The Land Set Aflame

Chapter 72: The Land Aflame

Autumn usually offered the world a surreal transformation, which the world usually accepted. But this time, the transformation wasn't autumn. It wasn't natural. And yet the world was apparently accepting it anyway.

There was the familiar chill in the air, and the odd, biting sensation in the joints, which usually suggested that snow could fall at any moment. But those weren't clouds in the sky: they were a continuous pall of smoke, accompanied by the acrid smell of burning grasses.

The rolling Tallas Hills weren't high, but each time Svenden crested a rise, he could see for miles across the prairies, between the patches of woodland that dotted the landscape. And every new hilltop brought with it vista of a new wildfire.

Prairie fires were terrifying, even without being touched by elemental magic: entire swathes of grasslands often went up rapidly, and the flames would rush across the landscape at the speed of a horse, driven and stoked by winds unimpeded by the trees.

But these fires were different. They felt alive and lethal, thrumming with magic. And they were diverse. One was a rolling rivulet of fire that meandered aimlessly through the prairies, heedless of the direction of the wind, before seemingly burrowing into the ground and vanishing. Another was a little, amorphous patch of flame that frolicked and danced atop one specific hill, consuming it utterly and eventually settling down into a black soot stain on the land that poured out heavy smoke for hours. A third was a leaping, stuttering beast that made frequent, hesitant pauses between sudden, unpredictable surges along its baffling, zigzagging path. A fourth seemed to wobble in place for a long moment, as if eyeing a particular hill with suspicion before deciding to split in two and flow around it.

The sensation of magic prickled constantly up and down the back of Svenden's neck, and he gripped tightly to the magical longbow in his hands.

"The elements are in turmoil," Leofric whispered ominously, "Did Master Garrafey do all of this?"

"I don't think so," Kithana replied, "These are rogue flames."

"Rogue elementals this large?" Svenden asked in disbelief, "That can't be, can it?"

"I don't know," Kithana said, "But it feels similar."

"I've never seen the likes of this!" Leofric said, still in his ominous whisper, "It must be something new. I wonder if this is how the Age of Shadow looked at its outset. What kind of future is before us, I wonder?"

"Would that make me its harbinger?" Kithana asked.

Leofric gripped her hand comfortingly, but he struggled to answer her. "That's a rather dramatic take, I think," he said.

She looked down at her hand, and summoned forth a ball of flame. "With all the fire magic in the air," she said, "I wonder if that will make it harder to make whiteflames." She concentrated, and the flame in her hand turned white for the briefest moment, before flickering out again. She sighed and shook her head.

"You're almost there!" Leofric said.

"I think I can do it," she said, "But it's hard to feel that mana when there's so much fire mana in the air!"

Svenden clenched his jaw. "I can only imagine it will get worse by the time we reach Kernohest," he said, "We'd pick up our pace."

As they pressed on, Svenden almost subconsciously reached for that flower behind his ear, but hesitated.

Leofric noticed. "She hasn't responded for the past two days," he said softly, "I think the spell must have expired."

Svenden gingerly withdrew the drying flower and looked longingly at it. Its light pink color had mostly faded, and traces of brown were starting to appear on its face. "You're probably right," he said, "The spell has just expired."

The words he had just said rolled around in his ears, and he tried to make his mind absorb them and accept them. But he couldn't shake the nagging feeling that something else was behind Callyndia's silence. He'd left her with an insane, cursed dryad in the middle of a tainted forest. Sure, she'd made it safely to Aevenwy, but that was only a minor comfort to him: after all, for all her power and her love of her daughter, Alloria Rosa fallible and complacent.

But, he was trapped on the road now, far away from Callyndia and almost certain that something terible had happened to her.

He brought the blossom to his lips anyway and whispered, "Callyndia? Can you hear my voice?" He waited several moments, the rhythmic thump of his footsteps gradually growing into an ominous indictment on the silence that otherwise prevailed. She wasn't going to respond this time, either.

He sighed in resignation. "I suppose you probably can't hear me anymore," he whispered, "But, just in case... The whole land seems to be aflame here. I'm afraid of what we'll find when we get to Kernohest. I don't know when I'll get to see you again, but I hope you're safe." He hesitated for a moment. "I love you."

He solemnly replaced the whisper blossom behind his ear, and continued walking, staring straight ahead with a mix of dread and determination.

"I'm sure she's alright," Callyndia's voice said in his left ear. It wasn't actually Callyndia's voice. Kithana had gotten good at mimicking the kind and gentle tone of her speech, and it had merely confused his ears for a second. He looked at her and smiled.

"She's in the safest place she could be right now," he said in spite of his own doubts, "With her mother. We're the idiots walking right into an inferno with almost no information to go on."

Around them, the land continued to burn.