-Forgotten Quest-
They’d stopped for the night in front of the southern Trucesan bridge leading down to the vast Ruins that would eventually take Jordan, Red, and Sareth to the doorstep of the Forgotten Trio.
Red and Jordan had gathered bundles of wood and sticks for Sareth as she hunted for fresh game. Now the three sat in front of a comfortable fire under a copse of trees, enjoying Sareth’s spoils—nightback ren, a variation of the bird Jordan had hunted on the Landing. She’d never seen the nightback ren before; it was apparently native to most of Ealias but only took to the skies at night, when its black feathers blended in with the night sky. They also had fresh sweetspine cut into slices and spread out on a smooth stone salvaged from the surrounding undergrowth, the fruit brought from one of the Trucesan stalls.
Jordan savored the sweet yellow slices as Red and Sareth bantered, Sareth unusually talkative.
“And what will you ask the ancients when we reach them?” Red asked as she worked on a leg.
“It’s supposed to be something private and sacred. Why would I share my question with a flaming mountain like you?” Sareth retorted, finishing up a wing.
“Just curious. Maybe your question will help me come up with my own,” Red said, smiling.
“I didn’t say I had my question yet, just that I wouldn’t tell you.”
“Have you had a look at the map? The extra ‘detail’ Eithan added means little to me. And the direction seems so vague. ‘Go southwest for several days until you find something ancient looking. That’s probably it. Although we don’t know. We just guard the old guys, we don’t actually visit them.’”
Sareth laughed. She’d finished eating and was sharpening her knife again, a slow, painstaking process.
“Do you even think they’re still alive?” she asked, looking up from her knife at Jordan. “How could anyone live more than a hundred years or so? Why would they last multiple generations? What kind of information do they have that’s so valuable that they needed to linger on Ealias so long? They’ve outlived the rise and fall of the southern ruins. Seen the birth, fall, and death of the old Forlorn city. What could be so precious?”
“I don’t know,” Jordan answered truthfully. “I know as little as you. I didn’t even know there was a prophecy tied to Ealias until I stumbled on it in a book.”
“And what did it say?” Red asked, now working her way through a thick slice of sweetspine.
“Not much. Honestly, I don’t think the author wanted me to learn much about the prophecy from the book, more like he or she wanted to ignite my curiosity.
“The little I know is that the prophecy involves a sun with dual moons.”
“Interesting,” Sareth mused. “What kind of moons?”
“Half moons, one black as night, one bright like a star.”
“Opposites circling the sun, almost like shields or doorways. Curious.”
“What does it mean?” Red asked, looking at Sareth and Jordan in turn.
“I have no idea,” Sareth said, “just that it seems like more than just Jordan will be part of this prophecy. If she’s a representation of the sun, it makes sense that two other people would be involved.”
The fire threw up a cascade of sparks, tiny pinpoints of light that danced in the air. Looking into the heart of the fire, Jordan noticed something dark in the distance blur as it moved.
Her hand went to the sunsword, sheathed as always. Sareth was quick to notice the movement, and the grip on her knife tightened as her body coiled like a spring. Red was about to say something when she observed her two companions. Silently, the auburn-haired warrior removed the hefty battle ax from her back and stood, her legs bent and apart, her shoulders wide, ready to wage war on the thing creeping through the shadows.
Locking eyes with Jordan and Sareth, she mouthed a single word—weiver. Jordan searched her memories, looking for the term.
Ah, yes. Four-legged, shaggy creatures with more fangs in their mouth than anyone had been able to count. Eyes as black as pools of ink. Claws sharp enough to tear through wood, rock, metal. And fiercely territorial.
Red’s usual carefree persona had vanished, buried in the night, replaced by a stern angel of justice. Sareth paled visibly as she realized the threat’s identity, keeping her knife in her right hand as she stood, unsheathing her thin sword and holding it firmly in her left hand, the two blades crossed over each other like a steel shield.
Silence was shredded into pieces by a cry that rent the air, causing the wavering, dancing sparks from the fire to burst like miniature explosions. Jordan was on her feet in an instant, her back to Sareth and Red as the three of them faced out, toward the threat.
Threats.
