Green Fire on the Mountain
Updated November 2017
Around her, the Agata buzzed, above her was the surprisingly loud flutter of millions of moths' wings. Faded Maiden looked about in the darkness, at her army, ensuring all was ready. The escape of the hawkriders earlier was galling, and she had been upset at Courtesan for letting the riders escape, but Courtesan had seemed surprised that her arrows had failed to kill the enemy.
Now the hawkriders were sure to come in numbers. She had known it was going to happen, but she had hoped for a little more time. The Million Wings were just beginning to get the mountain moving. Nothing could be allowed to interrupt their progress.
One of the dead drifted near, called out in a whispery voice, pointed down.
The hawkriders were coming.
"Prepare for battle," she yelled out. "Nothing threatens our master's work."
Ivory craned her neck as she clung to the riding harness of the hawk, trying to see up into the darkness, for the enemy that Heron said awaited them.
"Sit still," Temal told her.
"I'm not moving that much," Ivory told him, shifting about to look back at him.
"I said sit still."
"If you weren't telling me to sit still I wouldn't have to move to look at you," she responded.
"Just sit still," he nearly yelled.
"Stupid," Ivory said softly as she turned her attention back to the sky. The darkness seemed so complete. At the back of her head was a tickle of an idea, that darkness should not block her from seeing what was up there, but before she could give it more thought her attention was taken by a flare of bright light.
"What's that?" Ivory asked of Temal.
"Flares, to light the sky," he said, and then added, "sit still."
Ivory watched at the flares, mounted on arrow shafts, were fired up into the sky. They flew high, and then burned even brighter and seemed to hang in the air.
"Why don't they fall?" Ivory asked.
"Ask the thaumaturges that make them," Temal told her, sounding cross.
Ivory wanted to know more but accepted that Temal did not understand how they worked, or was really being childish in not telling her.
The bright light above them revealed nothing, and several seconds later another volley of arrows climbed into the sky to take their place above the first.
It was after the third volley had been fired that Ivory heard the pained scream of a hawk in the distance. Her stomach seemed to fall away as Temal had Silk Feathers roll and drop.
Heron urged Steal Spear to faster speeds as he drew his flame wand and pointed it at the sky. The incoming attacks were uncertain; he suspected that the foes above him were just firing blindly. Still, that could prove a problem to his hawkriders. They needed a better idea of the location of the enemy.
He fired a flare of his own, a ball of essence that burned as bright as the sun.
Hawk riders sent their arrows speeding up after his flare. The combined light that exploded across the sky finally revealed the enemy.
Orders were shouted out, simple signal flares fired to direct the attack. Heron drew his pistols from elsewhere and flew towards the heart of the enemy.
Bright lights exploded into existence around Courtesan, revealing her to the attackers, but also allowing her to clearly see them. She put two, steel shafted arrows to her string and fired down at the climbing hawkriders.
The arrows found their homes in the throats of two riders, and she was already letting two more arrows fly.
Before they could find their victims, a pillar of fire on hawk back interposed itself between the arrows and the targets that Courtesan had picked out. The vortex of flames caught the projectiles and ripped them off course.
Courtesan cursed and dove towards the Terrestrial, firing rapidly as she went.
Faded Maiden put herself between the million wings and the approaching enemy, for she could not let any harm come to the moths. The Agata, their dead riders, courtesan and even herself were all just there to protect the moths; though she liked to think she was ultimately more important than the moths.
Her forces would take the battle to the hawkriders, and keep them away from the Million Wings.
Butterflies, or some similar insect, there had to be millions of them, Heron thought. All of them, pulling together on the cables that joined them to the mountain.
It was a fantastic impossibility.
Amazing as it was, he had to destroy it.
The wings of butterflies were fragile, and they burned so quickly.
Steal Spear beat her wings and drove up towards the cloud, under Heron's hand the giant hawk performed an aerial ballet that slipped them between the enemy and avoided attacks. In the mere space of several heartbeats, he had breached the defensive lines and flew near the cloud insects.
Lifting his pistols, golden essence bleeding across the barrels, he pulled the triggers.
