.”
“Now how did you just make me learn all that by poking my stomach and forehead?”
“Remember when I told you Aigis have the power to learn any world’s magic?”
Roxie nodded.
“Once one Aigis has learned an element of extended reality, that person can channel the information into another Aigis via that touch I did to you. At least temporarily,” Aerigo said. “Any magical knowledge I channel into you like that fades from memory rather quickly. However, whatever skills you use today will take longer to forget, unless you practice them enough.”
“Why?” Roxie frowned at the news.
“Effort,” he said. “Whatever you don’t use today, you’ll forget by the time you wake up tomorrow, which is why I haven’t bothered teaching you anything so short-handedly before. You’re better off learning anything useful through days and years of practice.”
They sped along block after block that so far remained untouched by the creatures attacking Phailon. As they drew closer to the cliff overlooking the ocean, homes and buildings burned, and chunks of buildings lay in smoldering piles. Corpses and mourning, battered humans littered the ruin.
Aerigo’s strides faltered to barely a walk, then stopped altogether.
Roxie paused beside him, but she wished he’d keep moving. The sight of all those dead and dying tore at her heart, along with the others who probably wished they’d died with their loved ones. She tried to look away, but she couldn’t even close her eyes. Something deep inside wanted her to acknowledge this atrocity and embrace it as motivation. Roxie felt her eyes glow blue and turned to Aerigo.
She stopped herself before she could voice her desire to keep moving. Aerigo’s eyes were glowing a deep red, instead of the anticipated blue. Not only that, he was breathing slow and hard, and every muscle bulged with extreme tension. For someone who’d given her the impression of a seasoned warrior, this unexpected reaction put her on guard. “Aerigo?”
Aerigo spun and faced with his burning eyes. For a moment Roxie feared he might lunge out at her, but he held his breath for a second, then let out a controlled sigh. He closed his eyes and wiped his face with both hands. He looked at her again, this time with blue-glowing eyes. He closes his eyes and wiped them a second time, then opened them. He blinked several times.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t get my eyes to stop glowing.”
“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just take care of this cliff first.” Roxie wanted to worry. Yes, they had no control over their glowing eyes but, for someone who’d seen so much battle, Aerigo should have been able to put aside any anger or sadness and just focus on the fight at hand. Roxie put on a brave face, hoping it would guide him back on track.
Aerigo nodded his accord. He grabbed Roxie’s hand and together they took off.
The two Aigis passed many more streets scarred by destroyed buildings and dozens upon dozens of victims. Despite how fast they could run, it wasn’t fast enough to spare Roxie from seeing all the destruction. Each marred avenue stuck in her mind like a series of grim photos. Each image added more weight to her shoulders. Roxie wished she were as strong and magically knowledgeable as Aerigo. With not even two weeks of training, she felt like more a hinderance than anything. But she was determined to find a way to help.
Roxie recognized the Twin Falls District from their previous visit. The squat stone homes remained unharmed for now. The district itself appeared deserted. The source of the cliff’s pain lay somewhere beyond the city’s fortress-like wall. Roxie was grateful they were almost there because she was winded from all that running. She also felt afraid because her next trial was just on the other side of the tunnel that passed under the wall.
The two Aigis slowed to a stealth walk just outside the arched tunnel. Aerigo pulled out his dagger, then led Roxie through to the other side of the tunnel.
Last time they’d passed through here, it had been all sunny, cheerful, and bustling with locals. Now it was dark, humid, quiet and eerie. They stepped so lightly and slowly that their boot-steps didn’t echo, and when they reached the other side barely any light reached them or the open field and its many sidewalks.
There was enough light to make out two figures—two Elves standing side-by-side in the six-way intersection directly ahead. Both Elves had their eyes closed, heads tilted back, and hands out, palms up. They spoke the same chant.
“What are they saying?” Roxie whispered.
“They’re the ones trying to destroy Phailon,” Aerigo whispered. He took his dagger between his thumb and two fingers, squared himself with the Elves, then launched his weapon. His daggers sliced through the air and buried itself to the hilt in the Elf on the left.
The Elf gasped, then fell dead onto the greying sidewalk. The second Elf opened his eyes just in time to see Aerigo right in front of him, who grabbed him by the neck and slammed him into the ground. The stone cracked under the impact. Roxie winced at the sound of cracking bones, then ran over.
“Tell me why you’re attacking Phailon!” Aerigo yelled.
The Elf gasped for air, then coughed up blood, splattering some of it on Aerigo’s forearm. “We’re taking away... what never belonged to the humans,” the Elf rasped.
“You lie!” Aerigo pressed the Elf even harder into the ground. “Tell me the truth!”
“The ritual has been completed.” The Elf made a feeble reach with both hands for the one around his neck. He took a final breath before his slender body went limp. His hands dropped onto his chest, then slid off and fell lifeless by his sides.