There were multiple black shapes gathering in the rim of light the fire cast. A pack. Training took over, and Jordan undid the scabbard of her sword from her waist, wielding it in front of her with both hands, body loose, ready to dance like the burning fire.
Fangs the color of bone and claws so dark they blended into the night, fueled by a muscular body eager on preying on the intruders. Red gave a cry of defiance and swung her battle ax with practiced ease, cutting the shaggy tail off one of the weivers. It howled an unearthly cry of anger. It was hard to tell in the darkness, but it looked like the creature’s blood was as black as its devilish eyes.
Sareth’s hands filled with aquamarine light as icy as her eyes, and the warmth flickered and flared like the fire, which seemed to grow as the weivers began circling, their soulless eyes all too easy to see now. Jordan fought back the familiar sense of nausea that always accompanied Forlorn Orenda use. In a curious move Jordan had never seen, Sareth wrapped the Orenda around her sword and knife, and the weapons grew to a blinding sheen that made the weivers hiss in displeasure.
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Red did the same, her broad hands filling with garnet Orenda that seemed to illuminate her flaming hair. Soon her battle ax looked like it was on fire, the red light shimmering and rippling like the flames.
Jordan eyed the threat with her sheathed sword. The knife she’d been given would be little more than a joke against such large creatures—unless she was as practiced as Sareth seemed to be, but Jordan had spent years molding her body and mind to become one with the sword, not something like a battle ax or knife.
And then with a vicious growl a weiver leapt into the fire, smothering the flames with its thick, wiry body. The world was plunged in darkness, only Sareth’s and Red’s weapons glowing like holy blades, mirrored back by those many pairs of black eyes.
Jordan entered a place of concentration, everything snapping into focus like a well-fitted piece of armor. Time seemed to slow, her heart beat a calm, rhythmic thing, prepared for a moment just like this. Used to moments like this after so many years of rote repetition and countless skirmishes.
Red and Sareth were red and ice-blue blurs, keeping the weivers at bay with precision and well-practiced strokes, but Jordan was a hurricane, everywhere at once, the heavy metal of her pointed scabbard breaking bones wherever it landed without drawing blood.
There were moments to show restraint. Enemies to reason with. But weivers were savage killers, intent only on their next meal, enjoying the agony their prey suffered before being devoured. She remembered hearing stories about people out in the settlements being maimed by these creatures.
But the weivers continued to flow in like water rushing out of a dam until everywhere Jordan turned she was greeted by fangs, claws, deep black eyes grinning.
“There’s too many!” Red shouted to be heard above the howls. “We need to retreat, get across the bridge and drop it when we get to the other side.”
Sareth nodded, long dark hair flashing around her as she expertly used mainly her knife to gut any of the creatures that wandered too close, her Orenda making the weivers mewl with pain as they felt the burning sting of the power wrapped over the weapon. She kept her thin sword, still infused with Orenda at her side, but it was clear she had little to no practice with such a large weapon and it was more of a hinderance than a benefit.
Jordan continued to strike out almost faster than she could think, beating back the growing pack with utter calm until she found herself facing off against the largest weiver, a pitch-black abomination with a single white stripe running across its face like a scar. But even as she brought the sunsword’s scabbard over her head onto the pack leader’s open maw, catching on fangs and ripping a few out as she pulled her scabbard back and prepared for another strike, she noticed Sareth gasp in silent pain. A weiver had taken advantage of her awkward grip on the thin sword and raked its killer claws over her arm, where the slender woman already sported layers of faded scars.
Without slowing, Jordan fastened her scabbard at her waist once more and shouted, “Throw me the sword!”
Sareth didn’t hesitate, and as she threw the sword Jordan made eye contact with the woman and threw the knife she hadn’t used in Sareth’s direction. Sareth caught the knife with practiced ease and began pressing forward with a fury, using the two blades in a flurry of motion. Soon Jordan’s knife gleamed a fierce icy blue as well, and Sareth started working her way toward the bridge in the distance.
Red looked like a vengeful, fiery giant, her battle ax spinning and slicing and beating a path to the bridge. She was the closest. Jordan had been so focused on thinning the pack that she hadn’t concentrated on pushing forward to the dark, murky outline of the bridge.
