Morgan Rice: A Realm of Shadows

Still, Kyra, for the first time in as long as she could remember, felt a wave of self-doubt overwhelm her. Was she really strong enough to do this? To go to Marda, a place even her father’s men feared to venture? She felt a battle raging within her own soul. Everything inside her screamed that to go to Marda would be to go to her death. And she did not want to die.

Kyra tried to force herself to be strong, not to veer from the path. She knew this was a journey she had to take, and she knew she could not shy away from what was demanded of her. She tried to push from her mind the horrors that awaited her on the far side of the Flames. A nation of trolls. Volcanoes, lava, ash. A nation of evil, of sorcery. Unimaginable creatures and monsters. She tried not to recall the stories she had heard as a child. A place where people tore each other apart for fun, led by the demonic leader Vesuvius. A nation that lived for blood, for cruelty.

They dipped down beneath the clouds for a moment, and Kyra glanced down and saw, far below, that they were passing over the northeastern corner of Escalon. Her heart leapt as she began to recognize the countryside: Volis. There were the hills of her hometown, once so beautiful, now a scab of what it once was. Her heart fell at the sight. There in the distance lay her father’s stronghold, the fort, all now in ruins. It was a great heap of rubble, scattered with untended corpses sprawled in unnatural positions, visible even from here, looking up at the sky as if to ask Kyra how she could have let this happen to them.

Kyra shut her eyes and tried to push the image from her mind – yet she could not. It was too hard to just fly over this place that had once meant so much to her. She looked up toward the horizon, toward Marda, and she knew she should continue on, but something inside her could not bring herself to just pass over her hometown. She had to stop and see it for herself before she left Escalon, on what might be her final journey.

Kyra directed Theon to dive down, and she could feel him resisting – as if he, too, felt driven to stick with their mission and head to Marda. Reluctantly, though, he gave in.

They dove and landed in the center of what was once Volis, once a bustling stronghold filled with life – children, dance, song, smells of food, her father’s proud warriors strutting to and fro. Kyra’s breath caught as she dismounted and walked. She let out an involuntary cry. There was nothing here now. Just rubble and oppressive silence, broken only by the sound of Theon’s heavy breathing, of his scraping the ground with his talons, as if he himself were enraged, as if eager to leave. She could not blame him: this town was now a tomb.

Gravel crunched beneath Kyra’s boots as she slowly walked through the place, a gust of wind ripping through from the scorched plains surrounding the fort. She looked everywhere, needing to see, yet also needing to look away: it was like a nightmare. There was Shopkeepers Row, now nothing but a long pile of charred rubble; on her other side was the armory, now completely destroyed, a heap of stone, its front gate caved in. Before her, the great, towering fort, where her father had held so many feasts, where she herself had lived, now lay as a ruin, but a few walls left standing. Its gate was open, gaping, as if inviting the world to enter and see what it had once been.

As she walked, her heart pounding in her chest, Kyra knew she needed to see this, needed to see what become of her people in order to feel a sense of resolution. As much as she didn’t want to, Kyra forced herself to look, to take it all in. She saw bodies of women and children, all lying dead in the streets, bodies twisted in unnatural positions. She saw a dozen of her father’s men, Vidar in their center, all lying dead, face first by the castle’s gate. She could see from the way they held their swords that they had all put up a fight, made a stand here. She shook her head in admiration: these brave men had fought fearlessly, despite the odds, facing off against an army.

Her eyes watered at the sight. They were an inspiration to her. They died for the revolution that she had sparked, and as she looked at them, she resolved that their deaths not be in vain.

Kyra’s heart broke as she continued to walk, the signs of death all around her. What monsters could have done this? She looked closely and saw the huge claw marks on the bodies, and she knew this to be a troll attack. It was a sneak glimpse of what awaited her on the other side of the Flames.

Kyra slowly made her way toward her old fort. She passed through the destroyed doorway and entered the remnants of the building, eager to see this place she had once inhabited, this place she had been so sure would never fall.

It was cool in here, swirling with dust, unnaturally damp, as if spirits hung in the air. It felt conspicuously abandoned, felt as if she were visiting some distorted version of her past. It was as if her childhood memories had been destroyed and replaced.

Kyra passed what remained of a gaping stairway, now shattered in half, unable to ascend. She continued walking, straight ahead, in a daze, and entered what remained of her father’s Great Hall, now nothing more than a pile of rubble. She passed behind a crack in the stone wall and found the entrance, still hidden, to her father’s Chamber of Heroes.

Kyra entered and as she did, she stood there, numb. This small, hidden chamber, to her great relief, had been preserved. It was here where she had spent so many of her childhood days, dreaming, yearning, craving to be a warrior. There, to her relief, were the sculptures of the great warriors, still standing, the ones that had spurred her imagination as a child, had spurred her to want to achieve greatness. Sunlight poured in through gaps in the walls, high up, shining down on the sarcophagi of her ancestors. The outlines of their bodies lay face up in the stone, facing up proudly to the sky, staring into the heavens, eyes wide, as if even death held no fear for them. They were supposed to reside here for thousands of years. This room was supposed to stand the test of time.

“A powerful thing, to face our own mortality.”

Kyra spun, raising her staff, tense, ready for battle, shocked that someone else was alive here, in the room with her.

But she relaxed when she recognized who it was. Softis the Wise. Volis’s historian.

It felt so good to see an old face. There he stood, but feet away, looking older than ever. He had always looked old, but now he looked ancient. He stood hunched over in his robe, leaning on his staff, looking, if possible, even older than when she had left him.

“Softis.”

She rushed forward, embracing him, and he hugged her back with his weak grip. It was like having a piece of her childhood restored to her once again.

“You survived,” she said with a rush of relief, wiping away tears with the back of her hand.

He nodded, smiling weakly.

“My fate,” he replied, his voice ancient and raspy, “my blessing and my curse. To survive life at every turn. Long after everyone I have known and loved is dead.”

He sighed.

“They killed them all,” he continued, shaking his head, looking to the floor with sadness. “Women and children, young and old, strong and lame. They killed all that remained of this fort.”

“Trolls?” she asked warily, almost afraid to ask.

He nodded back solemnly.

“Your father could not have anticipated this,” he replied. “Now all that we have left, ironically, are these tombs.”

Softis stepped forward, limping through the room, running his hand along the bronze sculptures, along the stone sarcophagi.

“Great men they were,” he said. “Men to look up to. Men whose problems were as pressing in their times as ours. They were men of valor. Men we must remember always.”