ACoL book 2 - Chapter 7: Into The Night Sky

Vincent had no time to think. One moment he was staring at an inferno that materialized straight out of the air. But then Madeen snatched him from the landrider’s back and took flight. She clutched him in her talons, holding him close as she climbed. He was jostled and battered with each flap of the wings. His shouts disappeared into the howling wind. Stars danced in his eyes. He could see Menik and the others scattering, fleeing before that monstrosity could reach them.

Its maw, a circle of fire, plowed through the forest, funneling trees and dirt into a whirling hot abyss. The creature, if that’s what it was, had a body, but he couldn’t see much of it. He thought he saw a rocky texture behind the maw, but the blinding light overwhelmed the details, which remained hidden in its shadow.

Vincent was looking into the depths of hell and he couldn’t look away. The mouth must have been one hundred feet in diameter at the very least. Orange walls rotated inside the abyss, magma spun, and the deeper the funnel went, the brighter it burned.

Madeen continued to climb, her talons clasped around Vincent’s shoulders. His hands grasped a clutch of feathers, and he held on for his dear life. Terror constricted his chest, clamping his jaw so tight, he couldn’t even scream. The fiery colossus carved a trail of destruction. Jets of flame flanked the sides of its maw. The land behind it glimmered with embers and glassed dirt.

The monster shrank into the distance, as Madeen flew away. But then it turned upward. It left the ground. It had no wings, none that Vincent could see, yet it began to rise in defiance of gravity, after Madeen...after him.

Madeen pierced the low-hanging clouds and mists enveloped them both, leaving wetness on Vincent’s wings. When she broke through, the two of them were bathed in Tarn’s crimson light. Vincent could see their shadows on the clouds below. Every movement made his stomach flutter, every twitch caused his heart to skip. The wind pinned his wings against her feet and the tips of his membrane flapped like a kite.

Fold.

A single word was projected into his mind. He did not notice it at first, but then it repeated: Fold. Wings. This time, Vincent brought his wings in, folding them against his back and reducing their drag. He could not see where they were going, since he was facing backward, toward Madeen’s tail end. She carried him beneath her, holding him aloft, allowing his feet to dangle over the plunge. He kept uttering profanities into the wind.

But Madeen’s flight reached its equilibrium. It stabilized and she kept her wings spread, catching air currents and riding the eddies. She only beat her wings occasionally to maintain her altitude. Aching pain shot through Vincent’s arms. Adrenaline coursed through his veins. They coasted through Admoran’s heavens, with the cosmos winking at them from above. The whispers of Vincent’s schizophrenia flew with them, riding the air.

He was growing light-headed, though he wasn’t sure whether it was because the air was thinner or because he was sinking deeper into psychosis. In stressful moments, it was not unheard of him to simply flatline. He would disassociate and become vacant. A creature ripped from the pages of an eighties fantasy was carrying him through the clouds, but he was drifting. Only the pain in his arms seemed to keep him anchored.

Far behind Madeen, the clouds began to glow orange. The colossus burst through, its maw was churning something fierce. Illuminated in Tarn’s light, Vincent could now see its entire body. It was shaped like a massive cornucopia. The “skin”, held together by some invisible force, was formed of loose rock and crystal that tumbled into each other like gravel. Ripples travelled through the sediment as it moved, scanning its entire length, which must have been almost a thousand feet from maw to tail. It was as majestic as it was terrifying.

It was not facing them. Instead, the colossus continued to rise in the approximate location where Madeen and Vincent had broken through the clouds. In fact, it seemed oblivious to their presence. But then it suddenly corrected its course, turned in their direction and gave pursuit. Vincent could feel its radiance against his skin. Its speed belied its size. It was gaining on them.

“Madeen!” he shouted. As if he needed to let her know. The clouds were illuminated by its ambience.

Trust.

“W-what?”

Trust.

A bellow escaped Vincent’s maw as she flipped him around so that he faced forward. Then she pulled him close to her chest, wrapping her legs around his torso. He was locked in her embrace, warm feathers tickling his neck. She climbed the air, rising higher and higher. There were mountains in the distance, and she was headed right for them.

But the creature behind them was catching up. Both of them could feel the colossus at their backs. Vincent could hear its buzzing, like a million cicadas screaming in unison. He didn’t know how close it was getting, and he couldn’t look even if he wanted to. But he could feel the inferno growing. Its heatwaves buffeted Madeen’s wings, destabilizing her flight.

She banked hard to the right and veered into a towering wall of a cumulus. The heat left their backs and for a few moments, they flew through mist before breaking through the other side. Tendrils of cloud whirled off of Madeen’s wings. She corrected her path and aimed toward the mountains.

Vincent turned to the left and saw the colossus in the distance, flying in parallel with them. What? It wasn’t pursuing them anymore. It was just flying. However, as if hearing his thoughts, it turned right toward them again and gave chase. It was faster than Madeen was, and Vincent could feel the zerok straining.

