Chapter XIV: In the Shadow of the Sun
“They see not where they fire,” Cédes said, radiating intense heat and anger. “They have lowered themselves to my level of sightlessness. I must now lower myself to their level of hatred.” She placed a warm hand on Stefi’s arm as Raphanos swooped low overhead like an angry Arigan falcon, drawing a dry wind in his wake. “I must tell you something, dear heart.”
“We’ve lost no matter what?” came Stefi’s defeated reply.
“No, but I have,” she said, her hand now clasping Stefi’s. “Everything I have seen has come to pass. My sacrifice for home is no different. I always thought I was seeing the future. That is true, and yet it is not; I am only remembering what has already happened. Perhaps a dream is no different from a memory, a memory from another time and place.”
“You’re not making any sense,” Stefi said, still not raising her head. “Some of your ways have always been beyond me, but not your heart.”
“This world makes no sense. Such love from you, such hatred from others. I think it is best not to dwell on it too much.”
“I’m tired, Cédes. So tired.” With her remaining strength she struggled to her feet. Tired, yes. Her mind, her body, and most of all her sense of caring.
“I know you are. That is why I must end this now.” The two fell into each others’ arms, seeing and unseeing, human and Furosan, and yet not so different in their united grief.
“Have you forgotten what you said when we first met?” Stefi asked. “That we’ll fail no matter what?”
“I remember very well. I remember it every day.”
Raphanos swooped again and his form became more beast-like, bristling with impatience.
“I remember it,” Cédes continued as she stroked Stefi’s hair, “for I am the one who kills you and ends your journey.”
“Impossible,” Stefi shot back and buried her face in Cédes’s shoulder as if trying to hide from the truth. “I know you wouldn’t! You’re too sweet. And I…I love you and know you love me. You just couldn’t.”
“Correct, dear heart. I cannot kill you if I die here.”
“No! I won’t let you. I’m the Fieretsi, I order you to stay with me. Sansonis and Ifaut are gone. Gemmie and Maya too. I’m not losing you as well!”
As gentle as the cool breeze that even now wafted past, Cédes placed a kiss on her human friend’s lips and pushed her towards Radus. “All my life I thought I sought to belong somewhere. I was on the wrong path. Only now do I see I sought to belong with some one.” She tried to say more, found she couldn’t. The threatening tears saw to that. So she spoke the only way she could. Her hand reached into the darkness and came to rest upon Stefi’s cheek. It lingered just long enough to say goodbye.
For the third time Raphanos descended upon them, a soaring beast of flames. Snatching up her staff, Cédes launched herself into the air, and in seconds she was borne away high across the lake.
“Hurry, inside.” Radus tugged Stefi, but she refused to move and her eyes remained fixed where Cédes had gone. He held her arm, his face marred with concentration as he tried to think of something comforting to say in either language. The answer came in another one altogether, that which Cédes spoke so well and he so poorly. He kissed her cheek, but even that didn’t seem to be enough.
“Not the time,” she snapped, shrugging him off and turning to leave. “I need to stop Cédes.”
“Wow, it’s getting dark quickly,” Ifaut said, awe in her voice. “We must’ve hit land at lunchtime, but it already looks like chyana. Strange.”
“And that is?” Sansonis asked.
“The time just before twilight, for having a warm drink and a chat with friends.”
“Well, we’ve come a long way. That may be why.” Indeed, the odd pair had barely had time to rest before the way opened up before them in the shape of a floating island. Just moments after Ifaut had awoken later that day, overjoyed to find Sansonis still alive, she suggested they ask Makora for a ride. After an impassioned plea from Ifaut to find Stefi, they set off the next morning, riding Makora as he plowed through the waves like a boat made of earth. “Get us there,” Ifaut had added, “and we’ll try to fix your stone.”
Makora strode tirelessly across the landscape, which Ifaut soon realized must be Alzandia, crossing streams and hills with little effort. Even stands of pine posed no hindrance; his charging bulk reduced them to kindling with no effort.
“You can talk to him,” Sansonis shouted as Makora plowed headlong into a cluster of pines. Branches cracked about them like thousands of rifle shots and the air filled with a clean scent. “Can’t you steer him around the trees?”
“I don’t know how! It’s not like I paid attention to the elemental driving lessons in school!” she shot back, ducking just in time to avoid being swept off by a branch. A pinecone bounced off Sansonis’s head.
“Try the stick in his back,” he shouted back, gesturing at what appeared to be a branch protruding for the base of his neck.
“Already have. It’s not part of him. At some point in time somebody stabbed him. It’s a spear, not a steer!”
“They’d have to be pretty powerful to stab this lummox.” He ducked, suffering another pinecone to the face for his troubles.
Makora burst from the trees, trailing scent and branches in his wake. In the short time it’d taken to breach the small forest, the light of the sun had grown weaker as if it’d had its chyana and settled for an early night.
Suddenly the massive beast’s legs locked and he slid sideways before slamming to a stop against a mound of earth.
