Will unto power. It was by this mechanism the world was bent to whims and wants.
Mind. Body. Spirit. It was through these vessels the undying will was translated.
Steel could be loomed into silk through their pairing, and strength exerted to the sundering of mountains. Riches could be transmuted into detritus, and fallowed fields brought to fertile fullness through shed tears and murmured wishes. The limits were forever expanding, and the means of advancement as indelible as they were personal. The Art of Singing, Anding, Spellcraft, Zeroth, Tall Walking, Magic - the names were many, and the foundation singular supremacy.
Alcaeus learned of this young, and knew well a number of grand works wrought through its infinitudes: the citadel peak of Archaia and its perilous weighing remained an intimately familiar subject. The perfect healing of his mother’s mountain springs was known as well. So too were the mystifying effects of the Woodsea, and the accommodative nature of his father’s living library.
The Brecilian was the greatest of these encountered works, he believed.
From storm and shadow to peaceable springtime, light had replaced night, and pleasantry the foreboding nature of the forest. No dark trees were there to be seen, rakish and seeking; sentinels stood instead, strong and seemly, and blatantly welcoming, their canopy song rustling and gustling in a soft breeze. Rich browns and whites and reds were they, patterned bark and ebon leaves dappled by the softly hung sun. Great in variance were their sizes and species, with some so small as to be crushed underfoot, whereas others pierced so highly as to disappear from view. Untouched were they by rain or thundering. Alcaeus felt as if he’d stepped into a new day.
Birds fluttered to and fro across his vision, singing high into the cloudless sky, whose blue was deep and full. Critters danced between copses, merry in sounding, and oft dramatically furred - he especially liked the blue squirrels. They gathered nuts and berries, and gnawed in appreciation instead of hunger. In the furthest west, the toll of bells came low as could be, each toll spaced wide enough to accommodate the Strait of Woe.
Alcaeus paused in questing curiosity at the cavalcade of doings and sights, saliva thick in the back of his throat; and for a moment, he glanced back to see a far reaching sameness, no hint of the portaled path.
The son of Nemea had known of Merlyn’s largest work from an intellectual perspective. His mother had made certain of that much, all those months past; she had hammered into his head the Calling’s many such grandiosities, willing that he envision them through caught eyes alone. He had thought himself wholly prepared for their multitudes, if only in broad strokes.
Speak not to fang, reel not from fear,
Down, the west turns eastern sheer.
Through smoke and fire, blade and shame,
Crystal field anew with names.
‘Odes and enforced perspectives. Why I ever presumed they alone would suffice…’ Alcaeus scoffed at the naivety and arrogance of such thinking with wry humour writ in the curvature of his lips. Wilfully, he reached out with senses ethereal to touch upon the forest song, that he might better grasp its purpose - and so with eyes he looked, with scent he savoured, with ears he listened, with skin he touched.
‘Awareness and experience are truly different things; a powerful reminder,’ he concluded, lips wet from tasting.
Vibrancy and welcoming of the cheeriest sort were soaked into the ground and air. It whistled through the boughs to ruffle hair and tickle fingers. The gentle coaxings joined birdsong and fluttering leaves to beckon its occupants towards the Brecilian’s depths with unspoken promises, always away from the primary path whose dry dirt stretched due west.
It was the dreamstuff of children, and like to catch the unawares.
“Strength can be soft, oh son of mine. Gentle and slow. Indeed, whispers can fell a kingdom with ease to match any blade.”
His mother’s words echoed powerfully - always powerfully - as he drew back his senses.
Exhaling heavily, Alcaeus turned his focus upon the clearest way: ahead walked agemates, behind came more - and away wandered doomed dozens, their ultimate fates unknown. Within the first group were Alcaeus’ friends, who had evidently both awaited for and noticed his arrival from some seventy or so paces out. Alerted storms and fires were they.
“Nemean!” roared a womanly tenor, shattering the Brecilian’s deceptively quiet atmosphere like so much glass and peat, effectively saving the wandering few nearest her epicenter.