Without warning, she closed her wings and dived. Vincent felt his stomach lurch and his soul leave through his mouth. He fell with her, the zerok’s weight pulling him down. Air raced at his face until it drew saliva from his mouth and tears from his eyes as they picked up speed. They were falling...falling...falling.

When they plunged into the clouds, Madeen opened her wings slightly and began to pull out of the dive. Vincent strained against her legs and phosphenes dotted his periphery. The ground appeared far below, racing past. But then Madeen used the momentum to fly up into the clouds. When they reached the apex of their trajectory, the zerok flapped her wings and continued to climb. Though Vincent could not see the colossus, he could tell Madeen bought them some distance with the maneuver.

She repeated this throughout the night. She kept diving when their pursuer came too close. Then she climbed to gain height, waited for it to get close again before diving. Rinse and repeat. She tried to bank, right, then left, then right again, she tried to throw it off. Sometimes it seemed like they lost it, that it would leave them alone. There were times when it seemed like it was straight up ignoring them. Madeen would dive, double back, and fly underneath it. It would pass overhead, seemingly oblivious to the fact that its prey had flown below. But moments like these were always false hope. It always continued its pursuit.

They eventually reached the first of the mountains. Narrow gyres of rock poked through the clouds. Vincent didn’t know when they’d reached them. Every dive was rough on him, the g’s pushing him to the edge of unconsciousness. That, combined with the fact that he was in the throes of psychosis, meant he was nearly vacant. However, he was fighting to remain present.

In the corner of his eye, he saw something flying toward them. Another zerok. It was holding The La’ark in its talons. She was gesturing something to Madeen, Vincent didn’t see what. But the zerok holding her dived into the mountains and Madeen followed. They stayed low, dipping in and out of valleys, flying through arches. Rockfaces flew past. Vincent caught glimpsed of small surge-beasts, creatures of crystal and stone, crawling over veins of liacyte.

Time passed in spurts as he edged on the border of awareness. But at some point, he felt his stomach trill as the zerok flyers descended. The La’ark’s flyer landed on a riverbank and soon, Madeen followed. She landed on her back feet and deposited Vincent on the shore. The La’ark wasted no time. She walked right up to him and shouted his name.

“I...I...” he muttered. When she saw the madness in his eyes, she felt around his garments until she found the Triasat.

“Cure yourself!” she barked, “I need you present. Hurry!”

But he was trembling too much to handle it. Swearing, The La’ark grabbed the bottle, opened it, got a drop on her claw and shoved it into Vincent’s mouth before he could react. The elixir reacted immediately. It could heal any wound, any fracture. Vincent felt its fire coursing through him. A violent fit of coughing seized him as it always did when the Triasat cured his schizophrenia. Black smokey whisps poured from his snout. When it was done, his mind was clear. The voices were gone.

There was very little greenery around, just a few shrubs embedded in walls of stone. Dry vines clung to the gray-black rock that formed the valley. Like the jagged mountains near Lorix’s observatory, these mountains were made of the same glassy obsidian. The only difference was the rounded tops did not look like they’d cut open the sky.

“Are you here now?” The La’ark demanded.

“Yeah...” Vincent could barely move. But he took the bottle from her and shoved it deep into his pocket. His shoulders were killing him, and he was queasy from the flight. Madeen and the zerok were drinking eagerly from the river. “What the hell is happening?! What the fuck is that thing?! Did we lose it?”

“No, we did not lose it. It’s a zeffyr! You can’t lose it. You can only slow it down.”

Vincent thought he heard rumbling in the distance.

“Telo’s wing...” The La’ark swore as she paced back and forth, “those fools! Those damn fools!”

The La’ark’s ears folded back against her head Vincent heard the most dragon-like hiss escape from her teeth. Her jaw was clenched so hard, pinpricks of blue blood appeared where her fangs bit into her gums.

“Where the hell did it come from?” Vincent asked, “how do we fight it?”

“You do not fight it!” she spat, nearly laughing at the suggestion, “we run! That is the only option we have! It is Jalharan lore, and we do not know how it works. But it is clear they know about you, and they desperately want you dead.”

Jalharan... Vincent was not too familiar with the history between Jalhara and Mid-Admoran, but he learned from Sperloc that there had been a war, and that relations were tenuous. They wanted him dead. Why? No...it was obvious. And just as he thought of it, The La’ark spoke his thoughts.

“Somebody talked,” she said, “they know about you, what brought you here. That is the only explanation I can think of.”

“Well, what do we do? Where are the others?”

“Are your ears clogged?” she spat, “we run! As soon as the zerok have quenched their thirst, we leave. There is no stopping that thing. Of all the weapons Jalhara wielded, that thing is the most feared! The mountains will slow it down, but it will burrow through them to get to you!”

Burrow through mountains...good God! How was that possible? But as he thought this, he could still hear the distant rumbling, and he knew The La’ark was telling the truth. His thoughts raced. This couldn’t be happening.

