The peaks grew with every leap—giants that ate away the sky. There was an irresistible gravity to them, a lure that went beyond the secrets they undoubtedly held. Jack had never seen mountains of their scale. He approached them so quickly he had no time to grow used to their magnitude before he was already leaping forward again, watching them grow improbably higher—higher than he knew anything could be.
Within their depths lay flowstone elementals in their millions, a horde that Jack only now understood could be encompassed by the peaks he approached. Calre had been right, the ancients could never have conquered these mountains; containment was the only path.
Jack began to descend again and, at the moment his dash-shadow brushed the treetops, dashed down to the surface. He'd gotten used to landing in the canopy, saving the time to climb the tree to restock his dashes. He appeared among the needles—instantly transitioning from high speed to stillness. He quickly gripped a branch and swung to the trunk. To his surprise, a coating of sap cracked and rained down as he hit the tree. The shatter of red residue immediately coated his clothes and hair.
Upon closer inspection, Jack found tap bores around the trunk, sealed over by now but that previously had been left to run free over the tree.
'They must have sourced their flux oil as they ventured further. Sloppy work on their part; all that effort to prevent stray fires and they leave it like this, 'Jack glanced down to the distant earth, 'and why so high?'
He felt uncertain—pieces weren't making sense—but there were no answers to be found in a clearly long-abandoned site. He restored his dashes and continued his leaps, heading again towards the mountains and whatever awaited him there.
----------------------------------------
The day was growing long. Jack had found more cracked hills, and the occasional streak of partially burned forest—a difficult feat with flux trees, but with it his discovery of the sap-coated trees suddenly snapped into place. They were burning sections of forest to rile the elementals out of their slumber and save themselves the difficulty of breaking into the hills themselves. In a way, it was ingenious. Wherever the elementals stirred from were the locations of ruins; but the risks were tremendous—even with their measures to limit the spread, it could easily lead to disaster.
Jack knew he was approaching the point where returning to the caravan before dark would become difficult in the time he had. He had tied red cloth to the top of trees a few kilometers to the north, a beacon for his return once he was back in the general area, but spotting them at night would be impossible, and the caravan had restricted their light and flame use since arriving in the forest. But he couldn’t return now—he had come too close.
He had been rising steadily with every leap; taking careful, low angles to remain close to the treetops. But the security of their cover disappeared only a few meters ahead of him: he’d reached the treeline. The forest attenuated quickly, the flux trees becoming scrubby and shrunken in the rocky soil before disappearing altogether.
A few landings ago he had been brought into range of the occasional low rumble, the lowest notes of some activity barely reaching him. It had grown only louder as he continued, until the sound of it permeated through the earth, rolling up his bones and reverberating through his skull. It was joined by short travelling high-pitched cracks of breaking stone and an unidentifiable buzzing whir that set his teeth on edge. The work was surely less than a kilometer away, but currently still not visible.
On a previous leap, Jack had seen a narrow crevasse in the side of the mountain, too thin to see within unless he was directly above. He was sure it must be the site of the work, hidden from view for now, but close.
Months of effort had brought him here, and now in minutes he would uncover what had been so carefully hidden. He'd learn what was worth releasing the hivers and the umbrar to keep secret. Within his reach was justice for the victims of the umbrar, he only needed to throw himself forward again.
He would be difficult to miss flying through the air, and would undoubtedly be pursued by someone quickly. There would be a short window of opportunity, as any observers would have to reach him.
His path was decided. He stocked one last set of enhanced dashes and momentum charges—one pair to approach, and one to flee. He would not have the opportunity to restock them.
'Here I go,' and he did. The rush of velocity as he flew towards the crevasse, he dashed early—wary of winding up in the canyon itself. The sound had peaked, encompassing even the rush of wind until it consumed the world. His angle had been too low to see within the canyon, but only a hundred meters of rocky terrain separated him from the edge.
Jack ran, awkwardly at first on the poor footing but finding his rhythm quickly. The months with the caravan had left him lean and strong, whipcord muscles driving him forward with as much agility as strength. He had learned how to walk and run on the earth where before he had only known city streets.
The precipice was close, and then it was there. The crevasse was deep,but from within the depths were hosts of spring-lights illuminating everything. Jack could see several scores of people laboring, hanging from scaffolding and ropes along the walls, painting them in thick red flux oil.
