by Eric Vall
“I hope Tabby finds some answers,” Cyra murmured with a small frown. “I would want to see that diary of hers, if I were you.”
“I do want to,” I said honestly. “Thanks for understanding, Cyra.”
She gave me a warm smile, and it lifted my spirits a little.
“Man, I’m tired,” Layla sighed out. “I’ve got to hit the bed before I fall over. What are the sleeping arrangements gonna be?”
“I’m sure Tabby meant for me to take one room alone, and for the rest of you to double up,” I admitted.
“Not a chance,” Layla said with a grin. “How about two of us get to sleep with Gryff, and the other two get their own rooms?”
“Sounds fair,” Cyra said with a glint in her eyes.
“Gryff,” Ashla proposed, “how about you go up to your room while we settle this?”
“Uh, sure,” I agreed as my eyebrows shot up in surprise. “I’ll be in room three, then.”
I swiped the key off the table and made my way up the staircase. Maelor had his own place while I lived in Njordenfalls with him, so I never used any of The Roaring Cat’s rooms, and I always wondered as a child what they looked like.
The room was cat-themed, of course. The bedspread was embroidered with a large, black pawprint, and there were two paintings of cats on the walls. I settled my travel bag on the floor at the end of the bed before I pulled back the bedspread.
The sheet underneath had a cat embroidered on it as well, and I started laughing to myself as I stared at its expression.
The door opened behind me, and I turned to see Ashla and Erin hesitate as they gave me strange looks.
“Wow, he’s having so much fun without us,” Ashla commented. “Do we even need to be here?”
“We’re here to sleep and keep Sera out of his dreams,” Erin snorted. “Besides that, we’re getting up so early for our mission, we’ll want to crash sooner rather than later.”
“I was just thinking of going to sleep,” I admitted as I nodded along to Erin’s words.
“It’s a date,” Ashla declared. “Alright, we’ll keep the recreational activity to a minimum.”
“I can’t imagine a nicer night,” I agreed.
We got into bed as the crickets began to chirp their songs into the night. Erin squeezed up against my chest, and Ashla twined her long legs with mine.
Eventually the girls fell asleep, and I found myself smiling as I enjoyed the quiet moment between us. Slowly, the gentle sound of their soft breath lulled me to sleep, and I let my eyes fall shut.
In the morning, we started off quickly on our mission to the forest. Ashla, Erin, and I woke up before sunrise, just as we planned, and we woke up Layla as well. Cyra was already in the hallway with her travel pack, and we kept our activity hushed as we gathered our gear and went out the front door. The sun was beginning to crest over the horizon, and the dim light was enough for us to see by comfortably as we slowly wandered down the road.
We had some travel food in our bags, like dried meat and bread, and most of us took out a few pieces to eat as we deliberated on how to start. I took out the written report from my pocket and unfolded it so I could scan its contents.
“The report details a few locations where Phi has been seen,” I explained as I examined the various quotes from lumberjacks and the other citizens of Njordenfalls. “Normally, I would find one of these witnesses and ask them to show us where they saw her, but luckily, I know this area pretty well. Headmaster Sleet wants us to keep everything about the Archons as secretive as possible, so I think a little wandering around is preferable.”
“Yeah,” Ashla agreed. “I’d hate to have to field questions from curious people. It’s tough to not just answer them.”
“I’m fine wandering around a little,” Erin added. “Let’s do this.”
The four women followed me as I led them down the street and out into the Njordenfalls Forest.
“This is so pretty,” Cyra breathed in admiration as her head craned around to stare around us.
The woods were cool, and the light was gentle as it filtered through the trees. Ferns sprang up beside thorny wild roses, and vibrant green mosses coated the lower portions of trees. Orange lichen stuck to branches and boulders, and the entire forest looked like a painting splattered by an artist’s palette.
“Where was the most recent sighting?” Ashla asked. “I think we’re most likely to encounter her there, if we do at all.”
“Near the falls,” I answered. “They’re a hike away, so it may take us a little while. Keep your eyes open for anything suspicious.”
