Soon after that I fall asleep – like a rock – which is ridiculous considering, well, everything, but the body doesn't listen to the silly and juvenile demands of the brain. It does what it wants.
I'm standing on a hilltop with the dawn at my back. To my left, with one foot upon a conveniently-placed tree stump, is Kathanhiel decked out in her ceremonial cuirass. Her face is half-turned to me, and it is perfect, more beautiful than any work of art, nobler than all the kings of the Realms put together. The way her lips slightly part, as if on the verge of speaking or, Maker wills it, giving a kiss – it's impossible to look away from.
'I have to give,' she says.
I try to shake my head but it won't budge. The dream doesn't let me speak, only watch on in mounting panic as her words echo across the hilltop, understood by no one.
She holds her hand to her chest and, with compulsive fingers, claws at it as if her heart has stopped beating. Little wells of light bubble up around her fingertips, all fiery red and yellow and white, as she digs into herself with the manic desperation of one who has let go of the most precious thing in the world. Three bright pillars, curved inward like sharpened claws, rise around her wrist like a flaming pedestal.
No. Stop.
She pulls. Her hand reappears as an abomination, a mangled pile of squirming flesh held together by the glue of ember. Red lines have dug into her skin, each writhing like an open wound festering with maggots. In her grip is an ornate grip seemingly wrought out of static flames; its light is so brilliant that her deformed hand almost looks beautiful in its shadow.
The hilltop shatters like a mirage. From the blackening earth rises great pillars of frozen fire. To the sky they grow, caving inward like clutching talons around Kathanhiel's body, obscuring from her the dying sun, and through the thinning gap between them I see a sword of fire emerging from her heart, a blade so brilliantly white its light pierces through the pillars as if they're glass.
I jerk awake to the gentle prodding of Oon'Shang. Somehow it is dawn again; this despicable human being has manage to sleep through the second day of the apocalypse.
The battle has become one of attrition. Instead of recklessly charging in wave after wave the dragons are now watching, waiting on the edge of Kaishen's reach, ready to pounce the moment this dogged herald of fire shows the slightest weakness. Meanwhile, Kaishen's (energy? corruption?) has completely overwhelmed her body; in the sunlight her skin glows like a statue of bronze, and there is no distinguishing where the sword ends and her arm begins.
Her arm...if you could still call it that.
Tendrils of what looks like solidified flames, with the texture of burning coal, have encrusted it all the way to her shoulder. Flakes of skin – for what else could they be – are shedding like autumn leaves with the breeze. The wounds on her shoulder, arm, back, head...she's amassed quite a number, but instead of bleeding they're all pulsating with the orange fire of molten metal.
So far she has lasted three days without food, water, rest, or even a full minute of sitting down, and it's about to get worse: the rainclouds are leaving. If using Kaishen for a single night made her sit in water for an entire day, then...without the rain...
She's standing in low guard now, Kaishen pointed at the ground next to her right foot. Her bow had been discarded, its obsidian grip a melted blob. That pick she uses to detach her sword is nowhere to be seen; she didn't even bother taking it. There's no sense of calm or readiness in her posture; instead, it's as if she's frozen in place.
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.
...
...
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.
...
...