A/N: Chap 24 review responses, including clarification on the last chapter, are in my forums as normal. I WILL BE TRAVELLING NEXT SATURDAY, SO NO POSTING. Enjoy your holiday week if it is a holiday you celebrate.
Chapter Twenty-Five: Na-Strond's Shore
On the maps Taylor saw in the House of Knowledge, the Shadow Lands took the shape of a dragon's head, with vast, jagged mountains that ran down in parallel lines along either side of the Ash River until they reached the tip of the peninsula that held Asshai.
Though it was still morning when they left the city, no sunlight greeted them. The heavy, never-ending cloud hung low enough to obscure the mountains. The tall, black stone walls that protected Asshai from creatures even worse than demons let them out onto a lifeless plain of sand and stone.
Taylor could see the petrified trunk of a long-fallen tree. The demons were not as dense beyond the city walls, but only because fewer living things died to fuel them, she suspected. The plain had a gradually increasing slope until they reached the Ash River.
Even so close to the city, the river had carved a chasm through the rock that ran all the way to the same bay where Taylor sailed in days before. The path itself ran alongside the narrow gorge, buffeted by the sound of the frothing white-gray water below.
"We must be quick if we wish to reach the waystation by dark," Melisandre noted.
They started north.
All round, the mountains seemed almost to writhe angrily around them. The air whispered to them in a constant litany of sweet promises and terrible threats.
"The slaves are deaf," the priestess explained to Taylor. "And their tongues have been cut out. It is the only way that they might survive the journey."
Movement caught Taylor's eyes. She looked across the gorge to the other side and the sharply rising mountains there. Something black, with grayish stripes, slinked along the sides of the mountain. It was a feline, but one easily as large as the zorses they used to pack their supplies.
It stared hungrily at them until Taylor's bifrost eyes locked its gaze. The animal mewled forlornly before scampering away into the shadows.
The entire time they walked, Taylor heard Melisandre whispering prayers to herself in a guttural language. Having not heard it before, but having read it, Taylor realized the woman was praying in the Shadow Tongue. And her prayers acted as a defensive spell that created a light nimbus around her body that kept the shadows at bay.
They walked along the ever-sloping trail. With her relatively frail body, Taylor grew tired from the constant incline. While the ground still cushioned her steps, the earth here had no energy to renew her flagging muscles. Around them, the shadows gradually grew darker and longer as the hidden sun retreated beyond the reach of the mountains.
The way station, when they reached it, looked like a temple carved into the wall of the mountain. Ornate, arcane symbols were inscribed up the height of each of the four columns that were carved out of the face of the temple.
"I can set the protections," Taylor told Melisandre.
"You know the spells? How?"
With a touch, Taylor sent magic into the protective spells. The air shimmered from the power of it, causing the priestess to blink in surprise. Finally, she nodded. "I see."
The interior of the waystation, like its exterior, was carved right out of the sandstone. In the back, Taylor was surprised to find a little cistern of water. She checked it and confirmed it was fresh, fed by a fissure in the stone.
As the two slaves set up their camp in the open, two-story room within the waystation and began preparing the days only meal, Taylor cupped her hands and drank the water.
The priestess joined her. "My Order is unsure of you," she said. "What is it you seek in the Shadow Lands?"
"The same as anyone else coming here," Taylor said. "Knowledge. Humans have been on this world for over ten thousand years. In the world of humanity's birth, we went from living in the mud with ticks, flees and starvation to traveling the stars in two thousand years. Why haven't you? What is holding this world back? That's what I'm looking for."
"It has always been this way."
"That's the problem. And the answer to it is what I'm looking for.
~~Voluspa~~
~~Voluspa~~
The second day revealed why the journey would take so long. By a modern car on a modern road, Stygai was at best a two- or three-hour drive from Asshai.
But on a trail that was cut from the side of a gorge that seemed to grow deeper the further in they went, they were limited by the conditions of the day.
Or in this case, the twitching form of the slave who walked into the nearly invisible vines that hung from the stone overhang. The vines had to have a powerful venom. The poor man's inarticulate scream lasted only a second before he began to twitch and froth at the mouth.
"Ghost vine," Melisandre warned. "I have only seen it one other time, in the Most Holy City itself.
Taylor found herself both appalled and fascinated. The slave was dead from the very first injection of the vine's poison. The twitching was just random nerves firing off as the body finished the dying process. She watched as the vines contracted and rolled the hundred- and fifty-pound man up toward the overhang where it began digesting him.
It had a spirit. A hungry, blind spirit tainted by the demons that ran freely under the unending cover of the clouds. Not quite a plant any more, but still not an animal, the ghost vines existed solely to kill and consume.
