When the guards left, Aymiae forced me into a hug, which caused an undignified squeak to escape my throat, “Fari you scared me to death! You disappear for two days straight after dropping off a random zombie in my basement! Who does that?!”
I laughed nervously and extricated myself from her grip. “I’m sorry, I had to take Hivren to Aubinere and I wasn’t in the best frame of mind. I bet Illila isn’t any happier with me.”
“I’m just glad you didn’t do anything too stupid.”
I relaxed slightly, “I don’t know what to do next. Everything was thrown off, I was going to ask the Queen to help me get to the dragonlands, but that’s off the table now.”
Aymi grimaced, “Yeah… I don’t think you can fix it now.”
I nodded, sitting down on one of the benches.
“Is there a reason you can’t contact Yumorath though? I mean you haven’t seen him in a long time but he would probably know the answer to what you’re looking for. Plus he’s calmer than most Dryads. I can’t see him biting your head off for tracking him down.”
“...Yumorath? I feel like I’ve heard that name before, didn’t you say it once?”
Aymi stared at me, “Sparks it hit you too? That acctually…hmm yeah that makes sense, when you died the spell would have counted you as a stranger to him…”
I furrowed my brow, “What spell?”
“Fari, Yumorath was the dragon you worked for. He’s one of the abyssal dragons that travels between dimensions. He cast a spell a while back that prevents strangers from remembering anything substantial about him. The more they know the more they forget.” Aymi frowned, “You should remember most of that tomorrow... Sparks, he’s probably on some other plane or realm right now.”
“Aymi, you’re freaking me out, besides, aren’t different planes a legend?”
Aymi looked at me like I was stupid, “A master dimensionalist is asking me this...” she sighed, “Fari the between is a different plane, so is the Void, so is Orien itself. There are hundreds of realms hidden from the naked eye where other dimensions or worlds touch ours. I’ve read all about them in some very interesting Yeran legends and I even have a guy who supplies me with seeds from other places for experiments. They’re very real.”
Okay that made more sense, I’d always felt like there was more to the between realm. “I’ll look into it then, tomorrow. Right now I need to sleep. I just crossed a couple thousand miles with a teleport spell built for short hops, and the days before that weren’t much better.”
Aymi nodded at me, “You can stay here, rumors are probably going to spread that the Hero usually wears an illusion and Gium knows it’s not much of a secret how good I am with those.”
I dimly took a blanket from her and headed up to my old room, I finally had an idea of what to do next. I would leave Reiaran, I would leave Melor, I would leave Virna itself. And I would chase a dragon.
However long it took.
--
Something seemed…odd in the middle of the night, I kept tossing and turning, increasingly out of sorts as something in the back of my mind refused to rest. I would fall asleep and then minutes later find my consciousness returning as a strange scent began to assault my nose. As loud sounds echoed through the Ayfel and something that reminded me of screams rose up from the back of my mind.
I jolted fully awake to silence and the distinct smell of smoke. It burned at my lungs, threatening to suffocate me. I gasped for breath, I screamed for help, I pushed my door open searching for fresh air only to find more smoke.
I felt along the wall, yelling for Aymi, but I couldn’t find her. I found a window as my sense of direction started fizzling out, a sure sign that there was something blocking my magical abilities. I tried to pry open the window but it was jammed, as I stared out through the flames, I thought I saw a faint but powerful golden barrier. Time runes danced in front of my eyes, leaving nothing but a distinct and horrible terror to fill my soul.
I steeled myself and moved my hands to cast a teleport spell but it fizzled out like a million wards had been set in place. I set my jaw against the smoke, feeling dampness at my eyes.
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I ran through the Ayfel, searching for a way out, but that relentless smoke choked out my breath. I’d never had great lungs as Eliax, Estin blamed it on all the Sandfrost I’d inhaled so long ago. Those same lungs resisted the contaminated air I was forcing into them, I grew weaker, struggling to find Aymi, to find Turste. I thought I heard shouts from somewhere but my mind was foggy, my breath labored, I could barely make out shapes of furnature from behind the smoke.
My sense of direction was completely gone by that point, I had no idea where I was, for all I knew I could be in the attic somehow. It was almost worse than the smoke to not know instinctively where I was.