Dea Highwind came flitting towards him, a savage grin splayed across her preternaturally pretty features. She was tall and lithe, with long snowstruck hair marking her as cousin to Arkas. She stepped with inconsiderate force, leaving ruffled others in her wake. Brown leathers shone in fleeting fashion as she crushed rocks and leaves with booted feet. In reference to her fellow elf, she excitedly boomed, “Summerfield has gone and gathered a new friend!” Then she was upon him.
Lustful and swaggering, bold in all things and unreserved - more than Arkas, Dea was everything the Woodsea’s citizenry derided. As she joined golden lips to his mouth, tasting of richest honey and violent dawnings, Alcaeus reflected the world would be far more chaotic if the inverse was true.
Broadly grinning as she pulled away, Dea’s gaze of silvergreen was rife with mischief. Taking his hand in hers, she singsonged, “You are late, oh husband-to-be.”
Alcaeus chuckled warmly, lips quirked, flattered as always by Dea’s attentions.
“If my recollection is true, before you stole away to Pax with Ryder and Catherine in tow, none of us specified a time for meeting,” he said as they began walking back from whence she came. “Or that we would meet at all,” he tacked on.
Dea scoffed, “You say that as if our planning was not tacitly done. I did not take you for a fool, Alcaeus.” In her other hand, she balanced two daggerish chunks of ebon wood between three fingers, idly tracing their crude shape as she guided him.
“Dea,” Alcaeus began, tone musing. “When we parted ways, the six of us were in the midst of exploring the Woodsea’s second layer, embattled with a particularly ornery wyvern. There was little said on the subject of the Calling.”
Dea sniffed self-importantly, tugging him along with hastened speed. “I fail to recall Little Tom challenging anything at all, hidden as he was.”
Alcaeus stared, unmoved by her attempted distraction. Borne of the Woodsea she might have been, Dea’s considerations and aspirations made Arkas a seemly and acceptable example of elven youth - Tomard’s bodily weakness was no sin in her eyes, and needless pleasures brought her great joy. More besides…
“If I wish to have a happy harem of handsome husbands, then I shall! And no amount of tradition or disapproval will stop me!”
Alcaeus’ mien was fond as they parted through a small sea of persons. On the breeze of their passage, he whispered into her ear, “Come, let us aside such talk. Tell me instead of Arkas’ new friend; have you made a husband-to-be of them as well? Your mood is especially infectious this hour.”
The answering bow of Dea’s lips was inexorable. Puffing proudly, cheeks dimpled, a hand on her hip, she named, “Tristan Clarence. He hails from Lucent, and has shown himself to be handsome indeed. There are lessons to be learned before he’s perfectly suitable, but he’s not far from such an accomplishment.”
“His will and countenance are pleasing, then?”
“Of course. I claimed he was handsome, no?”
Alcaeus resisted the urge to roll his eyes at the asking tone of his friend, for subtlety and context were arts deliberately lost to the Highwind scion when amongst friends. “I suppose you did,” he supposed to a quiet harrumph, careful in stepping where Dea was not. Familiar faces were soon revealed to the pair.
Air soft and features yet softer, Ryder of Loric stood tallest and broadest; a mountain of midnight muscle whose legs were all but trunks in their amassed might. He was more man than not, despite the fat youth of his face, and was perhaps half again Alcaeus’ height at twelve heads high. Crowned by cropped shades of ash, silent fires reflected emberously in the unbroken grey of his eyes.
“Hail, Alcaeus,” he greeted, woolen dress damp from the rains afore. Lain across his shoulders was a small tree, roots and all. Vitality brimmed therein. He turned from his conversation to unerringly meet the son of Nemea’s gaze as he said, “You look well.”