Taylor held up her staff and summoned her cold fire. Melisandre stepped back in alarm as Hel Wind blasted out from Taylor's staff. At its mere touch,the entire colony of carnivorous vines, and the body it was consuming, froze and then shattered before being blown from the trail entirely.
The day didn't get better from there. The trail they followed grew narrower and more treacherous as they traveled, twisting and turning as the gorge itself did. In some places the trail turned into an arduous, steep slope, while at other times it plummeted down narrow stone stairs that seemed to undo hours of their climb.
Taylor's thighs and knees burned from exertion when they reached the second way station. The surviving slave began setting up their camp as if he had always been alone. Taylor could not see any grief or fear within him, only a beaten spirit.
The man had been so conditioned that his soul itself had been reduced to just a sliver of its origin. Just thinking about what his masters had to have done to him to accomplish this made her sick to her stomach. He was beyond even her arts to heal.
The souls of the two silent soldiers felt little better. They made no effort to help the slave.
~~Voluspa~~
~~Voluspa~~
They averaged less than ten miles a day–sometimes as little as three or four. As the path narrowed, even the sure-footed hybrid zorses struggled to keep their balance and not fall into the frothing, ash-colored water that raged a hundred feet down in the gorge. The water blasted through the narrow gorge like a firehose, carving down the rock as it went.
Two days into the second week of their journey, they found the waystation partially destroyed. The ornately carved columns had cracked and collapsed and a fissure split the face of the station to expose the interior. The inscribed protections on the columns were completely gone.
"Lord of Light protect us!" It sounded almost like a curse as Melisandre stared at the destruction with open fear. She glanced around the growing shadows of the gorge as night quickly fell. "I can provide a fire circle for a time, but I don't…"
Taylor shook her head. From her recent reading, she could think of two dozen protective variants, iterations of the same idea recreated over the generations as each new empire sought to rediscover the magic of the last.
"I'll take care of it."
With her staff, Taylor drew a line across the front of the exposed shelter, just behind the broken columns and fractured face of sandstone. There the tip of her staff moved, the sandstone melted in a dull red glow into glass. It was a magically expensive protection, but all the more powerful for it. When she had the rough hemisphere drawn into the floor, she knelt down and touched it with her hand.
She did not chant the spell aloud. It wasn't even really a spell, but rather because she understood the intent and mechanics of all the protective magics she'd read about, she employed those mechanics through her will alone.
The black glass line began to glow again as the magic anchored itself in arcane runes from a dozen dead languages. The air shimmered in front of them; the shimmer rose in a hemispheric dome until it swept over the entire shelter.
"Prepare the camp, please," Taylor said. "I'm hungry."
The priestess bowed, and then motioned for the nameless slave to begin his work.
Taylor did not sleep that night. She sat cross-legged just behind the protective spell as shadows flitted about in the mountains beyond.
Her Bifrost eyes watched shadows and monsters alike emerge into the darkness. The large striped felines that could so easily have killed their party hid in their caves from the true monsters that prowled the mountains. Some creatures looked almost crocodilian, while others bore vague similarities to theropod dinosaurs with bioluminescent feather clusters they used to lure in minor demons.
The creatures fed on the demons themselves, somehow drawing physical energy from the spiritual corruption.
Through the shield she saw a massive, winged shadow pass by and heard a piercing screech that echoed through the gorge. A dragon–a dragon whose tail to head length was easily a hundred feet. The mountains of the Shadowlands really were as dangerous as Melisandre said.
Suddenly the magical protection went black as something corrupted and ancient pressed against it. She could feel the power of this demon push against her own ineffectively. But though it had only a tiny fraction of her magical energy–the fact it had even that much spoke of an incredibly powerful being.
The billowing clouds of darkness collapsed down, growing denser and denser, until a humanoid figure stood just past the line of her spell. It looked like a mummified human, with wispy white hair and glowing blue eyes similar to Taylor's own, even if not truly luminescent. It had pale, desiccated skin and wore what looked like armor formed from sand and stone.
It lifted one hand and more sand flew from around it to form a long, curved blade. While staring right at Taylor, it raised its sand-blade and struck at the magical protection. It didn't even draw a spark.
Its mouth opened; sound emerged, but it had nothing to do with the movement of its lips. You do not belong here.
"This is my world now. It is you who do not belong."
False words from a dead god. An echo of one who was far greater. You are nothing but shadow, Telos of the Trees. The true darkness will envelop and destroy you. Darkness is the only eternal truth.
"We'll see soon enough," Taylor said. "Until then, go away. You're boring me."
