The Flame of Wrath

by Christene Knight

  It broke through an enshrouding wall of cloud. It came with a voice which dared to breathe, I exist. I am the Land of Logos, the birth and doom of you all.

  No land bridge could summon the will to claim Logos as lover or friend. The floating isle would not be bound. It hovered, unfettered by any alliances to the land of man. This looming terra of swirling mist and shadows daunted the world as a dream does the mind soon after waking.

  The Land of Logos possessed a domain which was abundantly green. From its greatness came the heavenly fragrances of life. Waterfalls in the four corners of the land rushed and frothed over the blunt borders. Each crashing current to careen over the sharp ledges spilled with powerful brutality, but still it did not fall into the ominous canyon which would forever divide the lands of fire and ice. The waters snaked below the island where they collided violently beneath its heart in a swirling pool of ethereal luminance. One day the waters would feed Logos, but for the moment it raced as the land's rich blood.

  “Highness?” Rapier moved forward, looking expectantly to the Queen. “Your orders?”

  The spell cast by the mysticism of fog intensified. Its might pulled at the soul, tugging at it possessively.

  Maven spurred her mount upward with a vocal command. All of her wished to be enveloped by that fog. Somewhere in the great distance, she thought she heard the echoing clap of wings beating thunderously. She could feel the sleepy stirring of her logical mind but it was deeply hidden inside of her. It reasoned that those wings were those of her men, but in her dreaming mind she was certain that the sound belonged to her jumping heart.

  She had fallen victim to the vortex of glowing waters floating effortlessly upon the air. Her eyes took in the sight of it traversing through imaginary canals. To her watchful eyes, it appeared to be carving its path through unseen lands. How was it possible, she wondered. What held the waters up? Why didn't they fall?

  A wall of sea air impacted savagely against her chest. She breathed deeply tasting the water laden within every particle of the air.

  Together in a frenzied rise, the Pyrosian force climbed higher. There was no regard for rank or order. The only thing that mattered among the soldiers was the sudden need to be the first to touch Logos' soil.

  When Maven's boots touched the ground, a flurry of dancing lights rose upward from tall green reeds. They leapt into the air as tiny stars. Those fireflies danced in the twilight, but more so within the Queen's emerald eyes. She gasped aloud, awestruck as they moved in dense schools around each human to inhabit this new world.

  Tall trees thickly populated the horizon in a dense wood. Their looming silhouettes were shadows obscured by the silver fog to blanket the distance. Blossom petals rained gingerly from the sky. A fragile few caught delicately upon blond lashes. Maven blinked them away while trapped in wonder.

  “Logos,” she scarcely whispered.

  Her heart leapt for her throat. A low mournful horn rang out once long and strong. She waited fearfully for the next but it never came. Glancing over her shoulder, she caught sight of Rapier who protectively drew close to her.

  Rapier scoured their surroundings with concerned brown eyes. “How will we ever find Wrath in all this?” she wondered aloud. Her voice had only just emerged from her lips as a mere breath when something happened. She tensed as her face blanched.

  The fireflies swiftly fled from their flirtatious dance. They arced high into the sky. Their brilliant light connected the travelers from their landing point to the hills in the farthest reaches of the land. They pooled together until forming a lighthouse which cast its glorious light in broad rotating rays over the world.

  As the light came to fall upon them, Maven felt her hopeful longing cresting. “There,” she said. “That's where we'll find our answers.”

  ********

  Touched by the winds, the swaying reeds sang. It was a whispered voice which rose and fell with the intensity of the winds. The willowy reeds spoke in a language forgotten by time. The ancient tongue empowered the meaning behind the words just as moss accents dejected ruins.

  Maven led her owl by the reins. She remained within the grips of consuming wonder. Each sight only furthered her state of awe.

  She underwent a sort of reverence as she fell under the cool shadow of a weeping willow. She had never witnessed one so old or so large. The sheer size of the tree was large enough to rival any proud manor.