“Some help he was,” Roxie muttered, frowning.
Aerigo pried his hand from the dead Elf’s neck. “Rox,” he said in a deadly calm voice, “don’t move.”
Roxie’s mind’s eyes alerted her to over twenty people surrounding them, most of them far older than A
erigo. Moving only her eyes, she saw no one else on the plateau, yet her mind’s eye insisted both of them stood inside a tight ring of two-dozen people.
Roxie’s body went rigid when something sharp pressed against the small of her back. She swallowed, a nauseating fear welling in her stomach. Aerigo slowly straightened himself up, fists clenched at his sides and dagger still embedded in the first Elf.
“Ava luzuudin,” a disembodied voice commanded.
Two dozen black hoods fell back to reveal Elves, all armed with crossbows pointed at both Aigis.
“Axen los,” an Elf said, crisply pointing at their targets.
“Mahssai sedal!” Aerigo roared, spinning his arms and twisting his body.
Every Elf fired at them.
Roxie tried to duck, but she felt like her whole body had been chained in place. She couldn’t even blink. She’d wanted to close her eyes before the projectiles punctured her, but then it occurred to her that she should have started feeling pain by now. Or be dead.
The Elves in front of her weren’t moving. Even their crossbow bolts were suspended mid air inches away from their weapons.
“Sorry, Rox,” Aerigo said. He plucked the statue-like Roxie from her feet and, dodging under the suspended ammunition and between two Elves, removed them from the center of the ring. “I didn’t have a chance to warn you. It was the only thing I could think of that wouldn’t kill you.”
Roxie couldn’t speak either. She tried to nod and even move her eyes up and down. She stared forward as Aerigo set her back on her paralyzed feet.
“Get ready to defend yourself just in case,” Aerigo warned. He raised a hand and snapped his fingers, saying, “Lib.”
The salty air filled with cries of pain as crossbow bolts finished their trajectory. A few Elves fell dead, clutching at their chests. More roiled on the ground, with bolts sticking out of limbs. At least half of them escaped injury, including the one who’d spoke.
Roxie felt her body loosen up. She shook out her limbs then braced herself behind Aerigo.
The lead Elf tersely said something to one of his unharmed comrades, who began tending to the nearest wounded Elf. Then the leader spoke to the half dozen others, gesturing toward both Aigis.
Aerigo dropped into a defensive stance.
The granite beneath their feet began to moan. Fracture lines cracked into existence all around them, and darted deeper into Phailon.
Aerigo glanced at the breaking ground, then back at the Elves. “We don’t have time to fight them.”
“Should we make a run for it?”
The lead Elf spoke like he was issuing a few commands.
“We’re faster than them, but they could just chase us with magical demons and the likes.”
“What do we do?”
“Back up a good ways. I’ll take care of them as fast as—don’t turn your back to them!” Aerigo snapped when Roxie attempted to turn around.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize; just stay on guard and stay alive.”
Roxie backed away, keeping Aerigo between her and the line of sight of the crossbows.
The Elves aimed at Aerigo as the plateau moaned and cracked some more.
Aerigo made a low cross-block with his arms as he dragged a heel across the ground in front of him. The granite beneath the aiming Elves’ feet jabbed out at their feet, knocking them on their backs and sending their bolts into the twilight sky. Aerigo shifted his arms into a high cross block and stamped the ground with the same foot. The Elves rolled and scattered, however a couple got impaled by the spikes that shot out from where they’d fallen.
In one swift motion, the leader rolled to one knee and aimed his crossbow at the Aigis. He shouted something in Elvish. What looked like a gargoyle made of flame erupted from his weapon and sailed right at Aerigo with its bat-like wings tucked into its sides. The gargoyle screeched and stretched its talons forward.
Aerigo dived out of the flaming gargoyle’s trajectory, only to realize he’d exposed Roxie in the process. “Rox! Watch out!”
Roxie’s first reaction to seeing the flaming monster speeding toward her was to just stand there and stare. Aerigo’s voice prodded her into action. Closing her eyes, she dropped to the ground and slapped the granite with her palms. Thanks to her knew—yet temporary—knowledge of communing with rock, she was able to erect a thick barrier in time. The flaming gargoyle detonated on impact, obliterating the barrier and knocking Roxie onto her back.
The cliff’s foundation moaned again.
Roxie shielded her mouth with a forearm as she coughed on dust. “I’m alright!” she managed to call out. She chanced opening her eyes, only to discover she couldn’t see beyond the dust cloud. Big surprise... She rose to her feet and snuck out of it.
Roxie felt her eyes stop glowing when she noticed that the living Elves were conspicuously absent. “Where’d they go?” A quick mental scan informed her that they were alone on the plateau.
