Desert Flame

by Nicole R. Taylor

  “I’ve seen these before,” Eloise said. “They’re the same as the Bungle Bungles.”

  “Purnululu,” Kyne said with a nod, speaking the Indigenous name for the famous rocks in Western Australia.

  She took one last look before she started walking. “C’mon, let’s keep going.”

  They found a dark opening at the base of the formation, their path leading them where they wanted to go. Coen was right as usual—all they had to do was walk with their destination in mind and their elemental powers would guide them to the bullseye. Handy, even though that kind of magic came with zero fanfare.

  “We’re looking for a cave, so…” She stepped into the tunnel, leaving the heat of the day and submerged herself in the cooler interior of the karsts.

  “What is this place?” Kyne asked behind her, his voice hushed. “It doesn’t feel…right.” It must be his latent elemental affinity for ether that spoke to him, or he was feeling the disconnect between the cave and the earth it should be attached to.

  “A place locked away in space and time,” Eloise replied. “Which is why no one in Solace has ever found it.”

  They emerged in a small cavern, finally reaching a landscape she was familiar with.

  A hole in the roof let in a beam of warm light and a campfire crackled in the centre of the ‘room’. A lumpy mattress lay to one side and a variety of baskets woven out of strips of dried bark sat against the cave wall, but there was nothing else of note, other than the runes carved into the banded stone.

  An old woman emerged from the shadows, her eyes narrowed at the elementals. She’d woven her wiry white hair into a long plait, her clothing looked handmade, and her feet were bare, but her eyes shone with an intelligence that made the two elementals hesitate.

  “I’ll be stuffed…” Kyne said, taking off his hat. “You were right.”

  “Of course, I was,” Eloise huffed. “This is Andante.”

  “If you’re here, then you must be in trouble,” the old woman said, not offering a hello. “Otherwise, that thunder cloud wouldn’t have told you where to walk.”

  “Coen?” Eloise asked.

  “That’s the one.” She reached out and slapped Kyne’s hand away from the wall. “Don’t touch that.”

  He snatched his am back and screwed up his nose. “Why?”

  “It’ll fry your brain, that’s why,” the old woman snapped. “Sit down before you hurt yourself.”

  The miner looked at Eloise. “It’s just a rune,” he said. “A Norse rune.”

  “It’s not,” Andante said.

  Eloise frowned and looked around the cave. It was covered with carvings—runes and other symbols she didn’t recognise—and they seemed to make her powers tingle. The last time she was here, she’d been on death’s door, dehydrated and not one hundred percent sure she was in her right mind. Now that she had a handle on her magic and understood the supernatural ways of the world, she was positive Andante’s cave held more than just a few scratches on the walls.

  “I think you should sit down, Kyne,” she said. “Andante owes us an explanation.”

  “I don’t owe you anything,” the old woman said, sitting by the fire. “You’re the ones who knocked on my door.”

  “You rescued me from the outback all those months ago, then dumped all those ominous warnings into my lap,” she retorted. “Now I’m in my right mind, I have the right to ask questions.”

  Andante let out a humph. “Then sit before I change my mind.”

  “You never said she was grumpy,” Kyne muttered, earning himself a swift kick in the shin.

  The elementals sat, crossing their legs. Eloise didn’t think it was best to push, so instead, she waited for the old woman to explain what she would.

  “My people are the Druids,” Andante said. “An ancient arcane race of travellers with the power to bend space, time, and the fabric of nature itself.”

  She held out her hand and the elementals watched in stunned silence as bright blue magic pooled in her palm like metallic liquid…then began to grow. Shimmering strands emerged, forming lines and turning corners, creating a complex geometric shape that shone with purples, greens, and blues that reminded Eloise of holographic cellophane.

  The runes on the walls began to glow, responding to the rush of magic and charging the air with static. She was right to warn Kyne away from them. They were anchors for her magic, like the sigils Vera used in her spells.