  In this magical land, its flowing arms threatened to come to life at any moment.

  Maven’s eyes peered more intently into the tree's dense canopy. From the hunter darkness, she could just glimpse a pair of otherworldly eyes. She froze. Staring harder into the tree, she found other eyes gazing outward to the passing caravan.

  “Who are they?” she wondered. Her muted voice had felt adventurous enough to pass through her lips though only just.

  “Wood fairies,” Rapier answered in a whisper. She paused and dipped her head respectfully to the fairies. Then ceremoniously, she bowed to the looming tree.

  Maven's eyes softened as she listened to the soft music of giggles flooding the air. Those giggles lived inside the ghostly echo of the wind in the trees. She turned to her second, who merely smiled.

  “The tree is their mother,” Rapier explained. “I was honoring her.”

  Hearing this, Maven motioned to her men. Together, they all followed suit, paying their sincerest respects to the ancient tree.

  The glorious tree rustled happily, favoring them with a sort of pleased chuckle, but her voice was drowned out by a low grumbling which sent the ground quaking. The soldiers froze behind their leader.

  Maven's head shot upward even as her body remained poised in a gracious bow. Through the vaporous enigma of mauve, a roar came as forewarning. The fog ripped violently like a fist through parchment. From the opening created in the whirling blanket, a giant slowly emerged.

  Its body was that of a lion. From foot to shoulder it towered over the tallest of Maven's men. In the eerie light of shimmering surroundings, its coat of tawny wheat glistened with the morning's dew. Each sinewy muscle moving beneath his golden coat warned that at any moment, the ebony claws which claimed the earth might change upon a whim to claim their lives.

  Pristine wings of radiant white were cautiously reined inward to rest along the enormity of its body. The head atop its shoulders was a mere silhouette with the passage of slow moving fog. Still even in the rising fog its profile could be made. On either side of its proud head, tufts of feathers rose skyward near its ears. Their aggressive poise within the fog gave the illusion of menacing horns.

  “A griffin,” Rapier rasped hoarsely.

  The sun broke through the clouds in a single shattering ray. It fell on the griffin just in time to betray his actions. His head had been peering in owl-like awareness to the skies at his back, ensuring no soldiers had been advancing behind him. With a soundless swiftness, his head rotated to face forward.

  A powerful beak tore. From its mouth came a sound to banish hope and welcome madness.

  Maven and her army clutched painfully at their ears in a frantic attempt to block out the sound. When their vision cleared, the griffin stood with a closed mouth. It surveyed them all with a look of regal disdain.

  Cautiously, the Queen lowered her hands. She fought the fog crawling slowly across her mind. She wanted to faint. She wanted to vomit from the sheer pain of that wretched sound, but she held firm to her resolve.

  A lightning bolt flashed across her thoughts with white brilliance. His face, it was the very likeness of the Guardians' masks. The white wings, the Guardians' kilts, their ladies' aerial prowess, it was his own. She knew how to address him now.

  Maven knelt respectfully. “Please, Honored Guardian, we mean no harm to you or this land.”

  “Then why do you come bearing arms?” he demanded in a voice which made the small birds in the trees squawk angrily.

  The blond immediately drew her sword. She held the blade horizontally atop her upturned pal
ms. Extending her arms, she continued to speak with a downcast head. “We meant no disrespect, my Lord. We seek only wisdom, with Logos as our teacher.”

  Rapier shot a warning look to the soldiers at her back. Then she too drew her sword and offered it up to the Guardian.

  The sound of weapons unsheathed rang out into the silence.

  The Guardian took painfully slow steps toward the army. His massive paws upon the ground birthed low thuds which reverberated against the chests of each fearful soldier. He stopped directly before a soldier nearest to Rapier. With a growl that sent many cowering, he consumed a young man savagely.

  Maven lifted her head only slightly to better her view of the creature moving within her peripheral vision. His large head rose cumbersomely. From his downwardly-curled beak dripped the blood of his prey. As he walked away from them, she understood. It was a warning. He had killed a mortal man without any exertion. It would take no great effort to destroy them all.

