“This travelling party is a joke,” said Sagar as they began to climb another hill in a direction that Elrann indicated. “You’re right, princess; we’ll have all killed each other before we have a chance to get back to your homeland.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be too hard on us,” said Cid. “We did just manage to elude the grasp of an entire Imperial battalion and a Shadowfinger, in spite of the circumstances. That is no small achievement, and took a great amount of teamwork and skill.”
Ryn’s spirits rose a bit at that.
Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr. Stay with Nuthea. Even if she had just hit him with a lightning bolt. He was surprised that he hadn’t been more lastingly hurt by it. There had been a brief shock of pain, but then he had been fine. He hadn’t even needed Cid to heal him, like Sagar. Was she able to control the strength of her attacks? Nothing she had said before had indicated that. And if she was, why had she hit Sagar harder than him?
Really though, there were other things more pressing on his mind.
“Nuthea, can you explain to us why we’re not in ‘so much of a rush’ to get to Manolia anymore?”
“Yeah,” said Elrann, “what gives, princess-girl? For ages you’re all like”—she put on a refined voice in mock imitation of Nuthea—“‘I must return to my homeland to warn my people of what the Emperor has learned’, then all of a sudden now that we’re nearly there you don’t seem so bothered. What gives?”
Nuthea took a while to reply, and for a moment they were walking only to the accompaniment of their own grunts and pants as they made their way up the hill. But eventually she broke her silence.
“As you know, we are currently in Zerlan, though very close to the border of both Imfis and Manolia, in the foothill of the Pelnian mountains.” Of course she was going to answer them through the medium of a lecture. “Just beyond those mountains, in the Iflama forest where the Manolian peninsula starts to jut out from the Dokanese mainland, there is a huge, fortified wall. It is not very long because it does not need to be to span the width of the peninsula, but it is tall, and thick, and extremely well defended. The train will have to stop at Plessa, a town just outside of the border wall. I am sure that my countrywomen will have got wind of the Empire’s invasion of Dokan by now, so they will have closed the tunnel that passes through it. It will take Vorr time to work out how to get past this obstacle, and all that time he will be sitting at Plessa station. But now that he has beaten us to it, our goal is not speed, but stealth. We will need to avoid the soldiers in order to get past the wall before they do. Then finally I will be able to deliver the information that the Emperor has found the location of some of the Jewels to my people, before Vorr can get to them.”
Ryn let this sink in for a moment, then said, “Alright… so we need to sneak past the Imperial troops...again. It’s a good thing we’ve still got this armour, even if we’ve lost our helmets. But what do we do once we reach this ‘wall’? How will we be able to get past it without revealing ourselves to the Imperials on this side of it?”
“He does have a point there, princess,” said Sagar, to Ryn’s surprise. Perhaps Ryn should set his face on fire more often…
“I know of a secret passageway through the wall,” said Nuthea. “We will be able to sneak into Manolia through that.”
“Okay,” said Elrann, “well that makes a lot more sense now. But I think it makes all the more sense for us to restock our supplies here in Zerlan before we carry on. There’s no way we could even get to the Manolian border wall on what we’ve got left.”
The others nodded their assent too.
They crested the latest hill and took a moment to catch their breaths in the crisp air. This hill was higher than the last and afforded them an even better view of the surrounding country. To the west and north, more hills, stretching back to the Imfisi plains they had traversed by train. To the east and south, yet more hills, yes, but instead of eventually flattening out, they rose to become the snow-dusted Pelnian mountains. Wending its way down through these was the thin blue ribbon of the river they had jumped into to escape from Vorr. The plume of steam from the Sirran train the Imperials had commandeered had long disappeared.
Ryn could not hold in his questions any more. “Why did we need to jump off the train?” he asked Cid. “Why didn’t Nuthea’s lightning attack do any harm to Vorr and his officers? You knew it wasn’t going to work. What do you know that we don’t?”
The old man chewed his cheek. Everyone looked at him expectantly.
“Something,” he said eventually, “that I had only suspected before.”
Ryn couldn’t help from feeling that the old man was only pausing for dramatic effect. “What?”