But the sword in her hand wasn’t sheathed anymore, and even if she regretted killing the innocent, she was ruthlessly efficient at killing creatures like this, animals bloodthirsty and intentionally cruel.
Sareth’s sword still glowed with aquamarine light, and the heat coming off the Orenda warmed Jordan’s fingertips as she became one with the sword. It was thinner and more delicate than she was used to, but Jordan had put enough focused hours into swordplay to quickly adjust, shifting her feet and the position of her body to accommodate the lighter weapon.
And then the weivers were running, black eyes wide, mouths open wide as they died, howling as they were trampled by their fleeing pack members. Sareth’s sword was a brilliant blue blur, blazing through the horde, Jordan’s blonde hair reflecting off the Orenda, flying out around her like a second blade.
It took only minutes to reach the bridge, a sad, rotting affair that stretched across the blackest expanse of sea Jordan had ever seen. The waves nipped at the rotten wooden boards, and the entire bridge groaned as Red strode onto it, replacing the ax on her back, her Orenda mere sparks now on her fingertips as she led them across the dark gulf.
Sareth went next, her knives still held tightly in her hands, looking more like torches than weapons now that they were still. Jordan came last, most of the weivers retreating from her ferocious onslaught. All but the pack leader. Its many fangs glittered like hundreds of Sareth’s knives, and Jordan knew it would hunt her down relentlessly for decimating the creature’s pack until one of them yielded.
Whipping her face away from the weiver for a moment, she gauged where Red was on the bridge and knew if she stalled the intimating beast for a few more moments, the red-headed warrior would be across, with Sareth on her heels.
Determined, Jordan walked slowly backward on the bridge, her companions at her back, the weiver a grinning demon in front of her, approaching her deliberately, slowly. The Orenda on Sareth’s sword was fading, casting long shadows over the creature and the dark trees stretching into the sky behind her where the dead campfire lay.
The weiver lunged forward without warning, but Jordan had been listening to the creature’s breathing, watching its emotionless eyes, the position of its massive paws, the ebony claws invisible in such little light. As soon as it rushed her she brought the sword up, blocking the creature’s muscular body from crashing down on her, the front paws catching on the sword’s blade as she thrust forward, forcing the animal back.
The entire bridge quaked, and a rotten plank under the weiver gave way, snapping and plunging into the Glacian Sea.
Another quick glance. Red was across. Sareth would be as well in mere moments. Red, little more than a smudge in the distance now that she’d crossed the span of the long bridge, seemed to be looking in Jordan’s direction with concern.
Glance back. The weiver was bleeding from one paw and looked ready to open its mouth wide enough to swallow Jordan and the entire bridge in its impressive jaws. The second lunge didn’t catch Jordan off guard, but the relentless force behind the jump snapped Sareth’s slender blade. The pieces fell through the gap in the bridge into the sea, leaving Jordan with the sword’s meager hilt and the sheathed sunsword.
The hilt wouldn’t give her enough length to keep the creature’s claws and fangs away, so she threw the hilt into the blackness below before withdrawing her scabbard once more. The weiver made a sound that reminded Jordan eerily of laughter and attacked again almost immediately.
Its mistake. She dropped low and rushed forward, slamming into the creature with all her body weight. Startled, the weiver stumbled back a pace or two, giving Jordan enough space to steal one more glance behind her.
They were both safely across. Acting with purpose, Jordan withdrew the sunsword barely, enough for the unique metal to gleam brighter than any Orenda. Enough for her to grab hold of one of the ropes and slice through the rest of the bridge.
The weiver howled like death come early and hurled like a stone into the Glacian Sea. The whole bridge swung like Red’s battle ax, and Jordan clung to the rope, ignoring the searing pain as it ripped through the skin on her palm as the entire bridge fell and Jordan flew toward the bank of land where Red and Sareth were standing, their mouths open. Bracing herself for impact and clutching the sunsword, now properly sheathed once more in her left hand, Jordan hit the other side and fumbled to tie her scabbard to her belt once more before beginning to gingerly climb. Red was quick to pull what remained of the bridge and Jordan up onto solid ground.
As soon as she was standing by the two women Jordan turned to face Sareth and said, “I may have broken your sword… sorry about that.”
The slender woman was silent, clearly at a loss for words. Red just smiled.