“Alcaeus,” echoed Catherine Roth, whose home of Fairbright was now gone from the world, the severity of her beauty lessened by the gentle curl of her cheerful lips. She was crimson-haired and eyed - the former plaited - and royal in both bearing and adornments. Dark wood was tied to her waist by a silken string, thin and long and shaped after a sword. Pearlescent mythril speckled the sea of black leather and chain clung to her ivory frame, echoing the palest of stars. Shadowed by Ryder’s bulk, the wet which sought to soak lax muscle and hair hissed, steaming.
“Ryder, Catherine,” Alcaeus returned as Dea released him. She approached her Summerfield cousin with a goading grin in place, the expression unapologetic and premeditated. Upon the feathery pale of his head did she lean, arm resting to better illustrate the difference in their statures.
Arkas paid her no mind, though not for lack of care. That his cousin was taller than he was a spot of soreness for the elven youth, where it failed to manifest for the fact he was the second shortest of their fellows; a matter that had everything to do with Dea’s history of needling, Alcaeus recognized.
Under normal circumstances, Arkas would have never allowed Dea to press him so. But he was wroth, and the blackwind’s origin underneath his sandaled heel, arms trapped beneath a dirt-mucking chest. The elf’s mood and focus were thusly wrought there upon the back of his agemate’s head, golden gaze dark and unimpressed.
“This would be your–what, fourth husband-to-be, Dea?” Alcaeus mused, observing the disgust marring Arkas’ face. Delicate as always, the wretched twist was an acquaintance hard to miss. The drawn look was made especially potent by the sword-like mass of wood stabbed beside his agemate’s head.
“No, he would be my sixth were he Tristan. But he is most decidedly not,” she corrected, blithe in her saying. Her golden gaze skimmed their surroundings to dissatisfactory results. Pouting, she regarded the gentlest of her friends with an inquiring look. “Wherever did Tristan travel, Ryder? I told him to wait, did I not?”
“Aye, you did, but he was of a mind to sing through the Calling sooner than later, despite your charms. He’ll be waiting at its end in Kingmaker Field, or so he asked us to relate.”
“Hmm,” Dea grinned, gaze narrowed thoughtfully. “I quite like that,” and she mumbled various approvals of the unmet Tristan Clarence, and every passing word served to draw attentions to the weight of her arm.
Breaths long and even, shoving his fellow elf off into a falling, Arkas wiped the vitriol from his face to cleanly and clearly ask, “What’s this about a sixth husband-to-be?” He proffered a fist and propped one finger after another as he listed, “Ryder, Catherine, and Alcaeus - and now Tristan. Did you manage to wrangle yourself another in the weeks we were parted, cousin mine?”
Tipped over, one foot high in the air, Dea clicked her tongue as she recovered her balance. The motion was unhurried and somehow sarcastic, body flowing upright and unharmed.
“I did,” she proclaimed, proudly smirking, “Sir Roland found himself quite enamoured with my charms and drive.”
“Sir Roland? You ensnared a knight?” Ryder and Catherine offered simultaneous sounds of amusement at Alcaeus' dryly done query. Shooting Dea an easy smile, the latter pressed fist to cheek, elbow in hand, and laughed gaily as comers passed them by.
“Dearest Dea worked doubly hard to do so, and stumbled into success towards the end of our stay in Pax. He was quite cross, her Sir Roland, once he’d learned of our collective existence - forswore love of any kind in dramatic fashion, in the heart of Loric, only to come rushing back with tears in his eyes not twenty minutes past. It was all terribly entertaining, I promise you.”
“I’ll take your word for it, Catherine.” Alcaeus huffed as he fell into a crouch, eyeing the toothless fellow in the midst of trying and failing to turn his head that he might glare death into Arkas’ person. Sunned and stubborn, he was dressed in the fashion of Lucent’s aristocrats, and striking in the vein of their multitudes, all sharp lines and bright eyes - and yet, he was somehow plain; a flowered valley or mountain to be admired, but never in lingering, for he was not so special as to be recorded. The aesthetic dichotomy was but a buzz beside the will which bubbled beneath the surface of his angered mien, however: desert sands stained by moonlight, chilled and whipping, they screamed against his skin, each grain a lash named Fatalism.
