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War of the Burning Sky - The Novel
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<blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 5491174" data-attributes="member: 63"><p style="text-align: center"><img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/blog_attachment.php?attachmentid=111&stc=1&d=1262306852" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " style="" /></p><p> </p><p> </p><p> <strong><span style="font-size: 15px">Act Two</span></strong></p><p> </p><p> <strong><span style="font-size: 12px">Chapter Eleven</span></strong></p><p> </p><p> Uselessly Rivereye clung to the horse’s neck and bridle, his short arms barely strong enough to keep him from being flung off into the flames that leapt from the forest brush and the trunks of trees. Smoke and cinders set his eyes to tears, and though the fire did not sear his skin, it smothered him and stole his breath. He had fled Ragesia to get away from horrors like this, and now he was riding, almost intentionally, straight into a living hell.</p><p> </p><p> The young han woman behind him, Crystin, pulled at the horse’s reins, crying out for it to calm down and stop. Only moments earlier an ambush by the Ragesians had spooked the mount, and now in its panic it had turned off the main road onto a trail filled with flames.</p><p> </p><p> “Stop!” Crystin screamed. “Help me!”</p><p> </p><p> Through the haze of heat and concealment of trees, Rivereye saw glimpses of the main road fading away to the left. He dared to sit up and look ahead, to the game trail the horse was following in its panic, but the ground rose and fell and vanished beyond curtains of fire, and he couldn’t see more than twenty feet.</p><p> </p><p> Then the horse crested the rise of its hill and started down a slope, toward a ravine filled with burning brambles.</p><p> </p><p> Rivereye cried out and Crystin yanked at the reins, but the horse started to buck them. Thankfully, Rivereye realized, he didn’t actually <em>want</em> to stay on the damned horse, so he grabbed Crystin’s wrist and threw his weight sideways. The two of them fell away from the horse and into a patch of flaming brush, while the horse plunged screaming into the brambles.</p><p> </p><p> Crystin coughed and flailed as the fire tried to cling to her cloak, but Rivereye rolled to his feet and, without stopping to bat out the flames on his own clothes, he dragged her onto the game trail, which was clear of burning brush. The magic of the elixirs they had drunk earlier kept them from being hurt by the fire, but by the time they managed to smother each other’s clothing they were rather singed.</p><p> </p><p> Rivereye helped Crystin to her feet as best he could; though short by han standards, she was still a foot taller than him. He caught his breath, then took a slow, awed look at the forest, which thrummed like a vast, breathing furnace around them.</p><p> </p><p> Thin trees stretched upward into a roaring canopy inferno, and bursts of ash and cinders swept through the forest beyond them like frenetic, incendiary cloud banks. To his shock, he saw what looked like a bird flying between branches, burning as fatally as everything else. Grass smouldered, and brush crackled as veins of fire burst through the skin of leaves. Everything here should have turned to dust decades ago, but still it burned, refusing to die.</p><p> </p><p> “We’re lost,” Crystin whispered.</p><p> </p><p> She looked so frightened, Rivereye thought. Nervously, he reached up and took her hand, trying to pull her after him.</p><p> </p><p> “Let’s hurry back. We need to get to Torrent and the others before the Ragesians reach us.”</p><p> </p><p> “Wait!” Crystin said. “The eyes of the fire beast. If we flee he will destroy us.”</p><p> </p><p> Crystin’s posture had shifted, from one of fear to that of a woman walking in a dream, but her eyes were horror-stricken. Rivereye followed her gaze to the end of the trail, where the horse had fallen to its death, and beyond. There was nothing there but an endless stretch of rough hills and searing foliage. No animals moved in the brush, and there certainly were no eyes. </p><p> </p><p> “It wants to speak with us,” Crystin said.</p><p> </p><p> “He’ll have to wait for somebody else, then,” Rivereye said. “You’re seeing things. It must be the-”</p><p> </p><p> Thirty feet away down the trail, suddenly their horse, which had vanished into the ravine, snorted and leapt into view, its body on fire and its cries of pain screeching through the air. It whirled, panicking as it tried to put out the flames on its skin, and finally it bolted away, running to its death in the distant brush.