“What an amazing creature,” Adacon proclaimed, still trembling at the size of the bird.
“Look out!” cried Falen. Krem and Adacon snapped from their daze: Krem instantly ducked his head into the saddle as far as he could, and Adacon instinctively mimicked him; just as they pushed their faces down, into Falen’s scaly hide, a great gold-rimmed ball of jet black rock hurtled by, narrowly missing them. The wind force of the projectile sent the drake spiraling down toward ice daggers below. After a moment of turbulence, Falen righted himself. Krem looked up to see where the rock had come from—in their amazement at watching the scarlet hawk fly above them, Falen had drifted off-course; they were now directly alongside the line of black smoke. Up close Adacon saw that it really wasn’t smoke from a fire that was rising from the valley below—straining his eyes, he saw a congregation of beings surrounding a swirling hole of darkness, its rim aglow. Falen lost control again, unable to steady himself against a mysterious pull. They spiraled fast around the circumference of the hole, from which arced skyward the black trail, now a lightless abyss between two steep mountains.
Krem threw Adacon down, prompting him to hug Falen’s back hard. Another projectile whizzed through the air, nearly striking Falen’s head. The drake quickened his spin down as wind whipped furiously. Several more gold-rimmed boulders shot past, nearly striking the riders dead.
“I can’t keep us up; the suction from the magic is too strong!” Falen wailed, vainly trying to steady himself. Adacon watched the earth below spin violently closer—the beings launched volley after volley, aiming to kill; somehow Falen kept dodging them, by inches and less.
“Hold fast, Falen!” Krem roared above the whining wind which blew against whichever direction Falen tried to thrust. Adacon peered out from Krem’s shoulder, which he’d buried himself into, and saw an enormous rock tearing through the sky at them, the size of a hillside—this one he can’t dodge, he realized in terror.
“Hold!” Krem screamed. The wind surged viciously around them so that all they could hear was the screeching hiss of a tornado. Falen lost all control of his wings, and they bent in an odd angle, and he whined: the turbulence sucked them down in tinier circles, a plummet of doom. Adacon hadn’t taken his eyes from the giant black rock: oddly, it now floated as if in slow-motion. It curved to intercept their dizzying dive, adjusting itself in mid-air to compensate for the loss in Falen’s altitude, homing to hit regardless of where he was in the sky. The gold aura around the massive opal rock flared against the whipping winds. Krem sat upright in response, as if turning to face their imminent destruction. The shimmering boulder took up all of Adacon’s view, and he could no longer see the pristine ice below, nor the strange gathering of people deep in the crevasse—all he saw was an orb of the deepest black, a meteor from the earth, heaving itself toward the heavens, aligning its path so as to take the drake and his passengers along for the ride. He closed his eyes at last: nothing happened. He opened them again: Krem was waving his arms wildly, despite the tremendous force of the circling winds. From his hands, an emerald fountain flowed, issuing forth from his fingertips, welling up into a pool—instantly, the pool of jade light expanded, encircling them as a shield, spreading out for yards in every direction.
“Aaaagh!” Krem writhed in agony. He stood up on Falen’s back, somehow erect upon the saddle, keeping his balance despite the enchanted wind. The shield that flowed from his hands deepened its hue: the mild gloss of its shine was changed—the green had turned dark, then transformed to magenta; sparks of brilliant cyan flashed against the gold rim of the encroaching missile. The great rock collided with the shield; Krem roared atop the failing drake—the tiny Vapour spoke words unto the malevolent storm:
“Hold back, divisive mana, keepers of the ice!—yield to Krem the Vapour; Behold, the Magic of Light!” Krem’s spine struck straight. Amidst a tremendous flash, the charged rock froze in midair, ceasing its flightpath of destruction. There was a great clangor, and the rock cracked apart; each snaking line in the jet rock webbed into veins of tinier fractures: each fracture issued forth gold light, the same that rimmed the black missile. Soon, the entire rock was dismantled; each piece began to fall away. First it chipped apart at its edges, crumbling piece by piece down to the earth. Then in huge chunks, parts ripped away from the rock’s core and shot in many directions, exploding away from Falen. Adacon winced from brutal light and scorching heat, trying hard to keep watching the destruction of the rock. Despite Krem’s defense, he realized they were still falling fast. The tornado wind hadn’t ceased, and Falen still had no control over their dive.
