Erin Hoffman - Sword of Fire and Sea

“A peace in which the strong prey upon the weak, and power is relegated to a chosen few.”

// She fills your head with lies! //

“So far,” Vidarian said, “I don't think she's lied to me yet.”

“Vidarian,” Ruby was calling-and the edge in her voice quickened Vidarian's pulse. He ran toward the Destiny , where Ruby bent over the rim of the craft. Within, Ariadel was trembling, her skin sickeningly pale. “She's fading,” Ruby said, pain lacing her voice. “It takes them so fast. I'm sorry, Vidarian.”

His jaw tightened. “I need to get to the gate.” He looked up at Ruby, and she nodded, wordless.

They emptied the craft of all its contents save Ariadel and her blankets, lightening it enough to lift between them like a large gurney. Vidarian buckled his sword at his side, stowed in the craft for flight. While they worked, the gryphons were circled in intense conference of some kind, a passionate one punctuated often by clacking beaks and flared wings. When Ruby and Vidarian lifted the craft, Vidarian pointed them toward the east, where the sapphires told him the gate waited. He expected Thalnarra to follow, expected the burst of renewed fury that was sure to come with her-but the gryphons only watched him, and when they did follow, it was at a distance, peaceful but ominous.

At the forest's edge the trees thinned and disappeared entirely into a golden plain that ran in undulating hills to the horizon. This stand of trees was deceptively small, large for a small human standing inside it, but a pocket seen from the air-one that had grown up around the ancient stones of the Great Gate.

The wild land that had grown up here in centuries of civilization's absence had consumed almost everything save the gate. Stacked sandstone originally shaped flat and precise had been worn down by wind and rain at all its edges, and dry sun-loving creepers wrapped its base to the height of Vidarian's eye. The gate itself-an empty thing, a frame only-extended thrice the height of a gryphon, and was twice as wide. The remnants of stone foundations littered the ground a respectful distance away, and the ground at their feet was once paved with clay bricks, but few remained to fight the invading grasses.

Vidarian and Ruby carried Ariadel to the gate's threshold, and as they drew closer to it the sapphires increased their constant rumble of satisfaction and anticipation. By the strain written across Ruby's face Vidarian knew the red gems treated her similarly. When they gently lowered the Destiny to the ground, Ariadel's eyes fluttered open, focusing clearly for the first time in days. Vidarian's fledgling fire sense felt hers questing outward, awakened by the sudden flash and rumble of the rubies and sapphires. He knelt at her side immediately, taking one of her hands in both of his. From behind them, he heard Thalnarra's hiss of indrawn breath.

When Ariadel's own fire sense touched his, she flared up in his awareness, for a split second bright and strong as she had been the day they first met. But it was a flash, momentary only, collapsing even as it reached the edges of her faltering attention. “Where are we?” With their senses entwined, he could feel the plague raging within her, the elements that made her at war with each other. He knew how much each word cost her.

“We're at the gate,” he said softly, and felt the jump in her awareness as she comprehended his words. She tried to lift her head, but only for a moment-as her strength fled, so too did her sense, and she dropped away from his mind. He recklessly threw himself after her, nearly reaching out with the water magic that longed to break free inside him. With a grasp of will that darkened his vision for a split second, he held it back, to the fury of the still growling sapphires. He closed his eyes, mastering them, snarling inside his mind, then brushed his thumbs across her fingers and said, “I'm going to open it.”

With a force that would have thrown her to her feet had she the strength, Ariadel writhed in the flight craft, every fiber of her being shouting resistance. When her energy fled again, she collapsed back, again winking out of his awareness-then slowly flickering, fighting back up again. “The gate…” she trembled as she fought to get the words out, “…must…not…be opened!” Her body had nothing left, had burned through its reserves in their passage to the gate, yet in the depths of her soul's urgency was the strength to fight.

Vidarian was quiet for a long moment, consumed by the sound of her breathing-knowing as he had never known any other truth that he was not capable of hearing it cease. “Ariadel,” he said finally, “you'll die.”

“If I die, I die in a world I understand, by the teachings that have shaped my entire life. You don't know what you're asking me for,” she said. Even as the strength had welled up within her, now it fled, leaving her a swiftly collapsing shell.

“I'm asking you to live,” he said.

“Not at this price,” she whispered. “No one life is worth this price.”

“You don't…!” He stopped himself and breathed, swallowing the flash of sudden anger, warned by the renewed pulsation of the storm sapphires. “You don't know the price,” he said. “We only know what we've been told. I know that this is right.”

Her eyes were fading, exhaustion settling across her features. She shook her head as her eyes drooped. “I can't be this,” she said, her eyes pleading for understanding he couldn't find in himself. “You have to let me go.” And then her eyes shut, her consciousness pouring through his Sense's grasp, flowing down into darkness.

“How can you ask me to let you die?” he whispered. And a whisper in his mind answered-

What are gods for, Vidarian, if not for cruel choices?

Her spitefulness bounced harmlessly off of the wall of his grief. “It wasn't the Quest ,” he choked, seizing Ariadel's hands in his, “it was you.” He looked up and into Ruby's ashen face. “I'm losing her!” He lifted her in his arms and stood, turning toward the gate.

// I can't let you do that, Vidarian. // Thalnarra's voice was quiet smoke in his mind.

He turned back.

// We came to support you , // the gryphoness said, indicating the gryphons behind her. // But not in making catastrophic decisions. I did not aid you so that you could do this! //

“But you aided me,” Vidarian said. “And for that I thank you.” As gently as he had ever moved in his life, he laid Ariadel in the blankets again. Her pulse fluttered under his hand, time escaping. He stood, swift, and drew his sword.

The gryphons behind Thalnarra hissed in promised menace, but she flicked her beak, warning them back. // Do you know what you're doing? // she asked.

Her simple question, untouched by emotion, nearly undid his resolve. As Ariadel had writhed under the weight of her priestesshood, so too did he falter under the specters of his father, his mother, his legacy. Regardless of its outcome, he knew his family's dynasty to have ended here, the thought of which threatened to still his hand. “What I have to,” he said only.

// If you think that I'll hold back out of pity, you're wrong , // she warned.

“I'd be insulted if you did.”

She leapt at him, claws outstretched, lashing out with a whip of searing fire energy. Vidarian fell to one side, half canniness and half clumsiness, stunned by the sudden leap. He spun away from her claws, but yelled as the flames washed over him, searing his face. Had he been in the center of the fire lash, he'd no longer be standing.