</p><p> </p><p> Rivereye shivered, then quickly yanked on Crystin’s hand to get them both out of there. She resisted for a moment, looking back at the burning horse, but followed. </p><p> </p><p> He scurried back along the trail toward the road was, shouting out for Rantle, Torrent, Sorra, and the others, while he told himself to ignore what he’d just seen. He had to tug the young woman with him to get her to move at all. Ash and clouds of cinders in the air made it hard to see beyond a few dozen feet, but he heard people calling for him and he yelled back to them.</p><p> </p><p> At the sound of others’ voices, Crystin seemed to snap out of her trance, and she hurried alongside him of her own volition. When they reached the top of the hill, Rivereye spotted almost the entire group standing at the edge of the old Innenotdar highway, where no flaming brush grew. What he had heard had not been them calling out back to him, but rather a vicious argument. </p><p> </p><p> Diogenes, the mage who had come with Rantle, shouted at Torrent, the two of them gesturing in the direction they had come from. Neither of them had a horse any more. The Ragesian knight sat on the one remaining horse, and he checked his armor and gear while casually holding the older mage, Crystin’s father, so the unconscious man wouldn’t fall off the saddle. He glanced up the road, as if waiting for the others, Rantle and Sorra, to arrive.</p><p> </p><p> “Father,” Crystin called out.</p><p> </p><p> The group looked up as Crystin pushed her way through flaming branches to reach her father. Rivereye cast a look backward, then followed. </p><p> </p><p> “You,” Torrent said, seeing him. “Oh thank you, gods. Do you still have the case?”</p><p> </p><p> Rivereye, reminded why he was on this trip, nodded and turned his back to reveal the sealed Ragesian documents in his pack.</p><p> </p><p> “Are we staying here?” Rivereye said.</p><p> </p><p> “No,” said Diogenes. He pointed southward. “It would be naïve to think the Ragesians can’t figure out how to follow us. If we stay on the road they’ll run us down. We’re going to have to head into the forest.”</p><p> </p><p> “To a watery hell with the rags,” Torrent said. “We’re not leaving them yet.”</p><p> </p><p> Diogenes spun away in a huff. He started picking through various tokens and amulets at his belt with one hand, while he kept the other tucked into his pocket. He still had an arrow stuck in that arm.</p><p> </p><p> “Is he alright?” Rivereye asked quietly.</p><p> </p><p> “Hm?” Torrent seemed lost in thought.</p><p> </p><p> Rivereye looked down. He should have stayed in the palace, he thought. It was frightening there these days, but he doubted <em>there</em> was on fire. The resistance in Ragos had tried to recruit him to assassinate one of the inquisitors; he would have definitely been killed in retaliation, but being a famous dead hero was better than being a charcoal biscuit.</p><p> </p><p> The forest blasted them with its dry breath for a moment, and then the Ragesian knight who Rantle had brought along – his last name was Danava, was all Rivereye could recall – spoke up.</p><p> </p><p> “Come hear this. The girl says there’s something in the woods.”</p><p> </p><p> Torrent and Diogenes went to hear Crystin’s tale of seeing eyes in the forest, leaving Rivereye alone. He stood at the edge of the group, tapping his foot and looking up the road for Ragesian forces, and down as well, for whatever demons might be living here.</p><p> </p><p> “Rivereye?” Torrent said.</p><p> </p><p> He blinked. “What?”</p><p> </p><p> “Did you see this too?”</p><p> </p><p> “No,” he shrugged. “Or maybe? This place is horrifying. I didn’t see anything, but where better for monsters to live than in a cursed forest?”</p><p> </p><p> Diogenes said, “The girl is probably just spooked, but it’s better not to assume we’re safe. Another reason why I’m not all that eager to linger.”</p><p> </p><p> “I believe her,” said the Ragesian knight. “When we first saw her, it was like she knew we were coming. Her expression . . . she’s like a seer.”</p><p> </p><p> “Her name is Crystin,” Rivereye said. “Even if there is something out there, it didn’t come close. It said it just wanted to talk to someone, so I thought maybe it could talk to one of you.”