"why does my sky keep falling down"
The water was tepid, like every morning. The summers were kinder here. Autumn was almost upon them, but she was determined to enjoy the fair weather while it lasted. The bay helped; it was quiet, it was colourful, the tide always eased in gently and it was just outside the cloud of poisonous air that infiltrated most of the island. No one bothered her.
She would have killed to have been bothered.
Formora washed using what freshwater she could siphon from the ocean using magic without depleting her energy reserves. A simple incantation, that was all it was - to peel the seasalt away from a secluded spot in the shade. First herself, then her garb, and then for comfort. A peaceful respite to offset another night spent huddling from the unknown, to try and forget the mad ramblings of another half-dead thing. It was getting harder to sleep. She tried to grab what rest she could in the mornings, away from him and her and it, but it wasn't enough. No matter how much she slept it was never enough.
Eventually her own meandering mind drove her from the water's edge. A single whispered word dried her off, then her hair and her clothes and that was it. Formora dressed, offered the bay one last regretful look, then put it behind her and began the trek back to the newest camp of the night. It took her longer than before, but they had good reason for the move. When she found herself at the abandoned stone hut, she checked for scents and temperatures. Nothing out of the ordinary. He was still inside. Still asleep. That was good. That promised an easier time of it. Formora paused by the threshold of the doorway and looked back out, in the direction of Doru Araeba. She couldn't see the city, not from their current position far to the east, but her heart always knew the way. It was instinctual - as a swallow always knew where to migrate for winter.
As a dragon always knew where to return to nest.
The old pang filled her heart, achingly familiar, but she was too worn down to give the matter any further thought. Formora stepped inside, walked to her bedroll and the packs beside it and began sorting everything away. Her fingers brushed against the blue-silver orb and a dull electric shock coursed through her hand; she flinched, then ignored it. Ignored the voices as they began to arise from the heavy crystal.
"Hush, Agaravel," she whispered. "Hush. Keep your madness to yourself."
The old dragon-soul shook and writhed within its glimmering prison, but it heard her request and was gracious enough to grant it. For a reluctant moment, anyways. Agaravel's fractured mind was a fickle thing and prone to all sorts of rash whims. As it was, Enduriel still stirred, rising from his own bedroll on the other side of the tiny room. He saw her and watched her, though she tried to ignore him, and as she packed Agaravel into the largest bag next to their other silvered treasure, he asked, "Is it time already?"
Formora just nodded - a curt dip of her chin. She was too exhausted to even look at him. "Du solus er aln älfs ypirst benda," she said. (The sun has risen high.)
Enduriel exhaled softly. He was slow to rise and slower to pack. Formora didn't wait for him. She shouldered her bags, put the growling racket of Agaravel's incessant ramblings to the back of her mind and set out. It was bright outside. The midday sun shone down at them with a warmth that rarely reached Vroengard, even in the summer months. The trees and flowers looked vibrant in that glittering light, every colour possible, but it was quiet. Few animals scurried through the undergrowth. Few birds sang. All she heard was the distant chatter of wraith-owls and the low scratch-scratch-scratch of burrow grubs crawling under the soil.
This was her lot. This was her life.
There was a collapsed tower some leagues south along the coast. They'd made camp there before, in the hollow beneath foundations where once the ground floor had stood. Rubble piled over the impromptu shelter, held together by sheer happenstance, but the supports within were still strong and the entrance was small enough that anything larger than a person would find it impossible to get inside. Formora set out her belongings within, unfolding her bedroll, setting out a blanket to ensure Agaravel did not roll away, and then, when everything was done, glanced longingly back into the large bag. The grey-silver rock within remained still. Lifeless.
If there was a spell that could-
No. No. Formora forced herself to turn away, though the shining mark on her hand itched and ached. Oh, how she longed for that connection - that bond. Something more than the ramblings of an insane drake riven by death.
