A rescue mission, swift and sure
To find that Heaven stands no more.
The White Dragon sped through the clouds; a sleek, determined shard of ice battling an angry sky. Wind buffeted Ferrian, and visibility was poor. In fact, they had completely lost sight of Caer Sync. Squinting, he peered down from the Dragon’s back. Now and then, through gaps in the cloud cover, patches of dark green forest could be seen
They were still over Arkana, then.
He wiped condensation out of his eyes with the back of his sleeve. He was worried that they would overshoot the Tower completely. If they ended up over the sea, then they’d gone too far. But they should be arriving at Fleetfleer soon – any moment now…
A few minutes passed, then a few more. But still there was nothing to be seen but grey cloud.
Thunder grumbled, rolling around them like a stone ball on a wooden floor. Lightning flickered here and there, licking the clouds like electric snakes. He didn’t particularly like being up here in a storm – how foolish would it be, to be struck down by lightning on a rescue mission! – but the Dragon seemed happy. She wove to and fro as though playing with the wind, as though daring the bright snakes to catch her. Ferrian had to keep reminding her to stay on course.
He hoped she had a better sense of direction than he did.
Crouched at the base of the Dragon’s neck, just forward of her wings, Ferrian felt well-rested and sharp. Despite the inconvenience of the storm, he was glad of the bad weather. The chill wind and dampness were a relief; they were like an old friend: reassuring. They were blissful after the long, tiresome days of withering spring sun. He felt, for the first time in a while, hopeful, his fears and worries tossed away somewhere in the slipstream behind them.
He felt ready for anything.
But he could not have prepared himself for what he was about to encounter…
A short while later, they finally broke through the clouds to find Fleetfleer close ahead to their left, the spire of Caer Sync rising majestically behind the floating white city.
Ferrian gave a small cheer. As they neared, he began to search for a suitable place to land, wondering if they should go directly to the Tower… when something exploded.
The flash of white light was so intense that both he and the Dragon were momentarily blinded. The Dragon made an eerie keening noise and banked wildly.
Ferrian struggled to hold on as the Dragon flapped about. A thunderous rolling noise crashed over them, but this time, it did not come from the sky…
Finally, the Dragon righted herself, but her strange whine continued. Ferrian blinked, trying to clear the coloured patches from his vision. The Dragon swung around until Caer Sync came back into view.
And then they witnessed something that Ferrian simply could not believe.
The Tower moved.
A tremor rippled through it, a sustained rumble that Ferrian could feel in his bones, even in the air several miles away. And then… it began to fall.
It fell slowly at first – very slowly. Reluctantly, almost imperceptibly. But it began to pick up speed.
It leaned like a gargantuan, ancient, dying tree, emanating a hair-raising moan as it did so. It toppled with a kind of horrifying, breathless dignity.
It fell to the south, towards the forest. The city of Fleetfleer was directly in its path.
And it kept falling. It fell on and on, more and more of it appearing out of the clouds as though it never ended, as though it truly was a spear dropped by the Gods…
Ferrian could do nothing but watch, open-mouthed and stunned beyond words, as the Holy Tower descended with unfathomable force onto the city, cleaving it in half like a battle-axe through butter. The white stone carved a path of destruction through everything: stone, mortar, timber, flesh, continuing through the forest below as far as Ferrian could see.
The crashing noise was horrific, and went on forever.
The air became littered with birds and Angels flying about in a frenzied panic. The first of the screams washed over him.
He could not fathom what he had just seen. It… it couldn’t be real!
Then the Dragon made another sound of distress. With an effort, Ferrian tore his gaze away from the collapsing remains of the city to look northward.
A bright golden glow obscured the shattered remains of the Tower. Ferrian could just make out a large globe within it, pulsing faintly, like an exposed heart. Pieces of stone floated around it peculiarly.
But beyond that…
Beyond where Caer Sync had once stood, where the cliffs met the ocean, was a huge black stain, as though the air itself was rotting away.
Ferrian thought his stomach had already dropped out of him into the forest below. He was wrong, for it did so now.
“Oh no,” he whispered. “Oh no…”
The black shadow was unmistakable.
