Not even the world itself was constant at this point. Force surged through the rock and splintered the ground, and the very air thrummed with the vibrato of a dying god's throes. Electricity came and went in the sky. The winds themselves stirred with clashing zephyrs of nourishment and decay, infused with the heavy magic that propagated from the mountain's peak.
Shadow ran with all the ferocity of a thousand storms, dodging slabs of stone that cleft from the earth's face and tumbled into his path. He could not trust even a single step, the ground being as erratic as it was. Ahead, a black-coated mutt dashed swiftly, and past that, a group of heroes made their frantic exodus from the fragmenting mountain. They threw bolts of flame and energy manifest, shattering barriers and hewing through the very earth itself. Shadow, too, avoided demise with a series of timely spells to resist the malevolence nature hurled at him. He struggled to keep the rear of the group, his bag bouncing against his back and the varied sacks he carried swinging ponderously at his side. Without a thought, he unhooked the sash that circled his torso and let drop a collection of coins worth thousands of gold – and without a single regret, as the money would mean nothing were he not alive to spend it.
Without warning, Shadow's foot caught on a stray stone and he dived. Only in the last moment was he able to catch himself in a fluid roll and begin to run again, his tempers unscathed. A crack split through the atmosphere and all his skill and all his wits could not have saved him from the boulder that materialised from nowhere and slammed into him. It threw him from the path and he landed in a tangle of creepers; only a thin field of instinctive magic prevented his bones from turning to powder. In the fleeing enterprise, one member in the rear – the man with the bandana – noticed his misfortune and turned. He was too far to help, but not too far to wave his arms feverishly, beckoning for Shadow to resume flight.
"Come on! We need to go!"
"I'll be fine!" Shadow roared, more from pain than anger. "Don't worry, I'll catch up."
The man in the bandana hesitated for a moment. Then he gathered his bearings and followed the rest of the party into the mouth of a tunnel, supported by wispy columns of magic that they sustained. Shadow peeled himself from the creepers and broke once again into a sprint, but once he neared the mouth, his pace slackened and drew finally to a rest. His breathing came in controlled rasps.
To the side of the tunnel a small path branched into a quaking hill. Over the crest, Shadow could see that the land dropped off to fall into the sky – courtesy of the deceased god's last will to make this landmass airborne. Taking one last glance at the tunnel, he veered his path and began to ascend the shuddering hillside at a steady rate.
An aggressive bark halted him. He craned to see the black coated mutt at the base of the hill, yipping angrily.
"Interceptor!" he snapped. "Get going!"
Beneath him, even the hill began to weaken. He extended a net of force to cement the landmark's cohesion, if only so he would not have to see Interceptor leave. Its voice tapered and it eventually stopped barking once it realised the futility, and docilely pranced up the hill to stoop at his feet. Shadow took a knee, running one gloved hand over the dog's glossy mane and teasing its chin. From behind the perpetual mask he had donned in his lifestyle as an assassin, he regarded Interceptor with naught but solemn sadness in his gaze.
"Stay well," he whispered, before standing and scaling the rest of the hill. The mutt brayed mournfully twice, before it got to its feet and cowered down the tunnel to follow the others. Now at the hill's summit, Shadow could see where the earth tipped off and the clouds began. Thousands of leagues below, there lay the boundless sea, misted by the white haze. With an eerie calm like nothing he had ever known, he withdrew the blade from its sheath on its back and placed it upright in the earth.
"Baram," he spoke to the wind, but beyond his eyes, he could see the only one he had ever called 'friend', whose passing had swayed him on the course of darkness and the sword. "I'm going to stop running. I'm going to begin all over again..."
Slowly, surely, he allowed his grip on the land begin to relax, until the devastation wracked its substrates once more. A tremor rocked the ground and a piece of earth the size of a drake dislodged from its place on the edge and plummeted out of sight. With grave certitude in his stance, Shadow faced the fringe of all that he knew, and prepared to become known to what lay beyond.
"Clyde. Good to see you're alive and well."
Shadow did the one thing that he had learned never to do. He faltered. For having spent a lifetime distancing himself from the essence of humanity, he felt a very human shiver travel down his spine when he heard that name and the voice which spoke it. Tentatively and as though he were in a dream, he turned to see a man standing on the hill before him. His hair was scruffy and his clothes worn. The skin on his face was sooty and wrinkled, and his eyes shone of anguish and hardship. It was that face, and those hands – the hands of a thief – that drew a blossom of emotion in Shadow that he had never felt in years. Shadow's voice when he spoke was barely audible. "Baram...?"
