Konrad

Walter clicked a dull metal key in the lock and took several cautious steps back. "If you don’t come back, I’ll have to assume that you weren’t part of the sacred duty, so to speak."

The inside of the box was completely hollow and illuminated by a dull purple glow that came from the vivid streaks of gemstone embedded in the rock. Two impossibly tall trees reared above them, gnarled spectres in the weak light.

One was a weeping willow that had cried its last tears many moons ago and now stooped over like an old maid, crooked and bent. The second was made of strong, twisting branches that were long and shapely, and the resemblance to a certain small god was undeniable.

"It’s a Lyran tree." Konrad said, and just like when he was in the secretive chamber of the dwarves, his words seemed to be sucked away as soon as he uttered them.

"The last Lyran tree I expect," Alice added.

"Why's it here, though?" Rolo asked.

"I think it’s a prison. The purple crystals do something to the gods; Lyran said they can’t even come close to it. They sealed the tree in here to cut Lyran off," Konrad said.

"What about your powers?" Alice asked.

Konrad opened his palm and felt the reassuring weight of the shadow sword drop into it. The power was still there for him to call on, but he sensed nothing of the small gods. The link had never been particularly strong, but now it was gone it felt muffled somehow. Perhaps the crystals didn’t dampen the power of the gods; rather, they blocked it, as if nothing got in or out of this cube.

"If it was locked away, then there must have been a reason. Look at the construction of this place; doesn’t it remind you of something?" Alice asked.

"You think the Faelen made it," Konrad stated.

Alice’s smile looked almost maniacal in the soft purple light. "If they did, then that means you can finally tell us what you learned from the dwarves; no one can hear you in here!"

Konrad could finally share the burden he had been carrying around since he entered the Lathorok crystal under Burly Mountain: that the Mother was a fiction and the Father had killed other gods, wreaking havoc on their followers.

There was a cracking sound above them, and a great lump of stone broke away from the ceiling, throwing up a cloud of dust as it high the floor. Above them, the rock began to move with a grinding sound, slithering as its form unwound.

"It's a Stonewrym!" Alice shouted.

Her cry of warning came a split second too late, and pain lanced through Konrad's shoulder as he was flung back against the far wall, a shiny barb of black stone twelve inches long sticking out of his shoulder.

"Rolo, help Konrad," Alice shouted.

The Stonewrym slithered around the trees in the darkness, and Konrad caught a glimpse of a long tail that ended in a spiked ball covered in shining black barbs. As he watched, one of the barbs regrew.

"Konrad, can you heal this if I pull it out?" Rolo’s words came in a rush.

Konrad nodded dully, and the sharp pain became more acute as Rolo pulled the barb out with a sucking sound. Konrad didn’t heal it, just letting the armour close up over the wound. One of the others might need healing and he couldn’t afford to waste any power that he had.

The roar of the Stonewyrm was closely followed by a detonation that shook the whole building, and two pieces of a broken blue stick sailed through the air and landed on the floor, gently smoking.

Alice ran towards them, a cut on her forehead bleeding furiously, and the Stonewrym rose up behind her to strike. Konrad felt a spike of fear, and the Cold Bite rose unbidden to his finger tips, but he held it in check as the Stonewrym's head swung to the left, tracking three shadowy blurs that darted out in front of it. Spirit and her two shadow hounds providing the distraction Alice needed to reach them.

With a flick of its tail, the Stonewrym destroyed the shadow hounds, and Spirit ran up and along the wall as the heavy barbs thudded in the stone inches behind her.

"How do we fight it?" Rolo roared.

"I read about this; they’re territorial; we have to make it back down!" Alice cried.

Konrad took a deep breath, and exhaled, holding the image of the stonewyrm in his mind. The only illusions he had ever made had been mist-like images, but he knew he would need more for this. He let the power of the Cold Bite flow from his ice encrusted hands into his illusion, a giant icewrym. The living wind of the coldest mountain explored its new form and shrieked with delight, the sound causing them all to clutch their hands to their ears.

The Snowwrym bellowed its own anger at seeing an invader in its territory, and the two titans threw themselves at one another.

"Konrad, that’s incredible," Rolo said as they stepped back into a dark corner, watching in amazement as the monstrous figures battled against each other.

"Let’s just hope it works; I don’t have anything left for something this size. Alice, how do we kill this thing?"

"It’s not really alive. Any information I have seen about Stonewyrms suggests that they are conjured, like what you just did with yours. I’ve no idea how it remained here so long; my only guess is that it’s been feeding off of the living crystal in the rock, waiting dormant until someone came along."

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Konrad’s respect for the builders of this prison increased slightly.

"How can we get rid of it then?" Rolo asked.

"If we can break down this place, then there’s a good chance it will escape; when it gets out, it won’t last too long."

"You’re sure about this?"

"Well, the book was quite old, and it was more of a story book for children. I’m mostly sure."

"Now that your blasting stick is broken, we don’t have anything that can break through stone," Rolo said.

"I have some rock-shaping gauntlets; they might be able to get through this; if we weaken the support structure, it might bring the whole place down."

"Where did you get rock-shaping gauntlets?" Konrad asked.

"A gift from the dwarves," Alice replied.

"Which I’m sure they would remember giving you," Konrad said, the secretive circumstances of their departure from Burly Mountain starting to make sense.

The Stonewrym thrashed its tail, and cracks appeared on the hide of Konrad's icewyrm. In response, the ice monster opened its mouth and engulfed the Stonewyrm in an arctic blast. The temperature in the cube plummeted, and Alice began to shiver. Konrad had his protection against the cold, and Rolo was from the north, but Alice wouldn’t last long in these conditions.

"Konrad, the gauntlets, in here," Alice stammered, struggling to take off her pack.

