Cleft in the sky

The belltowers drove the hair off his skin. Storming down the mount, he reached the road, where the current of people was driven towards the luminous city gates. He bumped into shoulders and hips as if he were swimming in a clogged river.

Never had he heard bells like these. It was not just the sound they omitted, which was deeper and heavier than those of his homeland whenever nature came crashing down on them. His skin from top to bottom resonated with each clang. Varion was absolutely sure even if he were inside a cement vault, he’d still feel the heavy vibrations on ears and neck.

Humans blocked the streets as streams of panicked inhabitants continued to flow inwards, away from the sky-piercing rackets of thunder. Carriages came to a halt and when their drivers could not clear the masses with their shouts, they simply jumped off and joined the stream on foot. He tried to get away from them. Sincerely. But why was he now so close to them? He should’ve taken another route. It was his second mind again that had propelled him there.

It took a long while to find himself again, where he caught his breath behind a large wagon.

He had received enough coin from Estas to get him through for a couple of days. The remaining leagues Varion would traverse on foot. He would have to hunt for food and travel close to the forest borders as to not be discovered. Only under greatest duress would he enter villages or towns, but Varion would leave. He needed to see her, to speak with her and to ask forgiveness.

He was used to strict economy, and he could endure hunger as well, for it fueled his action. Once he’d reach Ashrain, he’d be able to explain to her what had happened. The terrible mishap would certainly cause a furor, but Ariella had always known that he was strange. She would accept him back. Hopefully.

The towering wall of holy marble still shone with the golden sonnet that absorbed each racket of the thunder. Among tools and furs on the abandoned wagon a man pushed at his shoulder. Clad in a steel cuirass, the fork of the sky mirrored a weather-beaten face, the voice so deep it rolled like a storm cloud. “Venerated Mage, help us!”

But he couldn’t, had no idea how to summon the tiniest whiff. Preventing a storm was next to impossible. All Varion saw were lost harrowed faces, stumbling, pushing peasants with their loved ones at their side, hoping to manage, to enter the metropole before the lightning flayed them.

Varion had no idea what to do.

He pushed the guard back, shouting, “Where do you have your head, watchman! Go use that shield of yours and beat the people into order!” Bruises and cuts would heal, trampled heads not.

He nodded and shouted for his companions. Then, to Varion’s great surprise, the watchman went to do exactly as he had bid him. The Ashlander removed himself, forgetting his original plan.

He saw somebody trip. A flash and she was gone.

Earth washed over them, a stroke fading. A woman fell, mucus covering her skin and a child crying beneath heaps of dirt. Rain blotted his eyes as he leaped over the mound and there was a moment of mortal trepidation as he scratched away the muck, for Varion had on two separate occasions seen the casualties nature’s wrath left behind. These were heavily burned victims, all dead, locked in mutilated positions of agony and looking as if fire had skinned them alive.

The sodden, bawling child cowered beside the other mummification of dirt, where his mother lay, and so Varion dug. He didn’t scrape for long and yet it felt like hours as he expected to touch neat flesh at any time. What would he do with the child?

His hand flinched and a wave of relief washed over him as a hand–a bony but thin-skinned hand leeched onto him and carved his wrist bloody with her quivering nails. He helped the rest of her body out until the young woman was expectorating in mud and rain. She was crying too.

He pushed her up and urged them towards the gates. Bedazed and sobbing, they humped beneath the vibrating archway.

What Varion did next was beyond him, it was as though a slumbering part of his mind had awoken and barked now as a the devilgrims did at the steps of the Deathhall. The memory of the sun had never been so bright, the starless night never so pure and the taste in the atmosphere never so appealing. The cry of heaven interspersed with the ground, a bright splinter in the sky, a long flash, and the pressing firmament impaled someone to his right.

He made headway besides an allocated street to Lumina’s Gate where people poured into the metropolis from the outskirts. His limbs shifted through dense masses of tunics. He learned what a useful quality disrupting was and that he lacked it, too.

Mud, dirt, and other impurities besmeared his boots and leather pants, but Varion’s mind worked primely. Light cascaded over the field anew. He tasted an eruption, saw the emissary appear on the other side, screaming orders, and stopped after hitting something soft with his foot.

He dug out another person. This time a man, dead, but not skinned. It was a laceration that had caused him his spirits. Shit.

Rackets of thunder exploded. Stacked antlers of lightning bearing down on them claimed everything within earshot, overlapping the soundwaves of the frightened people, and marble splintered off the wall covering an upper body half. Varion removed the pebbles and cursed. Another dead body, his head stamped as if a hammer had fallen down on him multiple times, squashing the blood out of his ears.

The nausea had him stagger away from the crowd; he puked on himself. It wasn’t for long, and sparks lit, his shadow appearing on the stone before him. The sparks did not retreat into the atmosphere but remained like humming fireflies. The emissary rubbed his temples.

