First, came the wind. A cold gust of air that tugged at the boy's clothes and rustled his hair. He shivered in his leathers, staring uncertainly at the skies above him. Then, the rain. Soft pinpricks against his skin. The pleasant tapping of a thousand tiny feet, marching in place. Thunder sounded, a dull rumbling, heard from afar. An opening message, like the bugle of a horn. A battle call.
The earth answered. The ground shook and trembled and groaned. The churning dirt of the Gravel Sea rippled like a stone had been dropped into it. Where the ripple passed, the ground flattened and hardened. It merged into hard, jagged stone. What once was sea became hard bedrock.
Lightning flashed, followed by the crack of thunder. The boy flinched at the sound, something he'd heard perhaps a dozen times in his entire life. Black clouds bloomed outwards, spreading to cover the sky. The Twins were swallowed by the darkness, their brilliance unable to pierce this veil. It cast a shadow over the earth, broken only by the flickering lightning.
The world seemed to crack, hundreds of fault lines springing into existence. The earth groaned and slowly shifted, rising upwards. Massive pillars of stone acted like joints, bending but not breaking. They were the ligaments of some enormous beast. Some impossible monster. The ground trembled beneath the boy's feet, no longer a soft vibration but a constant, unsteady shifting.
Water pooled around his feet. The rain pounded steadily downward, a soft pitter-patter into a slowly building roar. Then, the black sky seemed to open. He could see the air shift, a massive blur falling down from on high. The gentle whisper of the wind turned into a howling maelstrom. It staggered the boy like a hammer blow, his feet sliding backwards in the dirt, dragged inexorably alongside the invisible force. A hand seized his wrist; Eurya, his teacher, standing like an untouchable bulwark. The Keeper seized his other hand, and together they pulled him forward, towards the churning earth.
The Keeper kept his eyes on the sky. The blur of— the boy realized that what he was seeing was water. A massive ocean, crashing down upon them. The Keeper moved without haste, one hand reaching into his blood-red cloak, and the other raising upwards. His lips moved, voice sounding out clearly despite the howling wind and groaning earth.
"I've walked this world beneath empty skies."
A hole appeared in the wave, in the clouds, in the sky, perfectly rounded, and directly above the man in red. There was no noise, no sudden burst of power, no piercing ray of fire. No sign at all that anything had happened, except for the Keeper's words and their inevitable result.
The ocean impacted the earth, and the ground shook like a cataclysm had befallen it. Only the three companions were spared its violent fury, by virtue of whatever the Keeper had done. The water missed them entirely. They stood in the empty eye of the storm, as the world ended around them.
The Keeper's hand moved to the boy's shoulder, squeezing reassuringly. "Quite a sight," he observed with perfect calm. The hand in his cloak withdrew a small glass bottle, sealed by a cork. Inside it, no larger than the boy's fingernail, was a bobbing, fluffy cloud. The Keeper uncorked it, and the cloud billowed out and expanded. It seemed almost alive, spinning slowly in place with what seemed like happiness.
"Far to the north," the Keeper said slowly, "where the Twins light can barely reach, there is a land of constant rain." The cloud thickened, going from a fine mist into thick sheets. White tendrils reached out, grasping at the humid air. "The creatures there feed on the Memory of rain, the life that it brings. They are different from the beasts that roam the Barrens. Not savage, but intelligent, and loyal."
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
The cloud brushed against the boy, and he could feel the soft touch of cold water. His arm came away dry.
"What is it?" he asked, watching the creature slowly grow. The sea around him thrashed violently, all but forgotten now, yet still held in place by the Keeper's power.
"A cloud manta," the Keeper replied, snapping his fingers.
The invisible walls holding back the ocean disappeared, and water surged forward, The boy gasped, and reached for his sword. It was an instinctive action, there was nothing he could accomplish with it, other than feel safe for a brief moment before his end.
Something soft seized him around his waist, his stomach lurched, and then he was flying. He left his breath behind on that drowned patch of earth, as his body soared across the sky. The ground blurred beneath his feet, as he dangled, held tight by something massive and strong. His surroundings thickened into white clouds as the creature finally took shape. He could see through its limbs, two massive wings and a tail that trailed like a streak of white. The boy and his companions were nestled in its center, in a translucent globe of clouds, held safe from the swirling winds and torrential rain. He saw, high above him, at the head of the beast, two enormous eyes open wide.
Eurya laughed, a gleeful cackle filled with joy. The Keeper smiled. But the boy's stomach tried to crawl its way out of his throat. He fell to his knees, gazing downward. Far below, the Gravel Sea churned. He could no longer hear the lightning, but he saw the flashes. Each brilliant bolt of heavenly fury cast shadows across the land below. The earth warred against the sea, and dark shapes rose from the depths of both. He saw creatures of rock and stone lurching out to clash with monstrous shadows, hidden in waves. He saw a mountain growing out and up, its form scarred by lightning. He saw it crack, and shatter, and a hand the size of Farathun rose from the debris.
He saw the Memory of when gods did battle, and then he saw no more.
----------------------------------------
He woke with a startled gasp.
"Easy, Nicos," his teacher's voice comforted him.
The boy's eyes opened, and he found himself staring down from somewhere high. Desert sands passed beneath his feet at a gentle clip, a far cry from the blistering speed of before. The cloud upon which he slept was soft, if damp. He could see through it, somehow, just as he could see through the rest of the creature— the cloud manta. He rolled over, his eyes finding his teacher.
"What happened?"
Eurya smiled down at him, gently mocking, "You passed out, Nicos. Like a startled fledgling."
"A natural response," the Keeper interjected, before the boy could defend himself. The blind man was sitting comfortably cross-legged on the solid patch of cloud that passed for the ground. He glanced to Eurya. "We've forgotten what it means to be young."
She scoffed, but he shook his head. "Not to live like we are young, but to actually be young. Look at him." The Keeper gestured to the boy.
His teacher's gaze fell upon him, and the boy fought the urge to shiver. His mind was still replaying the events that he'd just witnessed. They echoed, over and over, an impossible, unimaginable sight. Dread pooled in his gut like a slow poison.
He swallowed heavily, and admitted, "I shouldn't have doubted you, teacher."
Eurya preened at his words, but the Keeper merely frowned.
"You are young," the blind man said. "You only know what you know and have only experienced what you have experienced."
"And now he has experienced more," his teacher pointed out. "He'll be all the greater for it."
"Too soon," the Keeper replied. "He is not us. We've forgotten what it's like to be young and small and weak. Look at him, Eurya."
The boy wanted to protest. He wasn't weak, and he certainly wasn't small. But he remembered that hand, reaching upwards out of the earth. He remembered those shadows, those shapes hidden in the water, each large enough to swallow him whole. He remembered dark clouds and crushing waves and trembling earth. He remembered these things, and could no longer speak of his own strength without sounding like a fool.
His teacher watched him, her eyes as piercing as her companions. She huffed, and said, "Children are tough. The Memory will empower him, once he's dealt with it. It was the right decision."
The Keeper stared at her, and she shifted uncomfortably. It seemed as if they were arguing with body language, alone. About what, the boy couldn't tell. He was still trapped in the moment, a wave of water pressing forward onto him, and the ground beneath his feet giving way. Trapped, without his teachers to protect him. Facing the wrath of two gods with nothing but a wooden sword.
Young, and small, and weak.