Towards the bottom were multiple wooden structures, almost insectoid with thin supports holding up a convoluted frame, a comparison that only felt more appropriate as one of them extended a long metal tube like a proboscis. It hit the stone and the sound set his teeth vibrating. Others were already fully extended, plunged deep within the rock until only a bare nub extended from the earth. Into these they funneled barrels upon barrels of oxidized flux oil, flowing slow and thick as curdled blood.
The final oddity was the scattered crude cages of wood raised well above the earth. Each of these was given a wide berth by the workers, but all Jack could see in them were large red crystals, carefully wrapped in netting and suspended within the wood frames. Something about them tickled at his memory, but the specifics escaped him.
A nightbird suddenly plummeted past Jack, diving into the crevasse in a blur. He startled, it had been close enough to touch, and broken from his focus he realized he had been here too long. Jack turned and stood, taking a handful of strides before coming to a sudden halt. Down the slope was a figure coming up, halting as Jack did.
Jack and the man stared at each other. He was tall and well built, a coating of rock dust covered his clothes, but his face was impeccably clean—leaving his handsome features unblemished. His expression flickered—too fast for Jack to make it out, but ultimately he settled on a rueful smile.
'False.'
Slowly, he straightened from his crouch and gestured with one hand. In an instant the deafening sound of the work below disappeared.
"An awful racket; makes it awful hard to make conversation." He spoke with a curious twang, not unlike the working classes of southern cities, but something about it felt off to Jack.
"Is that what we're doing?" Jack shifted, carefully securing his footing, "Making conversation?"
"That's what I'd like, to talk a moment," the man answered and took a step forward, a motion immediately mirrored by Jack stepping backward.
"Conversation can happen from where you stand, I think."
The man smiled genially. "I think we're getting off on the wrong note. But I understand your concern, I'll stay where I am."
"Why the pretense? You usually sneak up on your conversational partners?"
Jack was watching for it, but failed to spot any sign of anger at his tone.
"Ahh, well," he rubbed at his neck, "I suppose I don't. But why so bent out of shape? I'm not gonna hurt you or nothin', that's not how we do things. Here, it's only fair to give you the first question if we're makin' conversation, as a gesture."
As if to show his harmlessness he turned around to look out over the forest, showing his back to Jack.
"Did you find it? Whatever you're looking for down there?" Jack said.
The man turned slowly back around, but he stumbled on the scree before quickly righting himself, an embarrassed grin on his face. The motion had brought him a step closer, and Jack retreated a step to keep the distance constant.
"Oh yeah, we found it. Wealth enough to make us. We worked hard to get it. You must have as well, been pretty clever, pretty quick to get here. Imagine my surprise, seeing ya sprinting up here."
"So we're all friends, after you tried to come up on me?"
"I'll admit it was a bit rude of me to creep up on ya. But we're almost done as it is. A few days under watch, I'll put in a word for ya comin' quietly and there'll be no reason to keep ya. Better yet, there'll be reason to offer you a bit of a reward for showin' such character."
His expression was chagrined, his tone rueful, but as he spoke he took careful small steps edging upwards towards Jack.
"Don't get any closer," Jack warned, backing away.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
"My fault! Sorry, just the work has to be coming along and I'm mighty curious to see how much time there is. Say, you're not from a caravan are ya? Now we're doing some dangerous work, folks need to be warned about it if they're around."
Despite his words his approach continued, and Jack continued to step back until he could feel the yawning abyss behind him and he came to a sudden halt.
"Don't come any closer!"
The man's expression changed then, to a vacancy of affect more twisted than any wrath.
"Now why would I stay back when you have nowhere left to run?" His voice was cold, exactingly precise. There was no remnant of the low-folk accent, only polished steel.
Rock shifted beneath Jack’s feet, small stones clattering down the void behind him to shatter on the walls.
Jack let his own mask drop as well, straightening from the cowed flinch he'd affected.
"Why would I need to run?"
Pivot.
The man charged forward in a card empowered rush, a blade appearing in his grip from nowhere, but Jack was already falling backwards, and the point passed over Jack's body by the barest margin as Pivot accelerated him away from the lunge.