</p><p> </p><p> “Brilliant teamwork,” Diogenes said. “Lure the monster to us.” </p><p> </p><p> The sound of horse hooves reached them then, and Rivereye looked up the road where they had come from. Rantle appeared a hundred feet away, riding in through a bank of ashes, alone atop his horse, his hands, shirt, and one leg covered in blood, with a bandage around his thigh. He rode up and reined his horse to a stop beside them. Briefly he seemed like he was about to look back over his shoulder, but instead sneered and sighed. Rivereye knew what had happened before Rantle said anything.</p><p> </p><p> “Sorra’s dead.” There was none of his normal cockiness in his voice.</p><p> </p><p> “Poor girl,” Torrent said. “Are you-?”</p><p> </p><p> “I’m fine,” Rantle said. “We need to go.”</p><p> </p><p> Everyone looked around in uncertainty.</p><p> </p><p> Rivereye said, “Our horse ran off into the woods, on fire.”</p><p> </p><p> “The rags shot ours out from under us,” Torrent said, “and we don’t have enough elixir to spare even if we had grabbed theirs.”</p><p> </p><p> Diogenes said, “We will if we sit around and wait for them to come and kill more of us. Rantle, let the jispin and the girl use your horse.”</p><p> </p><p> Rantle dismounted and met Rivereye’s gaze. The man cocked his head in the direction of the horse, then limped over to talk with the others. Rivereye considered the horse warily, wondering if this one would turn suicidal too, and decided to wait.</p><p> </p><p> Crystin helped her father, who was now coming awake, from one horse to the other. A discussion began between the rest of the group, but Rivereye was too overwhelmed by his surroundings to pay attention.</p><p> </p><p> “The ash is making his cough worse,” Crystin said.</p><p> </p><p> The old man was hacking violently. The sound was terrible, and Rivereye cringed.</p><p> </p><p> “Is he-? What’s his name? Is he alright?”</p><p> </p><p> “His name is Haddin,” she said. “I need to tell you-”</p><p> </p><p> Haddin managed to get his coughing under control and shook his daughter’s hand away. He looked around, spat, and glared at his daughter, who suddenly cast her eyes downward and shut her mouth.</p><p> </p><p> “You brought me into the forest? How could you disobey me?”</p><p> </p><p> “There are Ragesians following us,” Rivereye said, gawking. “You’re lucky we got here when we did.”</p><p> </p><p> “Better to die fighting in my home than burn to de-”</p><p> </p><p> Haddin covered his mouth as he coughed. He glared at Rivereye, then looked up the road to the entrance of the fire forest. Intermittently visible through ash and waves of heat, a small cluster of Ragesian cavalry had gathered hundreds of feet away. There were at least a half dozen of them, but they looked like they were waiting now. Rivereye wondered how hard it was to create the magic necessary to enter the fire forest.</p><p> </p><p style="text-align: center">* * *</p><p> </p><p> Guthwulf came upon the scene a carefully-planned few minutes after the fighting was over.</p><p> </p><p> His subordinate, the herethim Inquisitor Boreus, had just claimed the soul of the Khabese archer with the sword stuck through him – one of the drawbacks of discretion was missing out on the first pickings – and now the hulking man stood and faced him.</p><p> </p><p> “He saw them each drink some elixir before they fled for the forest,” Boreus said. “My target and his daughter went with them.”</p><p> </p><p> Guthwulf scrunched his mouth to one side as he considered the situation. He had a good dozen men on horses left, plus the demon he had brought with him from Ragos, and though the fugitives had killed – he counted the corpses now strewn in the distance – five warriors, plus the two Khabese trackers, the quarry were low on horses. He just had to make sure they couldn’t get in too far and manage to hide.</p><p> </p><p> “I’m entrusting you with recovering the case,” Guthwulf said. “Haddin is a distant second goal. They didn’t take all his research, did they?”</p><p> </p><p> Boreus shook his head.</p><p> </p><p> “Good,” Guthwulf said. “Here, take my demon, and go track them down. I’ll go see what the old man left behind.”</p><p> </p><p> Boreus gulped and looked down at the twisted woman prowling servilely at Guthwulf’s side, sniffing in the ash.</p><p> </p><p> “You look pale,” Guthwulf said. He patted Boreus on the back and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Trust me, she’s harmless if you keep her fed.”