“Sounds good,” Layla agreed, and everybody nodded along with her.
As we walked, the forest transformed from its gentle, beautiful appearance to a more foreboding one. The trees grew thick and close, and the underbrush was dense across the ground. Strange rustling noises made us all look around with unease. A rabbit darted across our path, and both Cyra and Layla visibly flinched a little with surprise.
“It’s okay,” I assured them. “I’ve been in and out of these woods a dozen times. Nothing bad ever happened to me when I was young.”
“That was when you were young,” Layla pointed out with a nervous laugh, “back then, there wasn’t a spooky Archon running around who wanted to destroy humanity.”
“Fair point,” I admitted with a chuckle as my hands fidgeted around the straps of my travel pack.
A rushing, roaring sound began to grow as we walked, and my steps grew more sure as I was filled with newfound confidence that we were on the right track.
Then we emerged through the trees as we reached the base of the falls. Water thundered down from above, and my team gave me excited glances as they stopped at the sight of it.
“It’s gorgeous,” Cyra gasped.
“Seriously beautiful,” Ashla added.
“It is,” I agreed, “though there’s no sign of Phi anywhere, as far as I can tell. We’ll have to check the other sites on this list.”
“That’s okay,” Layla breathed. “I feel better about the forest now.”
My team was a bit more lighthearted as I turned us perpendicular to our originally trajectory. The next most recent stop on our list wasn’t close, but we would be able to see the other spots along the way.
Each site was a total bust. I felt like we could stumble on Phi at any moment, but the Archon never so much as showed her face. I grew frustrated with the lack of results, and I was disappointed that she would remain a thorn in our sides. It would have been ideal if we caught her in the human realm, since her powers would be significantly weaker while she was away from the Shadowscape.
“Maybe the reports really were wrong,” Ashla mused. “Sleet may have been smart to send only a few of us.”
“He might have been,” I admitted begrudgingly.
“Ready to call it a day?” Layla asked.
“Not quite,” I insisted. “I want to go back to the falls and check there again. I feel like we’re missing something big, something right under our noses.”
Layla and Ashla exchanged unconvinced looks, but they turned back to me in agreement.
“We can look a little longer,” Ashla told me. “It’s three in the afternoon, so there’s still a little time before sunset starts.”
“Thanks, guys,” I said gratefully to my teammates. “I promise we won’t stay much longer.”
We began the trek back to the waterfall, and I felt bad for convincing everybody to keep going, but I just had a gut feeling about this one. I didn’t want to come back empty-handed without so much as a shred of evidence for what Phi was doing here. I couldn’t accept that the reports were completely wrong, especially not from so many people in Njordenfalls.
We almost reached the waterfall when Erin wandered off the beaten path to look at some wildflowers. I didn’t think anything of it, but she cried out suddenly, and my gaze snapped over to her in concern.
The mimic was sprawled out on the forest floor, and there were leaves stu
ck in her orange hair.
“I’m okay,” she croaked. “Just tripped over some random rock.”
I jogged over and helped her back to her feet, but my eyes were drawn to the rock she tripped over. It was unnaturally rectangular and smooth, and Erin had accidentally scraped a swath of moss from its surface when she tripped.
I peered closely at the scraped-off section, and my mouth fell open as my eyes traced a familiar mark.
“Guys,” I called, “Ashla? I think Erin found something.”
I scraped at the moss with my hand and ignored the dirt that accumulated on my fingers. If I was right, this discovery was more important than a little muck.
Sure enough, the strange mark I saw on the rock resolved into several more marks beside it. I couldn’t read them, but they were more than a little familiar to me, and I was almost positive it was the same language as the one used in the ciphers.
Phi’s presence in the forest made sense now. I couldn’t misinterpret what the presence of the runes meant.
Something old was buried here.
Something ancient and terribly important was here, right next to the hometown I loved.
Chapter 8
Ashla arrived and gasped as she looked at the rock. “This word, here,” she said, “I recognize it. Let’s keep clearing the moss, I need to see this.”
