Through the Fire and Flames
Episode 1 of The Rabbit Hole
A Story of the Second Realm
By R.J. Davnall
Copyright 2012 R. J. Davnall
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The Second Realm
Season 1: The Second Gift
https://itsthefuturestupid.blogspot.com/
Contents
Through the Fire and Flames
About the Author
The Rabbit Hole
1. Through the Fire and Flames
The Sherim that served Vessit and most of the rest of the region around the Tuani mountains had been a tree. Rel was sure he remembered Dora describing it as a tree when she came back from whatever it was she'd done here. The tree was gone now, though.
In its place, a pillar of fire roared and spat sparks over a ten-foot ring of scorched grass. The air around the fire wrenched and twisted with far worse than heat distortion. Even in the clouded, dim dusk, Rel could pick out the haze of Second-Realm colours floating on the Sherim's surface like oil on water. In the heart of the fire, flames stretched out into spirals and eddies that no ordinary breeze could create.
Taslin, the limp form of Keshnu tucked under her arm, marched forwards across the clearing. Her violet skirt and white bodice betrayed their otherworldly origins, glowing in the twilight gloom. She left a trail of faint, glittering mist in her wake. The Gift-Giver was even more fatigued and battered than Rel.
It was still less than six hours since they'd fought, teetering constantly on the lip of the Abyss under Vessit, while the First Realm tried to snap itself in two. In the brief pauses between Taslin's Gateways on the frantic trek here, Rel had been able to survey the devastation his recklessness had caused. Here, a hundred miles from the Abyss, a good third of the pines that surrounded them had been toppled or snapped. Before sundown, it had been possible to see the scars of fresh landslides on the faces of the Tuani.
They had passed within sight of no towns since leaving Vessit. The old city had worn its destruction like a ghost's recriminating stare, its once-proud towers blunted and cracked, rubble piled high in its streets. Rel shuddered to think what might have happened to the pre-Crash buildings back home in Federas.
He shook his head and started after Taslin. There would be time for counting the costs later. Now, he had to focus on what he could do, which was help Taslin get Keshnu to the Court for treatment. Save what could still be saved; it served no-one to let the death toll rise by another life. Get Keshnu to safety, then return to Vessit and see what could be done about Dora.
Then turn himself in and face human justice. If the Children of the Wild let him. His step faltered for a moment, but he gritted his teeth and pressed on. The clearing that housed the Sherim was steeper than it looked. The fire hissed, in sharp contrast to the silence he usually associated with the Second Realm.
Taslin stopped just outside the ring of char. Even standing half a pace behind her shoulder, Rel found he could feel the heat rolling off the Sherim. He cleared his throat, his mouth dry. "Can you- Can you still get us across?"
"With your help, yes." Taslin's voice was wooden and stiff. Her knife-blade face was much the same, stripped as it was of shadows that might have softened it. She didn't look away from the fire as she finished, "We will have to re-navigate the Sherim."
Rel rubbed his forehead. There was a lump of lead sitting just behind it, atop his eyes, that spoke of already-dangerous levels of logic fatigue. Any other day, he'd have called it mad to even attempt a visit to the Second Realm in this condition. "Can't you... do whatever it is you do when you take people to the Second Realm to be Gifted? Wouldn't that be quicker?"
"No." It was a relief to hear deliberate sternness in Taslin's voice. Remembering to show a semblance of human emotion couldn't be easy for the Gift-Giver in her condition, but if she could still manage it, then Rel owed her the same effort. "Opening a Sherim puts a lot of stress on the First Realm, and these mountains are a product of the same fault as the Abyss. Fresh strain after the quake could be disastrous."
"Hang on." Rel frowned, massaging the bridge of his nose as if that would help the encroaching headache. "The Tuani have been here for thousands of years. They didn't just spring up during the Realmcrash."
"The Abyss likely also existed before the Realmcrash. Remember that your forebears built a laboratory down there."