</p><p> </p><p> “How are we to follow into the fire forest?” Boreus asked.</p><p> </p><p> Guthwulf pondered a moment, then pointed at the dead han woman who lay in an ashy pool of blood, an arrow wound in her neck. </p><p> </p><p> “She was with them. She drank this elixir?”</p><p> </p><p> “I believe so,” Boreus said.</p><p> </p><p> Guthwulf looked at her closely and willed his mask to reveal the strands of magic still in her corpse. He could tell she had drawn mana recently before her death, but nothing worth taking. Her blood, however, was still warm with the elixir. Guthwulf knelt beside her and felt for the artery in her neck.</p><p> </p><p> “Have six of your men get out drinking cups,” he said.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="RangerWickett, post: 5491174, member: 63"] [center][IMG]http://www.enworld.org/forum/blog_attachment.php?attachmentid=111&stc=1&d=1262306852[/IMG][/CENTER] [B][SIZE=4]Act Two[/SIZE][/B] [B][SIZE=3]Chapter Eleven[/SIZE][/B][SIZE=3][/size] Uselessly Rivereye clung to the horse’s neck and bridle, his short arms barely strong enough to keep him from being flung off into the flames that leapt from the forest brush and the trunks of trees. Smoke and cinders set his eyes to tears, and though the fire did not sear his skin, it smothered him and stole his breath. He had fled Ragesia to get away from horrors like this, and now he was riding, almost intentionally, straight into a living hell. The young han woman behind him, Crystin, pulled at the horse’s reins, crying out for it to calm down and stop. Only moments earlier an ambush by the Ragesians had spooked the mount, and now in its panic it had turned off the main road onto a trail filled with flames. “Stop!” Crystin screamed. “Help me!” Through the haze of heat and concealment of trees, Rivereye saw glimpses of the main road fading away to the left. He dared to sit up and look ahead, to the game trail the horse was following in its panic, but the ground rose and fell and vanished beyond curtains of fire, and he couldn’t see more than twenty feet. Then the horse crested the rise of its hill and started down a slope, toward a ravine filled with burning brambles. Rivereye cried out and Crystin yanked at the reins, but the horse started to buck them. Thankfully, Rivereye realized, he didn’t actually [I]want[/I] to stay on the damned horse, so he grabbed Crystin’s wrist and threw his weight sideways. The two of them fell away from the horse and into a patch of flaming brush, while the horse plunged screaming into the brambles. Crystin coughed and flailed as the fire tried to cling to her cloak, but Rivereye rolled to his feet and, without stopping to bat out the flames on his own clothes, he dragged her onto the game trail, which was clear of burning brush. The magic of the elixirs they had drunk earlier kept them from being hurt by the fire, but by the time they managed to smother each other’s clothing they were rather singed. Rivereye helped Crystin to her feet as best he could; though short by han standards, she was still a foot taller than him. He caught his breath, then took a slow, awed look at the forest, which thrummed like a vast, breathing furnace around them. Thin trees stretched upward into a roaring canopy inferno, and bursts of ash and cinders swept through the forest beyond them like frenetic, incendiary cloud banks. To his shock, he saw what looked like a bird flying between branches, burning as fatally as everything else. Grass smouldered, and brush crackled as veins of fire burst through the skin of leaves. Everything here should have turned to dust decades ago, but still it burned, refusing to die. “We’re lost,” Crystin whispered. She looked so frightened, Rivereye thought. Nervously, he reached up and took her hand, trying to pull her after him. “Let’s hurry back. We need to get to Torrent and the others before the Ragesians reach us.” “Wait!” Crystin said. “The eyes of the fire beast. If we flee he will destroy us.” Crystin’s posture had shifted, from one of fear to that of a woman walking in a dream, but her eyes were horror-stricken. Rivereye followed her gaze to the end of the trail, where the horse had fallen to its death, and beyond. There was nothing there but an endless stretch of rough hills and searing foliage. No animals moved in the brush, and there certainly were no eyes. “It wants to speak with us,” Crystin said. “He’ll have to wait for somebody else, then,” Rivereye