“Back to the mount with you,” the emissary scolded and grabbed him. Regardless the dizziness, that impaired his agility, his instincts persisted, and he evaded the mage.

The emissary greedily went for another hold but they both fell on their knees at a loud rumble of thunder encapsulating them. It trumped the lightning strikes from before and what happened then was too fast for him to track.

A stampede of dirt blew against his ribs, as a white racket shot the meadow. The repulsion shook him to his bone and blinded Varion.

🏛️

“Well?” she repeated. “What is this urgent news?”

The messenger was queasy. He shifted, still ashamed of his interruption. “My utmost apologies, Your Grace. But I walked the entire camp and could not find the King. As I discovered Your Grace, I felt the purest elation, for as his second in command the message I bear must be as secure with you as it would be with him. But I shouldn’t–I really shouldn’t.”

He turned and ran but Kalia stopped him. She touched his arm, and the old messenger flinched back. Even after he realized that she was not using any magic, he remained frozen. Dumb mistake. She saw now that she could’ve achieved the same result with a simple word. “You are right. Give me the scroll. And my apologies,” she added hastily.

He handed it over without hesitation, bowed, and removed himself. The gladness of his escape was hidden beneath his mask of duty, but she caught it, nonetheless. This was one of the people who had lived in dread of the divine ones. Possibly, he or a relative of his was a veteran of the civil war. Not many of them were left and the best of them, the Auridons, had chosen exile or suicide after their general had perished.

She ascended the steps back inside the temple and the reveling shouts climaxed in honor of the festival.

The topmost temple venue with glinting statues of the foremother of executorship had been turned into a vault for war. Armory and devices of calculation lay strewn around everywhere. Judging by the sextants, backstaffs, astrolabes, and imprinted steles with calculations of tangent planes, and dimensional curves, Aevar was still trying to multiply his son’s discoveries. There were even prefabricated sonnets, waiting to be installed once he could get the World Temples of the Broken Valley to work again.

Throughout the portico, priests lit fires. They ran between the hundred feet in diameter, mumbling irritating prayers, thanking the gods, and asking for guidance in the future campaign.

Where the columns were carved to resemble grand swords, their hilts holding up the yellow veined ceiling, she emanated onto the main platform. It was the first time Kalia saw the host as a whole. It was beyond anything she had ever seen. Not even the speeches of her cousin had attracted that many people.

The army, a field of metal and fur, reached as far as the harbor and as wide as the horizon. Kalia knew not how to count them, but they seemed endless. In their shiny armor they were the sea, and, in their grimness, they were Death herself. The priests should not be praying for them, but for whomever dared to anger that host.

Mages and officers, that had taken shelter in the ruins of former temples, were allocated on the field, too. Had the Broken Valley once been the gateway to the Ancient Lands for the distant races, it now served as its escape route.

That Aevar had chosen this place proved yet again his severe thinking. Instead of building new World Temples, which was arduous, time consuming, and very, very expensive, he tried to reactivate those of the Broken Valley. Formerly the Valley of Worlds, it was the region with highest portal density, the only place that might be able to transport a host of this size.

The small ports and hamlets surrounding Pergarys had been rejuvenated by his attendance, she now saw. Some of the villages had begun to build the first outlines of a wall, a town hall as well as theaters and everything else a city proper required. More storage houses had been erected, enterprises had opened momentary branch offices, and Kalia even discovered a lodge of small but secure holy marble that was a bank.

The siege engines of ropes and fastened planks protruded, half-finished. The first triremes and galleys already waited ashore. They were new as the King would not, after repeated instructions from her, transform his current fleet of trading ships into those of war. Thus, most businesses were safe for now.

Kalia raised her hand in greeting, hoping Kosartes would play the festival in Doomsbane the same. Infantry, cavalry, and the elite troops cheered as they beheld the Dame of the Realm walking the rostra after having left the King’s service many years ago.

Even though action’s momentum currently shone on Pergarys, she missed the capital. It was not just because it was her home and birthplace, where the spells etched into the ground welcomed her. Kosartes had not lied about it. When Kalia had returned to her family’s seat of power, she found Doomsbane brimming with activity. The people collaborated on new investments. The schools of philosophy generated more income than ever by developing new techniques of theurgy and improving on the functions that the portal guild required.

Engineers and craftsmen innovated new tools and buildings that withstood the test of weather much better–and weather had become a huge issue in the recent years.

The mercantile ventures had not yet suffered from a long siege or a costly campaign. Goods were still in great exchange and now that Doomsbane was the capital of a new Valley, the King’s first rule had been to omit the trade restrictions, allowing their economy to expand yet again for virtually nothing.