There was some kind of immense wraith over there, even more vast than the Dragon-wraith he had fought and killed at Forthwhite years ago.
Not again!
Did that thing topple Caer Sync?!
Ferrian’s mind felt numb. He did not want to approach any closer. But he had to know what it was, he had to find out what had happened…
“Dragon,” he said, his voice barely a whisper, “take me over there. But keep your distance.”
The Dragon hesitated, her great white feathered wings pounding the air. But she obeyed.
The forest ended, and they sailed over the cliffs. The Dragon circled the patch of shadow, bearing wide out over the sea.
Ferrian forced himself to look at it, fighting the nausea and bile that rose within him, the familiar freezing clutch of dread, the taint of dark madness that sought to seize his frightened mind for its own. He held these things at bay as he peered hard into the depths…
There was a triangular-shaped… something… in there. It was enormous and alien, like no creature or construction that Ferrian had ever seen. It was outlined in a dim blue-purple glow, with similarly-coloured lines crawling all over its surface like electric worms.
It hovered about fifty feet above the surface of the water, close to the cliffs where once a spectacular chiming waterfall leaped into the sea. Now, a foul black oily substance poured out of the base of the Tower in its place.
Trigon. The Tower’s contained reservoir of trigon was now flooding unchecked into the northern ocean!
Ferrian thought that he was about to be sick. A cold sweat broke out over his skin. “D-dragon,” he stammered, “let’s find Mekka and get the hell out of here!”
Mekka.
Ferrian’s heart skipped in terror. “Oh, Gods!” What had happened to his friend? Had he been crushed to death? Had he… was he… the Pit…
A wave of dizziness washed over him. He clutched one of the Dragon’s protruding white spine-plates for support. Too much was happening at once, and he didn’t understand any of it…!
The storm broke, then, cold rain pelting down on them. The Dragon sped up, banking back towards the cliffs. Beneath them, the grey sea tossed violently. Ferrian watched it pass beneath, dazed, barely feeling the rain streaming over him. Then his numbed brain slowly noticed something else that was wrong.
A strange grey mist was pouring off the waves, thick and greasy, like smoke, as though the sea was smouldering. Things began to leap up out of the mist towards them, throwing themselves high in the air.
One or two of them slapped against the Dragon’s pearly hide, leaving smoking grey scars.
The Dragon half-shrieked, half-roared, surging upwards.
“What are these things?” Ferrian cried, trying to catch a good look at one as they rained upwards, hundreds of them. And then, with a sickening shock, he realised what they were.
They were fish. Skeletal and gruesome, and only partly substantial. They dissolved back into mist as they fell.
Trigon was pouring into the ocean, killing the sea life and turning it into wraiths, or reviving things that were already dead, or both…
We’re being attacked by dead fish!!
And then… something monstrous appeared.
It started as a shadow sliding beneath the waves, a darker grey patch slinking in the tormented sea. Ferrian strained to keep sight of it past the Dragon’s beating wings.
“Dragon!” he yelled. “Faster!” Looking ahead through the silver sheets of rain, he could no longer see the cliffs.
He looked back at the sea, but had lost sight of the shadow. Brushing water futilely from his face, Ferrian drew his Sword. Glancing down at his hands on the hilt, he saw that they were shaking.
The monster rose up behind them with despicable quietness, a mountain of briny sinew and stringy cartilage. Ferrian turned in time to see it looming over them.
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It was a match in size for the Dragon. Rotting, barnacled, misty hide dripped off its massive skeleton. There were many pale blind eyes, tiny and spider-like in its curved, scarred head, and rows of fins, ragged and torn. The rain poured over it and through it; parts of its vast body becoming smoke, mingling with the clouds, then reforming again as solid, slimy flesh.
It was an abomination, something dredged up from deep, cold, trigon-infected watery depths.
It was a whale.
A massive, undead whale-wraith.
“DRAGON!” Ferrian screamed.
The Dragon threw herself to one side as the whale surged towards them. It missed, trailing horrible, fetid smoke, its body deforming as it passed, as though the bones were shifting around.