Cid sighed. “The Jewels, when a person touches them, impart alignment to the element they are associated with. A person who has touched one of them can manipulate and manifest that element, and isn’t harmed by it.”
“We know that, old timer,” said Sagar. “Come on, skip to the new stuff.”
“When my former companions and I were gathering the Jewels before, we developed a theory about this elemental alignment, but we never had the opportunity to test it properly, and we never dared test it on each other. The theory was that, when a person touches a particular Jewel, not only do they gain the ability to manipulate that element, but they also gain a certain affinity with that element. Their body becomes ‘attuned’ to that element and comes to bear some of the properties of that element. And from various anecdotal incidents we came to speculate that with this affinity comes certain vulnerabilities and resistances to other elements.”
“Put it in plainspeak, old timer.”
“In other words, a person aligned to a certain element will be especially vulnerable to attacks from certain other elements, and especially resistant to attacks from certain other elements. The most obvious one is that people who have touched the Fire Ruby will be especially susceptible to attacks from those who have touched the Water Sapphire, since fire is vulnerable to extinguishment by water. But in turn water is highly vulnerable to lightning…”
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
“And fire is resistant to lightning,” said Ryn slowly, seeing where Cid was going. “That’s why Nuthea’s lightning bolt didn’t hurt me more. That’s why Sagar needed you to heal him, but not me. That’s why Vorr and the officers touched by the Ruby weren’t hurt more by her lightning back on the top of the train.”
“Indeed. As far as we guessed, fire isn’t completely resistant to lightning, but it is largely resistant, from what we observed. And interestingly enough, it didn’t quite seem to work the other way around. Lightning alignment does not grant resistance to fire–far from it–so fire seems to be the dominant element in the pairing. It was only a theory, and like I say, we didn’t dare to test it out properly but this latest turn of events does seem to confirm—”
“Do the Empire know?” said Nuthea all of a sudden. Her skin had turned milk-white. “Do the Empire know?”
“I don’t see how they could.” Cid held up his hands reassuringly. “Unless they have access to lore that we didn’t. Although recent events may have given them an inkling…”
“We need to keep moving. Fast. We need to find a Zerlanese settlement as soon as we can and restock our supplies, then move on to Manolia.” Nuthea had begun to hop from foot to foot. “Come on, everyone!” She had turned still whiter, were that possible, and started to shake a little.
“Now hold on, princess!” said Sagar. “All of a sudden we’re in a rush again? What’s with all the back and forth?”
Ryn knew.
“Don’t you see?” said Nuthea, pleadingly. “Vorr and his Officers are heading for Manolia, with the Fire Ruby, and they have resistance to lightning! The primary defence of my people won’t even work against him! And he might even know this now!”
Ryn cried out with frustration. The mention of the General’s name had lit the flame of his temper again, and hate burned in his chest at the memory of being tortured by him. “Damn him, he’s just too strong! Even with all my practice I still couldn’t beat him! He’s invulnerable to fire, and now we know he’s virtually invulnerable to lightning too!”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself,” said Cid.
“Vorr is powerful and devious,” said Vish.
“I hate him!” Ryn said, unable to contain himself and not caring. “I hate him for killing my parents and burning down my hometown and stealing the Ruby from me!”
“Come on, Ryn,” said Nuthea, “let’s go, then! That’s why we’ve got to get to Manolia ahead of him: to warn my people and stop him from taking another Jewel!”
Ryn remembered something else.
“Nuthea, what did Vorr mean when he said to you on the train ‘you’ve been helpful enough already by betraying your homeland’, anyway?”
Now Nuthea froze.
“I didn’t think you’d heard that…”
“No, I heard it,” said Ryn. “How couldn’t I? He said it loud and clear. I had just forgotten about it till now. What did he mean?”
Nuthea looked at the ground.
Ryn’s guts went suddenly cold, the heat vanishing as quickly as it had come. A chill crept slowly up from the base of his feet to the top of his head, gripping his heart tight on the way. Mum. Dad. Cleasor. Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr.
Stay with Nuthea?
He heard himself ask another question. “It wasn’t just a coincidence that Vorr attacked my town, was it?”