Gouts of flame spat forth from the pistols, each a vast, roiling mass of plasma aimed at the heart of the cloud.
They never reached it.
Glittering in the light, an Agata appeared, upon its back a woman in long, flowing robes, in her hands a scythe.
Heron watched, amazed, as she cut arcs about herself with the scythe, the blade intercepting the clouds of plasma, snuffing them out as if they were only wan candle flames.
Then her Agata folded its wings, and it and its rider dropped straight towards Heron.
Steel Spear powered up into an outside loop, allowing Heron to avoid the attack and drop himself in behind the Agata.
Lifting his pistols, he fired.
The Agata jerked to a stop, spun about on its central axis, and the rider cut his attack as she had the previous ones. Then she was again speeding at him.
Damn, Heron thought.
"Wow!" Ivory exclaimed. "Look at all those moths!"
"Stop shifting around," Temal snapped.
Around them, winds swirled to drive away the shuriken that the dead had hurled at them. Ivory felt it whip her hair, tear at her clothing, sting her bare skin with tiny ice crystals, but she was not really paying attention to that.
Moths.
Long Cables made of black metal.
Anchor points in the stone of the mountain.
It was like a poison, she thought.
They were poisoning the mountain, dragging its body to where they needed it. The mountain's god would not be able to fight.
How did she stop that?
She felt the world spin around her as the hawk looped away from some danger, or towards another, Ivory was not sure. She turned around on the hawk's back, much to Temal's distress, so she could look towards the moths.
Silver Fingers urged Six Luck Talon forward, speeding towards one of the long chains.
As hawk passed she sliced out with her red, jade daiklaive. Jade met soul steel, both metals screeched and screamed, and the soul steel moaned as if in pain. Silver Fingers felt her arm grow numb, and she almost lost her grip on the blade.
She felt the fire of her heart flow from her, and around her as her anima dimmed. She almost fell from her hawk as an arrow slipped through the fading vortex of flame and grazed across her lightly armoured shoulder.
"No," she shouted, tightening her grip on her weapon. Her anima flared brightly once more, and she guided her hawk into a power climb. She would teach these demon borne corpses the wrath of the hawkriders.
However, she would not attempt to cut the cable again.
Scythe and blade of essence met, the beamklaive flaring brightly as the soul steel blade moaned and shrieked. Heron nudged Steel Spear with his knee, and she folded her wings and dropped. The Agata rider followed, lashing out with her scythe, but Heron had his hawk cutting back behind the other rider with a tight turn and flip.
Presented with a perfect opening, he cut out with his blade only to have it blocked, impossibly so, by the scythe. The counter from the Agata rider almost opened his throat, and it was just by the slightest margin that he turned the blade.
He was a better rider than his opponent, but she commanded that scythe with skill, and no doubt charms, to cancel that advantage.
He and the hawk rolled and powered away from the enemy rider, and she did not follow.
She refused to leave the cloud of insects undefended, allowing him to escape each and every time.
He should be able to use that to his advantage, but he had no idea how.
"Let try it again, maybe it will work this time," he called out to Steel Spear.
The hawk screamed and rolled back towards the cloud.
Torvin hurled his javelin a moment before he pulled his mount out of the power dive. Javelin plunged through both dead rider and demon mount, sending both crashing to the mountain. Around him the dead and the hawkriders fought and died; if the dead could die. The old hawkrider screamed with his hawk as he sped towards another battle.
Oogan was a huge man, well over six feet tall, heavily built. If he were not blessed by the Dragons, he would never have been able to become a hawkrider. And even with the blessings, it had taken him years of hard work to master the charms that that Earth aspected Dragon Blood needed to aid his hawk.
As he and Mountain Wing crashed bodily through a group of the dead, the weight of both hawk and man smashing the enemy, he was never so glad of the time he had invested in becoming one of Metagalpa's elite.
Portus flew high into the air and then sped down towards the battle. In both hands, he spun weighted bolas. The weapons whiled faster and faster until they were a whistling blur. Just before his hawk pulled up, he released the bolas. Both spun onwards on their deadly course, to wrap around the wings of the enemy mounts and crush their carapaces.