“Heave!” Krem spoke into the storm winds. What was left of the great rock disintegrated into splintered shards. With a motion of his hands, he commanded the splinters as razor weapons, raining them on the assaulters below. The daggers radiated cords of magenta light—the gold aura around the hole began to flicker out. Adacon trained his eyes on the circling beings below, much closer now—it seemed the black hole from which they shot their giant missiles had been the source of wind. The funnel line turned from a stream of black to one of snow and ice. The beings below scattered at the rain of impaling shards, fleeing in every direction, but most fell dead, pierced to death. Adacon saw one of the running beings fall to the ground, twist in pain; then another fell, and then another—as fast as they could run, they could not escape Krem’s wrath. As each creature fell, Falen seemed to regain more control of his wings. Soon, the last of the creatures had fled or fallen into red-stained snow. The tornado emanating from the black hole lost all strength. To Adacon’s amazement, the black hole itself shriveled up and disappeared, dissolving into barren ice. The twisting lines of icy spray dissipated. One last creature fell dead against the tight-packed snow of the crevasse wall.
Falen leveled out, again in control of his wings, twenty yards from the ground; it was enough space to spare their lives, and Adacon sighed deeply. Krem finally sat back down, and the pool of magenta energy that had been steadily sparking from his fingertips receded back into his hands. Falen landed heavily on the ground, in desperate need of rest—he’d exhausted all strength keeping them in the air as long as he had, buying time for Krem to retaliate.
“What on Darkin were they?” Adacon gasped, hopping from Falen before he felt any sicker, slipping on the hard sloping wall of the crevasse the moment he touched down.
“Gaigas knows…” Falen grumpily barked between heaving breaths.
“They are the League of the Mage,” Krem replied, and without wasting a moment he too jumped from Falen, sliding down the icy slope between the two mountain faces, arriving at the flattened bit of plain where the League had congregated and created its black hole of magic.
“League of the Mage?” Adacon repeated.
“Quite harmless really, unless you cross their path,” Krem replied.
“Really? I couldn’t tell…” Falen whined.
“What were they doing?” Adacon asked, finally feeling his stomach settle once again, looking around to take in the huge mountain walls surrounding them; they stood bleach white, pointed like skyscrapers toward the still blue sky.
“The League seeks to destroy Darkin’s moons, for reasons I cannot fully explain—it has something to do with a legend of theirs, a myth,” Krem responded.
“Destroy the moons?” Adacon looked up to the sky and beheld against the clear blue a faint outline of three orbs, each barely visible in the bright light of midday.
“Yes, they’ve been at it for centuries; no one bothers them, and they keep mostly to themselves—unless, as I said, you cross their path. In the days of old…” Krem continued, walking up to the nearest dead body, “they were exterminated for their beliefs, murdered by all righteous kingdoms of the world—that is why they fled to Nethvale and Aaurlind, the two most remote countries in Darkin—so that they could conduct their magic in secret, unobstructed by the laws of Darkin’s kings and emperors.”
“But isn’t anyone worried that they could succeed?�
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“No, they underestimate Gaigas’s energy—you see, laddy, it is impossible to destroy a moon,” Krem continued. “It would take a collective of energy too strong, something more powerful than Gaigas’s whole life-force itself.”
“They’re very strange looking,” Adacon said, poking one of the fallen beings lying in a blood-red slush of melting snow. The bodies were robed in thick furs, animal coats, he presumed, and each had a staff in its hand—many of the staffs were scattered now though, strewn about the sides of the snowy mountain. He bent down to peer close at the face of one of the creatures: to his surprise, it looked almost like a human, except it had no eyebrows, and no facial hair—its eyes hung lidless beneath the brow, stark green, without an iris or pupil. He recoiled with a start, noticing that the strangers had serrated teeth; the one he stared at had had its jaw rent open by Krem’s stone rain spell.