“Why would they send that after you?” The La’ark murmured.

Vincent remembered what the Puppeteer told him.

“You will be hard to kill. Your vessel will always try to repair itself, even beyond mortal injury...”

He went cold. When he broke his back on Lorix’s Observatory, he could feel his nerves repairing themselves. When the Puppeteer broke his neck, it did not stay broken. The healing was slow and unlike the Triasat, which was fast but gentle, this regeneration was brutal. His body would not let him die. Not easily.

Is that why somebody sent that colossus after him? Did they know what the Puppeteer knew? Is that why they wanted to vaporize him right down to the atom? Because he was “Herald-work”? But a worse thought came to him...what if the zeffyr didn’t kill him? What if his body survived even that, and he was trapped within a never-ending fire? Did his regeneration have limits? He saw himself surrounded by flames, screaming as his body refused to die.

“There’s...there’s gotta be something you can do!” Vincent said, “you said the Jalharans used these things like weapons, right? But they didn’t conquer you! So, you guys had to have found a countermeasure! Otherwise...you wouldn’t be here!”

“I do not have time to give you a history lesson, Vincent Cordell,” The La’ark said, “so let me be brief. There is no countermeasure. Zeffyrs were rarely used because their creation came at a great cost. But when they were used, they were unstoppable. They only died when their target was devoured.”

“Then...what if we led it into the Stillwater?” Vincent suggested.

For a moment, she seemed impressed by the suggestion. “It has been tried,” she said, “the waters devour the body. But then it reappears in the sky unscathed. For now...we run. I must think. We need distance.”

When Madeen and the other zerok, whose name Vincent learned was Selefi, were finished drinking, it was time to leave. She embraced him against her chest like a mother holding a child and took off. The clouds gave way to clear skies, allowing the mountains to be outlined in Tarn’s crimson gaze. The fliers’ shadows danced on cliff faces. Veins of glowing liacyte, reminiscent of those found back in Meldohv, splintered and raced along cracks and fissures. It was a pretty sight, one that temporarily made Vincent forget the danger they were in. His escorts stayed low, putting the thickest parts of the mountains between him and his pursuer, buying time.

Daylight began to tease the horizon when they flew down to take another break. The zerok were visibly panting. Vincent could see their round, tooth-lined mouths behind their open beaks. Madeen flew off, but she was only gone for a few minutes. When she returned, she was carrying an animal that she had slain. The closest thing Vincent could think of was a mountain goat, only it was larger, and had a bonelike crest where its horns should have been.

She plopped it on the ground and used her beak and talons to rip it apart. When Selefi came over, she moved aside to share. Vincent saw the mouth behind the beak distend, grappling onto the pieces of flesh with its teeth, and tear chunks off before retracting with its morsel. The organ reminded him of a documentary he had watched about bloodworms. It made him shudder.

“We should have purchased ourselves some time,” The La’ark said, “drink. Relieve yourself if you must.”

“What happened to the others?” Vincent asked, “you didn’t answer me before.”

“They are fine. I left Akhil and Oris in charge of the rest. When the Shaydos meet us, I will tell them to go back for them. I came because my mind is sharp. You need to be kept alive.”

“And what about us? Are we just going to keep running?”

“For now, yes. That is exactly what we do. We run. We put mountains between us and it. We stay near crystal.”

As the morning brightened, Vincent could see clouds forming in the zeffyr’s direction. Plumes of destruction rose into the sky. The air grumbled. Everything was happening too fast.

Before he could ask what the plan was, she walked over to Selefi, who had mutant-goat blood all over his beak.

“Am I right to assume the Gullreach telenary can reach us?” she asked. Vincent, of course, did not hear the answer. But he heard the term ‘telenary’ before. “Then find a chain...send a message to the telenary. My brother left Meldohv Syredel seven days ago. Have the telen find him. Connect us.”

A telen, Vincent thought. He did not know the lore, but he knew a telen could use something called the reticulum to reach across vast distances and contact people. One tried to contact him shortly after he arrived in Falius, but he repelled her, not knowing how he did it. Then she tried to cast some sort of spell on him. He ended up killing her with powers he did not know he had. His stomach went cold just thinking about it. Everything he did, his very existence, brought destruction. And now there was a colossus carving up literal mountains in pursuit of him.

No, this isn’t my fault. I didn’t want any of this. This is Girashnal’s doing. There are things out of my control.

Selefi was about to take flight when Vincent’s ear twitched. “Is it just me, or did the rumbling stop?”

The La’ark, surprised, tilted her head. It was quiet. Selefi was about to take flight but before he could, the sound of a thousand cicadas began to fill the air.

“No!” The La’ark shouted, “How?! We should have had more time!”

Both of the zerok reacted immediately. They dropped their meal, ran over, scooped The La’ark and Vincent up and took off. The air behind them filled with boiling distortions, the same kind Vincent saw back at the camp. The zeffyr burst through.