by Kim Wedlock
Petra laughed at something Aria had said, and his eyes narrowed across at her.
He had appreciated her gesture in Mokhan, but it had been unnecessary. He'd been quite capable of holding off the attackers - in fact he was quite confident that, had she not stepped forwards herself, they wouldn't have dared to try. But her involvement had provoked them and landed her waist-deep in their business, creating yet another unanticipated factor in the matter.
His eyes flicked then towards the unexpected little girl who continued speaking animatedly about something or other. He would have blamed Aria for her sticking around, but he had the sense that, if she hadn't told her what they were up to, Anthis probably would have. He looked at the crimson-haired woman every now and then with a little more than just curiosity.
But, for now, all he could do on that matter himself was ensure that she truly understood its weight and kept quiet about it when she finally left them. And he resented that that meant she had to be told more. Not everything, just more.
He turned his head slightly, scanning the area behind them with his peripherals.
And then there was the unshakeable sense that they were being followed.
His thoughts were silenced as his ears pricked at a nearby sound, the slightest rustle, and he drew the group to a quick and silent stop. The rustle came again, followed by a shriek so sudden it made his hairs stand up and skin turn cold.
Anthis's eyes widened. "Harpies," he breathed, sending Aria into a silent panic while Petra turned incredulous eyes upon them.
"Harpies?!"
With a curt jerk of his hand, Garon silenced them. His jaw tightened. Harpies. They'd neither seen nor heard anything of them since the incident five days ago, but he hadn't forgotten them, and he doubted that Rathen had, either.
A voice rose, stilling him again, a brief call the others couldn't decipher. It was a name, he realised, but far more importantly, the voice was unmistakeably human.
Rathen sighed quietly in relief. "Hunters."
"We still need to reroute," Garon whispered, glancing off to the left. "There's no knowing where they've come from or where they're going." The voice came again, another missed word, ahead and to the right, beyond the second shale dune thirty feet away. The clattering sound of footsteps over loose stones was carried downwind towards them.
He slipped off to the left and gestured for the others to follow. They picked their way gingerly despite their haste over the barest of ground and the largest of rocks, and slid with gritted teeth to a quick, rough stop beneath one of the many steep overhangs, leaving an betraying cloud of dust behind them. They listened closely, holding their breath as the dust settled, the footsteps drew closer and two voices spoke low. A bird shrieked from overhead, making Aria jolt in fright, but it didn't seem to notice them.
Neither hunter reacted as it swooped down to join them, and though Garon caught mention of footprints in the younger hushed voice, the other was quick to brush them off. Whatever they were hunting, they had no interest in distractions.
They waited silently as the hunters passed, and Garon held them for almost a full minute longer even once their footfalls had moved beyond range. They watched him impatiently, straining their ears in case he'd heard something they hadn't, and only after his brief nod did any of them dare to move. They slinked along behind him, following the overhang in the direction they'd been heading before branching off abruptly eastwards.
"Where are we going?" Anthis whispered frantically as he hurried up beside him, spinning as he went, looking for sign in the stark emptiness of anyone else they might have to hide from now they were back in the open.
Garon didn't slow his pace. "Stonton."
"We're that far east?"
"Indeed we are. Keep your voice down."
They walked with their eyes fixed over their shoulders as he led them across the exposed ravine, and Rathen felt a shadow of panic lurking beneath the shared unease. The capital city was too close. He could almost smell the magic of Kulokhar's Order House.
Ahead, a patch of green stood out from the miserable greyness like a beacon, a cluster of tightly-knit shrubs, taller and fuller than the rest, bursting from a crevice in the wall. All but Garon eyed it curiously, and even as they reached it, his stride didn't break. He stepped through without a moment's pause and disappeared amongst the leaves. Equally eager to disappear, the others hesitated for only a moment, and found as they began shuffling their way past the sharp branches a hidden but climbable drop in the canyon wall, worn in long ago by another, smaller river.
The land around them changed as suddenly as if they'd covered miles in a single step, and they vanished at last back into the embrace of Turunda's forests, breathing a collective sigh of relief as greenery closed the way behind them.
"What's at Stonton?" Petra asked, her pace slowing with theirs. She straightened her back as she realised she'd been stooping in her tension.
Anthis's eyes glittered once again in excitement. "A marvellous sight!" He beamed. "An old elven village built up and around a single pillar of rock, carved into the stone itself."
Disinterest dulled her tone. "Oh." But then a frown creased her brow. "Is it...doing what other places are doing?"
"It's affected, yes," Garon replied. "Severely so."
"It is?"
A tingle passed through Rathen's veins, standing his hairs on end as though a chill wind had brushed him alone, and his stomach lurched at the sensation. His eyes widened warily. "It is."
Petra's question disintegrated to a gasp as she and Anthis stepped across the unseen boundary behind him, but the historian only frowned. "It feels no different from the others."
