Kashur

Kashur landed hard on his back in the darkness and winced. “Terris in flames, that hurt!”

Someone tittered. He rubbed his neck as he rolled up to sitting and peered around the dark room. “Moyshec?”

A green light illuminated the darkness, and the friendly face of his fellow Wizard appeared. Moyshec held out a thick Dwarven arm.

“Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to laugh at ye. It’s good to have ye back.”

Kashur grabbed the arm with his gloved hand and let his friend haul him to his feet. He brushed sand off his pants, shook out his cloak, and donned the other glove. “So that was your quicksand spell, was it?”

“Delivers the Imperial and Dwarven scouts right into our hands.”

They were in a small, wood-paneled room with round, porthole windows and a couple of upholstered chairs that had seen better days. Kashur sniffed the odor of moldy rope. “Are we on the river barge?”

“Aye. Careful of that soft spot there in the floor.”

Kashur noted the waver of the dark wood under his boot and stepped aside. “Where’s Yelora?”

“Oh, is it Yelora now?” Moyshec teased.

“The Elf Queen. Her Highness. Whatever. She was right next to me.”

“She’ll have popped into another interrogation room, but don’t worry. We’ve all got orders to give the Elf Queen the VIP treatment.” Moyshec unlocked the door and waved Kashur through. “We’re so glad yer back. Mol Morin will be, too.”

Kashur’s shoulder bumped the bulkhead as he navigated the corridors in the oddly tilted barge. He wanted to find Yelora, make certain she hadn’t been injured by the quicksand spell, but then again, she could take care of herself. Hunched Disciples moved in whispers between pockets of green lamplight. They greeted him warmly when they saw him. There seemed to be far fewer of them.

“What happened after the Council?” he asked, not sure he wanted to know.

Moyshec’s tone sobered. “War broke out. Our protection spells weren’t enough to hold off their numbers. Kenji Zamora and the Dwarf Conclaves overpowered us, drove us out of the Council chambers. We fell back to the Lair, and they held the dome, but they called more troops in and drove us completely out of our territory. We were forced to seek refuge here.”

“Who did we lose?”

Each name Moyshec ticked off was a stab in his chest. These were his friends. “Ah, Moyshec!” he cried, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes.

“I know, Kash. It’s been...” he trailed off, leaving them both to share a heavy moment of grief.

“So this is all the Wizards of the Arcane Sect that are left? The ones hiding out in this boat?”

“We have the surviving Sky Engineers who were at the Council, too. It’s not many, though it feels like plenty of mouths to feed at suppertime.” Moyshec paused. “Will ye take a moment to help with that?”

“Of course.”

He led Kashur down a salt-eaten ladder through a hole cut in the floor.

“Didn’t think to spruce the place up a bit?” he said, snapping his fingers. The petty magic transformed the rusted ladder into a lush spiral staircase.

Stolen story; please report.

“Stop that! We’re in hiding, remember? This isn’t the Lair.”

“Right.” Kashur reversed the spell and followed Moyshec through a gaping bite in the metal hull to a garden of sorts. All the plants were in pots, lined up like soldiers along a stretch of the barge covered in fetid algae. Kashur crouched beside a sickly tomato plant and got to work. When he was done, Moyshec was able to harvest three bushels of monstrous tomatoes, peppers, zucchini, eggplant, and orange potatoes.

“This’ll keep us fed for moons!” Moyshec grinned and clapped him on the shoulder as he levitated the baskets. “I’ll take these to the kitchen and be right back. We sure have missed ye!”

“Yeah, I was always the best gardener,” Kashur joked weakly and eyed an eggplant the size of a small child perched in one of the baskets. He’d never been able to grow fruit this big. His curse had grown even more powerful.

He glanced up at the sky. The planets were all there, their reflected light creating a zig zag pattern in the sky. A new constellation.

“It won’t be long now,” a voice whispered. It was one of the Sky Engineers—the Elven woman who had spoken at the Council. Kashur recognized her ice blue eyes and the tattoos across her cheeks and nose.

“The convergence?” he asked.

She swept aside the towering branches of a blueberry bush for a better view. “Not only that. The end of Terris as we know it.”

A lump rose in his throat. “What do you mean?”

The blue of her eyes reminded him of summer nights, when he and Nyla would take the boat out on a glassy black ocean and run their hands through the water, stirring up the bioluminescence.

“First the land will rot, and then the waters will be poisoned. Next the air will grow foul, and even fire will cease to serve the Five Peoples.”

“This is what will happen with the convergence?” he cried.

“It is already happening.” Her blue, blue eyes fixed on his. “You have seen it.”

He swallowed. He had seen it—the ground turning to sand under the sick Disciple. The dead fish at Creation Falls.

“There is a bigger enemy.” She lifted her gaze to the sky. “It comes.” Kashur blinked and suddenly she was in front of him, in his face, those unfathomable eyes boring into him. “You should have stopped the Elf Queen! At least then we’d have a chance!”

Did she know about the murder of the Elemental? Kashur tried to step back, but she had hold of the front of his shirt. The rune tattoos shimmered on her cheeks.

“I-I must speak with the Alchemist,” he stammered.

“No, you mustn’t!”

Suddenly, his gloves were off, but he hadn’t seen it happen. She was using time lapse! He tried to utter a protection spell, but it was too late. The words caught in his throat. She was silencing him. Two material spells at the same time.

“The heavenly bodies have shown me everything,” she whispered, tilting her delicate Elven face toward him. “Like a tapestry woven by the hand of the universe itself, the threads tell the tale.” She lifted his bare hands by the wrists. He fought, but was powerless to resist. An Elven Sky Engineer possessed both natural and celestial magic. With the convergence, she was doubly powerful.

“What are you doing?” Kashur gasped.

“I have seen that which was, that which is, and that which is to come.” Her voice was breathy, her eyes bright as the whirring diamond drill bits the Dwarves used in their mines. She lifted his bare, mottled hands between them. “This new magic is weakening us, paving the way. When the new enemy arrives, I do not wish to be here for it.”

And suddenly he understood what she was doing. He struggled to no avail, immobilized as she brought his bare hands to her cheeks, pinning them against her skin, her gaze as blue as a portal. No, no, no, no! The word screamed itself in his head as he stared at her strangely beautiful face, cupped in his deadly hands. He waited for it to age before his eyes, like a carcass left in the sun. But she was an Elf, and Elves lived many Imperial lifetimes. Her skin remained supple and smooth, her cheeks soft under his palms.

Her cheeks. Her skin. Kashur had not touched another living person like this since his curse had manifested, and he’d turned his beautiful mother into an old woman before her time. He moved his fingertips ever so slightly, the gentlest caress. A tear spilled down his cheek.

And then the change began. The flesh under his hands began to collapse. Wrinkles formed. The eyelids around those unfathomable eyes drooped. Her hair—it had begun to sprout beneath her light blue hood—tumbled over her Elven ears, twisting into dry, gray ropes.

Kashur tried again to pull away, but her grip tightened to a vise.

“No,” he whispered into her shriveling face. “Please, no.”

Her grip finally loosened, and she crumpled to the ground.