Jak Koke - The Edge of Chaos

Apparently dragons were unwelcome at the festival.

As they flew, Duvan caught glimpses of the scene below. Spellplague advanced along the perimeter of pilgrims, lighting up the night with white fire. They must have been in unfathomable pain as the blue fire burned their bodies, but they could not move out of it. The line was on fire from both ends now and would soon meet in the middle.

What would happen then, Duvan didn’t know. But it was bound to be decidedly not good.

“I am not making much progress against Vraith’s cadre of accordants,” Tyrangal said. “Together they are too powerful.”

Duvan nodded. He didn’t know what he could do; the scale of this battle was beyond his abilities. He did know that he wanted to survive it. He wanted to live through this to figure out what he could do with his life. How he could make a difference. It was an odd feeling; he’d never cared about making a difference before.

He’d never cared about much of anything before.

His tenure on the Fugue Plane and the prospect of spending eternity as just another brick in the wall of the City of the Dead had given him a new perspective. The boredom and futility of doing nothing forever was far scarier to Duvan than living in pain.

“Hold on, Duvan,” Tyrangal said, her voice drowned out by the cacophony of screaming pilgrims. “It looks like three of them are coordinating and-”

Duvan saw three glowing spheres now floating at intervals near the border veil. He watched in fascinated awe as bolts of ice blue shot out from them. The shafts sped directly toward him and Tyrangal.

Duvan’s hands yanked abruptly as, under him, Tyrangal swerved in the sky, plummeting as she tried to dodge the bolts. But even though the main shafts missed hitting them directly, the air froze and crystallized around Duvan. Tyrangal’s scales iced up, and the dragon’s movements grew sluggish.

Breath stopped in Duvan’s chest, and his skin burned with cold. His eyelids froze open, and his hands went numb. His vision darkened, and his joints locked. The vapor in his nostrils crystallized.

From the rate of their plummet, it seemed as though Tyrangal was having similar issues. The ground approached quickly as they fell.

He’d never been afraid to die before, but now he was. Now he wanted to live. He wanted to accomplish something, to be a force for good. Slanya had showed him that being a force for good didn’t always mean pain. Sometimes it meant satisfaction and companionship and caring.

The dragon managed to shift against the magical frost, moving enough for her wings to catch the air. Tyrangal’s body shuddered and lurched beneath Duvan, then rose sharply. Perhaps they’d get out of this.

As they quickly gained altitude again, Duvan felt himself sliding to his left. Inexorably and uncontrollably, he drifted nearer the point where he would fall. His ice-encrusted hands on the rope around Tyrangal’s neck had grown numb. With his fingers frozen, he was unable to hang on.

Tyrangal must have sensed this and adjusted her flight to nudge him back to the center. With a slight shift of her body, she helped him regain his balance on her neck. For now.

Far below, tiny pilgrims screamed as their bodies ignited with spellplague. The line was almost entirely engulfed now, the circuit nearly complete. In the halos of the bonfires, Duvan could see scattered pilgrims who had refused to join the line. They had all stopped their dancing, stopped their revelry. They all stared, dumbfounded, at the rippling wave of blue fire that raced over their brethren.

More blue bolts slammed into Tyrangal and she faltered. Huge blocks of ice formed large encrusted masses on the dragon’s wings. Beneath Duvan, Tyrangal dropped into an angled, spinning nosedive.

Completely frozen, Duvan slipped free and fell.

He could not move, but his eyes were frozen open, and he could still see. He could see the dark shadow of the ground grow larger as he fell. Beneath him, but off to the side, Tyrangal crashed into the ground. She was moving so fast that her body dug a massive furrow in the grassy earth.

In the split second before the onrushing, unyielding ground shattered his frozen body, Duvan saw his mentor and benefactor defeated. Defeated and probably dead-a huge dragon, frozen into a monstrous block of ice, crashing like a mote to the earth, scattering a bonfire and a small group of pilgrims out of the way.

So this is the end, he thought in his last instant. If they can beat Tyrangal, they win.

Standing in the stirrups, Slanya’s breath caught in her chest as she looked out across the field and watched Tyrangal fall out of the sky. Her heart wrenched as she saw the tiny figure of Duvan, a dark speck, silhouetted against the massive backdrop of the undulating prismatic border veil.

Dread swelled inside her as she watched Duvan’s plummeting form break away from the dragon and fall. She lost sight of his dark form as he disappeared into the blackness of the field, crashing into the ground. Falling substantially apart, both dragon and rider had nonetheless landed inside the arc of pilgrims.

Slanya took a quick glance at the line of pilgrims. Spell-plague covered about half of the arc and was marching forward rapidly on two fronts. Each successive pilgrim called out when the fire took them. And once ignited, each person seemed to glow white hot, forming the base of a high wall made of pale blue flame stretching up into the sky.

Obviously, talking to Gregor now would have no impact, but was there anything else she could do?

Abruptly, a possibility occurred to her. Perhaps there was a way to stop it. She wasn’t sure if it would work, and she knew it might kill her, but it was a chance. To stop the chaos from engulfing the world, she would do whatever it took.

Spurring her horse, Slanya crouched in the saddle and leaned forward. She pushed the mare faster and sped down the short slope and across the grassy distance toward the line of pilgrims. The blue magic advanced from pilgrim to pilgrim, inexorably approaching the apex of the arc from both sides. A small-and shrinking-section of the line remained untouched.

Slanya aimed for that opening. She needed to reach Duvan. She needed to make sure he was all right. Everything depended on it.

The mare broke into a gallop beneath her. The beat of the hooves synchronized with the rapid thumping of Slanya’s heart in her ears. Wind rushed past as she rode. Heated air bristled with magic and set the hairs on her exposed skin on end.

Closer.

Slanya took shallow breaths to avoid retching from the stink of sour orange-stuffed rotting flesh. Just ahead, the line of spellplague-touched pilgrims loomed, towering above her into the sky. She focused on balance and speed, trying to ignore the massive wall of disconcerting chaos she was speeding toward.

Ahead of her, the fire continued its consumption of pilgrims. Two by two by two. The arc was almost completely engulfed now, but Slanya could see a narrowing section where the spellplague had yet to catch hold. She needed to reach the line before the circuit completed.

Closer.

Slanya caught sight of one of the Order of Blue Fire Peacekeeper guards, patrolling the line. But he was too slow to react. Slanya approached with such speed that he did not even notice her until she was upon him. He could not have been expecting a single rider moving at such velocity.

Slanya went shooting past him.

Closer.

As she raced directly toward the line, she watched in apprehension as the gap narrowed to five pilgrims. The stench and heat from the blue fire, so close, made it hard to breathe. Then the gap was only three pilgrims wide and closing rapidly. Slanya fought back the urge to retch.

The last pilgrim to ignite was a small human woman. Mousy brown hair blowing in the hot wind, but her delicate features calm. She seemed to be waiting for rapture.