"I'm sorry," Formora said to Agaravel. That didn't stop her. She still clamoured for rage, for pain, for feeling. It forced Formora to keep her mental wards up, to keep Agaravel out as best she could - and though their thoughts were separated, the dragon's voice still rang in her mind loud and clear. She spoked without sense, without meaning; she rambled for the sake of rambling. It was frustrating to no end - and with that frustration came a deep-seated feeling of suffocating guilt.
Formora remembered hacking at flesh. Carving through bone. She forced those memories from her mind with a ragged breath and stood up abruptly, striding away. She left the tower, took up position overlooking the structure up-slope, and watched the ocean far below tumble and broil. The chaos of it was beguiling, appealing. She imagined taking a ship to those waves - a silver-prowed vessel with fine velvet sails. She imagined the burn of muscles tugging on rope and the feeling of cold seawater splashing onto her arms. She imagined listening to the wind, plotting a course through feeling alone, no need for a map.
A fantasy, nothing more. But what was the harm in visualising it for the sake of some meagre entertainment?
Enduriel arrived some hours later, at the onset of eve. He didn't so much as acknowledge her as he marched past and disappeared into the tower. Formora lingered; she had no more desire to subject herself to another sullen argument while there was still time to waste outside. She waited and watched and when she grew hungry she pressed some seeds into the earth and whispered, "Eldhrimner."
Green stalks sprouted from the ground, flush with health and life. Ripe red berries grew on their ends, tucked under soft leaves, and they tasted luxuriously sweet. Formora picked a handful, just enough to sate the ache in her stomach, and waited longer yet - until the sun tucked behind the mountainous rises to the west and the sky took on a bruise-purple hue. The air cooled and the ocean crashed stronger yet; distant, warped beasts howled to the sight of the rising moon. Formora rose up, retreated down to the tower and slipped inside. Enduriel was still awake within, sitting with his back against the wall and his orange blade resting by his side. He didn't so much as look at her, to her relief. She could barely stand his presence in passing, but his other pawing attempts at forging a connection between them were pitiful and aggravating. She would have spited him more viciously in years past if it wasn't for the fact that she needed him - and he her.
Formora strode over to her packs, urged Agaravel to stay quiet for the umpteenth time, and drew her own oak-hued sabre free of its tree-bark sheath. She sat down, cross-legged, and laid the blade across her lap. Formora pressed her hands over it - one against the familiar grip of the hilt, the other along the smooth, cool face of the flat of the blade. She closed her eyes and imagined herself... elsewhere.
Somewhere even warmer.
Somewhere even louder.
Somewhere with voices she didn't want to kill.
Somewhere-
There was a crunch by the entrance. A deep, rattling footfall of something large, something armoured. Formora's eyes shot open and she saw Enduriel staring back. Neither dared say a word. Even Agaravel knew the value in silence and retreated into herself. Another step, coming from above. Another, falling against the mass of rubble overhead, disturbing a layer of dust. Formora willed herself to not breathe it in, lest it fill her lungs and elicit a cough. Another step. Another. Her lungs had begun to burn. Another, on solid ground. She could breathe again. It returned to the small entrance and paced before it, whatever it was. She dared not open her mind to find out; the island was home to horrors enough, she didn't need to know what new monstrosity the poison had cultivated.
Another sound accompanied the crashing footsteps - the slick whistling whisper of a blade carving through dry earth and scoring over old stone. A heavy blade. A large blade. Given how many nights she heard it, Formora was all but certain it was a greatsword of some kind, likely a claymore. Something fit for dragon-slaying. Or more fit, rather. As it was, her comparatively more modest sabre had tasted dragon blood often enough - but that didn't blanket the ingrained fear of facing a weapon designed for that monstrous practice. An old, now useless paranoia, but the noise of it sliding across the brickwork of the tower would never settle right with her.
They remained like that for the duration of the night - herself and Endurial stiff and clutching their swords white-knuckled, and the beast outside stalking, waiting for one of them to break. It was a dance they'd performed for decades on end without respite and it was a dance Formora feared would end with her dead. She didn't dare move, didn't dare make a sound. Enduriel strained to do the same; she saw it on his face, tightened with fear, and in his limbs, tendons standing out.