The Nemissary known as Rust that Strengthens Steel leapt from the back of his Agata, his body of bone and Soulsteel crashing down upon one of the hawkriders and the woman's mount. His articulated, spiked toes curled down, sliding through flesh, giving him a stable stance on the back of the hawk.
The hawk rider tried to defend herself, but she was a moment too slow. He wrapped his razor bedecked fingers around her throat and opened flesh and muscle, sending blood splashing down upon specked feathers.
Leaping from the hawk he landed once more upon his Agata, ready to kill again.
Temal had three Agata chasing him. The riders were firing arrows at him as they closed, trying to box him in so they might slash at him and Silk Feathers with their swords.
"Go down," he heard Ivory yell over the sound of the wind.
He ignored her as he looked about for a way out.
"Go down," she yelled again, shifting about to hit him across his thigh.
"I can't afford to lose altitude," he yelled back at her, panic making his tone strident.
"Fly down to the mountaintop," she ordered him.
He swore loudly and then sent the hawk diving towards the mountaintop. "You better know what you are asking for." How desperate he had become that he was letting little girls boss him around.
The Agata followed, gaining speed as they dove. It was looking worse and worse for him.
He pulled out of his dive only a man's height from the rocky and broken surface of the mountain's pinnacle. He sought out obstacles, flying around them, hoping the giant wasps and their riders might crash. However, the wasps' precise, he might even say dainty flight, gave them the advantage.
Temal only saw it out of the corner of his eye, on the edge of his vision. Something large sprung from the shadows.
"Up," he heard Ivory shout.
Silk Feathers rose quickly, snapping up into a power climb. Temal looked over his shoulder.
One of the Agata had been driven to the ground by some great beast and, even as Temal watched, the beast was leaping from the fallen wasp, high into the air, tearing at another of the Agata, ripping open its carapace.
Suddenly he was only facing two Agata, and one of those was wounded.
As Silk Feather's went into an outside loop, as Temal felt gravity fall away, he took his chakram and hurled them down at the demon wasps and their riders.
"What was that?" he demanded of Ivory as Silk Feather rolled upright. Below him, the bodies of the demons fell.
"A friend," Ivory said. "He can't fly, but if you can bring them closer to the mountain, he can get them."
That, Temal thought, changed the shape of the battlefield to one that was more favourable.
"Alright," he said. "Let's go."
"You will fail," Faded Maiden spat as she pushed her scythe against the beamklaive.
It was not the first time she and the Solar, and she knew he was a cursed Solar, had been pressed so close together, blade to blade, as their mounts tumbled and tore at each other. She so wanted to follow him all the way down, to kill him, but she would not leave the Million Wings undefended. Having to retreat every time they met gave the damnable Solar an advantage.
She bared her teeth and again stated, "You will fail!"
His sword began to move, being pushed back towards him. She smiled and redoubled her efforts.
He was smiling as well.
Faded Maiden's gaze dropped down to the sword, the sword that he was only holding in one hand.
In his other hand was a golden, plasma tongue repeater.
Had he shot her Faded Maiden was confident that she could have stopped the attack.
Instead, he shot the Agata she rode.
The billowing flames shrivelled the demon's delicate wings, and the heat cracked its bejewelled carapace.
Faded Maiden willed the demon to remain aloft.
Her will was not enough.
She and the Agata dropped like rocks.
Above her the Solar and his hawk flew, unmolested, up towards Million Wings.
"No," Faded Maiden shouted and leapt from the back of the stricken Agata.
Behind her, her cloak furled out like a pair of wings.
Heron and Steel Spear sped up towards the cloud of flying insects. In his hands Heron's plasma tongue repeaters were like living things, spitting out clouds of flame. Agata and their dead riders fell from the sky, burning like stars as they plummeted.
His hands blurred as he reloaded the weapons, closing on the cloud.
Time to put this to an end, he thought, lifting his weapons.
A moment before he fired Steel Spear suddenly veered sharply.
Heron looked to the side and saw the woman who he had shot out of the sky, borne aloft by a pair of great wings on her back, closing rapidly.