"You're not a mage..." Rathen turned dubious eyes onto Garon. "How is--"
He was answered by a low hum touching the edge of his senses, one even the others slowly became aware of. It grew louder with each delicate step, fiercer, and as it rose sharply into a roar, a terrific force whipped up from nowhere and pummelled them into its current, ushering them into its thundering glory.
"Daddy," Aria called in alarm, covering her face with her sleeve to keep the gale from snatching her breath away, "do something!"
"There's nothing I can!" He hissed as long hair lashed across his face.
"Everyone just keep together! Move on!" They gritted their teeth and pressed through the force at the inquisitor's stoic lead, constantly fighting to maintain their grounding with every step. But the wind only intensified, threatening first to push them backwards, then to blow them away. Rathen kept ahead of Aria to shield her from the worst of it, while Petra's free hand twitched impulsively towards her sword, as though she thought she could cut the suffocating force away. But they were nearing the edge of the forest, where there was less to impede its fury.
"It's only getting worse!" Petra yelled over the roaring in her ears. "Why are we risking this?!"
"Just keep going!"
"You're mad, Garon!"
Even despite his battle against the wind, he managed to shoot her an impatient, irritable look. "You can always turn around and leave!"
A growl vibrated in her throat, but she bit her tongue and continued her struggle alongside the relentless group, and from daring glimpses made between fingers and over sleeves, a cliff face soon appeared beyond the thinning trees.
"We can't get any closer!" Petra insisted again as the wind continued to bully them. "It's not safe! Especially not for Aria!"
But this time it was Rathen who shook his head. "We'll be fine, just keep going!" There was no opportunity to rebuff her surprise. Somehow he found the strength to pick up his pace, gut certainty sparking a fire beneath his feet, and he all but charged into the unnatural wind.
And after just three more difficult steps, the mage stood suddenly upright, his black hair gently tousled rather than whipping around, even as the others continued to fight behind him. And as they crossed another unseen line, they too discovered that the force had subdued without warning, dropping abruptly from gal
e to breeze.
The silence was deafening, but relief enveloped them as they grasped the opportunity to regain their breath, and only then did they take notice of the enormous stone structure that towered before them, dwarfing the forest into a copse.
It was no cliff. There was no land above nor beyond it but that of the young forest that sprawled out from a ring at its base. This was a singular column of rock, standing at least eighty feet high by half as wide, growing out of place and by itself as if it had been planted there. It was colossal.
But of course it was. A whole village had been carved from it.
Aria wasn't the only one to gasp in surprise as her eyes began to pick out the details. There were various facades cut into the stone, their doorways and windows suggesting individual homes rather than a single, hollowed-out community shelter, and though all bore the same smooth, doming shape, there were countless etchings of runes and symbolic images that set each dwelling apart from the next.
Anthis suddenly blustered through the group, shoving them aside in his excitement and racing off manically towards the rock.
"Slow down," Rathen shouted after him, rubbing his smarting shoulder. "Surely you've been here before."
"Of course I have! But there's never enough time!
He shook his head at the childish grin he flashed back towards them before scrambling onto the carved, twisting path. "Just be careful."
"I am never anything but!"
With far less enthusiasm, the rest of the group approached the long-abandoned village, their footsteps hastened only to leave the creaking forest behind them. But it was eerily quiet; the wind still raged, spiralling around the tower through the trees like a moat of sheer energy, but the muffled silence within the eye was unsettling.
"So where do we look?" Petra asked, keeping close to Rathen and Garon, both of whom seemed to have a far greater sense of self-preservation than the historian.
"For what?"
"This relic of yours."
"We don't. Not here."
Her dark eyebrows drew together. She glanced towards Rathen, and even to Aria, but both of them displayed the same lack of expectation. "Then," she turned bewildered eyes back to the inquisitor, "why have we stopped?"
Rathen turned away while Garon begrudgingly divulged as little as he could, and looked around at the area. His eyes immediately glazed as he turned his mind inwards, Kienza's guiding words ringing in his skull, and he reached himself out to the magic that undulated around them, drawing that extension to a stop near the foot of the chiselled village.
'...how it feels, how it moves and flows, what form it's sitting in...'
He breathed, exhaling his thoughts away, and let the magic gather around him. Immediately, he identified it as a puddle; too dense to be a cloud, too thin to be a brick. He didn't really know what that meant for him, but it was a result he was comfortable with. At the very least, being half way between the two, perhaps his options for affecting it were broader.
But...one step at a time.
He discovered the slightest of smiles on his lips. Suddenly he had direction: he knew what to look for, and he was making sense of it - meagre, even grasping sense, but sense none the less. The magic sat in puddles, clustering here and there but leaking into one another. It didn't sit as a blanket of fog, nor as defined bits and pieces, but there were areas of concentration and dilution. And it felt familiar.
He had felt this in the other ruins.
He straightened himself, feeling a sense of victory for some kind of progress at last, as small a triumph as it was. But his smile quickly faltered as he considered the wind.
Rathen glanced towards the nearby trees. This was the first place he'd been to that had affected the elements, so was as good an opportunity as any to analyse that detail as well.