“Let me help,” Cyra suggested. “Step back, Gryff.”
Cyra threw out a handful of crystals, and a group of wetweavers burst out of them.
I’d seen Cyra use the wetweavers before, when she used them to put out a fire in the town of Millervale not too long ago. They looked like crystalline spiders with clear bodies, apart from the three emerald-colored eyes in the center of each wetweaver’s head. The small monsters could cast a water-like net of fire-resistant material that worked extraordinarily well against most flames, though I wasn’t sure how Cyra was going to use them here.
I didn’t have to ask, since her footlong spiders got to work with impressive speed and accuracy. Their crystalline legs picked clots of dirt, moss, and leaves from the stone while a few produced large globs of water-like liquid. The liquid soaked in to loosen more dirt even as it simultaneously cleaned the stone with surprising efficiency.
In just a few minutes of concentrated work, Cyra had completely exposed the runes below without damaging the stone itself at all.
“Give me a few moments to translate this,” Ashla asked with an absentminded look as her eyes flew over the runes. She rifled for a notebook in her travel pack so she could jot down her observations as she worked on the translation.
“I need to get some of those,” I marveled as I ran a finger along the stone. The surface was slightly slimy with the remnants of the wetweavers’ liquid, but I was impressed with just how safely they’d excavated the ruin.
“They’re very handy,” Cyra agreed. “I’m lucky to have them. If they were less rare, you could absolutely get a team of your own.”
“I’ll think of something else,” I promised myself. “My drillmoles are great for digging, but not like this.”
“I’ve got it!” Ashla exclaimed.
“Really?” I asked as I peered at her scribbled work on the page.
The ice mage was certainly less neat than Arwyn, so I couldn’t decipher much from what she had written.
“Well, I don’t have all of it,” Ashla admitted. “I’d have to bring it back for the researchers to figure out, but I do know two words. ‘Gate’ and ‘Shadowscape.’”
Why would Njordenfalls have ancient runes from at least centuries or possibly even millennia ago? Nothing interesting ever happened in Njordenfalls when I lived there with Maelor. Still, this had to mean something, and I suspected the sightings of Phi and the ruins weren’t unrelated.
“Gate and Shadowscape,” I realized slowly. “I think Sleet was right. Phi wants to open up a permanent rift, and this location might actually be one of the nine she can use to do it.”
“Here, in your tiny hometown?” Layla said with disbelief. “What are the odds?”
“They’ve gotta be slim,” I agreed, “but the evidence seems clear.”
“Well, what about the last permanent rift?” Cyra asked with a thoughtful tilt of her head. “That was in Ortych Sands on our side, and we didn’t see any stone ruins marking it as such.”
“That’s true,” I admitted, “but they would have been in the middle of the desert. Look how covered this stone was, and it was only in the forest.”
“You think the shifting sands covered it?” Cyra asked, and she paused as she considered the possibility. “I suppose that does make sense. Sand formations change all the time, and Ortych Sands could have changed dramatically since the permanent rift location came into existence.”
“It does beg the question how they came into existence at all,” Ashla pointed out thoughtfully.
“I bet the Archons made them,” I guessed. “Nine godlike Archons who wanted to take over the human realm, and nine permanent rifts because of them?”
I waited for a response from Sera, since she usually perked up her attention whenever the Archons got mentioned.
Wouldn’t you like to know? Sera asked with a dangerous, alluring laugh. Perhaps a kiss could incentivize me?
I was curious, but it wasn’t worth risking that again. Last time, I was dangerously close to getting lost in the moment. I wasn’t sure what I would’ve done just to keep the pleasure going.
“If they really all have ruins,” Erin proposed, “this could be a good way for us to find these permanent rift locations.”
“True,” I agreed as my mind raced over what this could mean. “Plus, we know Phi is still trying to open one. Why do we keep only reacting to rifts, when we can get ahead of the problem entirely? We should set up guards for both Ortych Sands and for here. That way we already have a defensive force in place if and when Phi decides to show her face.”