As long as the former king Arvengar behaved, he was left the administration of the Valley of Wind as its new High Mage. Just like Yelwana and Tholos had been allowed to continue their rule under a new guide.

Kalia was everything but content. She knew not how they would go on from here, but she felt the tides moving ever so languidly in her disfavor. And this slow but definite ride into the abyss of war bothered her more than a quick plunge would have.

All of this for moments of glory. It will harrow us in the long run.

Lyrus walked beside her with his pupil. Neria wore a meticulously knitted, threefold battle plait. Kalia found the rigid gazes that executors obtained during their theurgical elicitation finicky and preposterous. Often in discussion with them, she had felt like talking to brick. It was a wonder to her how Astaros had been able to maneuver them and yet there she was attempting to do the same.

She nodded to Lyrus who returned the gesture by pointing his chin at his pupil. The gesture was slight and grim, which in executor-terms meant an open lead. She saw then that Neria’s white plate armor displayed splashes of blood.

Kalia walked close by and dipped her fingers on a damp stain of her armor. Too quick for Neria to elude, the blood already rolled down her tongue, and Kalia divulged the species’ signature.

A head taller than Neria Solgaryn, she was thankful for every inch of it as she stepped closer into her proximity, into that nausea-causing atmosphere. “Interesting,” she pressed. “It is sentient, but neither human nor mage. Interesting.”

She charged herself.

“Neria, behave,” said Lyrus with a lethal calm, his golden eyes observing her obtrusively, moving along her body like torches blown by the wind.

“B-but–”

“Don’t worry. I’m not here to tell on you.” Neria was clearly returning from another world. Kalia scented it, too, and made a mental note that they had started to break the Covenant. What else had she missed since she had left the capital? But instead of asking what trouble the stout woman had encountered in the outer realm, Kalia crooned, “Where is Aevar, dear?”

“We have fought,” she mumbled. “It was nothing serious. Only… patrols. The contract… unbroken. They were… the ones… attacked.” She stopped herself quickly as another envoy followed. One led by an aura of electricity.

While the terraced portico turned into a flambeau of fire bowls and a retinue of torches, carried by the golden-plaited Paladins and white cloaked priests of the Victorians, more mages marched out of the hall bearing giant swords.

Servants presented each of them with refreshments, carefully arrayed on rich platters that were overflowing with cherries, figs, pineapple, and crunch fruit. Kalia rejected as she was fasting before the hecatomb and the pending banquet.

His figure appeared among them like an illuminated warrior. In full plates and with his electric vertices in full display, he crested the rostra. The vertices edged around his body like small lines and runes. Black as night the metal beneath it was matt as if it absorbed all light. His wavy hair was freshly washed and combed behind his ears. The aureole he wore was one of purple-veined wood, encased with amethysts and rubies. His tagora beneath the armor was gloomier than his theurgy and his knee-length boots were freshly polished.

“King, you have received message.”

His palm went up. “It will wait, sweet child.” He clapped and flipped. “Now, I have to rouse my legions.”

He appeared on the foremost part of the rostra and shot his hands into the air. Purple fire spumed ahead of his fingers, resplendent as the morning red. “My noble Paladins,” he began. “My fellow mages, my humble soldiers, and all those who aspire to citizenship through ordeal and victory. All of you, who deserved Tessarys with me, show yourselves!” A tenth of the soldiers jubilated, hands aloft mimicking their king. “Teach your siblings in arms and be familiar!

“See to your souls. Clad your minds in the cuirass of fortune. Believe plentiful in luck but obey thy discipline, for the gods ordinate: those who do not seize their destiny become the playground of others. Never challenge Fate lightly but when you must, bear her down with all the design you have. To a comrade lend your ear but never grant idlers and cheaters an audience. Nothing is worth the poisoning of thy character. Rashness of the tongue and despair in the head, discard these villains as the fool’s paradigm. Your fury target at yourself, for it will sharpen your resolve, but be avaricious with lending others your flame. And this above all never dismiss: in all your duties facilitate glory, for in Fortune’s Realm the only known currency is faculty.

“My legions. Follow these maxims and never shall we die!” screamed the centenarian.

The people believed. They went ballistic in sight of the energized conqueror that their fathers had followed and their fathers before that. The mages were moved, too, though in a more poised manner. Some clapped, others simply nodded and smiled, their attention entirely fixated on the captivating king.

Aevar turned to her with his vicious smile, his white, bushy brows swinging aloft like the wings of a vulture. “What do you say? A taught man, I am, but my oratory can still improve.”

While the King had sermonized, Kalia had read. The scroll cramped in her fist; it was hard to remain taciturn next to the vociferating, arrogant Aurian.

Kalia crushed her jaw and flung the scroll at him. It read:

Cataclysm striking Doomsbane. This is a big one. Immediate help of need.