Alcaeus felt his features fall into a moue of mislike.
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“And who is this?” he asked, catching Dea’s attention.
“Erik Ilsunna; a loathsome fool who thought his time worth more than my life,” she revealed, drawing the youth’s muted ire. She joined Alcaeus in crouching and flicked the trapped Erik’s forehead. Sharply, she laughed at his dented wroth. “Oh, cease with your griping, Erik. You wove your bed in wagering strength against strength, however slyly. Now, accept your loss and be done with it. There’s only the rest of the Calling until your obligation is finished.”
Spitting coldfire, jaw tight, the pressed-upon Erik snappily sloughed past growing teeth, “I would rather die here and now than submit to one of your kind, elf!”
“How boorish,” sidled, “Then, die,” and Alcaeus met Arkas’ facsimile of a smile, brow askewed by surprise.
“It is not his speciest behaviour which bothers you. Neither is it the threat made to Dea,” he observed. The elf’s flash of teeth dimmed at the accuracy therein, his stomped foot static in its application of pressure.
That elves were the enigmatic ‘Enemy’ as undefined by She-Who-Reigns was an uncommon but still prevalent school of thought amongst the denizens of Lucent and its northern neighbours in the sister kingdoms of Dhule and Rhune. ‘They betrayed Artus,’ was oft claimed - and Arkas had never shown himself to particularly care, for his energies were a focused sort aimed entirely at the deposing of She-Who-Reigns. Or so he claimed.
Sighting Erik’s growing teeth, Alcaeus clicked his tongue, while Arkas pointedly refused to meet his gaze.
Dea scoffed as she stood, repeating her earlier annoyance of Erik with a flicker of fingered movement before she went, so regaining his ire. Staring into the side of her cousin’s head, she said, “Summerfield here elected to pay the fool’s words undeserved attention in the aftermath of my victory.”
“Because he is not nearly as convinced as he seems! None of you feckless-”
“Cease your prattling before I step through your spine.”
Erik’s caustic barbing died, tongue all but swallowed.
Disregarding Alcaeus’ blue worry, the elf snorted, daggerish tongue satiated. “I see you understand: there is no one to save you, here and now amongst the trees of the Brecilian.” He scoffed. “Feckless am I? Who are you to claim as much, loathsome coward whose fear is wrangled lamely?”
“Arkas,” Alcaeus interjected, seeing his friend’s vitriol reestablish itself. “What did he say?” Off to the side, Ryder’s immense bulk shifted.
“‘You seek to dethrone Paternus? How pitiful. How wasteful. But then, such foolishness is to be expected of the Woodsea’s children,’” he quoted, voice warm and soothing. The largest of the gathered youths shook his head. “We were discussing squireships and quests to come, and how they might shape us to better embattle the godking on high.”
“Ah.” Alcaeus hummed his understanding, disdain consuming his mislike. “I can see why Arkas would take umbrage with such a statement. To see naught but failure when victory lives on unclaimed? Ha!”
Standing, the son of Nemea freed Erik from his entrapment, his hold on Arkas’ person as firm as the smile on his face. Blue eyes dismissive, he shooed Erik with a snort and eyed his friends. Gently, he shook Arkas by the shoulder as Erik fled from their assemblage with swallowed hatreds contorting his mouth, twin knives shaking in his clenched hands.
Alcaeus pried Arkas’ wooden weapon from the ground and offered its hilt to his friend, who then took and tied its length to his hip with air alone. Leisurely, they walked west along the dirt path - and as they went, the son of Nemea bore blue into gold.
“Put him outside your thoughts, Arkas. We’ve dallied long enough, and your mood is far too dour for the coming hours.”
“You speak as if he’ll not intrude during our trek. He’s a son of Lucent. His pride disallows swallowing, and his hatred for my kind is a potent thing. He will inflict himself before the Calling ends.”