I felt my knees grow weak and I moved to the ground, somewhere in the back of my mind I was screaming to do something to cast a spell to filter the air, to find the stairs and get to the main level, to search for another window, to…to find somewhere to rest. I was so sparking tired.
I could barely move in that hallway as I finally spotted the billowing flames. To my terror, they only came closer.
How...how had the Ayfel caught on fire? The...the skipping goat? I blinked blearily at the strange sight of stone burning. Perhaps it was dragons. I hadn’t heard any bells, I hadn’t heard anything.
I pulled myself toward a door with my hands, coughing and coughing and coughing. It felt like I was going to cough my lungs out. I felt something unnaturally hot flicker against my arm but I didn’t even have enough energy to jerk away from the burns.
There were some magical fires that could burn stone, was this something like that? Had Aymi been doing something in her workshop?
I reached the door and weakly hit the bottom of it, somehow hoping it would open underneath my weak fist. I couldn’t quite remember right now, but with my luck this door was probably the kind you were meant to pull on.
It was then that I gave up. I lay there, and found that I couldn’t regret anything.
The minutes ticked by, they felt extended by leaps and bounds. Dimly I tried again to teleport but nothing happened.
Slowly and agonizingly, Eliax Lestwood took her last breaths.
Slowly and agonizingly, Foralen dei Imal died for a second time.
--- NETUN ---
He could almost feel it as a life winked out in the city. Somehow though, it didn’t go from the world in the way he was used to. Netun remembered others slowly fading into Orien and out of sight, shining brighter all the way. It was sad, but Orien was a better place than here.
This soul instead faded into Esile and stopped, still dimly within sight. It was odd, but he had more pressing things to worry about at the moment. He quickly lost sight of it as a part of him snarled with rage at this terrible murder. The house in front of him was on fire, burning slowly; the scent of sandfrost only increasing as the flames bubbled outward like a massive bonfire. Netun might have decided then and there that the fire was the end of the sandfrost inside, if he hadn’t himself been burned to a crisp once about three hundred years ago.
There were villagers watching from around the flames with horror, some with buckets of water and sacks of gravel as they tried to prevent the fire from spreading any farther. Netun contemplated helping them, but they had it all well in hand, besides, there was something that only he could do about this unjust travesty.
He would have to track down those mushrooms later.
-- ? --
A man sat in front of a table full of nobles, grinning from ear to ear as a servant handed him a picture of the remains of the building. They hadn’t found much, but both of the women who had been in the Ayfel were now dead for absolute certainty. Foralen and Aymiae. Two pains in his back.
It was only right that he could still bring the world back to how it was meant to be. A world where the Hero hadn’t returned. A world where Foralen wasn’t the center of attention anymore. Weeks of planning lined up perfectly and finally that sparking shapeshifter had gotten his chance.
Really he’d started to wonder if the shapeshifter was even capable of the job, but setting up dimensional and physical barriers and burning the place out was almost too easy to even believe. Sparks he would have to throw a party after this.
The man grinned at the other nobles and held up the picture for them to see this glorious proof, “The Hero is no more!”
He was met with cheers and toasts, congratulations and pats on the back. Yes. They would learn after this success, now they would come to him and him alone every time they wanted a successful assassination. He would be known as the greatest strategic mind in all of Reiaran.
One noble fell over, a known drunk who seemed to have gotten to the alcohol early.
The victorious man sipped his own drink, still grinning from ear to ear. It tasted a bit odd, somehow reminding him of how sandfrost smelled, but spark him if he wasn’t going to enjoy his victory anyway. He sipped his drink again, feeling almost weightless at his bliss.
Beautiful, wonderful bliss.
It only lasted a moment before he felt a sudden horrible pain in his chest. He collapsed, feeling his heart reeling and his lungs gasping for air. He dimly realized that all the people around him were experiencing the same thing.
The dying man’s last sight was of staring upward in horror. A halfbreed stood above him, his pure white complexion and hair a strange contrast to the horrible red of his hard eyes. The assassin tilted his head down at the man. “It would have been more satisfying to stab the lot of you, but you really don’t deserve that effort.” The man dimly felt a foot on his stomach. “Justice was not yours to reap.”
And then he was dead, fading away into the Void.