Ferrian retched. The Dragon shrieked, spraying icy breath in an arc, freezing the rain.
“Won’t… do any good,” he muttered weakly. “Only silvertine… can… hurt it…”
He knew that the Dragon knew this, of course; but she was frightened and angry. The whale was big enough that it could probably consume the Dragon’s soul if it touched her. Only Ferrian could truly kill it, but he wasn’t keen on getting that close…
Where are the damned cliffs?! he thought desperately. We should be near by now!
The Dragon flew hard, her great white wings pounding through the storm, and finally something appeared out of the haze: a grey wall.
We survived a Dragon-wraith, Ferrian told himself determinedly, his silver eyes hardening. We can survive this!
Gripping his Sword with one hand, the Dragon with the other, he prepared himself, searching for the whale.
It had disappeared.
Towering forest trees materialised out of the gloom, like a giant, silent army – masses of roots, grass and vines curling like a vegetative waterfall over the cliffs at their feet. Nearly there!
The whale appeared again, behind them to their right. It slid out of the fog like a nightmare, silent and grotesque, on a direct collision course. Its enormous mouth full of slimy baleen was one of the most terrible things Ferrian had ever seen.
His stomach lurched again. He looked away, turning himself around fully, carefully on the Dragon’s slick silvery-white scales. Bracing himself as best he could, he positioned himself between the white plates sticking up from her spine, Sword held ready.
Rain streamed down his face; his Sword and eyes were bright in the gloom.
The whale closed in.
Ferrian screamed, determined to slash the thing back into the mist from whence it came…
… and then they were within the cover of the trees.
At the last moment, the whale turned aside. But as it did so, its massive tail flicked around, catching one of the Dragon’s hind legs with its flukes.
Smoke poured off the Dragon. She howled in pain, jerking to one side.
They were going much too fast, and there was little space to manoeuvre in the woods. Ferrian threw himself flat on the Dragon’s back, holding on for his life as she careened unstoppably through the trees, smashing against trunks, obliterating branches and finally, tumbling hard into the forest floor.
Mekka’s consciousness floated in a golden haze. Snatches of dreams came and went, forgotten in moments, each fading furtively into the dim amber glow. It was a blissful state of half-existence; he would have liked to stay that way forever… but then the pain brought him awake.
A burning, throbbing ache intruded on his wistful illusions, scattering them.
I can’t be dead, he thought groggily. It hurts too much…
He moved, and sharp agony sliced all along his side and chest, causing him to gasp and grimace. Instinctively, he put a hand to the spot, and felt something damp and sticky on his fingers.
Still, he could not see anything, only the strange golden haze.
Then he remembered that he was blindfolded. And following that thought came another: he could move his hands. He was no longer shackled.
Slowly, Mekka reached up and removed the blindfold.
For a moment he was disoriented, wondering if he was in fact still in a dream. Nothing made sense. He floated in the middle of a large, empty space. There were no walls; or rather, the walls were broken, split apart into hundreds of pieces of stone, suspended just as he was. Beyond them, and in every direction was nothing to be seen but yellowish light, warm and mellow like late afternoon sunlight.
There was no Pit below him: just the same golden glow. Upwards – no Excelsior, either.
But the two Seraphim remained, to either side of him. No longer sleeping in stone, but living beings. Each with three pairs of wings, moving up and down languidly with soft swishing sounds. Golden halos rotated above their heads; their hands rested on their chests in gestures of prayer, their huge eyes open and filled with the same golden light.
Mekka felt like an insect pinned between them.
Fear rushed through him. Memories of the third Seraph, the one he had killed with a trigonic dagger, raced painfully through his mind.
Is this… some form of Judgement? he thought in dismay. Some personal purgatory? He didn’t think he could face yet another accounting of his innumerable crimes.
But the Seraphim did not move or speak, and appeared to be staring intently at each other rather than Mekka.
Swallowing, he averted his gaze, flinching with pain again as he turned in the air. And that was when he caught sight of something else.
