Erin Hoffman - Sword of Fire and Sea

Once again Vidarian was borne into the sky by a trio of gryphons, but this time he was awake, and each of the gryphons bore a pattern of gold painting on their wings. The patterns danced as they flew, tessellating back and forth from images of leaping fire to stars that spangled across the white feathers.

Vidarian sat toward the front of the carry-basket, Ariadel's emerald lifted high in his left hand. With his eyes closed he explored his new Sense, trying to focus and nurture it as quickly as he could. Now and then he experienced an intense urge to do more than simply take in the “surroundings” painted before him by his new ability-an urge to move the ripples that pulsed in his mind. Determinedly he shoved these aside, keeping his metaphysical hands behind his back, and the sweat that beaded along his forehead with the effort grew icy cold in the high-altitude winds.

In remarkably short order the basket began to descend, and he remembered to work his jaw as pressure began to mount in his ears. The gryphons dropped swiftly, at times seeming to plunge almost vertically downward, and Vidarian wondered every few hundred feet if his stomach had been left behind among the clouds.

They landed in the courtyard of Sher'azar Temple, and such was the control of these gryphons that they made his previous landing at the mountain's foot seem a child's first stumbling walk. As the great creatures removed their harnesses he recognized the leader as Thalnarra-and if his guess was right, the rapid flare-and-pin of her pupils only very thinly disguised a smoldering anger. He followed her blazing gaze to a collection of three priestesses that stood hesitantly at one of the many temple archways.

Finally one of them approached, reluctance emanating from her body language. “Thalnarra,” she said, bowing, “It has been-quite some time since you visited us here…” Then she caught sight of Vidarian and inhaled sharply. “You …”

// Priestess Alshandra , // Thalnarra growled, punctuating each of her words with biting anger. // May I introduce Captain Vidarian Rulorat, whom our goddess delivered to the Temple of Kara'zul. //

“Sharli…” The priestess backed away a step, her eyes going wide. “We thought…”

// You thought she would kill him , // Thalnarra finished for her, sitting down on the gravel and coiling her tail snakelike about her feet. // You sent him up the mountain at night knowing that the goddess permits no mortal uninitiated to see dawn on Kara'zul Peak. //

“W-we thought he was an interloper-”

// You did not think, girl, at all. // Thalnarra's mental voice rose to a crackling thunder and Vidarian winced at the sudden pain in his head. // Gryphons bore him to you, yet you did not send any of your messengers after them. The temple was unattended or they would have spoken with you themselves. Have you any idea who this man is? //

The priestess did not answer, and Thalnarra pounded relentlessly on, each of her words more forceful than the last. // He is the sole assigned protector and sole remaining hope of Ariadel Windhammer, if we ever do see her again since her fall into Vkorthan hands. //

It was too much for the chastened priestess, and she broke into tears. “Thalnarra, please don't send me to…”

// Oh, do shut up, girl. // The gryphoness sighed, lifting her beak and giving a tiny disgusted shake of wing feathers that glittered golden in the pale sunlight. // I will be reporting the misbehavior of the priestesses here to the high temple, and they will be responsible for you. Perhaps they will send you up the mountain to see what the Dawn Goddess thinks of your actions. In the meantime, I have escorted the captain to Sher'azar to see that he has the proper equipment for his journey. I will be accompanying him on his quest and both of us will need proper provisions. //

Vidarian started at her words, but could not argue-and strangely enough, all of the priestesses of Sher'azar were suddenly extremely cooperative.

That evening they were back in the air again, Thalnarra leading with two hand (claw?)-picked gryphons flanking the harnessed basket. Unlike Vidarian's recent carriers, Thalnarra's companions this time bore no gold on their wings-they were uninitiated into the rites of the fire priestesses, and as a result greatly deferred to her as a matter of course. She seemed to encourage this behavior.

The basket was considerably heavier this time, as well. Packed in with provisions of food for all parties (the gryphons planned to hunt, but Vidarian learned to his surprise that they preferred an assortment of supplementary foods that aided in health and meditation) was a tight packet of medical supplies, a strange navigational unit intended for air use, and, most interestingly, a small chest of carefully packed magical implements. Tucked into canvas pockets on two sides of the chest was a pair of leather-bound books, each no longer than his hand and roughly half as thick. The cover of one was a deep blue, the other a dark burgundy. After the gryphons had settled into a comfortable altitude, Vidarian weighed one book in each hand, looking between them with a mixture of trepidation and intense curiosity.

Both books had the exact same number of pages-a fact that he verified by checking the last carefully numbered page of each. Setting aside the burgundy volume, Vidarian opened the other and began to gingerly thumb through it. He paused when he reached a richly illuminated page that described a fist-sized translucent globe identical to one that he had seen in the chest.

Setting the book aside after marking it with an attached blue ribbon, he flipped the lid of the chest open again. Nestled into a bed of narrow wood shavings was a pale blue globe, translucent and dotted with an intricate array of identically deep pinholes, that confirmed his suspicions. It lay alongside a narrow box of dark wood that he promptly used to support the reopened blue leather book.

A richly calligraphed diagram marked out the uses and significances of each set of holes on the globe. Following its footnotes, he observed that the pinholes were arrayed in groups of five, most often depicting a diamond shape with a single pinhole in the center. When he had studied the page for several minutes, he felt confident enough to very carefully place his fingers in specific points around the object and lift it from its nest.

Nothing happened, which was good. Vidarian consciously let out his breath, becoming aware that at some point in the procedure he had forgotten to do so. What the book specified next was clear but daunting: that somehow a Nistran should apply their Sense through the sphere, using it, he supposed, as a sort of lens. This would lead to greater focus of the user's ability.

After he had held the globe long enough to make his awkwardly bent fingers complain, Vidarian-following the logic that if he wasn't meant to use it, it wouldn't be in the chest-decided to try it out. He closed his eyes and held the sphere at arm's length in front of him.

As the book had recommended, he took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly. As he did so he imagined that every bit of his breath was going through the sphere, flowing around its perfect shape and sounding off of its pinholes as through finger-holes in a flute.

It took nearly long enough for Vidarian to assume that he lacked the skill to activate it, but, just as he was running out of breath, the sphere began to resonate.

Unlike the ripples that other living creatures generated to his newfound Sense, the rings that came off of the sphere harmonized with Vidarian's own, which he only then realized that he even recognized-his mind automatically filtered them out. There was a pop! , more felt than heard, and suddenly his own rings-his own pattern-had expanded immensely.