“So many strange things in this world, so many things I don’t know…” Adacon thought aloud.
“Well, they would have given us no trouble were it not for that hawk,” Falen said, justifying how his course was thrown off, pitting them into the trap of the League of the Mage.
“Don’t take it to heart, old friend—none of us has ever seen such a thing—such an omen,” Krem responded, having forgotten momentarily about the giant bird that had swept overhead, leaving them all petrified with wonder.
“Look!” Adacon yelled, and in the distance a straggling creature, one of the League, was limping toward them with his hands in the air, signaling that he was unarmed, without his staff.
“You can relax, he poses no threat,” Krem said, calming Adacon. “Let us hear what he wants.”
The human-like figure strode forth in uneven steps, falling hard against his left leg occasionally, barely able to right itself. Soon the fur-robed being came into close view, its lidless green eyes glaring in a permanent gesture of threat, but an easy smile traced its lips, and it spoke the common tongue to them:
“I am sorry, strangers, for what has happened here,” the odd looking creature spoke in an accent stranger than its appearance.
“Pay it no mind. We are unharmed, aside from some nausea,” Krem replied, calmly and without anger. What is he thinking, Adacon bemused; why doesn’t he kill him?—he couldn’t understand why Krem was so trustworthy and forgiving of one of the creatures that had just tried to mercilessly destroy them all. “Speak your peace then, so that we may make a better judgment of your character—if there is to be one.”
“Sparing him Krem?” Falen barged in, mirroring the rage Adacon felt at the creatures for having attempted to murder them all.
“My brothers and sisters are all slain here. I beg only that you hear my words,” came its raspy voice; Adacon thought he traced sadness.
“Go ahead, I have given you my patience already,” Krem responded, still unalarmed by the creature, and the man stopped several yards in front of them, watching each of them, and then began to speak.
“We were conducting a drain, we meant you no harm. A power has come into the planet, something greater than any of you can imagine. We were attempting to drain it, as you flew by and were caught in the path of our channel.”
“What do you mean drain?” Adacon quickly asked, feeling for his sword and being relieved to find it still at his side.
“Let him continue,” Krem interrupted.
“A drain, fair human, is the sapping of a magical energy source—and we were attempting to drain this new power, dark and evil as it is, growing immeasurably each passing hour—”
“You are in the League of the Mage, are you not? Your purpose is to destroy the moons of Darkin, is it not?” Krem countered.
“I was—It was,” the man replied, and there was silence for a moment, as Krem and his friends exhibited patience, while the standing man rubbed his chest, reaching underneath his robe. After a deep sigh, he revealed his hand from under his robe, and Adacon grabbed quickly at his hilt for fear that the creature was taking out a weapon—but he had only been rubbing a wound, a splinter in his chest, as blood-streaked fingers made evident.
“Is it bad?” Krem asked. Suddenly, the injured man slumped to the ground. Krem rushed forward with lightning speed and grabbed the fainting creature before it fell hard against the ice.
“Doesn’t look so good,” Falen acknowledged indifferently.
“We’ll make camp here tonight, I want to get all the information I can from him,” Krem explained. Adacon shuddered at the idea of staying a night in the freezing cold crevasse, surrounded by ripping winds and sprays of ice, and he realized that Krem had long since dissolved the warmth bubble that had been working on him earlier.
“If you can create heat, I’m fine with it,” Adacon said, disguising his complaint.
“Suits me fine. I need a while to rest, my left wing is battered,” Falen complied.
“Alright laddy, help me get him up onto the flat,” Krem motioned, and together they heaved the unconscious creature onto the flat piece of ice that had been the League’s point of congregation earlier. Finally, they laid him flat, and Krem went to work, sending wisps of jade-colored energy into the unconscious man’s chest. Adacon went to the packs strapped to Falen’s side, taking out some of the food stored there for them to eat.
Night fell upon icy slopes, and Darkin’s three moons ripened in the sky, full and glowing, floating jovially amidst a sea of bright stars and indigo dust.
