The sacred mountain was burning, and as soon as her feet touched moss, Sunny was off and running, kicking up moisture from the runnels of recently fallen rainwater, spilling between the moss and wet earth. Inside her chest, her heart pounded with a sick uncertainty that turned her blood to ice in her veins.
Rain clouds clung desperately to the ceiling of sky, extending the wake of the nights recent rainstorm. The land before her was awash in a cold gray light, hemming in a halo of burning blue from the slopes of the sacred mountain.
As her eyes took in the scene before her, her desperate run turned into a jog, and then into a walk, which then petered away and left her standing stunned, at the crest of the mossy hill. The sacred mountain was burning, eerie and blue against the grayness of a rain soaked landscape. Ash spewed into the air as runnels of blue lava poured in waves down the mountain's sides, painting the slopes in azure fire. Below, the rainwashed moss of the lower slopes burned with an acrid smell that choked her lungs even at this distance.
The sacred mountain had always been alight, but it had never burned like this. She scanned her eyes downward across the scene before her and tried to take in the face of the crowd before her, thousands strong. Drev of all ages and clans stood below her, forming themselves into a crowd that stretched out almost as far as the eye could see. Spears jutted upwards like the prickling spines of an alien creature, their capes glittering in a thousand rainbow colors, making up the creature's scales .
And so she stood, the Saint of Anin.
Saint of the Sun.
And watched as their heritage burned.
Against the slow grayness of the morning the mountain was a black monolith hemmed in by a halo of blue, the hot springs continued to send up gouts of steam that obscured the pyroclastic flow, and then the clans of the fertile belt, paused in their warring long enough to stand side by side and watch everything fall down around them.
A hand came to fall against her shoulder.
She didn't look up to see her brother, Kanan standing next to her, trailed by their sister Dzara.
Kanan had called her early that morning to tell her the news, but still she hadn't believed it until she saw it, and still didn't really believe it now.
"Naktan...?" She asked, not for the first time.
Kanan shook his head, "We don't know. No one has seen him, and the mountain is too hot to approach.... If he's up there..." His voice trailed off, but Sunny couldn't take this ending for an answer.
She whirled in place catching sight of Adam as he jogged up the shallow incline.
His expression was grim.
"We have to find Naktan." She said, her words more of a demand than a comment.
Adam nodded to her, his white hair waving in the muggy stillness that was the rain soaked dawn, and took a knee against the moss. He reached out, proffering the palm of his hand to the open air, and inside it sat a small silver ball, just small enough to fit inside his clenched fist.
Sunny recognized it almost immediately as a remote drone, and watched as Adam's mechanical eye flared once with a sharp green light.
The ball let off a chime and then floated sharply into the air, shooting up to about head height.
The expression on Adam's face was distant.
"I'll take a look."
The ball shot off in a flash, towards the distant mountain, but despite its speed, Sunny felt it wasn't fast enough, and began pacing back and forth over the wet moss as Adam knelt blankly in the dirt before them, his head tilted back ever so slightly, rays of UV light rolling in gentle ripples over his striped skin.
"Approaching the pinnacle now. The heat readings aren't encouraging...." his voice trailed off, but they all knew what that meant. It was very hot, even at the top of the mountain, and if Naktan had been alive when all of this happened....
Sunny continued to pace, growing more agitated as the minutes wore on.
It was only at the peak of her pacing, that she was interrupted by a sharp jab of pain in her stomach. She stopped and grimaced, resting a hand on her stomach as the feeling persisted. Inside her, something moved, its agitation almost matching her own.
Dzara came up behind her and rested a hand on her arm, "You okay?"
Sunny shrugged her sister off, "I'm fine." She turned back to look at Adam, "Anything?" She tried to reign in her concern and impatience, but it was nearly impossible.
"In the canyon now.... It's very smoky, but I.... I think I might." then he trailed off and the expression on his face was easy enough to read.
Sunny had to resist the urge to grab Adam by the shoulders and shake him, demanding to know what he could see.
Even so, she managed to control herself, watching as Adam's eyes widened with shock and horror, His mouth forming into a perfect O of surprise and horror.