said. “You’re seeing things. It must be the-” Thirty feet away down the trail, suddenly their horse, which had vanished into the ravine, snorted and leapt into view, its body on fire and its cries of pain screeching through the air. It whirled, panicking as it tried to put out the flames on its skin, and finally it bolted away, running to its death in the distant brush. Rivereye shivered, then quickly yanked on Crystin’s hand to get them both out of there. She resisted for a moment, looking back at the burning horse, but followed. He scurried back along the trail toward the road was, shouting out for Rantle, Torrent, Sorra, and the others, while he told himself to ignore what he’d just seen. He had to tug the young woman with him to get her to move at all. Ash and clouds of cinders in the air made it hard to see beyond a few dozen feet, but he heard people calling for him and he yelled back to them. At the sound of others’ voices, Crystin seemed to snap out of her trance, and she hurried alongside him of her own volition. When they reached the top of the hill, Rivereye spotted almost the entire group standing at the edge of the old Innenotdar highway, where no flaming brush grew. What he had heard had not been them calling out back to him, but rather a vicious argument. Diogenes, the mage who had come with Rantle, shouted at Torrent, the two of them gesturing in the direction they had come from. Neither of them had a horse any more. The Ragesian knight sat on the one remaining horse, and he checked his armor and gear while casually holding the older mage, Crystin’s father, so the unconscious man wouldn’t fall off the saddle. He glanced up the road, as if waiting for the others, Rantle and Sorra, to arrive. “Father,” Crystin called out. The group looked up as Crystin pushed her way through flaming branches to reach her father. Rivereye cast a look backward, then followed. “You,” Torrent said, seeing him. “Oh thank you, gods. Do you still have the case?” Rivereye, reminded why he was on this trip, nodded and turned his back to reveal the sealed Ragesian documents in his pack. “Are we staying here?” Rivereye said. “No,” said Diogenes. He pointed southward. “It would be naïve to think the Ragesians can’t figure out how to follow us. If we stay on the road they’ll run us down. We’re going to have to head into the forest.” “To a watery hell with the rags,” Torrent said. “We’re not leaving them yet.” Diogenes spun away in a huff. He started picking through various tokens and amulets at his belt with one hand, while he kept the other tucked into his pocket. He still had an arrow stuck in that arm. “Is he alright?” Rivereye asked quietly. “Hm?” Torrent seemed lost in thought. Rivereye looked down. He should have stayed in the palace, he thought. It was frightening there these days, but he doubted [I]there[/I] was on fire. The resistance in Ragos had tried to recruit him to assassinate one of the inquisitors; he would have definitely been killed in retaliation, but being a famous dead hero was better than being a charcoal biscuit. The forest blasted them with its dry breath for a moment, and then the Ragesian knight who Rantle had brought along – his last name was Danava, was all Rivereye could recall – spoke up. “Come hear this. The girl says there’s something in the woods.” Torrent and Diogenes went to hear Crystin’s tale of seeing eyes in the forest, leaving Rivereye alone. He stood at the edge of the group, tapping his foot and looking up the road for Ragesian forces, and down as well, for whatever demons might be living here. “Rivereye?” Torrent said. He blinked. “What?” “Did you see this too?” “No,” he shrugged. “Or maybe? This place is horrifying. I didn’t see anything, but where better for monsters to live than in a cursed forest?” Diogenes said, “The girl is probably just spooked, but it’s better not to assume we’re safe. Another reason why I’m not all that eager to linger.” “I believe her,” said the Ragesian knight. “When we first saw her, it was like she knew we were coming. Her expression . . . she’s like a seer.” “Her name is Crystin,” Rivereye said. “Even if there is something out there, it didn’t come close. It said it just wanted to talk to someone, so I thought maybe it could talk to one of you.” “Brilliant teamwork,” Diogenes said. “Lure the monster to us.” The sound of horse hooves reached them then, and Rivereye looked up the road where they had come from. Rantle appeared a hundred feet away, riding in through