“There’s something missing in the sky tonight,” Adacon noticed.
“Dear Gaigas…” came the stunned voice of Krem.
“It’s gone!” Falen chimed in, shocked.
“You’re right—the growing star is gone!”
“All that uproar at the council, over nothing!” Krem replied after a moment of contemplation.
“It was awfully strange while it lasted though,” Falen added.
“I didn’t think it was anything to be so worried about,” Adacon replied, feeling the warmth of Krem’s magic seeping deep within his skin, heating him in endless waves.
“No—I wasn’t so sure, but now at least there’s one less thing that we need to be troubled with, eh lad? Still not one for a smoke?” Krem asked, sparking his pipe with a flick of his finger, igniting the weed inside.
“No thanks,” he answered then lay down to gaze up at the sparkling heavens, warm even against the hard surface of the frozen plain.
“You know old man, I’ll have a pipe,” came the drake, and Adacon laughed.
“A dragon smoking a pipe!” he laughed boisterously, but Falen paid him no mind, and eagerly took the pipe Krem extended. Adacon looked over to their still unconscious captive, then back to the sky, but he couldn’t stop chuckling—a dragon with a pipe he thought, a dragon with a pipe.
XII: PALAILIA
Behlas bore his trailing party into thick seeping quags, treading quick and light so as to not sink into the muck, somehow finding an elegant path of drier grass that seemed to carry them buoyantly over the marsh. Above Remtall and Ulpo was a small patch of clear night sky—for a moment the tree canopy of the Endless Forest was gone.
“The star’s not there!” Ulpo realized.
“By Gaigas, you’re right—keen are dwarf eyes!” Remtall replied, freezing in his tracks to stare up at the predawn sky—the biggest star in the heavens was no longer there.
“It will be dawn soon, we must make haste. The entrance is only two miles away,” urged Behlas, as he stopped to look back at his still-frozen comrades who had lost their stride to gaze at the sky—Remtall and Ulpo both hadn’t realized they were sinking fast into mud.
“Dear whoring gods!” Remtall yelped, noticing his feet had disappeared entirely beneath the quicksand vat of steaming marsh. The tiny gnome struggled terribly, and gripped onto Ulpo’s arm, who himself was struggling to break free from the mud enveloping them.
“Here,” Behlas said, extending his arm to Remtall. Remtall wasted no time, hoisting himself then Ulpo out of the mire.
; “There’s no time for standing still, not while we remain on the bog,” ordered Behlas, and he promptly led them further into the stink-ridden mire.
“What do you know of that thing, ghost?” Remtall asked, following once more behind the pasty glowing silhouette of Behlas.
“Of what?” asked the spirit.
“The star—did you know what it was?”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, in fact, be thankful—the tribes of this forest will no longer be on alert, seizing wandering gnomes and dwarves that cross their path,” joked Behlas.
“It is strange though, that such a thing would grow, grow, and grow, only to disappear,” muttered a baffled Ulpo, trailing them.
“I don’t know what it was, a passing comet, perhaps,” Behlas guessed.
“Passing? It looked quite stillborn to me!” cried Remtall, feeling his head begin to throb again. “Does Parasink keep a good supply of liquor?”
“No, he doesn’t keep any that I’ve ever seen.”
“Blast this unsettler of gnomes! I’ll wring his neck for its juice!” Remtall said, broiling in anger.
The party trekked on, clearing the last bits of marsh, entering a thick pine-covered trail. The path was fairly easy to navigate for Behlas, and it seemed to Ulpo and Remtall a well-beaten trail. The stink of the marsh left, replaced by a snappy scent of fresh pine groves; as they hiked further into the Endless Forest, the canopy returned to blot out any trace of dawn overhead.
“How much further?” complained Remtall after another half-hour had passed, and the incline of their trail had increased tremendously. The poor gnome was breathing violently, and with each step up onto the next boulder or trunk he grunted loudly.
Darkin: The Prophecy of the Key (The Darkin Saga Book 2) Page 13