No, she thought, propelling the word his way. He only blinked.
The beast waited. It paced. It rummaged around their little burrow and it never uttered a word. When morning came and the first rays of light pierced through the sky, it left them be. It left them behind. It left them alive. Formora emerged from the tower, willing the tremble in her hand to fade away, and she idly inspected the tracks left behind - two massive feet, shaped like those made by a massive pair of sabatons. No claws, no toes, nothing of the sort. Those tracks were accompanied by an unceasing narrow trail, like a deep cut through the earth and rock. The sword, she presumed, dragged behind the beast as it had departed.
"Gone," Formora reported for the umpteenth time.
No answer. There was a shuffle as Enduriel put his sword away and prepared his blankets. Formora felt a pang of envy, but she would find her respite elsewhere. Back at the bay, perhaps, where no one bothered her - not even a hungry grub.
She would have killed to have been bothered, but she was equally terrified that the day someone did so was the day they came to kill her.
Formora had hardly made it a single league from the tower when a roar filled the air. She stalled in place, a hand falling to the pommel of her sabre, and she looked all around before glancing up. The sky was blue and warm and there were dark shapes in the distance, far over the ocean. Large shapes, moving shapes, burning shapes - falling stars? Another roar, and one of the distant shapes became two- no, three. The silhouette of an iron nail plummeted out of the sky, still far, far above, and it descended on what looked like a tiny, tiny speck.
A third great crack split the sky, and there, closer yet but still unfathomably far away, another object descended from the heavens. It was squat and rectangular, still so tiny she could hardly make it out, but there was another nail there of equal size to the other - driving the blocky object down, down, down. Down towards the ocean, down towards the water's surface, and only a few minutes after its arrival did it hit the sea below. Formora watched, transfixed, as the ocean surged - massive waves being kicked up by the impact and spreading, gathering momentum, charging towards the island. Towards Vroengard.
She ran. She ran not away, but back to the tower. She bounded and raced and all but flew, clearing the league faster than she had dared to hope and almost falling upon groggy Enduriel as he emerged from the hollow, who watched her approach with a quizzical look. "What was that?" he questioned.
Formora scarcely had the breath in her lungs to answer him. "Waves! We need to leave!"
Enduriel's frown deepened and he turned around, looked down at the ocean and, by some miracle, must have been able to make out the shape of the gathering tidal wave, scarcely distinguishable as it was. Without another word he raced inside. Formora followed, her veins afire with panic, and she stuffed everything she had into her bags - bedroll, clothes, tools, Agaravel, silver rock, everything. She threw it all over one shoulder and charged back out, almost toppling Enduriel in her haste. They made their escape, ran uphill as fast as they could and kept going until they were sure they were out of range. Formora laid her bags down, fell to her knee and gasped for breath - watching as the tidal wave approached, approached, approached.
And slammed against the coast.
It surged over beach and meadow and even flooded up towards the tower, smashing it away with pitiful ease. It rose and rose and rose, roaring all the while, and stopped some frighteningly small distance below them. It bubbled and hissed at them, furious, and it was reluctant to pull back - but it was beholden to natural law and foamed in sullen defeat as it went.
"What happened?" Enduriel demanded.
Formora scanned the sky. "Something fell. Something large. I don't know what. There were other-"
Other shapes above, still falling, burning as they went. Hitting the ocean like rain drops - plop plop plop - and making their own waves. Some were larger than others, but they were much further out than the first object. And the nail was still there, still diving but... levelling out, giving chase to the speck. The nail followed closely behind, gaining on it, both shapes inadvertently approaching Vroengard, and the speck became more than a speck - it became a box with a prow and some flared spines to the rear of its body. The nail was throwing things at it, needle-thin flashes of blue and red light, and on occasion the speck threw similar shapes back.
