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2 - Obsidian Maw
Warun’s fall slowed. A dusty beam of light coated him in softness, and he settled beneath an arch of rubble as the wall continued to crumble. The Ezard’s light, which had redirected to intercept Warun’s descent, left then, returning to its search for the instigator of the collapse. Warun curled his short legs snug against his stout torso. He coughed. Even surrounded by jagged talus, it was calmer here than atop the wall. There, gusts of wind threatened to banish him from the city throughout each post. Down at ground level, shielded by a newly-formed cave, Warun felt at ease.
It had come so quickly and so simply. Even the Ezards, humans able to harness magic, could not protect their fortification. Warun considered that the invader, though human in form, was more like wind than a living creature. It was like magic disguised in a human cloak. The greatest question, though, was why it desired to destroy the wall.
Warun stretched out of his small shelter, squinting to keep the hanging dust out of his eyes. He reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a pair of goggles. Useful to keep eyes clear on windy days atop the wall, they had become essential to his vision among this wreckage. He tucked the goggles into his shirt then bowed his face into the small gap of clean air against his skin. As he fumbled with the goggles, he found a smattering of bruises. It reminded him of a map of the Vesh archipelago, a string of deep blue islands extending from waist to neck.
He withdrew his turtled head as he tied the goggle strap around the back of his neck. Though his visibility remained narrow, his eyes no longer stung. After a few steps, he realized he had no way to orient himself. Which direction was the wall? Had the invader produced a way through? What was it like on the other side? For all Warun knew, the city was as much a wasteland as his present surroundings.
A distant, familiar call rolled in, like the horn blown at the Ocean End tower. There was always a guard posted in this farthest south tower, surrounded by the harsh ocean waves and half a day’s walk from the Land End tower on the coast. Another similar guard post at the Mountain End tower, the highest of them all, also utilized a warning horn, but its pitch was higher and less drowned by the frequent ocean storms. All Taekans knew the sounds of these horns. Each blared five times in echoing succession during the Grand Eclipt. It was all the time afforded to witness the two moons peek over the western horizon before resubmerging until the next calendar’s passage.
This call, however, though just as deep and desperate, was not the Ocean End horn. It was Dolo’s deep howl. He wailed like one of the wharfwolves, brooders of the salt flats abutting Taeko’s western reach. Many western Taekans were like these beasts. As children, the persistent night howls from across the Taeko River soothed them to sleep. To a eastern Taekan, though, the sound was an eerie threat of their western bound. No Taekans ventured west into the desert, nor did they enter the jaws of the obsidian ocean to the east. Taeko was a strong fortification, but its society was as closed off as a pearl inside its calcified shell.
“Warun!” The howl rang clearer.
Warun called back in his higher-pitched, westerly voice, “Dolo!”
Dolo, a full bust taller than Warun, thundered through the haze. He wore the same fashion of goggles. Whereas Warun presented more sharp and agile behind his, Dolo’s eyes magnified to appear like crackled glass marbles. Regardless of this fault, the giant of a man instilled unease, even to those who knew his gentle demeanor. Warun envied Dolo’s kindness. It was the sort of decency any Taekan would appreciate. Most guards, though, eclipt after eclipt spent protecting an old belt of rock from little more than stray tumbleweeds, were bitter and tired. Warun included himself among them. Dolo was a fresh recruit to the guard and valued the respectable pay, which he passed mostly to his family in West Taeko. It also offered him a dignity he had not experienced before accepting the post.
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“Thought you might be dead,” Dolo said.
“I should be,” Warun replied. “Ezard Scohr softened my fall. She also nibbed my shoulder.”
Warun pulled his collar down, revealing a welt on either side of his shoulder, painted with blue, green, and red bruising.
“Probably my fault,” Dolo said. “Tossed you the marble when I should have just—”
“Don’t worry about it. They don’t train you for a moment like this.”
“They do, though,” Dolo defended against himself.
“Not properly though.”
“How do you train properly for something like this?”
Warun looked up toward where he guessed the wall or its new gap might have been. “You don’t. You just hope that whatever forewarning your drudges are able to supply is good enough.”
“Was ours good enough?” Dolo asked.
Warun shrugged. From outside the wall and inside the unsettled dust, they could tell nothing about the state of the city.
“Did you hear that?” Dolo asked.
Warun froze and cocked his head. His ears were weak, pommeled since childhood by the blacksmith hammers. His whole family—mother, father, brother, and sister—refined and structured metals from the north mines into tools and infrastructure. Taeko was always in a state of renovation, always ensuring its efficiency to extract and utilize magic. Though they weren’t Ezards, his family’s wares, made from the magic-soaked ores of the mines, bore whatever magical properties the Ezards were able to draw out.
Then he heard it. At first, it came like the chirping of a baby bird. Then it melded into the yips and yawns of a pack of wharfwolves. Then the ground shook. Bits of it fractured, sending curved buttons of obsidian straight up and over their heads. The wind creature had been a mere harbinger. Something much larger was on its way.
Before Warun could contemplate the stampede to come, Dolo had ripped him off the ground. Dolo carried him like a battering ram away from the cracking floor as entire frozen waves of glass cleaved apart, moments later shattering like shrapnel bombs. Warun felt each thud against his back as shards struck the stone barrier Dolo had dragged him behind. He looked up at the rough-haired giant and, though trembling, conveyed his thanks with the standard Taekan expression of one raised and one lowered eyebrow. It signaled that Warun’s appreciation, though great, still paled against Dolo’s selflessness.
The fracturing intensified as the thunder rolled in. Curiosity welled up in Warun’s chest, and his neck drifted toward the edge of the stone protecting them. His cheek crossed the threshold. A chip sheared past, tormenting his ear with its shrill scream. His head whipped back, hinged at the shoulder by Dolo’s grip. He blinked repeatedly and touched his cheek, as though waking from a dream. It turned to nightmare when he saw Dolo’s angered face—a face that questioned his sanity.
Thunder cracked above. Still hooked at the shoulder, Dolo pulled Warun further in as a broken slab smothered their footprints. Warun recoiled from Dolo. His shoulder and pride hurt from the guard’s forceful hand. Warun cursed his own lapse in awareness. This level of vacancy, of ill-preparedness, was shameful, and Warun had fallen willingly into its maw. Such absenteeism would push him onto the streets with an amputated arm from a slip up in his family’s forge. Dolo’s brutish kindness reminded him of that. Warun offered Dolo a final disgruntled look before accepting their asymmetric strengths and offering another stepped expression on his brow.
The roars of whatever storm raged behind them began to pass. The splay of glass shards slowed, and the tension in the sullen air washed away with the fading thunder. Light returned in angled shafts through the dusty air. Warun emerged from behind the stone shield. Each step chinked as he swept through a layer of broken glass. Dolo followed. A vast valley of light in front of them signaled the gap in the wall. They marched toward it, anxious of what laid across its threshold.