"Oh, come on," Heron said as he blocked the descending scythe in the cross of the pistol barrels.
We're going to win, Courtesan thought, though there was no joy in it.
The hawkriders were much better at aerial combat than the dead on their demon steeds, but there had been more dead, and neither the dead nor the demons were growing tired.
Already the mountain was moving as fast as a galloping horse.
That speed would only grow.
She loosed another arrow, watched as a stricken rider fell from the back of his hawk.
Walker was going to win.
She fired again, then dove to avoid a close confrontation with the angry fire aspect.
If only she could be more like Faded Maiden, to care so much about Walker.
But the whispered voices she heard in her mind did not belong to Walker in Darkness.
Ivory looked about, wondering how they were going to win.
The hawk below her was getting tired, she was sure of that. Temal did not seem tired at all, but he was Chosen of the Dragons. She knew she was not feeling tired, doubted that Heron was. Still, they fought the tireless dead.
Ivory had once sat enthralled as a cousin had told of the fall of Thorns. The dead did not grow tired. Ever.
We're going to fail, she thought.
It was so unfair.
She had given up so much.
She had given up so much, it occurred to her, but hadn't she received much in return?
Closing her eyes, Ivory thought back on the dream of long ago, of running through a home that was not quite right, and of all that she had learned.
Nervously chewing on her lip, she thought about one room she had seen in that dream; of a tarnished brass statue of a pretty and terrible man with four arms and a cruel smile.
Her eyes snapped open, and her caste mark began to glow.
"Use that flare Heron gave you," she said.
"What?" Temal yelled.
"Use that flare!"
She heard a hiss as the flare was lit, and saw the blossom of yellow and blue light as Temal tossed it away.
"Fly steady," Ivory told him, her voice confident and hard as she sifted through the thousands of names of demons for the one she needed.
The far-off flare almost cost Heron his life for it proved a distraction. It was only the speed of Steel Spear that kept him from ending up impaled on a scythe blade. As the hawk rolled away from the woman with her wings and scythe Heron was looking at the yellow and blue flare that burned in the sky below him.
Ivory had decided on a course of action.
When a few seconds later her anima burst into a full flare, the ribbons of golden light spinning around her he knew that whatever she planned it was not going to be subtle.
From within his coat, he brought forth a flare of his own and lit it up, tossing it into the sky.
It exploded into a white and red starburst.
The signal for retreat.
As the white and red starburst exploded in the sky, Torvin turned his exhausted hawk away from the battle. He was as tired as his hawk, covered in sweat, his heart thundering in his chest. His hands shook as he brought out a retreat flare and threw it away from him, wanting to be sure all the riders would flee.
Faded Maiden blinked spots out of her vision, for the flare had exploded close to her, and watched as the hawkriders fled.
She had beaten them.
Or was it a trick.
She wanted to give chase to the Solar, to end his life, but perhaps that was just what he wanted her to try.
She was seized with indecision for several moments, looking around.
The blossoming of golden light made her wary, but she would not leave the Million Wings. She called out to several of the dead around her and ordered them to investigate.
Oogan and Rust that Strengthens Steel battled on the back of Mountain Wing, Rust that Strengthens Steel's Agata flew about, trying to attack the hawk when it could. Oogan had seen the retreat flares go up, knew it was time to run. However he had seen this dead creature of bone and steel kill a number of his fellow hawk riders, and he was not about to run before getting vengeance.
He wrapped his arms around the body of the dead creature, his stony skin turning the razor-sharp barbs of metal.
"Fly Mountain Wing," he ordered, then leapt from his mount to crash onto the Agata. As terrestrial, dead, and demon fell, Oogan crushed the body in his arms, his anima growing more destructive as he began to shred the ghost whose animate corpse he held.
Courtesan saw the golden anima flare into existence far away.
She had been fighting the fire aspect and had been about to give chase when the golden light caught her attention.
The whispers of the Neverborn grew stronger, for they hated the golden anima of the Solars.
Courtesan cruelly hauled her Agata around and sent is charging across the sky as she drew arrow after arrow, firing them at the light.