“What is it?” Ifaut asked, raising her eyes as twilight swooped down on black wings. In a moment the land of Alzandia lay beneath a dark, star-strewn sky. She swallowed hard as she saw what the sun had become: a black, lifeless eye ringed with a sliver of light staring back at her. Impossible, she thought. How can light cast a shadow?
“Something’s not right here.” Sansonis said, his voice barely louder than a whisper as if muffled by the eerie stillness all about them.
Away near the horizon a blood-red light flickered soundlessly like distant lightning. It flashed again. Then again. Seconds later it was joined by arcs of gold and electric blue, like a brilliant lightshow set against the backdrop of premature night.
Ifaut and Sansonis turned to face each other, both uttering the same word simultaneously. “Cédes!”
With a sharp kick Ifaut spurred Makora back into action, and the far away lightshow gained the steady, pounding accompaniment of drums.
Pheia scrambled across the arrow-peppered ground and threw herself into the aqueduct as more projectiles fell about her. Shizai’s surge had faded to a trickle, not nearly enough to break her fall. She landed hard, jarring her head against the ground so that a hundred stars exploded before her eyes. Painful, yes. But certainly better than being shot a second time.
“Shizai?” she called, climbing to her knees. Her damp clothes clung to her, weighing her down and chilling her skin. The cold brought hopelessness for company, and for a moment she wished Shizai’s current would sweep her to the same death as the soldiers before her.
She stayed where she was, out of sight of both humans and Furosans, waiting as the sky seemed to grow darker every minute. Muffled booms came from one direction, and were soon followed up by splintering cracks. Guns, she thought. Big guns. Then came a massive explosion that shook the ground with its echoes. Bad things were happening out there, far worse than the comparatively tame skirmishes, fought with conventional weapons, that had razed most of Ariga.
Seized by irrationality, she jumped up and clambered out from the aqueduct just as a mass of fire rumbled overhead, bathing her in a brief warmth. It struck the ground some distance away with such force that she was very nearly thrown back into the aqueduct.
From the scorched crater left by the fireball’s impact she saw a pale figure arise, wreathed in flames. Seemingly unphased by its sudden crash, it tucked the staff it was carrying into it
s belt and drew something from its pocket. As the ground continued to burn about it, spears of fire erupted from its hand, flying blindly into the amassed army of hundreds. Those it struck fell and didn’t move again, each a blazing pyre that its comrades couldn’t extinguish.
Pheia watched as the Bold’s eight starboard cannons brought themselves to bear upon the figure that seemed destruction incarnate. They fired with a unified roar, but they never found their mark. The figure twitched, raised its other hand, and in a crackling blue flash the missiles of steel and powder turned to vapor.
Her attention shifted in an instant as what appeared to be a small hill crashed through the Faith, flinging humans and debris outwards with the raw force of the earth. The airship seemed to hesitate for a moment, unsure of what had just happened. The crashing beast helped enlighten it. It reared up and brought its massive paws down like repeated hammer blows upon timber and bone, finding neither enough to resist the crushing force.
It was then that Pheia noticed two figures sitting astride it, and she knew right away it must be Makora. Not knowing why, and armed only with a useless bow, she made to run, not noticing that now the sun had fallen dark and the fiery figure’s violent outbursts were all that lit the plain. Premature night had fallen, and it seemed the end of the world had come to meet it.
“Stay here!” Stefi shouted. Her voice grew hoarse from repeating it over and again. Radus still followed her like a lost puppy, and, wearing a morose expression, looked much the same.
“Don’t you understand that?” she continued breathlessly. She took the steps from the tower two at a time, though even that didn’t seem fast enough. She didn’t know why she ran with such urgency; it would hardly make any difference. By the time she managed to reach the underground passage, traveled it, then at last climbed back onto the plain, Cédes… She drove the thought from her mind.
Legs and lungs burning, she found herself in a familiar hall. Too familiar. A way out of Alzandia, but the main entrance that opened onto the lake.
“You will swim?” a panting Radus asked.
“Of course not,” she shot back, more through frustration than anger. “I wanted to take the path underneath.”
“Other way,” he said, bent over, hands resting on his knees.
“I know, idiot.” Immediately she wished she could reach out and grab the hasty words before they reached Radus. She couldn’t. They found him.
“I know not smart like Stefi. I try. Not good enough.” He raised his head, and behind his sweat-dampened hair Stefi could see tears forming in his violet eyes. “Go now.”
He found the strength to run, but not the will to hear Stefi’s protests that he stay and that she was sorry.
She stumbled out the main gates, trying not to dwell on what had just happened, and onto the beach where several boats lay moored. Even if she knew how to row one she would arrive far too late to stop Cédes. But she didn’t know what else to do. Radus might have been able to help –would have been more than willing to help–if she hadn’t scared him away. First Cédes, then Radus…
She looked up to notice the light of day had dimmed, and so far down in the basin it seemed as if night had seeped up from the lake’s black waters. A sudden flash of light splashed red across the sky. It was joined moments later by what looked like flickers of lightning.