It came to an end when the nail managed to hit the speck with one of its needles. It dropped like a stone. The nail flew onwards, leaving it to its rapid descent, and the speck whirled, falling down in a westerly direction, plummeting to the ocean - or to Vroengard's southern coast. It soon disappeared from sight altogether. Formora just watched the nail fly along until it slunk back into the cover of clouds high overhead, with a flickering trail of fire left in its wake. If it had spotted them then it gave no sign of it, but she wasn't certain it had, being so far up. It had assumed an eastern heading, towards the mainland, but she could no longer see if that was its true intention or whether it was going to circle back around.
"Láerdhon," Enduriel grunted. "What was that?"
Formora didn't know. She'd never seen anything like it. The nail must have been massive, and the speck - it was obviously no bird nor dragon. An insect of some kind, maybe? But she hadn't noticed any wings or eyes, mandibles or proboscis. Nor had it resembled any invertebrate she knew. And the other material, the very thing the free nail had smashed through and what the second nail had driven into the ocean; what were they? Rock? They'd crumbled easily enough.
"They sank," she said at length. "And that... nail still flies."
"Where is it?" Enduriel looked all around, utterly bewildered. "Where has it gone?"
"I don't know."
"What does it mean?"
"I don't-"
"Will it return?"
This time Formora held her tongue. She was just as confused and confounded as he was, but Enduriel had a particularly frustrating way of presenting it. She didn't need to add to his eccentricities. He was more than capable of building up his irritating habits on his own.
"Do we have to move?" he asked, then.
Possibly. Nothing like this had happened in the three decades they'd remained on Vroengard. The island was cursed and inhabited by creatures the likes of which were never meant to be, but this? This was new. This was different. It unsettled her. "I don't know," Formora said again, trying to keep her irritation from showing.
Enduriel turned. "Smoke," he said.
Formora looked around - and yes, there it was. A trail of smoke as if to signal the direction the falling speck had taken. It was many, many more leagues than the bay had been, relative to their current location. Formora studied the smoke trail and tried to picture it in her head; against the geography of the island, she judged it to be somewhere close to the shore, give or take some miles off the coast or in from the shore. It was hardier terrain, though, with more rocks and tougher earth - and the water there was deep, what with the shore there settled on the precipice of a submerged cliff. Either the speck had sunk right to the bottom or smashed against the ground.
"What do we do?" Enduriel queried.
What do we do, Formora bitterly echoed in her own mind. "Something fell out of the sky," she said slowly, purposely. Enduriel narrowed his eyes and his stance stiffened with irritation. She continued. "Something fell from the sky. What, exactly can we do about that?"
"I don't care for your tone," Enduriel said in a low voice.
Formora withheld the retort on the tip of her tongue. "What can we do, Enduriel?"
SEE-LOOK-SEE-KNOW! Agaravel shouted. Formora winced as the dragon bellowed into her thoughts. Enduriel took a step back, tensing.
"That," Enduriel reluctantly said. "We can do that."
Formora glanced at the smoke again. It was dissipating, fast. She looked up at the sky and noted how the sun was still rising. It was still barely even morning. At last she looked down at the waterlogged remnants of the tower, noted how the rubble hads mostly been scattered around the surrounding fields by the force of the wave and how what remained had been filled in by muck and other sea filth. She sighed. "We have to move," Formora said. And waited.
"West, then," Enduriel decided. They'd make use of another camp, then; they still had plenty to choose from. Those three decades hadn't entirely been a waste of their time.
Formora didn't say another word. She studied the smoke, calculated where it had crashed and made a mental note of it - something to steer clear from. She didn't like it. Any of it. Things falling from the sky... what was she supposed to do with that?
Enduriel saw her hesitation. "There could be brightsteel in it," he said, but he didn't sound sure. Oh, he wanted to be, but Formora saw his uncertainty for what it was.
She shouldered her packs and walked on. If they had to move, then she would move. If there was anything left of the speck beyond ashes and dust, then she would investigate in time - but her primary objective was to find somewhere they could hide out another night, because losing the tower threw their whole routine into chaos. The wave must have hit the entire southeast coast, besides. The hut of the day before wouldn't have survived any better than the tower had, and she didn't doubt the same was true of the half-dozen other hovels they'd carved out over the years. She didn't want to trek further inland either. The city unnerved her. Doru Araeba was a place of death and the living did not belong in its streets.
