Promise the Sky

Prologue

Prologue

This Girl

 

 

 

I have made a mistake.

I know these mountains like the backs of my hands; I know the way they rise, I know the way they fall. I know every nook, I know every cranny. I have been the places that most men dare not tread; from the deepest pits of the mines, where monsters fight the dark with fire, to the highest summits, where the heavens are but a step away.

I have done forbidden things. I have spoken with dragons.

I have been everywhere I should not, done everything I should not. Everything but step foot in this final place. His final place.

Nervous magic thrums in my veins, desperate to be called upon, and something hidden deep in my psyche calls out for me to quell it. I cannot explain why but, somehow, I know that he can feel it too, even through the thick veils of death. I toy briefly with the idea of walking down into the dark, blind, and then give into weakness, calling the first particles of light to my palms.

I am not a girl who has lived a life tainted by fear. But as the soft glow swirls comfortingly around my fingers, I know I have just made my second mistake this night.

Looking back the way I have come, I take in the distant streets of my hometown. The mountains are steep and rocky; I have not travelled more than a half a mile west, but at least two skyward.

Everything is blurred by distance and the constant cloud that curls always through my city; a city that has been built so high up that it is almost born of sky. It should be a pleasant sight; my home wreathed in soft cloud and coloured purple by the dusk. But the streets of Awyr are no longer a safe place.

It is just something that everybody knows... though I have not heard a single word spoken of it, not even a breath on the wind. Awyr is not safe, home is not safe. The very mountains themselves, cradles of the sky and as old as time, are not safe. A wise little girl would have stayed inside, pulled the curtains tight and taken her thrill from nothing more than the knowledge that evil stalked the streets below.

But that was never going to be enough for me. Silent whispers and the taint of evil have never been enough for this girl.

Oh Dragon-kin, I have made a mistake.

I turn back to where I am headed, swallowing nervously as my gaze sweeps over the cavern mouth. A part of me cannot help but feel it is a little under dramatic; an unmarked cave-mouth to hide the greatest evil this world has ever seen. But then I remember - what marking does it need?

Everybody from the Dawn-Light mountains to the Mirror City knows whose bones lie here. Only a stupid child would stray this far from home, this far from safe, and allow the chill to settle around her shoulders. Only a stupid child would ignore the ghostly fingers as they trail up her spine and begin to tread softly beneath the sparkling of frost.

It only goes to show just how stupid this child really is, that she knows all this, and still she clenches her glowing fists and takes her first step down into the maw.

I gaze longingly up at the crystals on the ceiling as I walk, to distract myself from the buried evil that I know lies at the end of my path. It is a frost that has remained untouched for centuries, or so the stories go. And as the mountain's purple sunset fades slowly to cold black, I keep looking, strengthening  the glow in my palms. I still do it, even though I know I should not.