An uneasy feeling had settled over the group as the night wore on. Since around midday near constant tremors assailed Fount Salt. Some felt close, and others far away, but a few nearly shook them off their feet. It was near-relentless. Nanri made the call to cut their day short, bringing the large group of exorcists back much earlier than intended. Navigating the Last Step with the passing quakes was simply too dangerous. Still, they got more aetherium than the first day by noon, but that was hardly anyone’s concern at the moment.
Nanri fastened everything down with conjurations as soon as she stepped out of the skiff, draining a large portion of her own mana. When they had returned, the alchemists were desperately holding the various apparatuses down with the help of frantic Earth Vein workers.
They were quickly dismissed, as the batch could finish safely now, more or less. With plenty of time on the hourglass, this left everyone to wait in uncomfortable silence, save for the occasional attempt at small talk. They could only wonder as to cause of the island’s violent shaking.
What concerned everyone as evening approached was that neither Lomp nor Cira had returned.
“They were up to somethin’, weren’t they?” Triton asked Nanri.
“I don’t know…” The witch sulked, feeling her chest tighten up as she tried to push her worries down, “She didn’t tell me anything. I was sure she would be back by now.”
“What could she possibly be doing at a time like this?” As Chip steadied himself on the table with a nervous grip, a little salt pebble fell on his shoulder. He frowned deeply as he looked up at the ceiling, “I can see Lomp getting stuck somewhere, but not her.”
“She… she said she had some investigations to do today.” Nanri added, lacking her usual confidence, “Maybe these tremors are connected.”
“Guys.” Triton grabbed everyone’s attention and he looked at them like the stupidest people he’d ever met, “Isn’t it obvious that crazy woman is the cause of these tremors?”
Nanri’s face trembled as she tried to maintain her denial, “That… that can’t be so.”
“I agree with Triton.” The bespectacled man said with an attitude, holding up his medallion.
“I mean, it has to be her, right?” Jules wasted no time to get snooty about it, crossing her arms and nodding with her fellow maidens.
Basically everyone agreed, and the sinking feeling in Nanri’s heart told her the truth of the matter. Cira had intentionally peeled herself away from everyone to do… something. And now the entire island was shaking, with her nowhere to be found. “What happened to Lomp then?”
“Maybe he died.” Triton shrugged.
“Hey!” Nanri’s fragile expression didn’t hold the authority it usually would, “You shouldn’t say that…”
Truthfully, everyone had begun to worry about that as well.
During this time, of course, Earth Vein across the way was in a panic. The Official had taken the initiative to come help in the beginning before returning to whatever their work entailed—some manner of disaster-relief. Delilah had offered to help with patients, but he said he had plenty of hands and the cure was more important, for all the work it took.
As the evening grew, Nanri periodically went to ask him for updates, and the entire island was in a similar state as far as his ears reached, which wasn’t a great distance in these conditions. In the last couple hours, bits of salt had begun to fall. Damage was minimal so far with no reported major injuries, but it did force emergency procedures into effect here in Uru and down in Nymphus where everyone was required to huddle inside the safest structures until further notice. It was widespread crisis.
Why would Cira do this? I… I don’t understand! Nanri wracked her brain for the answer but came up empty. This was a disaster no matter how she looked at it. She could only imagine everyone on the island in every city or settlement was in a similar state. If this gets any worse the ceiling will start to fall down. Everything she built here would be crushed—all the patients. She wouldn’t want that, would she? There’s no way this was all a ruse… right? I just… there’s no way I can believe that.
Chip broke the silence which fell again, “Should we even be here? I figured she was our ticket out, but… this doesn’t look good.” Although silence was a strong word with the constant rumbling.
“There’s no way she would cause this island to fall apart. It will stop soon, I’m certain of it.” She tried to be confident in her words, her fist clenched tight against her chest, but her face still shook.
“Of course you’d believe in your witch buddy,” Kate spat, “I say we take that boat and get the hell out of here while we have the chance.”
All of the former prisoners agreed in a chorus and even started getting up. Nanri didn’t know what to do—she couldn’t let everything here fall apart. If everyone disappeared, then the plague would continue to ravage Fount Salt until the end of days. Kate led the way to the skiff, pulling a mildly reluctant Triton along so he could fly them away.
The alchemists watched Nanri, concerned and unsure of what to do. Delilah especially felt unwilling to depart from the cure, continuing to watch the hourglass carefully. At this point she felt it was draining slower with the constant shaking. Someone had to attend to it, and now Jules was trying to pull her friends away to escape.