"Your mad god beckoned me," the apparition said. "His power is unlike anything I've ever known. I could feel its aura even in the backwaters of the hereafter. When the unraveling began, I passed through the barrier, just to see what was happening. And here you are."
Shadow swallowed hard. "You needn't fret. I'll be arriving there after this."
Baram snorted, and as though on cue a saucer of land slid away beside them. The smirk, demeaning and paternal, that he cast at Shadow pressed into the insecurities that he had thought he had killed. And when next he spoke, they were the most dismantling words that the assassin could bear.
"Don't be a coward."
Those four words that had defined the life of the wraith named Shadow, nameless and formerly Clyde, gutless thief alongside his colleague, Baram. Those four words were the last that Baram had spoken to him before they parted forever, Shadow leaving him to a long and torturous death. That one day, when he could not put his friend out of his misery to end his suffering, when he could not overcome the weakness that pervaded his soul. Don't be a coward.
"A coward..." Shadow breathed.
"You were a coward that day in the cave and you'll be a coward now," Baram snarled, "if you discard all that was given to you. All you've earned."
"Earned what?" Shadow cried. "I'm a man on the run. I'm a blade for hire. That's all I'll ever be. This is the only way, the only resurrection to a path anew. I can't keep running, Baram. Not like this."
"Choose death and you'll have run down the final strait," was the reply. "Hear, Clyde. I don't have much time left in this realm. The ethereal current is collapsing and soon order is going to be restored, and I'll be locked away for eternity again. But when I go back, I don't want to see you next to me. You want to stop running? Then stay. There are people here who depend on you. Who care."
His thoughts turned to the girl. She was his only reason for staying with the enterprise of heroes, for he was no hero himself. The only life he had ever fathered. And he had not even been that for her.
"I don't blame you for what you did that day, Clyde. I wouldn'a had the heart to kill you either. But I'm asking you now. Stay here. It ain't your place to go."
A final fissure erupted in the ground, bisecting the earth between the two men. Shadow steeled himself against the rupture, keeping balance with a strain of effort. Baram appeared unperturbed, glancing casually at his former partner and shrugging. "Well, that's my cue to leave. I trust you to know what's right. Clyde."
And just like that, the other man vanished in a wash of flowing light. The earth was in tatters beneath the boots of Shadow, and whatever passage had led back to the tunnel lay long asunder now. The spit of land upon which he stood hung from the main body by a mere arm of mineral and even that was on the verge of snapping at any moment. Cursing, Shadow drew the sword from where he had placed it and swiftly sheathed it again. With one last breath of preparation, he threw himself over the edge of the fraying continent.
The wind whipped by him in a frothy sea of motion, the horizon and the clouds meshing together in an indistinct blur. Beneath, the ocean was similarly nebulous in his vision. All around tumbled loads of debris and collapsed matter that precipitated violently from the floating mountain and its bearing landmass. Shadow cast a field around him to avoid fatal collision with any of these rocks, and concurrently summoned a powerful updraft to stagnate his plunge. In what seemed like an instant, either of these merits tore from him and he resumed the terminal fall. Magic is no longer, he realised heavily. Drawing on his last vestiges of strength, Shadow drew a sailcloth from his pack and cast it to the wind, allowing its fabric face to fill with air and catch him in flight.
As he bobbed with all the languidness of a feather toward the surface of the sea, he could not help but think to the fate of the man he had kept as a partner, as a friend.
"Baram... I'll be well from here on," he murmured, and this time he knew he spoke to no more than the wind.
His form settled on the water and the sailcloth deflated above him, its taut form sagging into a tangle of fabrics against the gently lapping waves. Lukewarm saltwater stirred and writhed around him, clawed, and pulled at his legs and it soaked his garb and spat its brackish soup at his mouth. Around him, debris and flotsam crowded the waters and enormous cubes of dirt and earth floated drearily. Over the east, the sun was climbing over the horizon, and to the north, view arrived of the shore of the mainland. Against all darkness and moroseness in his heart, Shadow permitted himself a smile, because he knew he would live to see the day rise to a new and rejuvenated world.