"Spirit, hide her, keep her warm!" Konrad yelled.

Spirit wrapped around Alice, and a flood of shadows surged towards them. In the blink of an eye, they were gone, at one with the darkness around them.

Konrad rummaged around in Alice’s pack and found, to his surprise, that it contained at least a dozen objects that were carefully wrapped with neat labels. There was a pocket-dimension ore bag, and one was labeled an elemental drill. One was wrapped in black velvet and felt like a large piece of pear-shaped glass. It exuded a kind of quiet malice, and the label read, "The tear of remembrance." Konrad read the rest of the label and decided that it would be best not to mention this particular artifact to Rolo.

The gauntlets were nothing more than a pair of thick, well-used leather gloves. Pulling them on, he leaned his hand against the hard black stone and watched astounded as his fingers dipped into the rock like a hot knife through butter, leaving him with a lump of rock in his hand.

An almighty crash behind him signaled that his icewyrm was losing its battle with its tougher stone enemy. With a flick of its tail, the stonewyrm smashed against the icewyrm's body, and deep cracks appeared. The Cold Bite whistled out of them, further dropping the temperature of the cube.

Konrad tried frantically to form a plan. There looked to be a dozen structural supports in the chamber, thick columns that would take him too long to slice through. Plus, what would he do when that was completed—let the roof fall on his companions?

Konrad eyed the black stonewyrm and started to sprint towards it, dropping to his knees and sliding as the tail thrashed towards him. As the huge spiked ball flew over his head, Konrad held up his hands and let the gloves slice through. The great spiked ball flew off and bounced twice before smashing clean through the chamber wall. Out of the hole that was left, Konrad spotted a nervous Walter peering in.

The stonewyrm gipped the icewrym in its mouth and crunched down. With a final howl, Konrad's summoned beast was no more, and the Stonewyrm lowered its head down until Konrad looked into two eyes like polished black pearls.

With a roar, the worm lunged at Konrad, and he managed to dive to one side, only to be caught in the stomach by what was left of the beast's tail. He hit the floor hard and gaing up he saw the stonewyrm above him, its toothy maw wide open.

The war cries of the far north had not been heard in this region of Parthanea before, and the sound reverberated around the cavern, filling Konrad’s heart with courage. Rolo’s axe struck the head of the wrym with such force that the metal shattered, and the momentum of the northman’s charge pushed the beast's head to the side just enough that the sharp teeth missed Konrad, instead plowing into the dirt.

Konrad rolled over and plunged his hands into the side of the stone head, wrenching it up and slicing it completely from the body. The headless stonewyrm reared up to its full height and came crashing back down onto one of the walls of the cube, causing the whole structure to start to shudder. Then Alice was by his side, pulling Konrad to his feet, and they were joined by Rolo and Spirit as they made a desperate break for the hole in the wall.

The group made it clear of the collapsing cube and lay panting on the floor as great chunks of stone pounded down. Walter appeared and unscrewed his small flask, wordlessly handing it to Rolo who took a deep drought.

When the dust had settled, the two trees did not look good. The dead willow tree had easily succumbed to the pounding rock and collapsed in a snap of dry wood. The Lyran tree fended off a few glancing blows, but the bigger rocks gashed great rents in its side, and some of the branches snapped off.

"Did it work?" Konrad asked.

There was no answer from his companions, and he looked around to see they were frozen in time, just like that day on the coldest mountain when he had freed Casovan's power.

The Lyran tree groaned and flexed, and as he watched it heal itself, the branches sprouted anew, bigger and stronger than ever, the trunk twisting and expanding into a delicately flowing shape. Features could clearly be seen near the top, and suddenly, as if she had been there all along, Lyran appeared, a hundred feet tall, with the green canopy falling around her head like flowing hair.

"Well done, Konrad," Lyran said.

"It worked?"

"It did; I’d almost forgotten how much there was; no wonder Casovan was so pleased with himself. I promised you gifts; are you ready?"

"I am." The gifts were what he needed now—strength to go up against the champions of the Father.

"To you, I give my greatest gift, the power of the Lyran tree itself."

"What will it do?"

"The Lyran tree is the cycle of life; the possibilities are almost endless."

The hole that Alice had blasted in the thorns stood yawning nearby, and Konrad focused on it. The power of the Lyran tree filled his nostrils with the smell of wet earth, and he felt his muscles bunch up with the slow strength of searching roots. Green limbs snaked out of the dirt to fill the gap, and flowers burst from them as years of summer growth happened in the blink of an eye.

"Not bad; let me try," Lyran said.

An eruption of greenery exploded all around them. The thorny barricade that had prevented anyone from reaching the center of the caldera was obliterated, and in its place stood ancient trees and soft grasses. Flowers of every hue winked under the sun-dappled canopy, and soft fruits weighed down both branch and vine. Above all towered the colossal Lyran tree, in the center of a shimmering pool of water, its ancient power restored.

"What about the other tree?" Konrad asked. He focused his new power on the old Willow tree and shuddered as his spirit touched the edges of a yawning hole in existence. The emptiness threatened to overwhelm him and it was only the distant voice of Lyran that stopped his mind from being carried away.

"You can’t help her, Konrad," was all Lyran said, and Konrad detected a note of sadness in the voice of the small god.

The world unfroze and Alice, Rolo, and Walter all cried out in amazement as they took in the verdant garden that had seemingly sprung up around them in the blink of an eye.

"Konrad, you did this?" Rolo breathed.

"Not me, Lyran."

"If you were still worried about whether you did the right thing, I guess you know now," Alice said.

In his pocket, Konrad gripped the teardrop-shaped item he had taken from Alice’s bag earlier. He had the power he needed, but it would take a lot more than a pleasant garden to make him trust any of the gods. Thanks to the tear of remembrance, he had a way to get the truth.