Rich Wulf - Flight of the Dying Sun

“Did you ever find anything?” she asked.

“Unfortunately,” he said. “I found the gallows where the elves hanged them. If Ashrem hadn’t found me soon after, I really don’t know what I would have done. I was alone with no way back home. I was lucky to survive as long as I did.”

“That’s terrible,” Seren said softly.

“It doesn’t bother me anymore,” he said with a sad smile. “I accepted their deaths a long time ago. It hurts to be alone, Seren, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I know you lost your father, Seren, so I just wanted to tell you that … so that you’d know that you aren’t alone.” He ran one hand through his unkempt brown hair. “That all sounded good in my head, but it’s kind of stupid now that I say it out loud.”

“Yeah,” she said. “It really was.”

Tristam blinked.

Seren laughed. “I’m teasing you,” she said. “If you think you’re still alone, you’re blind, Tristam. Now give it to me.”

“Excuse me?” Tristam asked.

She sighed. “Your sword,” she pointed at the blade sheathed at his hip. “I’ll show you a few things.”

“Oh,” he said, embarrassed. He drew the weapon and flipped it elegantly in one hand, laying it across his arm with the hilt pointed toward Seren.

“So debonair,” she said with a giggle. She took the weapon and stepped away, sweeping it in a fluid arc to one side. Tristam sat down, leaning back on his palms as he watched her.

“Your problem is you’re too uptight. You need to hold the sword a little more gently, so you can maintain flexibility.” Seren glided through several mock swings, parrying and thrusting against an invisible foe.

“Don’t I already do that?” Tristam asked. “I thought I was pretty relaxed.”

Seren laughed. “No, not really,” she said, and she lifted the sword in a one handed stance, holding it at an angle above her head. “You fight like a lumberjack, hewing wildly. That’s fine if you’re fighting a tree, but if your focus is too narrow, you won’t be free to adapt to an opponent’s movements.”

“Lumberjack?” Tristam asked, hurt.

Seren sighed, lowering the blade. “Don’t pout, Tristam,” she said with a laugh. “I’m trying to help you. If you take criticisms personally, you aren’t going to learn anything.”

“Well then maybe you should stop making fun of me,” he replied with a crooked smile. He lurched to his feet and moved close to her.

Seren looked into his eyes with a challenging grin, but it vanished as her gaze moved past him, fixing on something far away. Tristam looked at her in concern, then followed her eyes. A plume of column smoke rose in the distance, scarring the flawless sapphire sky. They exchanged worried glances.

“ Seventh Moon ,” he said. “That must be where she crashed.”

“Do you think anyone survived?” she asked.

“Probably,” he said. “Soarwood is naturally quite buoyant in the air. With a decent pilot, an airship can float to a crash, the same way ours did.”

“But what about the rogue elemental?” she asked. “Wouldn’t it want to destroy the ship?”

“At first,” Tristam said, “but it would ultimately want to return home to its own world. Even if it remained, elementals aren’t invincible. The Moon ’s crew would eventually defeat it.”

“So there are likely survivors,” she said.

“Definitely,” Tristam answered, still studying the smoke.

“So we should avoid the wreck,” Seren said.

“We should,” he said, but his eyes still stared at the distant plume.

“But you don’t want to,” Seren said.

“I know it’s dangerous,” Tristam said, “but I want to know how Orren Thardis survived the Day of Mourning and became the monster that he is. I want to know who those soldiers are that work for him. I want to know how he brought back Ashrem’s flagship. I want to know how much he knows about the Legacy. We still really don’t know anything, Seren.”

“We might not learn anything,” she said.

“But if we don’t investigate, we’ll never know.” He was quiet for a long time. “At the very least, I have to see how many of those soldiers survived. I didn’t want to blow the Moon ’s containment and release that elemental. I … I probably killed a lot of people. Whoever those men are, whatever brought them under Marth’s command … they didn’t deserve to die, Seren. I have to know what I’ve done.”

“You feel sorry for Marth’s soldiers?” Seren asked. “Those are the same men who murdered Jamus, Kiris, and the Ghost Talons. They tried to kill us, too.”

Tristam nodded. “And if things had turned out differently, I might have been one of them,” he said.

Seren’s smiled sadly. She clearly didn’t agree, but she understood. “Very well, then,” she said, handing him back his sword. “We’ll check it out, but you’ll follow me, got it? You aren’t very sneaky.”

“Lumberjack, I know,” he said, nodding, sliding the blade into its scabbard with a crack. “I’ll do what you say, Seren.”

“And promise me that if you see Marth you won’t do anything stupid,” she said, “until you’re powerful enough to face him. His magic is still much stronger than yours.”

Tristam looked crestfallen but mumbled his agreement.

She nodded pertly and set off toward the distant plume, gesturing for him to follow. They stepped over a small rise and saw the wreckage of Seventh Moon sprawled in a shallow valley before them. A long gouge split the earth, carved by the ship’s violent landing. The airship looked to be in relatively good condition considering the chaos she had endured. Two of the four struts that once held her elemental ring in place were now shattered. One lay in two pieces in the gouged earth. The other was nowhere to be seen. The ship lay half buried in the ground, her hull covered with ragged burns. A few dozen soldiers in Cyran armor patrolled the valley, sorting debris or laying bodies on a burning pyre. Seren kneeled in the grass and Tristam nearly collapsed beside her, staring at the pyre.

“Don’t blame yourself,” Seren said.

“Then who should I blame?” he said bitterly.

“Marth,” she said. “He started this.”

“Did he?” Tristam asked. “Do we really know that?”

Seren shrugged. “Let’s go see what we can find out,” she said, crawling away through the tall grass.

Tristam looked around awkwardly and followed, moving with less grace than she. Seren looked over her shoulder with an irritated frown.

“You’re jingling,” she whispered. “Stop it.”

“Jingling?” he asked, confused. “What do you mean?”

“What in Khyber do you have in your pockets?” she said.

“Some flasks, mostly potions, and a few focusing crystals,” he said, looking away sheepishly.

“How many?” she asked.

“Um … a few dozen?” he said. “I guess I never noticed how much noise they make. I’ve grown accustomed to it.”

“Take off your coat and leave it here,” she said.

Tristam stared at her, aghast. “What if I can’t find it again? Some of the things I’m carrying are irreplaceable.”

“Then leave yourself here,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll sneak ahead by myself.”

Seren started off again. Tristam watched her in silence for several seconds. With a pained expression, he shrugged out of his long coat, folded it in a tight bundle, and hid it among the grass before following. He crawled after her for several minutes, stopping to crouch next to her in the shadows beside a large boulder at the outskirts of a small camp. He winced at the pain in his knees. He wasn’t used to crawling around like this. Seren looked back at him curiously, and he offered what he hoped was not an obviously pained smile. She rolled her eyes and turned her attention to the camp. Three soldiers sat in a semi-circle against the boulder, staring into the pathetic little blaze. Two of them nursed small cups. The third occupied himself by continuously scratching at or adjusting a bandage on his right leg.