Again his dark eyes softened as his attention shifted, doing his best not to reach, grasp or strain, and he found the expected concentration of magic within the winds. It was powerful, easily felt from where he currently stood, safely away from the buffeting edge, and its presence didn't seem to reach beyond the field of magnetism. And the gale was certainly not natural. Perhaps it had been, initially, but magic had fuelled it out of control, or perhaps it wasn't wind at all but the chaotic movements of the magic itself. It was a whirling mass of power, whatever the case.
He narrowed his eyes in thought. No. His first guess was right: some degree of it was real, magic had simply empowered it.
The idea that raw magic could affect the elements didn't really surprise him. It had long been theorised by the Order's scholars. Magic was very nearly considered a fifth element, so unique was its structure, but as it couldn't exist on its own, unbound or unwoven, they'd never found a way to prove it. But that had always been just as well, because it was also generally agreed that its interaction with other elements would likely be extreme, even hazardous - an idea this unrestrained magic had now proven all by itself.
But why, if the magic was the same, weren't the other sites affected this way?
And where was that phantom tug of peace?
His frown deepened uneasily. Stepping away from the others, he began to wander, peering absently up at the rock while Aria hurried to stay at his side, and broadened the reach of his magic. There was something more here. He could sense it, feel its presence with a certainty, but whatever it was, wherever it was, it hung just a hair out of his reach.
It continued to elude him as he circled the base of the village, skittering away just as he was almost upon it. Rathen's skin prickled in irritation, and he stretched himself again in pursuit. He didn't feel Aria's frown boring into him as his pace increased to an erratic jog.
Something was here, he was sure...something different...
He stopped suddenly and snapped around. But there was nothing behind him. Only Garon and Petra standing a distance away, safely out of reach of the forest, the first keeping an observant eye on both himself and Anthis while the duelist watched the bending trees.
Aria puffed as she ran to a stop beside him. "What is it?" She panted, though her tone and eyes were equally weighted. "What can you feel?"
He shook his head and looked around feverishly, his shoulders dropping in confusion while his frown deepened. But it wouldn't defeat him. He was too close.
He extended his reach once again.
His heart leapt. A tremor passed through his veins.
He had it.
Victorious adrenaline spiked his blood, but in that instant another jump paralysed his chest. Heat seared into his left arm, shattering his concentration and sending his mind and magic hurtling back to him with the force of a stampede. He hissed, stunned, clutching at his bicep while Aria's severity doubled with alarm.
The metal cuff clamped about his skin burned hot even through his sleeve, and he half expected to see the steel turned red as he snatched the fabric back. But it remained cold to both his sight and Aria's, who continued to stare on in panic.
Then, just as suddenly as it had begun, the burning subsided. A long, slow sigh of relief escaped through Rathen's lips, and he stared down in confusion at the slightest reddening of his skin at the edges of the metal.
Aria reached up and touched it quite gently. "Are you okay?"
"I'm fine," he sighed heavily.
"What happened?"
"I...don't know...I was reaching out to the magic and it started to burn..."
He pulled his sleeve back down and made a show of shrugging it off, forcing all his strength into a smile as he bottled his raging panic. He knew she wasn't convinced by it, but he also knew she wouldn't pursue it.
And indeed she didn't. She dragged her eyes away from him and looked up instead to the towering village, curiosity returning to colour her previously cynical gaze. She pursed her round lips. "Can we go up there?"
"Why?"
She shrugged. "Reminds me of home."
He frowned at her softly. "Do you want to go home?" He regretted the question immediately. He kne
w it wasn't an option.
Fortunately, she grinned. "Nuh-uh! I just haven't seen anything that reminds me so much of home that isn't a forest, and I like to remember what's waiting for us when we get back. It makes it more exciting! Home but not home!"
Rathen chuckled and pulled her against him by the shoulder, but as he looked back up at the skyward rock and heard Anthis laughing giddily to himself some way above them, his mind was drawn reluctantly back towards the magic. Aria noticed the change fall over him immediately.
"What did you find?"
Exhausted from her vigil, Petra turned her back decisively to the trees and regarded the pillar instead. She counted the doors, picked out the differences from facade to facade, and as Anthis traced his hand over the rock face, high up along the carved, winding path, she began absently to picture the bustle, ancient residents going about their forgotten days. She pursed her lips in contemplation. "Why would someone think to build a village out of a rock?"
"Off the top of my head," Garon began with indifference, "because temperatures would be more stable, it wouldn't leak nor get blown down in the winds, it's elevated and built at a slight angle so it wouldn't flood in heavy rain, and, if the forest wasn't here at the time, it would have provided a good look out." He shook his head as he continued carefully observing the mage. "Otherwise, you'd have to ask Anthis."
"Mm." She folded her arms and watched the young historian hurry away to another door along the path and then back again, presumably comparing some minuscule detail or other, but he didn't hold her attention for long. Her thoughts shifted, and she regarded Garon from the corner of her eye before her curiosity once again loosened her tongue. "So, what drove you to being an inquisitor?" She asked as casually as she could. "Why do you do what you do?"