Sons of Ironstorm - Book 2: Griffon's Call

Into the Remains of the Past

<<When next I kill you, human, you'll stay dead!>> the dark figure promised in a harsh snarl, jerking free a massive broadsword with a single pull from a sheath attached to his saddle.

<<Time to go,>> Feladorn hissed and he, Dezi, Banik and Thom took hold of a suddenly resisting Shawn and bodily dragged him forward and past the side road the Shadowmaster had appeared in.

<<What, . . ?? What are you doing??>> Shawn growled, throwing furious looks at each of them. <<I have business with that offal-eating parasite, . . .>>

<<Maybe when you're all the way alive, instead of just mostly,>> Feladorn retorted, bracing himself for Shawn throwing the whole of his mostly restored strength into his resistance. Only to feel Shawn sag with reluctant release.

<<Good point,>> he muttered, then grimaced when he threw a hasty look back in time to see the Shadowmaster careen around the corner in full pursuit, bent low over the neck of his powerful horse.

<<Frost me, he's after us. This way!>> And he was breaking hard to the left and down a side road. His four companions followed without hesitation, nearly stepping on Shawn's heels as the small company sprinted for several paces down the side road. Then they were darting through a hole in a wall, pell-mell through a half collapsed building, roughshod over a rubble-filled street and into another building through a hole in its wall.

This one they traversed then raced up a crumbling stone staircase at its rear, going up three flights before the grim human led them through yet another hole in the wall to leap through space three paces to the roof of the next building over. One by one they hung agonizingly in the air before landing lightly on the other side, instantly churning back into motion as soon as their feet were solid.

Down another flight of stairs, over a partially collapsed bridge then through a series of buildings so fast it was hard to tell when one ended and the next started. Then the small company burst out of the buildings and into a cleared space, where once a mighty park stood.

<<Frost me, we're close!>> Shawn rasped as they charged across the space towards what appeared to be an indistinct mound of stone and rubble in the space's center. They hadn't gone far when horns from several different directions sounded, dull and throaty and less than five hundred paces distant.

<<So are they,>> Thom darkly noted.

But Shawn was once more unheeding; the delights that were the Hall of the Enclave and the Tower of Mists in the shadow Jair Kalial now climbed in his mind's eye above the heap of rubble and dust that was their destroyed remains in the real Jair Kalial. There were the main doors, where he entered in his vision. And there, there was a side door they could use, that would traverse the upper concourse and avoid going into the Hall's sunken heart. A staircase at the back would carry them into the archive behind, where the chest holding the Star would be. He angled them towards it, knowing it was the shortest route.

To his companions' eyes, however, all they could see was a giant heap of rubble growing closer and closer with every step.

<<Shawn?>> Dezi finally asked hesitantly as they slowed, the mound now climbing well over their heads. <<Do you want us to go over this mound?>>

<<No,>> the human tersely replied, pausing long enough to sketch a strangely sinuous shape in the air. It immediately began to glow a silvery blue color as soon as he was finished.

<<We're going in.>> Then the stone rubble in front of them was beginning to shift and move.

<<That's no magic I've ever seen at work,>> Banik muttered in uncertainty, eyes wide as he watched the stones move of their own accord to stack neatly beside a hole growing swiftly into the mound's interior.