Douglas Niles - Goddess Worldweaver

The Worldfall tumbled from the zenith of all circles, carrying the stuff of creation into the mountainous Nullreach of Nayve. For decades it had pounded this ground, pulverizing the substance of the Fourth Circle in this region into a wasteland of chaos. Nothing could live there, nothing could so much as approach this shimmering vista of violence. The air churned with violent storms, and the ground was shattered and trembling, prone to quakes that dropped away great sections of terrain, sucking it right into the vortex of the great storm.

Yet for all that destruction, the storm had remained in this one location since its creation. The scope of the plunging debris, instead of expanding outward, remained localized, limited to that section of terrain that, in fact, no longer existed as anything resembling solid ground. Those bordering plains and hills that, one year, vanished into the chaotic tangle would re-form in another season; hill might be plain and flat might roll into lofty elevation, but the terrain would inevitably begin to re-form. It survived this perilous existence for an unknown time, before once again vanishing into the maw of destruction.

Across the world of Nayve, a far less violent phenomenon had been observed in the five decades since the discovery of the Worldfall. There, in an idyllic region of farmland and lakes, a land of gnomes and elves called Winecker, the ground had been subject to a series of upheavals. Hills had risen where gentle pastures once sprawled, and periodically, storms of wind would sweep the land, winds that swept away from Nayve, forming a vortex of upward-rising air. The scholarly druid Socrates had determined this to be a reaction to the Worldfall, an upward counter to that powerful and relentless downward force.

Despite the Worldfall’s lethal power, many creatures had survived the plunge down the cataract of chaos, including the thousands of harpies who had swarmed into Nayve five decades ago and the massive dragon who had been sucked into the storm called the Hillswallower. That maelstrom had similarly wrought great destruction in the Sixth Circle as well, the overworld that was called Arcati by those who dwelled there. A whole province in the cloud world had vanished into the Hillswallower, leaving a region of chaos and destruction where once cumulous elevations had risen gently into the oversky.

So extensive was the storm, so vast its plunge, that it actually carried the stuff of the cosmos downward past the sun-for that orb was below Arcati and above Nayve. Rising and falling on a cycle of twenty-four hours, the sun at its loftiest height brought daylight to the Sixth Circle as the Fourth was plunged into night. Then it would descend, and the Lighten Hour would come to Nayve as the overworld was cloaked in cooling darkness.

The sun was oriented over the Center of Everything, the temple of the Goddess Worldweaver and her silver loom, the thousand-foot-tall spire of silver rising from her sacred precincts. Three directions marked the points from the Center: the direction of wood; the direction of metal; and the direction that was neither metal nor wood, sometimes called the direction of null. Like the center of a web, the temple stood tall. Here the goddess performed her labors, while the druids studied the Tapestry, practiced their magic, and recorded their stories.

Nayve, the Fourth Circle, was surrounded by the Worldsea, beyond which lay the Second, Third, and Fifth Circles. The Fifth, in the direction of null, was the land of death and the end of all worlds. The First was below, the great city of Axial aligned directly underneath Circle at Center. Together with the Sixth, above, these worlds formed the core of the cosmos, the focus of all the worlds where magic dwelled.

Only the Seventh Circle, the world called Earth, lay beyond the pale of the first six worlds. There were those druids who maintained that Earth, the Seventh Circle, is an imagined place, a dream woven by the goddess on her Tapestry for the edification of her druids. More rational minds discounted this argument, and indeed, since Earth was the birthplace of all humans who live upon Nayve, druids and warriors alike, there was a significant population on Nayve with very vivid memories of their world of origin.

The druids were summoned here by the blessing of the goddess, and each warrior was brought by the explicit act of a druid: the carnal Spell of Summoning, which brings a warrior from the place of his dying to the place of his eternal life. But all of them recalled past lives, lands, and peoples of Earth.

These spells were the final proof: the Seventh Circle was a real place, source of actual creatures, the humans who, increasingly, came to populate Nayve. Thanks to the water discovered by the druid Juliay, the Spell of Summoning could be cast without costing the druid her youth and her future. As a consequence, more and more members of the order had selected warriors from the battlefields of Earth, bringing each to Nayve at the moment of his death.

Still, there were not enough of them, as the ghost warriors teemed to the far horizons and beyond.

Natac saw that the three great columns were marching onto the plains, with the Ringhills, some fifty miles away, as their goal. He sat astride the great dragon as Regillix Avatar flew three miles above the world’s surface. From here they could see the valley of the Swansleep River, the vast plain, and the rugged horizon of the hills rising toward the Center.

Tamarwind’s elves formed the rear guard as the army pulled away from the river, though the ghost warriors were not aggressive in their crossing of the Swansleep. The quake had proved very disruptive to them, even as it gave the means for the Delvers to cross Riven Deep. It was that dwarven crossing that had made Natac’s position at the river untenable; if they had stayed in place, Zystyl’s force would have attacked them from behind, and there would have been no survival. Instead, Natac had ordered the general withdrawal and now simply hoped to get his army away to fight on another day.

While the Argentian elves watched for pursuit, the elves of Barantha and the forest trolls formed two vast formations, leaving behind the valley of the Swansleep as they started across the dry plains. From the back of the mighty dragon, Natac could see the plumes of dust raised by these marchers and knew that they would reach the hills within a few days. Each had a large contingent of centaurs towing their batteries, the silver metallic carriages mingled into the long files of warriors. It was encouraging to see that the troops, despite the orders to withdraw, were moving in good order and maintaining an impressive speed.

To the left Natac saw another column of dust, and they flew low to see the Hyaccan elves, the only mounted troops of his army. Beyond were the massive rock piles, where the slabs that had carried the Delvers across Riven Deep had come to rest. The Tlaxcalan had seen many examples of powerful magic since he had come to Nayve, but never had he witnessed anything comparable to this: the great uprooting of the very landscape, the use of that ground to carry troops onto an otherwise inaccessible battlefield. He didn’t want to think about it too much, for when he did, it seemed impossible to comprehend any means whereby they could win this war, not against an enemy that could marshal such unspeakable power.

Yet still, they would try. Below him the riders of Janitha Khandaughter were already making the dwarves pay for their advance. The elves on their nimble ponies skirmished with the Delvers, riding close, showering the dwarves with arrows, then galloping away before the iron golems could come up. Like the elf and trollish infantry, the elven riders were fighting cautiously, giving ground instead of lives. Natac was confident they would reach the Ringhills with their numbers intact.