Taylor sent Hel wind blasting through the shield, untouched by the protection in its purity. The greater demon howled spiritually as its material construction shattered back into shards of shadow and sand.
~~Voluspa~~
~~Voluspa~~
The last, most arduous leg of their journey required them to unload and reload the zorses three times to make it past collapsed sections of the path. The gorge had widened and deepened to a canyon whose bottom was so far down only Taylor with her bifrost eyes could see it. The sound of the rushing water was a distant murmur.
Instead of a waystation, they arrived at a free-standing structure that stood almost like a gothic church at the mouth of a long, unstable-looking stone bridge. As the weak light of the dying day leached away, Taylor saw an actual skyline of structures in the distance. The demon smog clouds hung low enough to obscure some of the structures, but what was clear was just how vast the ancient city was.
Looking at it from a distance, if not for the absence of light Taylor could almost think she was staring at a modern city of Earth.
Something began to glow from the center of the compound–an ominous green glow that tinted the low clouds above. So, not quite like on Earth.
"The slaves and beasts must remain behind," Melisandre said. "Only the most powerful and dedicated of my order can survive Stygai."
Taylor didn't argue; she could see the darkness within the ancient place.
When dawn came, Taylor was able to see a brief glimpse of light from their position so high in the mountains. It lasted only moments as the sun rose into that sliver of space between mountain and cloud. She left the protections of the fortress gate and greeted the sun as a long-lost friend, and felt its army of spirits fight through the shadows to embrace her before the shadows won.
Melisandre emerged from the back of the fortress covered in runes painted in blood all over her body. Her robes clung to her in places where the zorse blood was still wet. Her hands shook until she clasped them together.
"Show me how far you went before," Taylor said.
"As you wish."
They left the gate fortress and stepped onto the wide stone bridge. Now that she wasn't just concentrating on the ancient, cursed city, Taylor saw where the two branches of the Ash River met. Stygai was built on a plateau between the rivers. Somehow, they hadn't yet carved away all the rock, and so flowed relatively calmly on either side of the dead city until they reached a deep, dramatic pair of waterfalls that filled the air with a dull, constant thunder.
The plummet was easily four hundred feet and created a small lake where the plunging water carved deeper than elsewhere. The mouth of the lake spilled itself out into the gorge that cut through the mountains in an almost straight line all the way down to Asshai.
The stone bridge vibrated from the rush of water under Taylor's bare feet as her Hel wind pushed demons away.
Even more than Ashai, Stygai writhed with demons beyond counting. Every death–every burst of fear, pain or rage of the millions who once lived here had somehow given birth to a demon, until there were so many that it wasn't possible to walk without stepping on them.
"Stay by my side," Taylor said.
The priestess did exactly what she was told, and watched as Taylor pushed the demons away in a circle around them.
Stygai had no defensive walls. It was almost like a modern Earth city in that they walked along a thoroughfare that ran through the dense urban area. The area at the end, where the two rivers met, was mostly flat. As Taylor looked, she could hear the ghostly sound of distant children laughing. Of parks and green space and playgrounds.
"What is that sound?" Melisandra gasped, wide-eyed, and looked around.
"The city shows me its past," Taylor said.
Melisandre drifted close enough that the hem of her travel-stained robe brushed against Taylor's feet. They continued walking along the narrow road. It was made of the same seamless paving as what Taylor saw in Asshai.
When they reached the first buildings, Taylor saw something that at once broke her thoughts and filled her with awe.
There were no buildings. What they saw from a distance was the ash shroud of dead structures, held upright by the very demons that hounded at their feet. The building nearest them looked as if it might have been unremarkable even in Taylor's time–two stories, with windows and doors. All lost, all but this morbid ghost of ash and spite that held the original's shape.
The structures increased in size–and from their outline Taylor could see apartments and office buildings and schools. There were warehouses and manufacturers, and stadiums where she could hear the ghostly echo of cheering spectators. All gone. All lost.
"That is as far as we ever came," Melisandre whispered. She spoke like a child in a massive church, afraid to make any noise.
She pointed to the side of another ghostly structure–a spire that disappeared into the thick clouds overhead. There was nothing unique or special about the location. They moved on.
"Do you understand what this place was?" the priestess said.
"It was a city," Taylor said simply. "Not so very different than Qarth or King's Landing. The people possessed advanced knowledge that afforded them better lives, but most of these buildings were for the people to live, or to work. To educate their young."
"What happened?"