Temal was blinded by the sudden golden light that surrounded him. He cursed as he blinked his eyes rapidly in an attempt to chase away the white blobs that swam across his vision. "Stupid girl," he shouted.
The girl was mumbling softly, apparently unaware of his anger.
Temal wanted to shake her but recalled that she had told him fly steadily. He did not know what she planned, but the safety of his home might depend on her.
How galling that was.
An arrow sliced across his shoulder, splitting the jade pauldron and cutting to the bone.
He hissed in pain and rolled Silk Feathers to the left as several other arrows passed through the space he had just been.
The girl yelled at him to for the rough flight.
He might have yelled something back at her, but he was not thinking much about that. He had hurled his chakram into the air, intercepting some of the arrows in the air, deflecting others. Some of them at least.
Ivory tried to ignore the pitching and yawing of the hawk as she concentrated on her spell.
She was calling up prodigious amounts of essence, feeding it into the spell matrix she was constructing.
All she needed was a few more seconds.
Heron watched as one of the Agata riders sped towards the hawk that Ivory rode upon.
Cursing he swung Steel Feathers around and charged back, hoping to help her.
Faded Maiden watched Courtesan's charge. Finally, the woman was doing something useful.
Courtesan found her quiver empty of her steel shafted arrows, but it did not matter. She drew arrows crystallised out of her essence and the Neverborn's unending hate and sent them flying at her target. Her actions took on an almost frenzied aspect as within the golden light a spark of green appeared.
Ivory opened her eyes which had changed from gold to green, and she drew her hands apart, a cat's cradle of golden light twisting in on itself, darkening into a glowing green as she spoke a word, a name, one long since forgotten by almost all but the most focused scholars.
In her hands appeared a perfect sphere of unwholesome green flame.
She tossed into the air as if she were urging a bird into flight.
As it fell towards the mountain, she called out, "Run!"
Temal had felt several of the arrows graze him during the flight, and one had pierced his thigh, through into Silk Feathers. The hawk had cried out in pain but had continued to fly.
When the girl tossed the green flame away and then told him to run he did not question her.
"Go Silk Feathers, fly!"
His hawk sped away, as if fresh from the eyrie rather than having fought in a long battle.
Courtesan cursed as her target fled and green light dropped towards the mountain. She screamed as the whispers in her mind spat anger and despair.
Faded Maiden knew, knew with painful certainty that that green ball of flame was failure. She shouted denial as she flew as fast as she might, in hopes that she might stop it.
She was too late.
Heron saw what Ivory did. He turned Steel Spear about and flew off, not looking back, urging the hawk to fly faster even as he used essence to boost its speed.
The flaming ball hit the top of the mountain and flared with a light almost as bright as the sun.
The expanding pillar of light tore down into the mountain, like a volcano in reverse, carving a crater hundreds and hundreds of yards straight through the rock, blowing the top of Metagalpa to dust. It also rose into the sky, where dead, Agata and the Million Wings could not stand against it. All were destroyed utterly by the green light that continued to rise until it was miles high and the light stained the dome of the sky.
As Ivory clung to Silk Feathers, she thought she heard mad laughter into the echo of the spell's thunderous detonation.
She prayed that it was not her own.
Courtesan once more dragged her Agata about, but this time she fled the expanding pillar of destruction instead of charging into battle.
Faded Maiden screamed at the green light as it washed over her, destroying all that she wore and flaying her skin from her bones. But even as it ripped her her body apart she healed the damage. As she fell through the green light she screamed in pain and anger, and fruitless denial as the fire continued to burn her, and her body continued to mend itself in a manner that she could only think of as torture.
Standing on the lower slopes of the Mountain Dreaming Blue watched as the sky was turned green by a column of unholy fire. "By the Maidens," she whispered as the mountain trembled.
Mount Metagalpa trembled in the sky as it slowed, its forward momentum failing.
Deep within the mountain's god cried in pain, cried for the nurturing embrace of Pasiap.
And Pasiap, for the first time in centuries, turned attention to the wayward mountain.
Metagalpa began to fall.