Nanri had to do something. It was her responsibility to keep it together. To grab everyone’s attention she fired off a flash of earth mana, clattering her staff on the ground, “Everyone stop!”
She wasn’t timid this time and her voice carried weight. Everyone turned with a shiver at the stern call of the Titan Witch. Her eyes were determined, and they allowed no protest, so she continued, “We can’t just abandon the cure. This island needs—”
Her commanding speech was cut short by a loud banging on the door, “Tch. Who would knock like that…?” With the irritation of having worked herself up to be so abruptly interrupted, Nanri figured it had to be the Official with important news. She walked over to the relentless pounding and swung the door open, “Lomp?! My heavens, what happened to you?!”
She quickly offered an arm for the wounded man who nearly collapsed into it. He was covered in burns all over his body, eyes bloodshot and weak. Half his hair was charred away and even the fringes of his cloak had begun to fray.
“Lomp?! What the hell?!” Chip ran up, followed by everyone, but a fierce glare from Nanri made them part. Some of the girls helped get him onto a bed. His gaze was unsteady, and he had a bad limp in one leg. With a sharp twist, one of his arms was clearly broken. Just laying down made him wince in pain.
“Everybody, get back!” Nanri shouted, silencing the demanding crowd who bit at Lomp’s heels, “Delilah, Cira said you work at the clinic in Uru. Can you help?”
“Maybe a little… We need to make him a splint… or two, before he gets any worse. can you do that with your magic?” She instructed Nanri to conjure a few flat rods that would do and cut up a blanket to wrap them around Lomp’s arm and leg.
The man himself clenched his teeth, straining not to scream through the pain as they doctored him up. Finally through the worst of it, he breathing was heavy, eyes locked on the ceiling.
“So?!” Triton budged in, “Where the hell is that witch? You two get in a fight?”
Lomp looked to him, and his expression fell. With a complicated expression, he struggled to sit upright with his good arm and looked between everyone. The words caught in his throat for a moment as he looked into Nanri’s worry stricken eyes.
“Cira is… she’s dead…”
The witch gasped, hiding her broken expression in her hand. “No… there’s no way. I… I refuse to believe that!” Despite her words, the color had drained from Nanri’s face and tears began to well up.
“I watched it happen with my own eyes.” Lomp held his arms out best he could, “Look at me. This is just from being near her, and trying to get closer. I didn’t want to believe it either, but… I saw her last breath. I stayed as long as I could…”
Nanri was speechless, tears unabashedly trailing down her face as she stared at Lomp in disbelief. Delilah was not far off, “Cira, no… Why did you have to do this?! You could have just flown away!” The humble medicine woman had only just met the sorcerer, but she didn’t want to say goodbye already. They had hardly gotten a chance to speak since that night in Uru. It was too sudden, and she felt a knot grow in her throat.
This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“Quit crying, you idiots.” Jules threw harsh words at everyone, “What did she even do?”
“I don’t know what she was trying to do,” Lomp took a deep breath and laid back in bed, “but she… she took the deritium. All of it. Whatever that water thing she has is, she used it to fill the whole room with so much mana it burned my damn skin off… I can hardly see shit anymore. She did… something to the spring, but I think it failed. That’s when all this started. Blood came out of every hole in her face, and she collapsed… I… I watched her stop breathing…” Lomp shivered, trying to shut his eyes to hide from the image, but it only became clearer. Hanging his head low, he spoke to Nanri, “I’m sorry.”
Nanri was aghast, her mouth hung open and the tears had momentarily dried up. She sputtered, but any words failed to form. Delilah watched her expression crumble and offered a hand before the two started crying together.
This time Triton banged his fist on the table, startling everyone. “I don’t buy it for a second.”
“What?! I—” a fit of coughs caused the worked up Lomp to calm down, “Dammit… I’m telling the truth. Why do you think I’m lying?”
“Oh, I’m sure you told the truth.” Triton retorted, “But she ain’t dead. I don’t buy it. I’m sure she’s busy pulling something incomprehensible out of her ass as we speak. And that crazy witch ain’t allowed to die in this shithole after kicking my ass like that.”
There was a tinge of hope in his voice, but no one commented on it. Scum as he was raised, Triton could recognize what a favor she’d really done for him, even if it was a bit rough around the edges. He really didn’t like getting his ass kicked like that, but it wouldn’t sit well with him if she really died.