“And you would love nothing more than to paint fatalism a poor path, I know. However, as demonstrated by you and Dea, he is beneath our excellence. If he comes unavoidably, we will crush him. If he does not…” Alcaeus shrugged, a disinterested look on his face. “I’ve no quarrel with him or his prejudices. Let Ilsunna stew ineffectually.” In reply, Arkas barked a grimsome laugh.
“Should he come with those who share his opinions, the many failures wrought by acceptive decadence? We are not so great as to overcome dozens of our agemates, we few five. Not yet, at least,” he said, addressing Catherine, Ryder, and Dea.
Bowed lips split by amusement, the darkly-dressed daughter of tragedy chose then to loop her arms with the occupied pair, smiling shooting between them as she hastened their pace. “Come along now, you two.” Catherine chuckled with a suffusive warmth, red-plait bouncing as she bounded with them in tow. “The ‘loathsome coward’ has betrayed an oath to dear Dea, but our time shortens. Let us as Alcaeus advised and not waste time on such frivolities.”
The so-named elf grunted in mock anger, a pout upon her lips. Steps light, she eyed Ryder from behind the advancing trio.
Mirth-laden was the smile on Dea’s face as she wondered, “Do you think she notices the tenderness they treat her with?” Ahead, neither Alcaeus nor Arkas protested Catherine’s handling of them.
Dry as the winds of faraway Loric, the home of his continuing youth, Ryder softly answered, “Of course.” Amusement suffused his tone. “There are reasons she ranks amongst your husbands-to-be, no?” Dea huffed a happy exhalation through her nose, affectionately entwining her hand with Ryder’s.
“Quite right,” she beamed, and away they went in following.
~ X ~
Minutes of swiftfooted movement carried the quintet for flat leagues. The trees were unchanged, and their extraneous company led astray or tempoed distantly. Of the fauna: critters and game were replaced by stealthing beasts whose presences were as the leaves and wind, while birdsong was outdone by howlings pitched in the further west. In the skies above, where trunks thick and thin occasionally towered beyond sight, patterned selves beacons of colour amidst the blue, forms of claw and hoof frittered, their small size a trick of spaced perspective.
Always, the low timbre of the Calling’s constancy sounded, doubled tone a resonant thooming and booming.
“There’s another one,” Catherine hummed, crimson gaze flitting upwards to spy a blur of silver shining starkly against the sky. “Do you know what they are?” she asked, sidling a glance at Alcaeus. For his part, the Son of Nemea hadn’t an accurate clue and so motioned a relaxed shrug as he examined the path ahead.
His own mood much improved from their activity, Arkas chirped, “My elders spoke of nesting griffins to impress upon me the dangers here.”
“Truly?” Surprise dyed Catherine’s tone.
“Truly, verily, certainly, and most emphatically,” he asserted. “They are a verbose and cantankerous lot.”
“I think many are where you are concerned, Arkas. Elders aside…” she breathed. “I suppose it’s quite sensible that griffins would be here in so honoured a forest. I imagine they protect it from those who would deface its beauty?”
Glancing up to meet searching pools of crimson, Arkas shook his head. “Though the nobleguard of fair Lucent might insist their heraldry is otherwise, forest guardians griffins are not.”
“Then what is their purpose?” Catherine turned her focus upon the slope they were nearing - and at their backs, boisterous and soft, Dea and Ryder shared in laughter as good friends ought to. Alcaeus answered in Arkas’ place, as the elf abruptly pulled away to investigate the ongoing humour with evident distraction in his gait.
Meeting the wry pull of Catherine’s lips with an exasperated smirk, the son of Nemea said, “In regards to function, griffins are as dragonkin and vanargi: they maintain balance amidst their territories, culling those whose predations imperil survival; parasites mainly.” He clicked his teeth, brow knit in quiet thought. “From what I have learned of them, Arkas was not inaccurate in his earlier description,” and understanding writ itself across Catherine’s mien.