  She swallowed hard at the fear rising inside her throat.

  They had been warned.

  ********

  They moved about the isle, never knowing what lie just beyond the fog. It might have been the answers they craved or it might have been their undoing in the form of a gargantuan griffin.

  Twilight never ended. Although they often prayed for the normalcy of night and day, it never came. In its stead, thrived a land caught forever within the immortal grips of pale watercolor landscapes blurred by the Dragon's tears.

  Maven was forced to watch her army unravel around her. She could see the strain clouding their eyes.

  With each camp wearily made, the air was filled with conspiratorial whispers of seeing far more than the mythical creatures of Logos. Fanciful fairies fluttering about, wild unicorns running free, a land alive of its own accord, these things were nothing to the steadily increasing accounts of a larger-than-life shadow which appeared as little more than the blackness of the wood before it moved to reveal itself as something wholly different, something monstrous and alive. Its breath covered the island in the cursed never-ending fog.

  “It's the Dragon,” Maven heard them say. “It's the reason why we shouldn't be here! This place is not meant for mortals!”

  Then like a weathered blanket which had been battered by age, the Queen's nerves were also becoming tattered and frayed.

  Maven stood away from the others. Her breathing was labored by emotion. She stared with tearful eyes into nothingness. As her eyes stung tragically, she fought not to release her tears. Hands gently moving to rest against her shoulders made her body tense then still.

  The Queen cleared her throat while struggling to find her voice.

  “I know,” Rapier soothed.

  Maven released a wavering breath. Were it not for Rapier, she would have lost her composure long ago.

  She turned to gaze into Rapier's sienna eyes. They were fatigued, darkened by a rising sadness which refused to lose its clutches upon hope. “Logos is toying with us,” Maven whispered. “We have walked these paths a thousand times before. Though they may appear different to my eyes, my feet recognize familiar slopes and stones.”

  Rapier nodded gently.

  They stood together with swirling mist around them so close and yet so far from one another.

  Maven lowered her eyes. What was she doing, she wondered. She felt so far from herself. Each time she gazed into a reflecting pool of water, she did not recognize the woman staring back at her. What was this land doing to her, to them?

  Desperate to give Maven what she saw slipping away from her, Rapier pointed to a flower with a lowered head. With its glistening yellow petals, it appeared so much like her saddened Queen. “So many things change under Logos' touch,” she said, “but there are a few precious things left to us as tools.”

  Maven frowned. “Tools for what?” she asked.

  “For survival.”

  Maven tentatively raised her head.

  Rapier extended her hand, pointing to the flower standing apart from the others. “That bloom is unlike any other I've seen. I've been making notes on our travels and each time I see this plant it seems to keep an odd sort of schedule. It opens and closes at very particular instances while other flowers here are forever in bloom. I think they can be used to gage the passage of days.”

  She was almost too terrified to ask, but somehow Maven forced herself to speak. “How long have we been here?”

  “Roughly thirty days,” Rapier said.

  Maven released a lengthy sigh. And yet knowing that there was some sense of normalcy in their newfound ability to count the days brought her an odd sort of comfort. “Inform the men,” she said. “It will bring them peace of mind.”

  Rapier nodded before turning to leave. She stopped and pensively asked the question on her mind. “And you, Highness, what does it bring you?”

  “I have a new sense of calm,” she said. Maven stared after the woman whose eyes she had seen begin to shine with happiness. As she did, she realized what she could not say aloud. The great sense of calm which had washed over her like a soothing tide had come not from Rapier's words, but from Rapier, herself: Rapier, her friend, Rapier, her rock. Quietly, she mused over the strength with which tense situations can bind two people.

  ********

  Each day found them journeying forward, but can one truly claim to move forward when the distance you have traveled is an endless circle of aimlessness? As the days ticked onward, the answer to that question became an adamant, 'no.'

