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Ruins

-Ruins-

Ryn Ashten’s map had been straightforward and easy to follow. In many ways, it reminded Drew of interacting with the woman herself.

Isle had been beside herself with joy, flying with such finesse and speed that Drew knew the journey would inevitably feel short.

Flying over Deporta in the darkness reminded him of his arrival mere days ago, and he was startled to see that the man who’d reluctantly left Mount Solis would miss the people here.

My people.

The bright beams of Orenda shining from the towers and throughout the streets of Deporta had faded into the darkness like a dazzling dream, replaced with a night he didn’t recognize anymore—the night of most of Ealias, a black night lit only by the torchlight of stars wavering above them.

Isle blended in with the world below them, and Drew had to keep both hands on her neck feathers to assure himself that she was still there and he wasn’t gliding alone through the night sky.

Occasionally she would croon, a sound of joy and satisfaction at their flight and reunion.

“I missed you too, girl,” he murmured. He could barely hear his own voice over the whipping howl of the wind.

Whisten. Drew had never been to the Forlorn settlement. Never even heard of it until arriving at the towers. And to find out Ryn Ashten not only knew of Rew, but was a key operative…

Unexpected, to say the least.

He glanced at the map again. With the breakneck pace Isle was maintaining in her eagerness to fly with him again, they would arrive in Whisten in thirty minutes.

Which, of course, tempted Drew to visit the Ruins, directly north of the settlement. Acelin had forbidden any ventures near the Ruins, and as Forlorn lineal Drew hadn’t had any spare time to waltz through the abandoned structures, but with the vague instruction to discover the source behind the strange happenings in Whisten, he felt confident exploring the Ruins was part of better understanding Whisten. At least, that’s what he would say if anyone asked or it something went terribly wrong.

For the next half hour, he reveled in being airborne once more. The steady beat of Isle’s wings as consistent as his own heartbeat. Her impeccable knack for catching wind currents. The rush as Isle dove almost into the forest below them before shooting back up like a comet.

This was the epitome of freedom.

Drew didn’t know how he would survive in a world without flight, without this feeling of revolving around the world like he owned it, could reach out and hold it in his palm.

The time passed quickly, and then they were passing over Whisten like two shadows, hugging the darkness of the sky. The settlement looked humble this far off the ground—nothing more than a sprinkle of multi-colored orbs filled with Orenda pushing back the night.

He couldn’t make out much more than that before Isle continued past Whisten at Drew’s urging and direction.

Would it have been wiser to explore the Ruins in the light of day? Sure, but Drew couldn’t help but feel like the inhabitants of Whisten would be shocked and mollified if their new lineal went exploring the Ruins in his free time.

Better to enter and exit like death—silent and unexpected.

Besides, he might glean some insight into the strange occurrences happening in Whisten. It didn’t take a wise old sage to assume that the source of the disturbances was coming from the Ruins.

I’m pretty sure they aren’t coming from Deporta, after all.

The landscape beneath them changed without warning from a tight interlaced canopy of branches and leaves to dark, broken structures, some of which reached into the sky like broken teeth.

The Ruins.

Drew was guiding Isle into a gentle downward spiral when he spotted a particularly tall building that looked strangely similar to the towers of Deporta.

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However, this jagged tower was filled with branches and vines which had overtaken the outside of the building with the patient, slow fury of nature. If the building had had any glass in the past, it had all been shattered by the wild foliage, which gleamed a strange blue-silver in the light of the stars and the sliver of moon hanging above Drew’s head like a scythe, posed to fall.

After instructing Isle to wait at the top of the tower for the sound of his whistle and feeding her some trailing fingers from his pack, he approached the side of the towering building they’d landed on and gazed down at the sight at his feet.

There was no evidence of violence, other than the wild, encroaching overgrowth that embraced each building like recently married lovers.

But then again, the Ruins hadn’t been ruined overnight. Whatever had caused the destruction and driven the people away, it had left no traces, not after all this time.

“Alright, Drew, less thinking about it, more exploring it,” he muttered to himself, working up the courage to leave the tower and enter the bony city of the past.