“Probably to safer grounds. Let me retrieve my dagger real quick.” Aerigo crossed to the Elf with a dagger protruding from his chest and yanked it free. He scanned the corpses then turned to Roxie. “I’d look away if I were you.”
Catching the hint that Aerigo was about to slit a bunch of throats, Roxie faced the ocean. She shuddered and her eyes stung with tears. She felt no remorse for her attackers’ deaths; just regret that the two of them had to resort to such gruesome behavior in order to survive. She wrapped her arms around herself and tried to focus on breathing steady.
A minute later, Aerigo was back at her side placed a hand on one of her shoulders. “Should I send you to Rooke’s where you’ll be safer?”
“No,” she said in a steady voice. The last thing Roxie wanted was to leave her companion’s side. Leaving him would just turn her into a moving target, easy prey for those people who’d effortlessly surrounded them both in an instant. She wasn’t ready handle a kill-or-be-killed scenario all by herself.
“You going to be able to help me repair the cliff then?”
“Yes.” Her reply sounded strained. She grabbed the hand on her should and squeezed it reassuringly. He returned the squeeze, then led them toward the waterfall nearest the setting sun.
The granite sidewalks, the huge wall, and the elongated dragon sculpture overlooking the ocean were now a solid pale grey. The color wore away at Roxie’s fragile morale. She brushed the stone dragon’s side with her fingertips, reminiscing the pure beauty the sculpture once had. It was still beautiful, but the wrong color. Aerigo placed his hands on the stone and peered over the edge. He glanced at the waterfall, then turned to Roxie.
“I need to pass on another skill to you. Face me again.”
Roxie could sense that the worst of the cliff’s fracturing lay deep below them, where the jutting stone met the vertical formation. Nearly half of Phailon rested above the suspended granite.
Aerigo pressed his fingers to Roxie’s forehead and stomach, but faltered when both of them heard a rapid peal of cracking stone behind him. Both turned their attention on the fifty foot wall yards away as dozens of cracks raced up from the crux where the platform and wall itself met.
Roxie had a feeling where they stood wasn’t safe anymore. But for some reason, watching something so strong and stable start to crack and fall apart was too horribly captivating to not watch.
The plateau buckled, and then Roxie felt nothing but air below her. Her stomach did a flop as gravity pulled her toward the ocean, chunks of rock and dirt and sidewalk falling all around her.
Twisting in mid-air, Aerigo grabbed Roxie by an arm and leg. He took a deep breath, then chucked her back at the platform.
Roxie cried out her alarm as her body sailed upward through wobbly somersaults. Aerigo’s throw brought her to the broken edge. Her angle of ascent arced right into the granite, stomach first, knees and toes knocking against the thirty-feet-deep protrusion. The wind got knocked out of her. She dug her fingers into the cracked sidewalk and gasped for air. Upon to
uching the stone, it warned her that this part, too, was about to crumble. Clenching her teeth, Roxie hoisted herself onto the platform and log-rolled away from the edge. Several square feet broke away, and the pain left her body. The Aigis flopped onto her back and worked on catching her breath, only to remember she was alone. “Aerigo!” She snapped to a sitting position, then crawled toward the edge, panting for breath.
All she could see was falling debris and cascading water.
Throwing Roxie had sent Aerigo’s body into an uncontrolled fall. He couldn’t keep his feet under him, and he couldn’t keep his sight on the waterfall long enough to concentrate on it. Aerigo kicked and pushed away chunks of rock falling too close to him. He reached out with both hands toward the waterfall several times before succeeding.
The water level with him bent closer, then fell away as Aerigo’s bodily momentum forced him to fall head-under-heels. He spun his body upright, facing the waterfall once more. He reached out with his arms, closed his fists as if he were holding two invisible ropes, then pulled on the water, tucking his arms against his ribs.
A two-foot-wide strip of water stretched toward him and cradled his booted feet, slowing his fall. A medium-sized boulder plunged through the strip of water, cutting off its flow. Aerigo plummeted for two agonizing seconds before he could pull the water back under his feet. Keeping one arm tucked at his side, he slowly raised the other as if he were pushing something over his head. The water began to lift him toward the platform.
Another group of rocks fell around him. A large one hammered the top of his head.
“Ah!” Aerigo lost control of the water, began falling and clutched his head. He felt no blood, but the blow had smarted and startled him.
Aerigo pushed away all awareness of his sudden headache and, rotating himself to fall feet-first, he focused on the waterfall once more. He reached out with both hands and willed the waterfall toward him. A huge strip of water—way more than he’d intended—snaked its way under his booted feet and ceased his fall. Aerigo felt the multi-ton weight of the liquid tax his will as he commanded it to defy gravity. He didn’t know how to let go of only part of the water holding him up without letting go of all of it at once. The water bubbled and flowed beneath him as he rode higher and higher.