The Citrine Prince gapped up at her from the ground. “Kill her! I demand one of you kill her” His guards were paralyzed in place, straining between his orders, the sudden escalation, and the lingering hold of the Vigilant’s compulsion. Even those that had rushed forward only a moment before warily watched Val, and did not approach within range of her axe.
Val hefted her axe across her shoulders, striking a deceptively casual stance again. Her mind raced beneath the surface. The Prince was driven to a desperate frenzy, this would turn to a bloodbath if he could not be intimidated or placated. The pilgrims did not scatter as she had earlier ordered, watching from the dark with a morbid fascination.
The Prince scrambled to his feet, his sword held in front of him still in an attempt at menace. Val was fairly certain from what she had seen he had no idea how to use it. “The scout! Bring out the scout!”
There was a shuffling in the guards, and Bastian was dragged forward bound at the hands and gagged. The Prince snatched the rope around his wrists and jerked him forward, Bastian stumbling weakly after. With a shove he pushed Bastian, who tumbled shoulder first into the ground unable to catch himself. He tilted his head up and made eye contact with Val, golden eyes wide and the slightest shake of his head pleading with her to not do anything rash. There was mud on his face, but also the gleam of blood and the telltale swelling and fresh bruising from a beating.
“Enough!” The Prince kicked him once in the gut, Bastian doubled on the ground and groaned into his gag. “You will let me through the gate or I will kill you. And if I cannot kill you, then your master!”
Val took a step, her speed and strength was constantly underestimated by humans. The Prince was mid-movement, lowering his blade to threaten Bastian who was curled in agony beneath him, face turning to her to gloat his upper hand. A second and a third step were all that was needed to close the distance. Val reached out to seize the Prince’s wrist in barely, and drew his hand up and above his head. His retinue surged forward again, desperate to protect their charge and more confident now she had one hand busy.
Val tugged the Prince off balance with her off-hand and tossed her axe like a spear one handed at the nearest guard. The axe head crashed into his chest eye first, knocking the man into two others and all of them to their behinds as the weight of the weapon toppled them.
Unarmed, the Prince writhing under her grasp yelling words she did not care to hear, she raised her free hand to the dark sky. She needed to warn them all back, to strike fear or they would come at her unrelenting and she would have the weight of more lives lost on her conscious. She very much doubted killing a foreign Prince was an outcome the Pentarch was thinking when he sent his least favorite nephew on this quest. All she could think of was a display of overwhelming force, to drive them back and shatter the Prince’s wild madness and desperation. The buzzing and droning of the mountains and bells had been calling to her, waking feelings she had pushed down within her for years, and it was the feelings she turned to now. Like she had done for Bastian and Dorius in quiet, plaintive thought, she drew on the feeling of the fire. There was no hesitation, no caution this time, only a desperate plea for it to respond, and it gleefully uncoiled.
A flare spluttered to life in her hand, at first it flickered and spat and threatened to die. As she felt the flow of resonance build hot in her chest she understood better how the channel to her hand felt and she solidified it. Bracing herself, she pivoted her palm directly above herself and opened to the flame. A second burst of will, mustered in the gap between her heart’s beats, sent the flame shooting skyward from her palm. The beacon was bright white-yellow and stood straight without flickering or wavering.
The fire coursed through her, it was warm in her veins but did not burn her. It came from a core she felt somewhere in the depth of her chest and energized a path up to her shoulder then onwards through her arm. The simmering had completely uncoiled into a torrent, with a feeling like a great pressure behind the source and an unseen raging inferno pressing against the tiny conduit that was open.
She felt fear at the pressure, she had no idea how to hold it back now it was unleashed, and it channeled through her breast and up her arm with only the size of the opening holding back the full conflagration. This was not the confident, collected fire she sought mental strength from. This was a monster beyond her understanding, with thoughtless power devoid of feeling. At the point of ignition centered over her palm, it seared skyward forming an elongated teardrop barely wider than her outstretched hand but towering into a column of blazing heat taller than a man. It burned a blinding white now, edged with blue. Somewhere, her mind noted the feeling of the fire magic, while similar to the droning of the bells and mountain air, had a had a different feeling to its resonance quality. While related, these were different species of magic.
The beacon-light illuminated the entire camp and well beyond, bathing the clearing as far as the distant trees beyond the meadow brighter than daylight and casting stark black shadows. The pilgrim crowd turned their faces, blinded in the darkness by the beacon and their voices rose in fear and terror. Val was dimly aware of the heat radiating from her palm, but the shift in the air pressure around her told her that her own awareness at exactly how hot it burned was flawed. Air rushed in and followed the beacon skyward, whipping up her robes and tearing at her hair. The roar of the fire and wind was louder than any blacksmith's forge. The Citrine Guard fell back, hands shielding their faces from the light and blazing heat. The Prince in her grasp screamed and pulled, his free hand shielding his face. Bastian curled beneath her feet.