He invited his Orenda to surface and it roared like a flood, eager and desperate to overstep its bounds. Drew had never been good at resisting the power’s pull and let it flood forward, illuminating his fingertips and spreading until ruby light coated his arms up to his elbows. Directing the flow of Orenda in his mind, Drew fashioned a pair of greaves over his arms and hands. The ruby light complied, becoming brighter as it shaped the armor and then dulling until the ruby glow was little more than a spark in the darkness.

The last thing Drew needed was to send up a flaming beacon as he explored the remains of the Forlorn’s broken legacy.

Content with his handiwork, Drew took hold of one of the thick vines encroaching the roof and gingerly lowered himself down from the roof, gradually climbing down to the ground below.

When he reached the dirt and overgrown grass he used his Orenda to fashion a kind of armor to match his greaves. If he ran into anything deadly in the Ruins, the ruby protection would keep him safe from harm, at least at first.

As soon as he’d detailed out the armor in his mind, eyes closed, he opened them to admire the ruby defense glinting faintly in the darkness.

He still didn’t understand where Orenda came from or why his was so powerful, only that the power seemed to have a mind of its own and was better at teaching and surprising Drew than being submitted to his will.

Maybe my Orenda is defective, he mused. Oh well, Reign would say that’s what happens for learning outside of the holy academy.

And maybe the raisling would be right, but now that Drew was on the ground and the ruins towered above him, he banished trivial, distracting thoughts and focused on his surroundings.

Distraction here could get him killed.

Or maimed. Or something equally unpleasant.

The sliver of moon and the stars above, combined with the faint gleam of his Orenda, failed to illuminate the wrecked surroundings, and Drew risked summoning a small ball of Orenda light. It hovered above his right shoulder like a confidant as he took in his surroundings.

And blinked.

Wondering if he was seeing things, Drew circled around the base of the ancient tower, examining the skeletal remains of buildings from long ago. When he’d completed his rounds, he stopped, transfixed.

The architecture of the buildings scattered throughout the Ruins was totally foreign to anything Drew had ever seen. They looked nothing like the sensible stone-and-wood houses and shops of Deporta or even the shimmering Deporta towers. He’d flown over Trucesa once, and their buildings were made of the same wood as Deporta, even if the orange-colored stone they used was distinct.

But these buildings were made of something smooth and pale, like huge stone slabs without blemish that had been propped upright and carved into perfect lines. The ruins also consisted of perfectly rectangular, reddish colored stones, stacked together and connected with some kind of white material. When Drew reached out to touch the strange stones and the material holding them together, it all felt like stone below his fingertips.

“Who built these buildings?” he murmured, so quietly he almost couldn’t hear his own question.

Deciding to venture away from the main tower, confident he wouldn’t lose sight of it given its superior height to the buildings around it, Drew began entering the Ruins proper.

Like Deporta, buildings were stacked side by side like books, and many were several stories tall. However, where Forlorn structures featured only a door and one or two windows, these buildings, even though they were covered by tangles of vines and wild plants, were far more detailed. Strange little glass boxes hung from metal poles outside most buildings with a thick, oily substance pooling in the bottom.

Intrigued, Drew invited his floating orb of Orenda light to make contact with the liquid.

As soon as the ruby power settled into one of the little glass boxes, something incredible occurred—something about the Orenda mixing with the oily substance created a flame, and quickly the glass box was a fountain of light, illuminating the ruins in front of him far better than his Orenda orb had alone.

If someone or something was watching him out in the darkness he’d already revealed his location with the unplanned glowing box.

He waited a moment, listening intently for any signs that he wasn’t alone. Nothing.

Now that he knew how to make the little glass boxes work, as he walked down the path in between the rows of dilapidated buildings, lighting the boxes until he looked behind him and saw a phantom city come to life.

The ruins gleamed brighter even than Deporta. The oily substance burned brighter than Orenda, almost making Drew feel like he had stumbled into a different world.

A world where it was day instead of the darkest part of night.