a bank of ashes, alone atop his horse, his hands, shirt, and one leg covered in blood, with a bandage around his thigh. He rode up and reined his horse to a stop beside them. Briefly he seemed like he was about to look back over his shoulder, but instead sneered and sighed. Rivereye knew what had happened before Rantle said anything. “Sorra’s dead.” There was none of his normal cockiness in his voice. “Poor girl,” Torrent said. “Are you-?” “I’m fine,” Rantle said. “We need to go.” Everyone looked around in uncertainty. Rivereye said, “Our horse ran off into the woods, on fire.” “The rags shot ours out from under us,” Torrent said, “and we don’t have enough elixir to spare even if we had grabbed theirs.” Diogenes said, “We will if we sit around and wait for them to come and kill more of us. Rantle, let the jispin and the girl use your horse.” Rantle dismounted and met Rivereye’s gaze. The man cocked his head in the direction of the horse, then limped over to talk with the others. Rivereye considered the horse warily, wondering if this one would turn suicidal too, and decided to wait. Crystin helped her father, who was now coming awake, from one horse to the other. A discussion began between the rest of the group, but Rivereye was too overwhelmed by his surroundings to pay attention. “The ash is making his cough worse,” Crystin said. The old man was hacking violently. The sound was terrible, and Rivereye cringed. “Is he-? What’s his name? Is he alright?” “His name is Haddin,” she said. “I need to tell you-” Haddin managed to get his coughing under control and shook his daughter’s hand away. He looked around, spat, and glared at his daughter, who suddenly cast her eyes downward and shut her mouth. “You brought me into the forest? How could you disobey me?” “There are Ragesians following us,” Rivereye said, gawking. “You’re lucky we got here when we did.” “Better to die fighting in my home than burn to de-” Haddin covered his mouth as he coughed. He glared at Rivereye, then looked up the road to the entrance of the fire forest. Intermittently visible through ash and waves of heat, a small cluster of Ragesian cavalry had gathered hundreds of feet away. There were at least a half dozen of them, but they looked like they were waiting now. Rivereye wondered how hard it was to create the magic necessary to enter the fire forest. [CENTER]* * *[/CENTER] Guthwulf came upon the scene a carefully-planned few minutes after the fighting was over. His subordinate, the herethim Inquisitor Boreus, had just claimed the soul of the Khabese archer with the sword stuck through him – one of the drawbacks of discretion was missing out on the first pickings – and now the hulking man stood and faced him. “He saw them each drink some elixir before they fled for the forest,” Boreus said. “My target and his daughter went with them.” Guthwulf scrunched his mouth to one side as he considered the situation. He had a good dozen men on horses left, plus the demon he had brought with him from Ragos, and though the fugitives had killed – he counted the corpses now strewn in the distance – five warriors, plus the two Khabese trackers, the quarry were low on horses. He just had to make sure they couldn’t get in too far and manage to hide. “I’m entrusting you with recovering the case,” Guthwulf said. “Haddin is a distant second goal. They didn’t take all his research, did they?” Boreus shook his head. “Good,” Guthwulf said. “Here, take my demon, and go track them down. I’ll go see what the old man left behind.” Boreus gulped and looked down at the twisted woman prowling servilely at Guthwulf’s side, sniffing in the ash. “You look pale,” Guthwulf said. He patted Boreus on the back and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Trust me, she’s harmless if you keep her fed.” “How are we to follow into the fire forest?” Boreus asked. Guthwulf pondered a moment, then pointed at the dead han woman who lay in an ashy pool of blood, an arrow wound in her neck. “She was with them. She drank this elixir?” “I believe so,” Boreus said. Guthwulf looked at her closely and willed his mask to reveal the strands of magic still in her corpse. He could tell she had drawn mana recently before her death, but nothing worth taking. Her blood, however, was still warm with the elixir. Guthwulf knelt beside her and felt for the artery in her neck. “Have six of your men get out drinking cups,” he said. [/QUOTE]
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