“We’ll probably never know either way.” Lomp shared.
Nanri’s voice shook. “What do you mean…?”
“She said she had to leave before that new witch shows up…” Lomp watched the light in her eyes dull and she shrunk into a state he didn’t know existed. He had met a few witches in his time, and even without Cira’s influence this one was a little different. It really made him feel bad for her, and with the grievous wounds coating his body, he stopped caring, “Since it’s come to this, Nanri…”
She looked at him with a frightened look, like a child who lost her family—or whose family left her behind. It was unexpected, but he noticed Cira get uncomfortably close to the witch since they met. Seeing her now, he felt she was owed the truth. “Cira was—isn’t really a witch. Pappy convinced her to fix all of Fount Salt’s problems and she thoughtlessly agreed. When we arrived in Nymphus we weren’t expecting run into a real one…”
She stopped him with a wave of the hand, wiping her tears away with the other, “It’s okay, Lomp… I’m not that stupid. I figured it out a few days ago.”
His eyes shot open, and he froze for a moment, “Why… why didn’t you say anything?”
“Look around you, Lomp…” Her voice was weak, and she motioned to the alembic firing away then out the window to the dying masses. As she continued her voice started breaking up, “I just wanted to help… How could I not? I don’t want my purpose to be putting people and little creatures in cages… Or to spend my life in a cave. I wanted to… I know it’s selfish, but I just thought she could take me away from all this!”
Nanri buried her face in her hands and sobbed, her silver hair was unkempt and folded over her arms. A teary-eyed Delilah trying to comfort her, rubbing her back. Suddenly an unlikely supporter said the words she needed to hear most. Triton gave her a hard pat on the back and she looked up at him with a miserable expression, tears caked to her face in salt and a devastated frown hung open. “She’ll be real disappointed if you look like that when…goddammit…when you see her! won’t she?!”
Nanri’s sobs abruptly cut off and she stared at him trying to process his words. The island trembled above and all around them making it hard to think. He’s… he’s right, isn’t he? I’m a mess. Like I am now, I could never join her, I’m already weak enough. If she saw me right now, I would be so ashamed.
Nanri’s heart was beginning to turn ever so slightly when one of the goons shouted out, “Hey! Isn’t it getting louder?!”
It was true—they couldn’t hear each other without shouting anymore. Before it was all above them and now the shaking surrounded them, growing to an unbearable degree. Everyone on the platform had to hold onto something and they could hear the cries of tumbling Earth Vein workers across the way. Fortunately, the cave didn’t collapse on them, but they were beginning to get pelted with pebbles. Dusted salt fell on their heads in sparse clouds.
Lomp gripped the edges of his bed feebly as he stared up at the ceiling. Salt nymphs started pouring in through the solid rock. Starting one at a time before becoming a steady surge.
“Guys look!” Kate hung onto a windowsill with her legs shaking. She pointed out to the ground beneath them where countless streams ran through the plague ward. “It’s a stampede!”
Chip pointed straight up and shrank down in fear, “A-at a time like this?! They’re coming from above, too!”
“We—we gotta get out of here!” Even Kate was frantic at the sight, having only heard the stories as they didn’t occur until long after she left Silver Lake.
“Dammit!” Lomp cursed, “Now she’s even causing stampedes?! Is it like this everywhere?!”
“She… She wouldn’t do that!” Nanri’s defense was weak, but she knew it was true in her heart.
“If she even has a say in it.” He shot her a cold glare without thinking and shrunk. “God dammit, Cira… Now we have to leav—oh no…” The words quickly faded as he stared up in horror.
Lomp and everyone’s eyes quickly receded into their skulls as every water inlet in Uru’s plague ward from the walls to the ceiling started gushing with water. With it came the blinding cerulean radiance that had already caused so much harm. Heavy drops of water started splashing down and Delilah scrambled to shield the alchemy tools.
Shaken out of her stupor, Nanri quickly sealed the tables up and used nearly the last of her mana to put a roof on the walls around them, but still, everyone was already drenched and half-blind from the light. They peered through the shutters in shock as a maelstrom struck the walls and flooded the grounds below them. Hundreds of nymphs had joined the storm and either enjoyed the ride, followed the effulgent waves down the island, or retraced their path back up any given river. There was no sense to any of this.