“They are a verbose and cantankerous lot?” She belled a laugh, voice smoke and fruited wines; the sound swept softly from her mouth, coiling comfort into the air, and there was a fierce thirst for knowing in her gaze as she admitted, “I would quite like to converse with one. It feels as if an age has passed since last I was met with a mighty mind of the wilds. And no,” she huffed, “I do not include the wyvern we stumbled into as such, for their distinct dearth of civility.”
Alcaeus arched a searching brow. “You miss their songs?”
“Of course.” Catherine shrugged a melancholy smile, beauty blinding an unfortunate fellow in the distance. “Fairbright was most beautiful for the fact we communed so often with children of the deep. Their melodies were as the tides and currents, old and new and interesting. But you’ve known that much.” She dispensed of her blued mood with a shrug, and Alcaeus ruminated on the strength with which his friend continued to move past the loss of her home.
The last of her people, few were the survivors of such tragedy who could have-
“I do not blame you, Alcaeus. For any of it. I never have.” Catherine’s absolution burned itself from the air, secreting her words from all but the addressed; and where their arms joined, warmth was deepened by the brutal honesty she so freely expressed. Her pink lips lifted into a loving smile, and Alcaeus puzzled at the ease with which his friend had read his thinking, for hers was his shortest acquaintance - mere months had they known one another. To be certain, she was of great intelligence, but there came understandings of another only time allowed for.
“No!”
As one, the thinking pair and their furthered friends paused. From elsewhere and besides, unfamiliar voices coughed or shouted worry. Alcaeus’ innocent bemusement died ignobly ‘neath such apparent fear. In the feeling’s place rose fuller attentiveness to his surroundings. Upon his back, the wooden spear stirred as he looked towards the source of aggrievement.
Up.
From the top of a thousand-step slope, riotous racketing curdled downwards like so much mist. It was dewed acidity splattered across dusted glass, and it assailed the ears and mind with an unavoidable precision:
“Retreat!”
“Help me, they’re coming closer!”
“It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!”
Indeed, with all the fury of an encroaching riptide did the fright come, wide and mounting in waves of illogical sound. It whorled conically, and focused greatly upon the son of Nemea.
Thoom!
Through his shoulder it ripped with phantom force, fluttering his dress and hair. And with it came images vivid and hefty, each of them soaked by an undeniable depth of emotion. In his mind’s eye, Alcaeus saw and smelled for himself corpses: Arkas fallen, his back a mess of shredded flesh and bone, golden gaze unseeing; Ryder bereft of his arms, lifeblood soaking the ground beneath him, features frozen in a rictus of fetid regret; his mother riven and faceless, sat atop a mountain of victims… the horror went on.
It was real. It was not. It was infuriating. Truth warred with emotion in Alcaeus’ heart, encouraging fear.
Catherine bloomed.
Unfurling between one stride and the next, setting aright that which had been twisted, the fires of her spirit scoured from herself and Alcaeus the metaphysical barbs infiltrating their persons. In doing so, her quick thinking preempted ruination, manifesting the iridescence of unclouded midnight to the Nemean’s senses. Like so many stars in the sky, her will shimmered against the air.
“An illusion. How irritatingly sly,” she muttered, reaching across her body to gently pat Alcaeus’ arm, suffusing him with yet greater invigoration.
For his part, as he recouped his faculties, Alcaeus’ jaw set unhappily. In his breast, goldenbright thundering threatened salience, crackling against the confines of his chest.
Thump, thump - thump, thump! Thump, thump - thump, thump!
Alcaeus scowled. Such weakness from his mind could not be afforded. Not now during the Calling, and certainly never so near his friends. That it had been Catherine specifically who was at his side…
‘It seems She-Who-Reigns has a sense of humour. A poor one.’