Their steps slowed as they came across their first artifact. It rose up out of the demon-infested ground like a small mountain, but one in the shape of a giant metallic humanoid on a chassis of four thick metallic legs. To Melisandre, it must have looked like a pile of metal bars, but Taylor could identify what looked like mounted weapons on each of the limbs. She couldn't quite tell what the weapons were, but she had no doubt they were fearsome in nature.
The back of the war robot was melted away by whatever blast destroyed the city.
They found more the deeper they went, of similar nature if not design. Some looked more human, some looked like partially melted mountains that fell across the thoroughfare or through the ghostly structures.
Melisandre gasped, ducked and clutched at the side of her head. Her hand came away bleeding, and the fresh blood made the surrounding demons writhe like worms.
"Let me see."
She moved the woman's red hair to reveal a demonic bite had torn away a part of her ear. Taylor cupped her hand over the minor wound. Rather than raw power, she intoned a spell she'd read to shape her magic into a facsimile of healing fruit. It had a similar, localized effect and instantly healed the wound.
Melisandre blinked in surprise at her, but recovered quickly. "The demons grow stronger."
"Stay closer, then."
With a surge of will, Taylor spread her Hel wind around not just their feet, but in a sphere that made the air shimmer with cold. The demons hissed at them like a cold wind blowing through leafless trees.
"What is this power?"
Taylor explained as they walked. "The Telos-That-Was was the daughter of an ancient God of War and an even more ancient Goddess of Magic. Prophecy foretold that she would face a star-eating dragon from beyond creation, and so her mother imbued in her all the magic of all the gods of Earth. She had the strength of an Olympian, able to lift mountains. She had the wings of the Valkyrie of Asgard, able to fly faster than sound. And she had all the magic of the Norse gods–including the power over human souls. I am that part of Telos-That-Was who carries the magic, and this wind is the wind of Hel, where the souls of the unworthy were sent in my mother's youth."
"Did she win her battle, this Telos-That-Was?"
"If she didn't, you would never have been born. Humans would never have walked this world, or built this city. By her death, Telos saved every human to ever live."
They moved past another shattered, burned mount of mechanical death, only for Taylor to slow. A crater dominated the center of the city, blasted out of solid rock in a roughly circular fashion. The bottom of the half-mile wide pit was lost in the black haze of demons large enough, and powerful enough, that she could sense their perceptions focusing on her and dulling the power of her own Bifrost eyes.
"What is this?"
"This was the death of the city," Taylor said softly. "I don't understand how or why. Those were the questions I had. What happened here? We're going to have to go down there."
The demons were so powerful there that even mortal eyes could see them. "How?"
"Carefully. Come on."
She took the terrified priestess by the hand, and with her other hand clutched her staff for balance as they stepped over the steep lip of the crater. Rather than go straight down, Taylor wove her way at a less steep angle around the crater's slope. The demons began attacking almost immediately, forcing her to expend more magic to keep them at bay.
Abruptly something lunged at them that was not a demon at all. Massive jaws framed a fiery throat. Melisandre screamed as she collapsed at Taylor's feet. Taylor bit back her own startled scream as well–she was concentrating so much on pushing back demonic energy she didn't even think about a physical creature within the mess.
Her staff slammed down on the snout of the beast. A blast that could send a grown man flying made the dragon snap its head back with an angry roar. It pulled in a deep breath, filled with as many demons as air, and blasted fire at them.
Taylor lifted her staff and seized the magically enhanced flame. The spirits within obeyed her command, and the stream of napalm-like flame split and flew back into the dragon's face. The creature yelped in a strange, moose-like bellow and flailed wings larger than that of a Boeing. Doing so pushed some of the demon clouds away, and Taylor got her first glimpse at the base of the crater.
A fused, partially melted structure.
The dragon flapped its wings again to lift.
With a surge of will, and if she were honest, self-directed anger for not anticipating the attack, Taylor caused the spirits of the air to still themselves. The dragon's flapping wings found no purchase; no lift. With her point made, she condensed her Hel wind into a single, concentrated beam almost like a blue laser that she directed with her staff.
The absolute zero cold of the beam carved into the dragon like no other weapon could. Its pained howls filled the air and drove the demons away. Malevolent, glowing green eyes eyed her with bestial hate. But like many predators, the dragon was unwilling to risk itself on prey that was too dangerous.
Releasing the air, Taylor let the wounded, bleeding shadow dragon flap its wings until it lifted into the air and then flew away into the mountains. In its absence, the demons quickly returned. But Taylor knew where she was going, now.
"Are you okay?"
"You…you defeated a dragon!"
"I've faced bigger monsters," Taylor said. "Come on."
They continued down the crater wall, surrounded by a nimbus of Hel wind and angry demons.