“No,” said Nuthea very quietly, still looking down. “He knew about the Fire Ruby before he attacked Cleasor.”
“How?” The cold was freezing fear in the pit of his stomach.
“He knows because I told him.”
Shock tore through Ryn. His mouth fell open.
“Wh… what?”
Nuthea refused to meet his gaze. “He knows because I told him,” she said again quietly through tears that started to stream down her cheeks.
“Why? When?”
Nuthea took a deep breath and brushed water from her cheeks. “There… there was never an undercover mission to Imfis. I ran away from my homeland because I was due to be wed in an arranged marriage, and I didn’t want to be. So I ran away, and disguised myself, and made my own way travelling. I got as far as Sirra, but one night I was staying at an inn there, and I met this man...”
A horrible premonition came into Ryn’s imagination.
“...he bought me some drinks, and somehow I let slip that I was a Manolian princess...”
“Why would you do that?”
“I don’t know!” Nuthea nearly started to sob again, then choked it back. “He was very charming, and he had a very flattering way of talking and I… I suppose I wanted to impress him. When I told him I was a princess he was very interested—”
“Course he was,” said Sagar.
“—he was very interested, and he started asking me things about my homeland and my people. And then… then he started asking me about the Primeval Jewels. Somehow he had heard of them, and he started to ask me what I knew, and I told him… I told him…”
Nuthea petered out and looked back at the ground.
“What did you tell him?” said Ryn. But he already knew.
Nuthea raised her gaze to Ryn’s. Her lip quivered.
“I told him what I knew about the Jewels. I told him that the Lightning Crystal was hidden in the Manolian capital and that the Fire Ruby was hidden in a small town in Efstan called Cleasor.”
Ryn reeled, and had to put his arms out to stop himself from falling over. The world had begun to spin. He felt himself sit on the ground with a bump.
“I… I’m sorry I lied to you. To you all.”
Nobody spoke. They just watched Ryn.
“Say something, Ryn,” Nuthea implored.
Ryn’s mind caught up with his body.
“Do you mean to tell me…” he said slowly, quietly. “Do you mean to tell me that the person responsible for the Morekemian Emperor discovering the location of the Fire Ruby, for Vorr coming to my hometown to retrieve it, for the death of my mother, the death of my father, and the destruction of my hometown and murder of everyone I’ve ever known is...you?”
“I’m sorry!” Nuthea burst out. “I don’t know what came over me! I had been drinking wine, and Vorr is...Vorr is actually quite attractive when he’s not in his armour and you don’t know he’s an Imperial soldier. He must have been in there on shore leave or something, in his regular clothes. He noticed me, and he was trying to...ingratiate himself with me... ”
The world was still spinning, and it span faster. Ryn’s stomach turned over; he worried he might be sick. “You mean you…?”
“No! No. After I told him about the Jewels, he overpowered me straight away and took me back to his airship where he threw me in that cell. I didn’t even get a chance to use my gift. I’m so sorry, Ryn.”
The nausea receded a little, leaving only cold.
“Ryn, I—”
“Stop.” Ryn stood up shakily. “Don’t waste your breath.” This was too much. “I need to be by myself for a little while.”
He stumbled away from the group, down and round the side of the hill they were on. The whole time he walked he felt numb. And yet, underneath the numbness, somewhere in the pit of his stomach, he was vaguely aware that something else was stirring in him, fighting to make itself known.
When he knew he had walked far enough to be out of sight of his companions, he sat down and wept.
The ocean of grief that had been sealed up inside of him burst forth, flooding him. He had had to keep it held back in order to escape the Empire, find a healer for Nuthea, sneak onto the train with the others, fight Vorr. But now it had grown too much, and the grief broke its dam. He buried his face in the grass, as it came out through his eyes in hot tears, through his chest in big, heaving sobs, through his mouth in muffled shouts of pain and anger at Vorr, at the Empire, at the world, at the fact that everyone he had ever known had been killed, but he alone had been left.
At Nuthea.
Mum. Dad. Cleasor. Find Vorr. Get Vorr. Kill Vorr.
Get away from Nuthea.