  In that moment, as they watched the threads grow, Eloise realised Andante wasn’t an old hermit scratching out a living in the dirt. She lived like the mobs who’d called this place home for thousands of years before Australia was colonised. She lived in harmony with the land, sky, and spirit. Her cave lay within a strand of what she called space and time, but what the Indigenous peoples called the Dreaming. The dark places between the stars where Coen told her he looked to the ancestor spirits.

  Andante’s magic went beyond their world and into places Eloise could only barely touch. Her elemental gift was unique, but the old woman’s was boundless.

  “I have travelled far, across many worlds, and have been hunted along with my people for a thousand years,” Andante went on, shaping her magic.

  “Hunted?” Eloise asked. “By whom?”

  “Darkness…” she murmured, “and the things that live within it.”

  “Is that why you hide here?” Kyne asked.

  “The Druids are watchers,” she snapped. “We do not interfere. We are not warriors.”

  “You’re pacifists,” Eloise murmured. “That’s why you haven’t come to Solace. You know what we face there.”

  She nodded curtly. “I do.”

  “If you watch, then you know the danger we’re in,” the elemental added. “You’ve seen Darius and what he’s done to those EarthBore workers…and what he plans to do to the seal.”

  Andante nodded again and allowed her magic to solidify.

  Kyne snorted, his temper rising. “And still you won’t come out of your cave to help us?”

  “There are more dangers to worry about than vampires,” the old woman said, scowling at the miner. “Many more.”

  The druidesses magic flared and gained form and colour until she held a bouquet of flowers—daisies, pansies, and cornflowers.

  “Tell us,” Eloise urged. “If you’ve been watching us, then you understand how close we are to calamity. That’s the word you used, remember? Calamity.”

  Andante let the construct dissolve, the flowers falling away in a shower of glittering sparkles.

  “You remind me of my niece,” the old woman said. “Of Gilhana. She was just as spirited as you. She made the ultimate sacrifice for our people, remaining behind to protect those who remained.”

  “I’m sorry…” Eloise murmured. “Do you know what happened to her?”

  “I do not know. She… She took up the mantle when I would not.”

  Her heart sank and she glanced at Kyne. Andante had refused to help her own people and her niece had stepped up in her place. Maybe that’s why she remained here, as some sort of penance.

  “Andante,” Eloise murmured, reaching for her hand. As her fingers brushed her cold, wrinkled skin, Andante looked up, her eyes glowing with the threads of her magic. “Will you help us now? Will you tell us what we face so we can understand it?”

  The old woman pulled her hand back and looked at Kyne, who’d been sitting stoically beside Eloise for most of their meeting.

  “I don’t claim to understand anything you’ve already told us,” he said, “but maybe this is a chance to make up for old regrets. It won’t change the past, but maybe it can help you find some peace with your future.”

  Andante’s face softened but she remained silent. For a while, the three sat beside the fire and listened to the crackling logs. Eloise’s anxiety rose, knowing what they’d left behind in Solace—Vera was casting her boundary spell, but it was only a temporary fix—and the longer they sat, the closer Darius got to the hidden ‘key’ withi
n the iron ore.

  Finally, Andante drew in a deep breath.

  “In this world, it was called the heart of the ocean,” she said, gazing into the fire, “but its threads weave through many curtains, stretching outwards like the roots of a great tree.”

  “The tentacles.” Eloise glanced at Kyne, Andante’s words conjuring the vision of the mountain they’d seen on Valentine’s Day.

  “Yes,” the druidess said. “Thread, tentacle, root… They’re all just words describing the same thing.”

  “Then what is it?” Kyne asked. “The thing under the seal…the mountain? What are they?”

  “My people, the Druids, call them the Old Ones. Entities as old as the universe itself, neither living nor dead. Made from the particles that created everything, they exist between worlds, between space, between time…just out of reach to all but a few.” Her gaze moved to Eloise.

  “My powers,” she whispered, a chill running down her spine. “That’s why I… That’s why I see it.”

  Andante sighed, a sadness creeping into her expression. “It calls to you. The mountain.”