  They trekked in the direction of the lighthouse, but no matter how much land their weary bodies thought that they had crossed, the distance between their caravan and the shining lighthouse never appeared to change.

  Scattered bodies lost their battle with exhaustion. They fell with violent thuds to the ground. Around them, hollow-eyed soldiers reached down to them and helped them to their feet. They supported one another, but only just. In the copious fog, they were wavering shadows.

  Maven stopped. She held the reins of her owl, wondering ---although not for the first time--- if she should be a generous master and release the creature from the grips of this land. As she imagined the bird taking flight for home, it made her heart swell for the life she had known before falling into this place of delusions. Her thoughts were shattered by the thundering sound of screams.

  “Help us!” she heard.

  She scanned around her with wild eyes. Her hand reached for her sword. Green eyes were wild with rage and fear. It had finally happened, she thought. The Guardian had come to claim them!

  Maven trembled as the voices rose upward.

  “Sacred Mother, help us!” a soldier pleaded.

  “Please,” another cried. “We are Your children!”

  Soldiers kowtowed to the glory of the land. They trembled beneath the breath rolling over them.

  “Forgive us if we have angered You!” another screamed.

  “Please!”

  “Please.”

  “Please!”

  The fog hissed around them. Whispers tickled their ears but their words were unclear. Then slowly the fog began to clear. The lighthouse which had hovered elusively in the wavering distance solidified.

  Maven fell to her knees along with her men. She coughed out her tears in dizzy sobs. Her hands clutched the earth as her tears fell heavily from her eyes. Her lips moved in a way which felt all too foreign. She was outside her body, beyond the intensity of this moment. Floating above herself, she heard her own voice travel upward timidly.

  “Please,” she prayed, “please allow us to live through this quest and I will be a better child to You. We're frightened and alone.”

  Tears lined her deep green eyes. She found her mind flashing to image of Aurea's face. She wanted to return home once more, to see Aurea once again, but as she felt her sense of self slipping further from her grasp those things began to matter less. Upon Logos' land, Maven had been forced to reevaluate what was truly important to her.

  “P
lease, Mother,” she whispered. “We are lost children. Our spirits are nearly broken. We need Your hand.” She frowned inwardly, wondering what it was about this land which had inspired so many to resort to the ways taught to them as awe-filled children.

  Rapier knelt with her forehead touched to the cool earth. She shivered. Fearfully, she turned her head to the side. Her head was still lowered, but even so she could clearly see Maven's shaking body as the Queen prayed. With a trembling hand, she reached out for her. Much to her surprise, she found her hand met within the tight embrace of Maven's hand.

  Green eyes locked tearfully with hers.

  “Thank you, Sacred Mother,” Rapier prayed, wondering what she was grateful for most: the clearing fog or the woman next to her.

  ********

  When the very sight of you no longer inspires God's wrath, you are humbled and grateful for so many things. To feel even the slightest favor is a blessing which restores the lightness of the soul that one once knew at birth. For the army facing a land which changed its moods with all the fickleness of a temperamental soul, it came as a much-needed pardon. Their lives were far from easy but simply being able to walk without life continuously shoving them down gave them a certain air of weightlessness. That is, weightlessness was theirs until an ominous shadow on the distance ripped it from their hearts.

  “The Guardian,” a soldier gasped.

  He moved toward them. Each step his feet made against the earth brought a sickening quiver to resound throughout the mortals' insides.

  Maven awkwardly searched around her, wondering what they could have done to offend him. She saw nothing. They had been very respectful of the land, of the animals there. Each time they made a kill for food's sake, they thanked both, the animal's spirit and Logos, itself. Still she wondered. What could they have done?

  Her army fought not to cower.

  The Guardian stopped directly before the golden-haired Queen. His eyes lanced into her. “Decide.”

  His voice, his otherworldly voice was not meant for human ears. Maven battled not to run from its sound.

  “Decide, noble Guardian?” she stammered.