“Good idea,” Cyra said approvingly. “I’m sure Headmaster Sleet would’ve decided the same thing, with this information.”
“We should all go back to Varle Enclave,” Ashla put in decidedly. “We can’t just speculate on what Headmaster Sleet would decide, we have to actually know his orders. We need to tell Sleet what we’ve found.”
I agreed that Sleet should probably know, but the thought of leaving Njordenfalls behind made my stomach knot with tension. How could I get back on the airship while I knew Njordenfalls was being stalked by Phi? One lumberjack had already disappeared, and the whole town was sitting next to a ticking time bomb of a rift.
No, I couldn’t leave them. I wouldn’t let my hometown be wiped off the map like that.
“Hold on,” I said. “We can’t possibly leave now that we know Phi has definitely been around here. She intends to open a permanent rift, right?”
“Probably,” Ashla admitted, “but she hasn’t done so yet.”
“We don’t know why she hasn’t,” I argued with conviction. “Maybe she’s been looking for this ruin, and now that we’ve uncovered it, she can open the rift. We have to stay.”
“She opened the one in Ortych Sands from the Shadowscape side,” Erin pointed out as her eyebrows knitted together. “I don’t think she has to have the marker revealed.”
“Or,” I suggested as I sought for an explanation, “maybe she just needs to gather a little more power, and then she’ll throw it wide open.”
My teammates looked a little uncertain, and I could tell they had some misgivings about my guesses.
To be honest, so did I.
“I understand you’re worried,” Ashla said with understanding in her expression, “but we have a duty to report this.”
“I know,” I said as my frustration grew. “The thought of leaving this town helpless isn’t something I can live with, though. I know people here, and I just can’t leave them to die. Njordenfalls is so far from any Enclave, the entire village would be wiped out before a single airship could arrive.”
“He has a point
,” Layla murmured.
“You guys can do what you want,” I allowed with a regretful smile. “I won’t ask you to stay, but I’m not leaving.”
“We can’t let Gryff stay alone,” Erin put in. “Sera is as much of a liability as Phi. What if she gets free, and we’re not there to stop her?”
“It’s a bad idea to let him stay at all,” Ashla warned. “Njordenfalls would fare very badly against Sera’s power.”
“So, one of us should stay instead,” Layla suggested. “How about Gryff goes home, and I stay in his place? I’d be happy to relax here and soak in the views.”
“You can’t stay alone, either,” I disagreed as I looked at Layla with concern. “That’s too dangerous, to have nobody around to watch your back. If Phi does open a rift, one mage alone shouldn’t try to stave it off.”
“Two or three mages isn’t enough to fight her, either,” Cyra pointed out.
I chewed on my lip as I thought it over. I couldn’t leave Njordenfalls without knowing it was at least a little protected, and some of us had to go back, but a couple of mages just wasn’t adequate.
“How about this,” I suggested, “two of us can stay, but as soon as the rest of us are back, we ask Headmaster Sleet to send in a military platoon. That way, there’s real backup if anything bad happens.”
“That’s a good idea,” Ashla admitted. “I think I can agree to that.”
“Good,” I asserted. “So, Layla wants to stay. I think she’s a good choice, since her monsters can fight well against multiple enemies at once.”
“Agreed,” Erin put in. “I can’t stay, because I have to pilot the ship back.”
“Right,” I said. “Should I stay alongside Layla?”
“I refuse to let you do that,” Ashla responded seriously. “I know you have confidence that Sera won’t overtake you, but things can progress quickly. If she did possess you, could you live with the guilt of injuring people here?”
“No,” I admitted hesitantly. “I suppose I couldn’t.”
“It won’t be you, then,” the ice mage said with a confident nod. “It has to be me or Cyra.”
“I should stay,” Cyra put in with a smile. “I like the surroundings here, so it’ll practically be a vacation. In addition, my magic can be used to stop multiple enemies at once, just like Layla’s. My petripede and wetweavers can be extremely helpful, not to mention Kalon.”