Well, he thought wryly, if I have ended up in the Goddess’s reception area, I appear to have dragged someone along with me…
Some way off, near the floating debris, hung the limp form of Commander Re’Vier. Mekka couldn’t tell if he was unconscious or dead. Oddly, he was not wearing any armour or weapons, dressed only in underclothes and a long white coat. Pools of a silver metallic substance hovered in the air around him.
Mekka looked down at his own unbound wrists, then around himself. Sure enough, a small silver puddle wobbled in the air nearby.
Everything made of silvertine has melted! he thought in wonder. Returned to its original form…
Blood also hung in the air around him, and his own clothes were saturated with it. Gingerly, Mekka examined the wound.
Reeves had opened him up nicely, but not fatally, in a clean gash along his left side. The Commander had known what he was doing. Ever protective of your First Law, Mekka thought, gritting his teeth. Coward.
With an effort, he reached down and tore strips off the hem off his garment, and bound the wound with them tightly to staunch the flow of blood.
That done, he closed his eyes with a sigh, wondering what else could possibly happen to him.
The rain sounded loud on the tarpaulin roof; a steady, relentless drumming. It reminded him of his younger days, years spent camping in the wild when the weather dictated his life, and he was all alone, with no one for company save birds and night animals and the ever-present rain.
Except when the rain turned to snow. The only sound better than that of rain on a tarpaulin was the soft silence of snow. It would gather around him, wrapping him in a cold white blanket, pristine, untouchable, keeping him safe and hidden…
Ferrian woke with a start, to find himself lying not in snow but face-down in damp, churned-up dirt. The drumming sound echoed a massive pounding pain in his head.
With a groan, he attempted to push himself up. That was a mistake. The groan turned into a stifled cry of pain.
He tried again, more slowly this time, raising himself carefully up onto one elbow. Quickly, he checked himself for injuries, and to his relief, nothing seemed to be broken. He was sure that every single part of him was bruised, however.
Then he realised that the span of leather over his head was not a tarpaulin.
It was a wing. The great white wing of the Dragon.
Gathering himself, Ferrian crawled out from under the wing.
The Dragon lay before him in the gloom like an enormous felled ghost. Rain cast a glimmering sheen on her iridescent scales, making them ripple. She was not moving.
Breathlessly, Ferrian followed the line of her body, stumbling on torn-up undergrowth and mounds of dirt, until her tail narrowed enough to climb over it.
Her legs were sprawled out in front of him. One of them looked completely grey, as though burnt or rotten. A few other small grey patches dotted her side, scale and flesh alike eaten away, turned foul.
Despite the dampness, his throat was dry. His gut twisted.
Hurriedly he ran forward, around her limbs until he came to her head. It rested amongst the roots of a colossal tree, great mossy arches curving around her like cradling arms.
“Dragon?” Ferrian whispered. Several of her icicle-like horns were smashed, and dark blue blood ran in thin streams over her long snout, mingling with the rain. Her eyes were closed.
“Dragon?” Taking hold of the slippery roots, he climbed them until he reached her.
The Dragon did not move.
“No...” His eyes filled with tears. “Please don’t be dead!” He placed a hand on her nose. She felt cold, but of course she felt cold. She was an Ice Dragon. He couldn’t feel any breath coming from her, and didn’t know how else to check if she was still alive.
He shook his head in denial. Surely the Dragon’s soul was too huge, too mighty to be stolen by a few stupid dead fish!
Ferrian looked around helplessly. The forest rose around them, watchful giants – brooding, but offering no help. It was dark, like twilight. Anxiously, he searched the shadows, the half-formed shapes in the gloom, reassuring himself it was just ordinary dark, not trigon-dark. He looked back the way they had come: it was a wrecked path of broken branches, scarred trees and mist.
But nothing like the destruction caused by the toppling of Caer Sync.
Ferrian had seen it with his own eyes, not so far away, yet he couldn’t imagine it. The catastrophic horror was too immense. He couldn’t think about it…
He swallowed against the tightness in his throat, tears spilling down his face. It had all gone horribly wrong. One minute he had been feeling good, confident that they would reach Mekka in time, that everything would somehow work out fine. And the next…
He slumped down on the roots, back against the Dragon’s snout, staring out at the rain in despair.