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The magic had her desired effect, the Pilgrim crowd scattered now, screaming and clawing at eyes blinded by the beacon. The guard retinue was cowed, and were equally fleeing or sprawled to the ground covering their faces from the flame beacon. Val let go of the Prince’s hand and he fell to ground and scrambled away, babbling and blinded, a smell of seared fabric and scorched flesh in the air. Bastian remained curled underneath her, the edges of his travelers rags curling in the heat and singed black. Now, she realized she did not know how to shut it off. Fear rose in the back of her throat, and her stomach rolled.
The broken horned Laon tugged at her robe, he was on his knees, his head tucked low to protect his eyes from the light.
“Alate!” he cried, “You must control it!”
Val choked back a cry of desperation. The pressure was too great, the energies of the resonance too violent for her to still with her mind like she had the day before. She closed her fist, and instead of dying the beacon’s flame spilled free between the gaps in her fingers splitting into six lances of fire that spun in the sky as she twisted her wrist. Scared of losing control, she opened her hand again so it resumed its singular pillar and she kneeled beneath it, bracing her wrist with her other hand, as if it would do anything to help her control the inferno from her palm. Bastian was curled in a ball, his bound hands twisted to do their best to protect his face and his knees drawn underneath his torso. Her previous confidence was in tatters, and she felt tears at the edges of her eyes. She could feel her energy depleting now as the beacon roared. If she did not shut it off, it would draw everything from her through its searing path. She would be spilled into the night sky as light and heat and only a husk of flesh left behind.
The bells still rang, and as if the player sensed her, they shifted melody to try and show her how the magic could be tapered. She felt the droning of the notes drawn tight, as if a string was stretched and its vibrations were growing shorter and faster as each end was pulled until it was so taut it could vibrate no further. With a final bell, the Vigilant’s music ceased. Val tried the same, stretching the point of ignition at the point of her palm outwards from herself with her mind, trying to stretch tight the pathway that surged from her chest up her arm. The beacon grew longer and thinner, turning bluer, and she roared with exertion. It stretched so thin, it seemed it pierced the heavens, then spurted two flares of yellow that climbed to the stars and ceased.
Val fell to her knees, curled over Bastian beneath her. Sweat dripped down her face and arms as if she had run many miles and she felt equally exhausted. On her flesh, it mingled with soot and ash that had gathered on her skin, dripping like ink. There was a moment of silence, the blackness of the night just as blinding as the light had been. All she heard was her own breaths and Bastian’s ragged breathing beneath her, he did not uncurl.
Then a creature deep beyond the peaks of the Spine bulged. The noise was so great the earth trembled, the very air itself quavered. It was the most terrible cry Val had ever heard.
Terror, unlike anything Val had ever felt before, turned her blood to ice and threatened her bowels. Her fear only moments earlier that had felt like all she could handle, was nothing to the wave of alarm that overwhelmed her. Everything held still, all listeners paralyzed. Barely a sob was heard when previously there had been screams and terror, till just enough time passed that there was a hope the sound would not come again.
And then a second cry.
It rolled down the valleys, a tremor traveling with it through the air and ground. It carried a feeling of immense grief and gut-wrenching distress. If not for the animal instinct to run Val would have remained paralyzed. She would have cried tears of pain with the creature, pulled her own hair from her head, torn the clothing from her back. So great was the aching and suffering she felt at the voice. Instead she wailed as terror unfurled from her, and felt hot tears run down her face. She was completely undone between the effort of creating the inferno, the fear that she could not contain it, and now this overwhelming anguish carried on the air. She gathered Bastian beneath her, drawing him to his feet where he stumbled against her weakly. She wrapped him tight in her robes, gaining some strength from his slim form against her and stumbled back to the gate. The broken horned Laon supported her with a shoulder under one arm, urging her in stumbling steps forward while she could barely see between the tears that scattered torchlight into blurs and pinpricks in the darkness. She grasped Bastian close to her, vaguely aware of how concerning his weakness was as she partially pushed him, partially lifted him, back towards the gate. She tried to control her sobbing while they walked, her composure completely scattered. Behind her, she was only dimly aware of the screams and scattering of the pilgrims, and completely unaware of where the Citrine Prince had disappeared to.
As she returned to the fold of the Laons, a third bugle shook the walls. The anguish was joined with bloodlust and unbridled savagery. The call carried twice as long as the previous ones, the walls shaking as they passed beneath the gate, raining dust on Val’s horns. Val looked up to the night sky in the direction high above them that the cry originated, and swore she saw a dark shape moving between the stars.
The mayor and his men had scattered, leaving their barricades and torches strewn about the solid stone road. The Laons urged her back up to the Chapel, some breaking into a jog and running ahead, many desperately clutching at the wolf pelt that all wore somewhere on their person. There was nothing not afraid of this voice in the dark. It was sadness and savagery above any other. All were but flesh and bone and dust beneath it, and they would tremble. But if the dark figure had truly been in the sky above them, it did not descend to unleash its wrath. And no fourth call was heard.
Bastian had fallen limp and Val joined the Laons in a jog, carrying his body now over her shoulder.