Chris Evans - A Darkness Forged in Fire

The image in the pool pulled back, revealing more. There was a small fortress on a hill, vaguely familiar to him. Power flowed from Her to the pool and the image grew larger as She searched for something there. The wizard gasped as Her magic suddenly washed over him. He struggled to keep control and remember why he was here, knowing he was slowly losing the fight as the magic of Her forest wreaked havoc with his mind.

The shooting star blazed across the sky above the small fort, then stopped, hanging there like a red sun. The brilliance of its light grew until the ichor turned completely crimson. And then the light was gone and no sign of the star remained, but something had changed.

Slowly, silently, he inched out of his hiding place and crept along the ground toward the thing he had come for. Every step was a cold needle in his paws, but there, just a foot away, lay one of the silver Wolf Oak's obsidian-shelled acorns. It was close, but he needed a distraction.

He concentrated, trying to draw magic from the foul power that coursed around him. Wincing with pain, he sifted it in his mind until he was able to cleanse enough to perform one small spell. It would have to do.

He focused his thoughts on a tree on the other side of the clearing, and for a moment it looked more like what it should have been; brown and green and healthy. The other trees attacked it at once, flailing and stabbing it in a flurry of branches. The wizard lunged, grabbing the acorn between his paws and stuffing it into his mouth. Cold lightning flashed through his head, but he managed to scamper back behind a rock before spitting the acorn out into his paws where it steamed in the air.

The mountain shuddered again, a deep, mournful sound. Rock sundered. Chasms opened deep into the mountain's core, laying bare its ancient past. Flames of black frost leaped from the darkness and high into the night sky. Her forest dug ever deeper, delving more than rock, reaching back to an age long past. Primal, red-throated roars not heard for hundreds of years filled the air, and they were hungry. Another voice rose above them, and the bit of the wizard that remained in control shivered at the words.

You shall feed, too, She told them. Roots pulled misshapen creatures from the depths. They spilled forth in black heaps, a shambling mass of crooked limbs and milky white eyes.

Go out in this world as you once did. Gather to me those that bear my mark. Those others that would harm My realm…destroy.

Every fiber in his body told him to run while his luck held, but he had to risk one last look in the pool. Like the Great Forest, tongues of frost fire were engulfing the fortress on the hill, burning everything. Her trees breached the earth, their roots clawing, searching for the star that had fallen there.

Enough. He stuffed the acorn back in his mouth and ran for his life.

The pain was overwhelming, but he had to get back down the mountain with his prize. Every leap took him further away from this infernal place and closer to the one who now had a chance to stop Her.

When he reached the bottom of the mountain he found a nearby cave and crawled into it, spitting the acorn out and collapsing in a heap, his body transforming to that of an elf again. He let the pain and exhaustion take him, drifting into unconsciousness with the satisfaction of knowing he had succeeded in the first part of his task. When he was fully recovered he would be able to deliver the prize in person.

High up on the mountain, the Shadow Monarch stood watching. She saw the elf-wizard collapse in the cave. Creatures stood beside Her, waiting. Some still bore the look of elves, though terribly twisted. They waited for the command to tear the wizard to shreds. The command did not come. Instead, the Shadow Monarch smiled.

Worlds shouldn't scream, but this one would.

A sentry leaned against an abandoned bullock cart, propping his musket against a shattered wheel. The faded painted letters on the side of the cart spelled out 35 TH foot-calahrian imperial army, not that he could read them, not that he cared. He took a quick glance around the other side of the cart and saw nothing, just a few dots of orange in the night where lanterns burned along the fortress walls. It was as run-down as the cart. Only in darkness did it still look fortlike, and even then the ragged line of lanterns showed where parts of the walls had collapsed through time and neglect.

He pushed his shako back on his head and ran a sleeve across his sweaty brow while undoing the top button of his uniform. You could poach an egg in this heat, he figured, then felt sick at the thought. There was a time when he'd scarf down a horse steak barely seared on the fire and ask for seconds, but the heat of this place robbed a man of appetite, and not just for food.

"Honor guard my arse," he grumbled to himself, pulling a small carved pipe and leather pouch of tobacco from a jacket pocket. "So the last Viceroy was daft enough to get himself killed here, so what? What honor do they think we're guarding now?" he asked, knowing he would not get a satisfactory answer, even if he wasn't just talking to himself. It was like that in the army. Ask away, the sergeants said, but you'll never like the answer. Made a soldier think there was little future in thinking much at all.

"Shoulda had a better guard two years ago, might have done him some good then," he said, chuckling at his own joke. He tamped a thick wad of leaf into the bowl of the pipe with his thumb then with his left hand patted his uniform for his flint and tinder box. He stole another look back up at the fortress. He had ten minutes, fifteen at the most, before the sergeant would come down to check on him. Time enough for a good smoke, if only he could find the flint. His hand fell on something hard and square in a pocket and he smiled. Pulling out the tinder box, he quickly slipped the piece of flint from inside and was about to strike it when a glitter in the sky made him stop. He looked up into a fiery light that roared into being directly above the fort.

He screamed, dropping the flint and throwing an arm across his eyes. Pure, red light radiated in every direction and then just as quickly, was gone. Slowly, he let his arm drop, blinking to get his vision back.

Everything looked the same as before. The fort still stood, the lanterns marking its walls. Had it been a spell? He patted himself all over and found that he felt the same, too. He remembered the flint and bent over to look for it. Was that frost?

He leaned closer, reaching down with his hand. The air felt cool on his fingertips nearer to the ground.

The grass shriveled before his eyes as the earth cracked like a plate thrown to the floor. Something black burst through the earth and latched on to his wrist. He tried to fall backward, but he couldn't break free of the icy grip. A shout froze in his throat as a dark shape emerged from the ground in front of him. Its face was a jagged puzzle of shadow, but something about it looked familiar.

"…V-viceroy?" he managed, his breath a pale mist.

The thing that held him let go of his wrist and grabbed him by the throat, lifting him up until his boots no longer touched the ground. The small pipe and tinder box fell to the dirt and were immediately covered in a cold, black frost.

"Not anymore," Her Emissary said, letting go of the dead body and moving toward the dots of orange light up the hill. A forest, of a kind, began to grow in its wake.

It began to hunt.

There were many places you didn't want to be in the middle of summer in the sweltering humidity of high noon on the southern coast of Elfkyna. The center of the bazaar of Port Ghamjal topped the list. Heat oozed through the streets like wet mortar, filling every crack and crevice and slowing the pace of life to a crawl.