Jack was falling into the crevasse, but by now being midair was almost as comfortable as a solid position on the ground. Pivot swung him back upright, and then he was flying upward once again. He erupted from the crevasse in a blur of motion, making mockery of his attacker's previous speed. As he crested, a glance downward showed the appearance of a dozen other figures at the cliff-side, all tracking his movement, some of them even readying card effects.
'Cute.'
A new angle and then he was off again, his next charge sending him along the mountain in a new burst of movement.
His dash-shadow gave him the timing to return to the ground, he was still past the treeline, but now most of a kilometer away from the crevasse. His pursuers were still in sight, and he could already see them moving to intercept him, some faster than others.
'Need to lose them before anything else. My leaps aren't exactly subtle, but I can use that. I'll make them think I'm rounding the mountains and then I'll cut back into the forest when I'm out of sight.'
The rough terrain made Jack's retreat easy, large boulders or sudden drop-offs were no obstacles and, in fact, gave him the height to gain stronger momentum charges. Even a steep slope could be jumped off of and turned into later movement. He switched to his Enhanced Vital Flow for the greater acceleration, managing to make even the smallest of falls into sixty meters-a-second dashes.
The first few landings he studied his pursuers while waiting for his hand to cycle. Most of them had fallen away but those that remained used diverse cards to remain in sight, albeit barely. They moved with focused grace over the terrain, some leaping superhuman distances, but the scree slope saw many of these stumbling and losing time as they struggled to overcome the rock-slides they produced. Others used exotic effects to accelerate themselves forward, producing flame or other means of propulsion to avoid the worst of the terrain, but Jack's lean deck and absurd speed kept him well ahead of even the most capable of them.
For all his superiority of movement, he saw within them a host of deadly effects and knew that facing them directly in any capacity would be his demise.
‘I’ve learned all I can. Let’s see how they handle the uphill.’
Jack turned to face the mountain directly and leapt again. He was exchanging distance for height, but the rapidly dwindling pursuers were all the encouragement he needed as they struggled with the steep slope.
Another leap and he was gone around the curve of the mountain. There was no one in sight, and he took ample advantage of the opportunity. While his cards cycled Jack threw whatever stones he could reach down the slope, where they dislodged other rocks and quickly formed deadly tumbling cascades.
'Leave a trail, and then,' he sky-leapt back down the slope towards the forest, 'disappear.'
Jack faded back into the boughs of his landing tree and waited. He could make out the faint forms of his pursuers after a few minutes, gesturing to the disturbed slope he'd crafted for them to discover. None of them approached the forest, convinced by his subterfuge.
He waited a few more minutes to be sure, but soon enough there was no one in his sight and he leapt once more back into the forest. The light was growing dim, and they would be attempting to see him from above, a rapidly moving object on a richly textured background.
After a few more leaps his worries faded. There was no way they would be able to keep pace with him through the forest. Until a new sight sent a surge of fear through him.
Ahead of him, a few kilometers to the south he could make out a card effect, a blue orb had materialized from the height of a flux tree and was even now descending to the forest floor.
'They cut me off? How? More allies in the woods? But—' the realization struck him then, the card was familiar, 'Grant.'
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Jack spent his second charge of momentum to divert his course mid-flight and take him towards the bondsman. Grant must have climbed a tree for his own scouting, and then descended using the same effect from the hiver's pitfall. Jack felt a new rush of worry—the card was eye-catching, particularly as the looming night enhanced the visibility of the blue glow. The group on the mountain wouldn't miss it—forewarned as they were by Jack's appearance. He needed to warn them and share what he'd learned. The time for secrets was over. Whatever was happening on the mountain seemed far stranger, and more dangerous than he'd ever anticipated.
His aim was true, refined by the many leaps he'd made through the day, and he landed in a tree only a handful of meters from where he'd seen the light descend.
"Grant! Cal!" Jack shouted, failing to spot them through the blur of the canopy as he scrabbled down the tree, "Where—"
"Jack?!" Grant's baffled face looked up in astonishment from the forest floor, "What are you doing here?"
Calre stood next to him, a look of surprise already morphing into a dry smirk.