Reconciling reality with illusion between strides, the son of Nemea conveyed both gratitude and regret with a tight nod, pulse overly loud in his ears. Catherine replied with a gentle grin of easing, all too familiar with the potent power stirred to brimming inside of her friend. Matching the electric of his blue gaze with scarlet sanity, she exaggerated an inhalation.
In, she breathed. Out, Alcaeus followed - and for true beat his heart, becalmed.
Past a sparking tongue, he sighed, “My thanks, Catherine.”
“Think nothing of it.” Her grin broadened into a companionable smile as they approached the assault’s source. One and then two and then ten came their steps, upwards aiming and illusion-bereft. Quietly, irreverently, she continued, “In reference to our earlier talk, I do not blame your mother for her execution of Fairbright. I despise her, yes, for I must. To do otherwise is unconscionable. But, blame?” The daughter of tragedy huffed a sorry breath more amused than apologetic, and clicked her tongue.
“I refuse to countenance such base irrationality,” she admitted. “If not her, then another would have enforced the All Mother’s will.”
Divesting himself of unworthy feelings, Alcaeus hummed, “Not that I am against your unburdening, but I find myself curious as to the currency of it, Catherine.”
“Is there any reason the Calling should be less appropriate an environs for such conversation than the Woodsea?” she returned.
Blue eyes dulled by tranquility blinked thrice in rapid succession. Calm straightened broad shoulders, and booted feet stepped with mounting care.
“I suppose not,” Alcaeus admitted, contemplative - and in the seconds to come, Ryder would hasten to his side, carrying Dea and Arkas atop his shoulders.
Together they strode through greater illusory peril than minutes afore, occasionally bypassing a frightened or despondent other.
~ X ~
Cresting the hill revealed to its conquerors a sheer cliff. Down it went for flung leagues, extending far beyond sight. The face of it was sheer and white, stark like the bright of day, extending cardinal lengths for seeming ever.
Shuffling his friend’s choice of tree so as to clear his vision, Arkas whistled from atop Ryder’s shoulder.
“How queer,” he mused, peering down at the vastness; and at his back and side, collecting in their twos and threes, came agemates. Below and beyond, stretching for as far as any eye could see - even ones so fine as Arkas’ - there existed a sibling to nothingness. Absent colour, substance, scent, and taste, it was, sounding of slowly tolled bells from all directions.
Showing great sense or stupidity, one of the fellows amongst them stepped off the cliffside. She fell and fell, fell and fell…
…never to be seen again.
Another leapt towards limitless heights, wings of blood sprouting from his back. He soared high and fast, and was far from alone.
Still more came, each with answers all their own. Some walked or ran as if the absence of a substantial path was no deterrent, others clambered down the cliff with deft or dumb force. Few enough were those content to wait and observe. Of them, Ryder alone voiced Alcaeus’ thinking.
“We must walk back.”
“Back?” Catherine questioned, eyeing those who were in the midst of doing just that.
“Yes, back,” Ryder confirmed. Gently offloading his elven friends, he knelt then leaned over the cliff’s edge. Head tilted, chin tucked against his chest, he pointed at the starkly white face of the cliff. Unmarred and even despite the attempted depredations of those descending its breadth, the polished surface rippled as his finger neared. Dea huffed her understanding.
“‘Down, the west turns eastern sheer’,” she quoted. The partial ode echoed for one and all, stealing into unintended ears. Comprehension stole itself across the face of her friends, whom Alcaeus had shared much with.
Arkas rolled his shoulders as he stepped beside Ryder, who then himself rose to towering.
“All together then?” the shortest of them hummed, grinning as ethereal winds and fires blinked into existence. Followed by Dea and Catherine, he grasped the hands of Ryder and his cousin, and saw their doing was repeated by scant few amongst their agemates.
Confidently, Alcaeus joined them as he affirmed, “Together.” Receiving equally assured nods and smiles from his friends, he took a mirrored step over the edge.
Down and then down again they willed themselves, and so through they went. The white sheer rippled at their passage as day turned to night.
Together they faced an inferno.
~