Nanri started to get worried about how the City of Uru would be taking this, but before her eyes all the shining droplets found their way into the now rushing streams which peeled up from the ground, forming an amorphous river delta in the air which whimsically spiraled around in countless directions, pulling all the excess water from the chamber towards it, marked by shining blue light. Each and every stream retained its path—though they were aloft, they still fed into the island as they did before.
Everyone was speechless, including the witch, as they watched this spectacle. It wasn’t until a good ten minutes later that the radiance of the mana started dying down, weaker now from above as it seemed to pass through. The Violent storm turned into heavy rain, then a soft drizzle. By the time they opened the shutters and looked at the scene, the floating delta had started settling back onto the ground, each stream and river nearing their prior gentle gaits.
Finally, all was calm. As if nothing had happened at all, except for two key details. They were sopping wet and all water coming into the chamber now shined with that pure cerulean brilliance, though much more subdued. Aside from that, the waterways showed no signs of having exploded with years-worth of rampant flooding.
They didn’t even have time to notice the tremors had died down again, slightly, but a frantic knocking at their door interrupted everyone’s awe-stricken gazes. Nanri ran over and answered it. The Official looked at her with weary, terrified eyes, “Please tell me you know what’s going on!”
She looked at him and clenched her fists, “I don’t know exactly… but I think Cira is trying to fix the floods.”
Emotions flashed through his face like a revolving lantern. He was shocked, awed, horrified, baffled entirely. “She… I… but how?! No, that’s not important… I know not the way of witches. All of our patients are soaked, and we need to get them dried off, fast. There’s no way to get aid from Uru. I’m still waiting for news but it’s already a mess. Can you help with your magic?” His eyes were pleading.
Nanri’s pale blue eyes returned his plea with regret. She barely just learned to work with salt, let alone fire. Then an idea sprang into her head, “Triton! You can help with your fire, right?”
“Are you kidding?!” He stumbled back, “There’s no way! I’ll shrivel up before I get a handful of them done.”
“Just use holy mana!” Nanri argued, “I think Cira settled the debate on that.”
“Wha—” He was baffled, “With what spell?! I’m not the kind of insane wizard who can just pull holy magic out of their ass like a certain someone.” Triton glowered at the ceiling.
“Magic doesn’t come from there. It comes from the heart. You need to be certain. Just make a spell up—the one we need. Cira does it all the time.” Nanri conjured a plaque in her hand, “In fact, I’ll do it for you… ‘Oh holy one’,” The letters formed as she spoke, “’won’t you please dry this person off in Cira’s stead? For my aura is far too meager’. And this should do.”
“What is wrong with you people?” He ripped it out of her hand.
Walking over to the boat, she rummaged through a pile of pouches Cira left there. She took one and handed another to Triton, “We still have some mana potions left. They’re Earth Vein grade so they’ll work just fine on regular people, but I’m hoping that spell will do most the work.” She gave Glasses a pointed look.
Delilah’s uncertain voice came from the witch’s other side, “Wh-what should we do?”
“You should keep an eye on the aetherium, have Sarah and Patricia follow Triton in case he needs help.” She looked at the exorcists and their tagalong, “All of you should spread out among the patients and see if anybody needs help, then ask Captain Renit if he needs anything when you’re done.” That was Earth Vein’s Official. “If anything… Cira-y happens, come back immediately. Understood?”
“Hang on.” Glasses raised his hand to not be overlooked, “I’m leaving. Quakes or not, I need to report to all this to the Overseer.”
Nobody had qualms with that, and let the man scurry off on a harrowing ascent. Pappy would surely appreciate his service.
While some of them were collectively upset at Cira, they were all experiencing the same disaster. Nobody else offered protest to Nanri’s orders and went off as directed.
“What will you do?” Delilah asked.
The titanium cube which floated around with her staff for a few days had actually seen some use. Nanri studied whenever she caught a break or late at night. Now, she opened it up and withdrew the third volume of the Sorcerer’s Compendium. “I’m going to try to get Lomp back on his feet.”
I need to keep my head on straight. This is no time to be falling apart. If Cira’s working hard up there, then it’s my job to do damage control. I can’t help outside the plague ward… but I’ll do what I can here. I can’t let Cira down. I just know she’s counting on me.
Nanri had regained her heart, determined to make a difference. The pyre of her spirit was lit anew, though it would trouble her to know that of the one she held dear now dwindled like a lone candle in the highest winds.