The Dragon moved. She twitched so suddenly that Ferrian slipped off his perch, tumbling face first into the mud and leaves below.
He was so elated that he didn’t care. “Dragon!” he cried, leaping to his feet. Then in the next moment, he fell back onto his knees, putting his hands to his muddy face. “Oh Gods. Thank the Gods!” He took several deep breaths to compose himself, then looked up. “Are you… are you badly hurt?”
The Dragon opened her huge silver eye, blinking slowly. “I will… live,” she replied.
Then her great head rose, her body shifted, and her neck curved around so that her head came to rest on her good paws. Her long, sinuous tail curled inwards as well, and her wings outstretched above her like a canopy. Then she closed her eyes again.
Ferrian watched her, feeling weak with relief. In a flash of inspiration, he walked over and knelt once more before her, placing a hand on her nose. Closing his eyes, he summoned his magic, gently sending a wave of frost whispering out across her scales.
He could not heal the Dragon’s wounds, as Requar would have been able to, but, just as he had with Lady Araynia, he could ease her pain, at least for awhile.
When it was done, the Dragon slept peacefully within a glittering layer of frost. Ferrian stroked the ice. “Rest for a bit,” he whispered, and got to his feet.
Standing alone in the rain, Ferrian wondered what to do. He felt suddenly weary, and wanted to lie down and sleep for awhile, too. But he couldn’t. Above everything else, Mekka’s fate preyed on his mind. He couldn’t rest without knowing what had happened to the Angel.
He stared glumly into the darkness of the trees to the east, where he imagined Fleetfleer to be. He could see and hear nothing but the pattering of rain on the ferns. How far into the forest had they crashed? He had no idea; everything had happened so fast. And with the Dragon injured, he had no way of reaching the ruined city or whatever was left of Caer Sync; at least, not until she recovered well enough to fly.
But there was a chance that there were survivors roaming about the forest. Perhaps Ferrian could locate someone and try to find out whether Mekka had been taken to the Tower or not…
Closing his eyes, he took a shaky breath. It was a small chance, but Ferrian didn’t know what else to do. He would find no answers standing here.
He checked his small battered knapsack, which, remarkably, he was still wearing. There were a few provisions left inside. He reached back to draw his Sword…
His hand clutched empty air.
Ferrian looked over his shoulder, then removed his scabbard in disbelief. It was empty.
His Sword was gone!
He looked around wildly. I must have dropped it somewhere!
A terrible thought occurred to him. The last time he remembered holding it was when they were in the air, when he was facing down the monstrous whale. Could it have fallen into the ocean?!
No, Ferrian told himself, heart hammering, he was sure he still had it when they entered the trees…
Dumping the rest of his gear in a heap, he ran about the clearing, frantically searching the mud and bushes. After about twenty futile minutes, he paced back and forth in front of the Dragon, in full-blown panic.
“This can not be happening!” he said out loud. “I can NOT have lost my Sword AGAIN!”
It was not the first time he had stupidly dropped the Sword. The last time, he had thought it gone forever, swept away down the Sorcerer’s Valley, but it showed up again, uncannily.
He cursed, whirling around, furious with himself, and then noticed that his footprints in the mud were filled with ice. In his distress, he had unconsciously summoned his magic. He had an annoying habit of doing that…
Wait. Magic?
He stopped dead, slapping a hand to his face. I’m being a fool!
Closing his eyes, he took a few minutes to calm himself, breathing deeply, concentrating. Then, slowly, he lifted his arm.
At first, there was nothing. But he remembered his training, remembered to be patient. This was one of the first things Lord Arzath had taught him.
Frost spread out from him, a thin white bloom across the mud.
At last, he felt a tug, and opened his eyes to see something silvery-bright flash out of the darkness, whirring towards his outstretched hand.
He caught the Sword neatly, then sagged once more with relief. “Magic can be useful for something!” he said, laughing despite himself. Then he straightened and went to gather up his things.
With a last long look at the sleeping Dragon, Ferrian snapped a small icelight into existence, and set off into the depths of the great forest.