That was true enough. But for that facility, Rel wouldn't even be in this part of the Realm. "Sorry. I didn't think of that." He paused, braced for reprimand, but Taslin stayed silent. Had Dora been here... But she wasn't. Rel buried his eyes in his hands, grimacing as he fought down a stab of remorse. When he looked up again, Taslin was watching him, her face divided by a sharp line of shadow, firelight to one side, night to the other. It took all the nerve he could muster to stand straight and meet her eyes. "What do you need me to do?"
"You remember the procedure." The humanity faded again from the Wilder's voice. "We explored Dora's Sherim this way when we fought the Axtli together."
Images from that nightmarish encounter drifted back. Firelight recoiling from the pitch-black torrent of the Axtli as it poured out of Dora's head, insatiable and merciless. The glittering, tingling web of silver thread inside Dora's Sherim that had teased and danced with his Clearsight, until he'd felt almost feverish as he tried to focus on the glowing orb that marked Taslin's progress.
The roaring of the fire all but drowned Taslin's next words. "We must be even more careful this time. I can do nothing to indicate Keshnu's well-being to you."
"I'll do what I can." Rel swallowed. He'd done Keshnu enough harm as it was. He had to get the senior Gift-Giver to the Court safely.
Taslin gave a stiff nod and raised her free hand. An orb of pale yellow light bloomed above her palm, but made no impact at all on the darkness around her. Rel blinked a couple of times, trying to wash away the prickling of the fire's heat, and opened his eyes to Clearsight.
Ice slid thin, metallic fingers around his eyeballs. His eyelids tightened, pulling back to give the claws better access. Taslin and Keshnu vanished, and the air came alive with swirling currents, every eddy wrapping itself around slivers of colour that had no place in the First Realm. The fire of the Sherim surrendered the secrets of its internal structure, knots of tangled Realmspace that tied through each other along dimensions neither Realm had words for. Molecules of air trying to travel those whorls squashed down, rubbed against each other and heated until they ignited. Rel didn't need Dora's strange, heightened sensitivity to know that this Sherim was severely out of balance.
Taslin's orb of light had no such complex internal structure. Clearsight revealed nothing about it that had not been apparent with ordinary vision. The solid, non-particulate mass of light was so obtuse, it seemed more like a problem with Rel's eyes than a part of the world beyond them. He squinted to focus on it as it began to float towards the fire, bobbing with Taslin's steps.
The light washed out in the glare from the fire, honest, ordinary heat distortion turning it watery and weak. Rel said, "S-stop," then kicked himself for the stammer. Even that small a delay could be fatal in a riled-up Sherim.
Still, Taslin froze in place almost before he'd finished. At least she was on the ball. Sharp-edged, her voice cut through the crackle of the fire, "What's wrong?"
"Could you... Can you make the light a different colour?" Rel paused, and when Taslin didn't answer immediately, explained, "It's blending with the fire, and it's quite hard to pick out."
"What colour would be better?"
The question surprised
him. He glanced away at the night, and Clearsight showed him just how much life had been disrupted by the quake; not just the smashed trees, but the thousands of insects and birds and rodents crushed in their dens or chased out into the cold darkness. Though it stung to look at, the fire was a welcome alternative. He said, "I don't know, purple maybe? Something with some blue in it."
He felt as much as saw the orb change colour. It didn't fade smoothly along the spectrum - just one moment yellow, the next a violet stronger than any that appeared in nature. The colour of Taslin's eyes, he realised. Her voice jumped out of the air next to the orb, "Will this do?"
Rel nodded and pushed his eyesight out a little way into the future. A tendril of fatigue crept in through his Clearsight-frozen eye-socket and prodded at the heavy lump behind his brow. He winced, but waved a hand vaguely in Taslin's direction as the orb bobbed. Again, it began to inch towards the fire.
A shuffling half-step to follow brought Rel's foot down on ash that shifted like sand under his weight. He felt his cheeks reddening with heat from the fire, squinted to protect his eyes. Taslin continued to edge forwards, almost directly at the fire. Did she intend to walk straight through it?
Her light stayed bright and strong. Rel pushed another half-second ahead, watching