Her heart felt like it had slowed and stopped, squeezed to death by the knowledge that her friend was about to kill herself along with the invading humans. She wandered over to one of the boats, a small dinghy, and gave it a half-hearted kick. In that second an idea struck her with such force that she let out an excited shout.
“Shizai!”
Of course, she thought, the elemental had given her and her friends a lift aboard a boat before. All she needed to do was block out the world with her bandana and-
You called? came a bubbling voice.
Stefi started. A broad smile spread across her face and she plucked up the tiny watery ferret that had appeared before her. “How did you get here so fast?”
Pheia brought me. She’s way up high, where your friend is about to use Raphanos and Guratzu to destroy all the humans, where Makora has just arrived, she said, the words gushing from her mind.
“Makora?” Stefi asked. “What’s going on up there? Wait, can you give me a lift first?” She clambered into the boat and perched in the stern.
A confluence of elementals, Shizai explained. Her ferrety form melted and trickled through Stefi’s fingers. It pooled in the bottom of the boat before reforming. Makora is the elemental of earth. You bring up little Fairun and then it’s a real party befitting our first family reunion in lifetimes. Utnali and Uespera will be here any moment now. Come.
With her mind still reeling with countless questions, the boat rocked beneath her. The next instant a giant roar shook the world about her and she felt herself hurled high into the air. Cool air rushed down to meet her as a powerful torrent of water thrust the boat skywards. For a moment, with the darkness filling her vision, she felt like the sky was rushing down to swallow her in its depths. And yet a small star, a tiny speck of celestial dust, suddenly made her feel otherwise. The night sky holds not fear, it told her, but the love of the past.
The boat flipped over mid-air, dumping Stefi upon the hard ground. She tumbled a short distance and found herself staring, through rapidly blinking eyes, at a very stunned Furosan she thought she’d seen once before.
“Stefi?” The Furosan asked and helped her to her feet. “And Shizai?”
As Stefi’s vision came into focus she recognized the Furosan at once. “Pheia!”
“Stefi!” Pheia repeated. “I thought Shizai was lost! Her stone fell over the cliff and… and…”
Stefi found me, Shizai cut in as she reshaped herself before them. But maybe we should help Cédes first, then we can catch up.
It was then Stefi looked about her and noticed the source of the otherworldly flashes. Cédes stood some distance away, wreathed in a corona of flames. Bolts of light flashed from one hand, scorching fire from the other, each flying wildly into the night. However, it was the pillars of fire that erupted from the earth about her that drew the most concern.
Raphanos will consume her any moment now, Shizai said. She controls him now, I feel it. Yet she wishes to give her life through his power to destroy the humans.
“Then put her out before that happens!” Stefi shouted. Panic rose in her voice, quickly followed by surging sickness.
I am weakened having just helped you without an Arigan possessing my stone, Shizai bubbled sadly. I doubt I can make it in time.
The next moment the earth began to tremble beneath their feet, each small quake accompanied by a dull thud, and what looked like a living chunk of hillside lumbered into view.
“Stefi!” it shouted in a high voice. “Stefi!”
“I… I think I’m imagining things now,” she murmured. With all the stresses trampling across the last of her nerves, it came as little surprise to her that the earth should start speaking in a young woman’s voice.
“Up here, silly!” A hand shot into view and her gaze wandered up its arm to find-
“Ifaut! You’re… you’re…”
“A Furosan!’ Ifaut finished, her face shining with happiness despite the eerie twilight. “Sansonis is here with me. We nearly weren’t a few times, and Cédes won’t be if we don’t hurry. And hey, dog-face!”
Rhaka bounded up on swift paws, and without slowing launched himself onto Makora’s back and into Sansonis’s embrace. “You yet live,” he said and licked Sansonis’s face, a gesture that carried far more love than his gruff words. “You shall have to tell me of what happened when the time is right.”
Glancing towards Cédes, Stefi’s vision blurred and through her tears of happiness the flames fractured into a hundred tendrils, each branching into a hundred futures. There was only one she wanted to follow, and it grew fainter every second.
She accepted Ifaut’s hand and clambered
up, where she clung to the Furosan who now seemed more grown up than the one she’d left behind in Sol-Acrima. Despite the circumstances, she found herself grinning broadly through her tears. Whatever was to come, she now knew, she didn’t have to face it alone.
“Everyone,” she said as Pheia vaulted up with them, soon joined by a Shizai who looked tinier than ever, “let’s save Cédes!”
“Where you order me to go, I follow,” Sansonis said.
“And,” Ifaut piped in as she dug her heels into Makora’s side and clutched the spear in his neck, “even though I owe him nothing, where Sansonis goes, I follow. Even into fire or lightning.” She turned and gave Sansonis a knowing wink as Makora lurched forward and a flicker of lightning lit her face. “Or Stefi’s future!”