  “I dream about it almost every night.” Her hand found Kyne’s. “He’s seen it, too.”

  “Why?” Kyne asked. “Why is it looking for Eloise?”

  The old woman shrugged. “I do not know. There is no way of knowing until she stands before it.”

  Eloise swallowed hard. She’d never go to that mountain if she had any say about it.

  “I’m guessing your people have a history with these things,” the miner said to Andante.

  “Unfortunately,” the old women told him. “Our leader made a pact with an Old One. We were hunted by the Darkness and faced our extinction. Our only hope was to return to our ancestral home, but in order to stop our enemy from following, we needed help. The entity would guard our home world in exchange for the souls of the unworthy.” The runes on the wall flared dully. “The Darklands are a black, crystalline world that all Druids must travel in order to reach home.”

  Kyne snorted. “Let me guess, only ‘the worthy’ make it.”

  “The Old Ones have no emotions. They feel no joy or sorrow…they know no mercy. They have no benevolence for biological life, thus they cannot be reasoned with.”

  “And one of those things is buried underneath Solace,” Eloise murmured, her heart sinking.

  “And lives within your black mountain,” Andante said, effectively dropping the mic.

  “Of course, there is,” Kyne said with a heavy sigh. “Soon we’ll have Old Ones coming out of every orifice.”

  Honestly, Eloise still found herself confused about most of what Andante had revealed. What did the Old One want? To destroy worlds? Or was it just what they did, like a natural predatory response like a vampire needed to hunt to survive? At the thought of these entities needing to devour worlds like a juicy hamburger, she shivered.

  “Whoever trapped the Old One under your town, did so long before I arrived,” Andante said. “Quite a long time.”

  “And it’s different from the Old One in the mountain?” Kyne asked.

  “It seems so.”

  Eloise watched Andante as she spoke, and knew she had her suspicions about who’d sealed up the heart of the ocean, even though she wasn’t voicing them. Maybe it was important they found out who had imprisoned the Old One and why, but for now, it was more pressing to stop Darius from opening the seal and letting it out.

  “The vampire is digging,” she said. “He’s looking for something buried in a mass of iron ore north of Solace. Do you know what it is?”

  Andante shrugged. “A key, perhaps? I do not know anything that would be worthy enough to bury inside iron that deep.”

  “We have the key to the seal. I hid it myself,” Kyne said. “It has to be the key to the mountain.”

  “You won’t know until you dig it up,” the druidess added.

  “Uh, hell no.” The miner shook his head. “It can stay down there.”

  Eloise was only half-listening to their exchange. Her mind was full of all the things Andante had revealed about the Old Ones, especially the mountain. If she was dreaming about it, was it calling to her? Her visions had led her to Solace, where her van had promptly broken down, her magic grew, and… It was all beginning to feel like one huge cosmic manipulation, and she was not going to stand for it.

  “Andante,” she began, leaning forwards, “you’ve given us so many answers, but we didn’t just come here to talk. We came here for help.”

  The druidess narrowed her eyes and said nothing.

  “Is your magic linked to your life?” she went on. “Does it fade if you’re gone?”

  Andante shook her head, her lip curling. “I know what you ask, child.”

  “Then you see the sense in it.”

  “The Old Ones stretch over hundreds of worlds,” the druidess said. “I cannot contain it all.”

  “Then just hide the part that reaches into ours,” Eloise pleaded. “If we can’t help the entire universe, then at least we can safeguard what we can.”

  “A little is better than nothing at all,” Kyne agreed.

  Andante’s lips thinned. “We have been given extraordinary gifts, but we are not masters of nature. Do not fall into the trap of believing you have total control over the forces you shape.” She made a point of looking at Kyne. “Both of you should remember that.”

  Eloise’s shoulders sagged. She was saying no.

  “So you won’t help,” Kyne hissed. “You’ll just keep sitting here in your stupid cave while your Old Ones erase our world.”

