That One Time I Went on a Quest

Four Days (2/2)

She speaks. 'Come to me, Rutherford, if you so desire death. Hiding avails you neither peace nor sanctuary from my vengeance.' Her voice resembles the sigh a great organ, polytonal and metallic.

A great dragon falls from the sky and lands in a twisted heap not two steps before her, its scar-riddled face trembling violently. Its jaws move but the voice comes from elsewhere.

'Slay us all, herald of fire. Only then will the Dark be banished.'

'Then stop making it difficult.'

All the dragons – in the sky, on the ground, and those breathing their last – utter as one a single, shrill cry. Clapping down my ears help with nothing; the noise is a hammer blow to the head.

'But what fun we're having!'

From that point on it's all dodges and feints. The dragons box her in from all sides, snarling, thrashing against one another to get a better spot, but not one attempts to take her head on. Even as I speak of this hopelessness, their numbers have dwindled by the hundreds, of which Kathanhiel's death-dealing only accounts for a minority.

Hunger is taking care of the rest.

While rain has kept away the thirst, neither dragon nor human or giant have eaten, and even though I've done nothing except lying in this ditch with Oon'Shang, peeking out at the bloodbath like a jumpy groundhog, my stomach insists on being stuffed.

The dragons, meanwhile, have flew, screamed, and fought all this time.

Even now dozens are breaking off the encirclement and flying north, most likely looking for non-existent deer. How ironic it is that the will of Rutherford, so adamantly imposed upon the dragons and driving them to suicidal ferocity, is being overpowered by the most basic instinct of all.

How ironic that Kaishen is not as powerful as an empty stomach.

A pair of Apex candidates casually snaps up a mouthful of dragonlings from the horde. Cannibalism at its most effective; the largest and most powerful show no sign of leaving – they're not hungry like the rest.

Oon'Shang, who has barely moved an inch for the past few days, stands up. She gestures to me. Walk? To where?

Picking me up by the armpits like a wayward baby, she backs all the way into the fields until Kathanhiel is no bigger than a yellow dot on a canvas of black.

'What-what are you doing? We can't leave!' She couldn't hear me.

With her other hand she digs into the dirt and, as if by magic, uncovers a slab of rock big enough to shadow even her. She puts me down and I, like a great warrior, fall over into a mouthful of ashy earth; cotton are my legs and a fat soap bubble my head, courtesy of not eating.

Oon'Shang kneels and tilts the great slab onto her back so that it blocks everything from view. The act is so obviously painful – no way has she healed enough to allow this kind of exertion.

But what could I do – give her a hand?

Suddenly there's a great rush of wings, and from a chipped corner I catch a glimpse of hundreds of shapes fleeing into the sky. Yes, they're really fleeing now; you can tell by the collisions, the infighting, and the sizable number dropping out of the flock for no reason. Their shadows are small though; all the big ones are still on the ground – seven Apex candidates by my last count. The departure of the great flock leaves an eerie silence. The rain, the wind, all things have stopped; even the sun hangs unmoving at the centre of the sky.

I look at Oon'Shang and she at me. She's gesturing again. Down. Get down.

No need to ask twice.

The very second I finish half-burying myself in the slippery mud, the world breaks.

When I was younger and fonder of nature, I used to spend whole days in the Moon Canyons, that crack in the earth two day's walk from the city. The sound of the wind charging through it at daybreak, that awe-inspiring howl of pure power, seemed to me like the beating of dragon wings. It makes you forget about yourself.

During the last days of winter, however, the winds become violent. Chunks of rock, branches, bones of dead things...they're ripped from the canyon floors and tumble along the narrow path in a stampede, pulverising everything along the way. That's when it goes from awesome to terrifying. In the spring, scavenger crows breed like flies in the canyon, for the carcasses of dead animals number in the thousands, and would keep them fed for months.

The sound of seven Apex candidates belching fire all at once is the winter wind of a thousand canyons, all pointed at a jut of rock upon which I stand naked and alone, facing the stampede.

And the howling wind is hot as the sun.

An enormous orange plume roars into the sky. The earth groans, buckling under the sudden force, as the echo of ten thousand deep fractures gallop to the surface in a great shockwave.

The slab on Oon'Shang's back is peeling, layer by layer, holding at bay a world of blinding white dominated by a tower of flame. She staggers, almost falling over, but the air rushing inexplicably towards the fire holds her up with violent strength.

Surely this is the end of everything; the quest, the Realms, the world, burning up in one great explosion.

Seconds pass. I count them like steps to the gallows. It'll be over in ten. No? Fifteen, then. Twenty? Thirty?

Fifty?

Two minutes pass.

Five.

Ten.

Somewhere between twenty and thirty (minutes, not seconds) I close my eyes. The light is too bright, even with Oon'Shang shielding us; the inferno has become the sky itself, risen too high to be blocked by anything.

Under the howling gale, under the cascade of rocks splintering, bursting, and under my own insufferable screams, the roar of the great dragons persists without end, an ocean in turmoil. When I sleep now I'll hear it. When I walk now in a quiet forest it'll fill my ears. It will never go away.

At some vague point I start laughing, and it's not a good laugh; it's the sound people make just before going insane: shallow, out of breath, obnoxiously loud and will only end at suffocation and never before. Doesn't matter though, since not even I could hear it.

At another vague point the ground begins sinking. Oon'Shang, who has bravely held up the slab of rock for all this time, leans forward, putting weight on her knees. The earth is tilting toward the fire, as if emptying the world into it is going to make it stop.

The mud, baked stiff, their moisture long lost, holds my useless body in place as bits of rock and dead things tumble down the fracturing slope. Goodbye, pebble number one, pebble number two, number three...

I lose count. I lose track of everything, even breathing. More than once I've fainted – this I know, because that stalk of dead grass in front of my right eye has turned from tired green to dead brown. Now it's black and breaking apart.

...

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Nightfall.

Nothing gives it away, not the temperature, certainly not the brightness. It has to be that inexplicable rhythm inside the body of living things that tells them when to sleep and when to just roll over and be done with living.

The inferno shows no sign of abating. This persistence could mean only one thing.

Kathanhiel is still standing.

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