“Sky’s on fire,” Rigel remarked.

The young thief pointed back the way they came. The thunderheads roiled in waves of bruised violet and angry vermillion. He’d never seen such a storm.

“That’ll happen,” Fish replied.

“Great.”

They looked back through a rift in the trees, carved by the fallen giant beneath their feet. They stood on the trunk of a massive white pine that had once stood a hundred yards tall. In decline, it felled scores of lesser trees like dominoes. The trunk was as wide as a boulevard.

It could have been the mast for the greatest ship ever to sail if anyone could figure out how to haul it down the Rakkar. Instead, the white pine served as a natural bridge, canted across a ravine at a steep angle.

By the orb’s cerulean light, Rigel and Fish wove through a splintered maze of snapped limbs and broken trunks. The trunk was slick with wet moss and sodden rot. A slip meant a forty-foot fall onto the sylvan cheveaux below. They advanced with great care.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

The storm raged on, and they climbed the trunk by the glow of a blood red sky. The glow faded, and they were sorry it was gone. The gate orb’s light was a puny thing against the whipping wind and infernal rain. Fish raised the orb, Rigel toted the meager sack, and they groped forward as the rain spat in their faces.

Midway across the span, the wind fell silent, and the rain died to a drizzle. Rigel froze. A tingle ran up his arms. He glanced at Fish and saw the strands of the old man’s hair were sticking straight up. Raindrops hovered in midair.

Rigel had time for just one thought:

Please, no!

He cringed at the blinding flash, certain he was about to be blasted to bits. His entire field of vision turned the color of deepest sky. But no thunder came. Instead, the orb blazed in Fish’s hand. The tension in the air bled away, and the orb’s light faded to a faint twinkle. They were both stunned by the strange reprieve.

Someone answered his prayer!

The wind howled, louder than ever. They groped their way forward and scrambled off the trunk, climbing down the branches of smashed conifers.

“The orb saved us!” Rigel cried, still shaken.

“We’re chosen,” Fish told him, as if that were any explanation at all. Rigel waited for more, but Fish had nothing to say.

Who chose them?

They hurried west, toward Inaltazei.