  “They’re not my Old Ones,” the druidess said. “They cannot be defeated.”

  “Andante, please,” Eloise pleaded. “We don’t know what to do…”

  The old woman said nothing. She didn’t even move. It was becoming obvious she’d given all the help she was willing to while taking the Druids’ role as pacifists to a whole new level.

  “We need to get back to Solace.” Kyne stood and glared down at Andante. “We’ve sat on our arses here long enough. She won’t come, so let her rot.”

  “Kyne,” Eloise hissed. She stood and looked down at the druidess. “Andante? Will you come with us?”

  Silence was her only reply.

  “C’mon.” The miner tugged on her hand. “We don’t have much time left. If we want to stop Darius, we have to go now.” He pulled her across the cave.

  Eloise looked over her shoulder as they stepped into the tunnel, her heart heavy. To say she was disappointed by Andante’s choice was an understatement. At least they knew what they were protecting now, never mind how ambiguous it all seemed. A new piece of the puzzle had slotted into place, and they would return with a renewed sense of urgency…but they’d have to take on Darius by themselves. Andante’s magic was powerful, they could do with her help, but they couldn’t force her.

  “There are so many things I don’t get…” Kyne said as they clambered back through the cave. His temper had seemed to ease now that he was away from the glowing runes. “Are these Old Ones at war with one another? And who locked them up in the first place? Are we just collateral damage?”

  “All I know is that we’re trying to hold back forces too powerful for people like us to stand against. We’re a grain of sand on a beach the size of a grain of sand compared to these things, and that’s being wildly generous.” Old Ones. Even the name sounded ominous. “Whatever they are or what they want seems irrelevant. They’ll destroy our world for no particular reason, and it’ll be all no hard feelings, that’s just how the cosmos works.”

  “When you put it like that, it’s frustrating as.” Kyne took her hand, helping her over a rough outcropping of rock. “It feels like they’re waving their hands at us and saying they want to destroy us all because…‘reasons’.”

  That was exactly what they were doing. Mulling it over wouldn’t help them, not now, not later, and not ever. The only thing that seemed reasonable was to keep their access points plugged—an
d that meant keeping the seal closed.

  As the elementals left the shadowy cave and stepped into the burnished afternoon sun of the outback, Eloise felt a stab of melancholy in her heart.

  “I can’t help feeling sorry for her,” she told Kyne.

  “Why? It’s her choice to sit in that cave.”

  “I guess…” She looked back at the rock formation, but it’d dissolved, disappearing into the illusion of Druid magic. “But…she’s all alone.”

  “Also her choice.” Kyne wasn’t budging on his assessment of the old woman. “We reached out to her and she declined.” That was a loaded statement, but she didn’t have it in her to bite back.

  She wondered how long Andante had lived in her cave amongst the karsts, and how long it’d been since she’d seen her niece Gilhana. Perhaps it’d been a thousand years or maybe more, just like the number of all the worlds she imagined the druidess had visited in that time. Maybe her niece was long gone.

  She’d wanted to ask, but as they moved west across the outback, Eloise knew there were some stories that weren’t for her to know. They belonged to other people, in other worlds far away from her own.

  But her story, and that of the Exiles, was still unfolding. Safeguarding them and the world at large was her only concern right now.

  Eloise sighed, knowing Joseph was about to get his wish. A reckoning was coming for Darius, and not a moment too soon.

  Chapter 21

  It wasn’t the first time Hardy had his neck snapped. It’d snapped so many times in his early years as a vampire, it was a wonder it hadn’t come off entirely.

  As he came to, he felt a dull ache in the base of his skull. It bloomed outward, twisting around his vertebrae and down his spine and up through his brain and into his temples. The magic that’d created him had a cruel way of letting him know he was still alive.

  Hardy jerked awake, his eyes flying open, and his arms and legs met with resistance. His skin hissed as the ropes burned into his flesh, sending a sharp throb of pain through his body. The bonds were wet with… What was it? Acid? He didn’t know of anything else that would eat into his skin like that.