"No..."
"What!?"
All three of them clustered around Adam now.
And when he looked up at them, they already knew what he was going to say.
"Naktan is dead."
Sunny felt her heart fall through her stomach, but wasn't prepared for what came next.
"Someone killed him."
It was Dzara who found her voice first, "KIlled him! Who would Kill Naktan, how would they.... I..." The guardian of Drev tradition, wasn't someone you just killed. Sunny was a saint, and she doubted even she could best him in a fight. In fact, she was sure she couldn't.
It simply wasn't possible
And she refused to beehive it.
Adam blinked once, some semblance of awareness coming back to his eyes as he looked up to face them.
His expression was grim, but there was no doubt in his eyes when he spoke, "She left her spear."
The cold dread in Sunny's chest crystalized in an instant, turning her insides into a solid block of cold.
There was no doubt in her mind what Adam meant.
The cold fire in her belly turned into raging heat everywhere else, and she fought back the desire to scream. Even so her hands clenched into fists around the shaft of her spear. Her entire body vibrated with rage and anger.
It couldn't be possible.
It simply couldn't.
It was just then that Celex appeared, floating down from the atmosphere on a halo of golden light. His billowed around him as he touched the ground, keen eyes bright with the fire of the mountain. A now, fully mature Maker, his understanding of the war that they were in had been a valuable asset since Maverick's disappearance, but now, she didn't want him for that.
She pointed at Celex command rising in her voice, the moment his feet touched soil, "Go."
She didn't bother to articulate her desire, knowing he would understand fully.
Despite being the most powerful person on this planet, he didn't argue with her as her tone broached no argument, turning and launching himself back into the air.
He worked quickly, and they watched as he left a golden artifact of light behind him as he zipped through the open air and towards the mountain.
She waited for his return, sick and burning with anger as she waited.
The world around her hardly seemed real.
Naktan couldn't be dead.
It simply wasn't possible.
The sacred mountain had never been without a guardian.
Ever.
Inside her body, her stomach took another sick turn, and she gritted her teeth against another sudden, jarring pain, but she couldn't think of that right now
Celex appeared a few minute slater, golden light shooting from the top of the motuain's crater, and as he drew closer, Sunny could see the black dot he carried with him. Soon the black dot resolved itself into a shape. Due to Naktan's size, Celex had been forced to change his shape, shifting himself to appear as a technicolor Drev, so he could be big enough to hold Naktan's body.
The entire crowd had turned to follow his movement, growing still and silent as the scene played out before them.
Celex landed on the mossy hillside, and gently bent to rest Naktan on the ground.
Below them, the crowd grew still in a wave through the waiting assemblage.
Naktan did not seem small in death. Even now, he was larger than life, his black carapace shining like onyx in the castoff blue light. His eyes were cold, and his hands were neatly clasped around the haft of his spear, masked in serenity even as Celex stepped to avoid the black shaft sticking out of his heart.
Blood coated his body, a garash orange that seemed to be an insult to the dim morning.
Sunny swallowed her rage and sadness, bending over to more fully examine the body.
Her eyes ran over the golden warpaint that marked his carapace, and the rivulets of blood, now dry, that caked his own blade, "He was expecting a fight." Her jaw tightened as she examined the patterns of blood spatter that flecked his regal head. He wore no armor, but she had never needed to.
"This blood isn't his.... At least not all of it." her voice felt distant, even to her, but her simmering rage was loud inside her head.
Kazna had killed Naktan.
But it wasn't simply her rage against kazna that held her, but rage against Naktan himself. Naktan could beat anyone in a fight, that was no question. This wound , the one that had speared him through the heart was simply too clean. If this fight had been difficult she would have expected to see other wounds, but other than the killing blow that had taken his life, he was simply unmarred.
There was no doubt in Sunny's mind that had he wanted to, he could have killed Kazna.
If Naktan's death was anything.
It was purely intentional.
Inside, Sunny's guts twisted, squeezing tightly, and she had to fight not to double over with pain as her insides contracted to the pulse of her rage.