"Really Grant, it's like you've never had a friend drop in. Where are your manners? Make us some appetizers from that lichen over there and I'll go fetch that rotted squirrel we found earlier."
Jack laughed—as much as in relief as from Calre's antics. Everything would be alright, he could feel it. He joined them in an instant, dashing to the ground with confidence.
"Refreshments will have to wait…I…there's something I have to tell you."
Jack explained quickly, his discovery of the false bookkeeping, the pedestal in the hiver tower, all the pieces that led him to the forest, and then he shared what he'd found there so far. The broken hills and extinguishers arrayed in a line through the forest as they hunted for something, and finally the work being done in the mountain—the details of which he could barely decipher, but seemed to be risking a great rise of flowstone elementals with their impetuous efforts.
Calre's face grew darker as Jack explained, eventually going blank—Jack recognized it as the moment Calre looked towards his memories, reaching into the library he kept locked within his mind.
Jack finished his telling, gratified to see the serious looks he'd brought out of the others.
"But so much of it doesn't make sense to me, like the extinguishers placed along their route. I thought I understood them, but every new piece seems to contradict something I learned earlier. I thought they were trying to avoid the risk of fires, but if anything they're provoking the elementals without restraint. Calre, what have you read? What does the library say?"
"You really do have a knack for getting to the heart of secrets," Calre whispered. But before Jack could respond he continued, "Those red crystals were animus crystals, isolated from stone until the fires return them to contact with the mountain—a method of awakening a portion of the mountain without a major blaze. The extinguishers. You're right, they're not trying to reduce the risk of fire. The forest around us is a testament to its own resilience. Elementals don't stir from a few extra logs burning, no, but once they're awake they're darn stupid. Fires off the main trail would split their forces. Waste of resources. Increased risk of dispersal. If you want to focus them, you need a straight shot, a burning trail leading them directly to their destination."
"But whe-" Jack froze, in his mind the line he'd tracked through the forest extended, tracing along a mental map until it arrived at the beginning, "Calamut, but why? Why destroy the city?"
"Cal—" Grant attempted to interject, but fell silent at Calre's raised hand.
"He deserves to know," Calre said simply, and fell silent as he organized his thoughts. Jack could sense the care Calre was taking, the deliberation he made as if these were the most important words he'd ever spoken. "Every Fall begins with a Rise," he began, "a city usually, sometimes smaller, the aggregate of focused efforts of a large group. Cards grow stronger, begin to tap into fundamental powers. A feedback loop occurs, and soon their cards usher in a period of incredible potential. It's been seen enough that some have come to recognize the signs, and fearing the Fall... they cull the Rise."
Images ran through Jack's mind. It would begin as a rumbling. Notes so low only animals would perceive them, and then a cloud of dust on the horizon. Then behemoths of stone tearing through the fields of the city; rampaging through the buildings; crushing every mural; the Tangle coming to a shrieking collapse as uncaring rock ripped it asunder; the people unable to withstand the Mountain.
"Your family, the population of the city, they'll escape. Flowstone elementals are fast but they don't aggressively pursue humans, only their works. The people will become refugees, and the development of spring-tech will come to a halt. They won't kill to the last child, I'm sure of it."
"It's my city Cal."
"Don't pick a fight you can't win Jack. They'll kill you and it will be for nothing. Don't-don't take my friend away."
But Jack didn't say a word.
"What do you intend to do about it then?" Calre asked, eyes flashing.
Jack already knew. Calre was afraid, he could see that, the anger was a cover. But to Jack, that fear was simply a lack of faith in what they could achieve together.
"The three of us. We can do it. Their crevasse is low on the mountain, and I can get us to the top. There's enough loose stone to bury their entire operation once we can get it going."
Calre turned away.
"Don't make me do it," Calre whispered harshly, his voice breaking.
"I understand that you're afraid! I am too. Togethe—"
But Calre hadn't been talking to him.
"Grant, please," a voice of despair.
Jack glanced to Grant, his body stiffening mid-look.
Tears were running down the bondsman's face. In his hand was a thin rapier, its point buried in Jack's heart.
Jack coughed, and a dark and vital blood spilled from his lips. The world shimmered out of focus, and the next sight was of Calre looming over him.
His last thought from the ground was one of confusion—when had he fallen?