Formora cast a look over her shoulder - partly to check that Enduriel was following, partly to ensure the nail wasn't swooping back down to stalk them from above. It had killed the speck, that much was clear, though she hadn't the faintest idea why. Maybe to feed. Maybe it was checking that the sky remained clear of other rival aerial predators. It was for that reason alone she was hesitant to even involve herself, Enduriel and Agaravel be damned.
There was an old barn some miles away from where the smoke rose, separated by some hills and ridges, but it was as close as she dared to make camp and even then she did not like it. The building was old stone, built by artisans who certainly knew their craft, but it wasn't near as defensible as she would have liked. She and Enduriel climbed up into the loft above via the only ladder still intact and found they could pull it up after them. It... was something. Not satisfactory, but an option nonetheless.
Formora wanted to move on, find somewhere else. Enduriel stubbornly refused, ignoring her - and not for the first time she felt angry. She felt furious. Oh, she despised him - and despised herself more, for allowing herself to have fallen so far. He was an inconsiderate, short-sighted fool with no aspirations beyond vengeance, but he was the only person there with her. She couldn't leave him even if she wanted to. Alone they would die off. Together, at least, they stood a chance.
But the barn...
"Plant your spells," Enduriel shot over his shoulder. "Will that silence you?"
Formora pursed her lips and descended back to the base of the building. She walked around its perimeter and did as Enduriel had requested - not for his sake, but her own. They needed a warning system. They needed all the wards they could summon. If the beast found them exposed... Formora shivered. It would end them, of that there was no doubt. She rounded the barn, muttering incantations under her breath, and pressed their effects everywhere she could - against a support pillar, pressed in a corner, against the waystones that marked the edge of the property, even tucked under random blades of marram grass. She returned inside feeling weary and tired, yearning for a chance to catch up on lost sleep, but before she could Enduriel marched out and tossed her bow and quiver. He motioned to the distant smoke with his head.
"Today?" Formora questioned, incredulous.
"While the trail is fresh."
"You are too optimistic. Whatever happened, I want no part of it."
"You're too insular," Enduriel remarked.
Formora laughed without mirth. "The irony! Too insular, from you?" She smiled thinly. "Go, then."
"You won't accompany me?"
"I won't die on some fool's errand."
Enduriel bristled. Oh, how he hated that word. "I won't go alone," he declared. She looked at him as the implications set in.
"You wouldn't..." Formora's smile became a scowl. "You would jeopardize everything we've worked for?!"
"No. You would." Enduriel motioned to the bag hanging over his back. One of hers. The largest one. "Agaravel will come. As will-"
"You are a fool," Formora snapped.
His hand tightened on the hilt of his sword.
"And you will be a dead fool before long," she continued, not intimidated in the slightest.
"You won't be long to follow, then."
"Damn you. Stars above, damn you." Formora angrily shouldered her quiver. Already she was considering putting an arrow in his back the moment he turned around, but fool that he was he still had his wards. It would become a fight of blade, magic and mind, no matter how she chose to go about it - and though she was sure she could best him in all three, she also knew that he understood that just as well. Enduriel would try something underhanded if it came to blood - and unimaginative as he was, he had the cruelty and pettiness to make up for it. She couldn't chance it.
Nor could she chance losing the only other sane person she had left to talk to, unpleasant as he was.
Enduriel turned and began walking. Formora heaved a reluctant sigh and stiffly followed suit. They walked over meadow and dusty dunes, scaled the ridges and marched through the hills. The speck's crash site was some leagues away, far enough that Formora began to worry about how long it would take them to return to the barn, but then they stumbled upon it - or rather, the place where the smoke gave way for a scar through the earth parallel to the coast below. Something had raked through sand and rock, something large and burning, and Formora looked down the length of it. The speck, it appeared, was not so much a speck anymore. She saw... something at the end, its nose planted in the ground and tilted at an angle. Debris lay behind it; scraps of weathered metal.
And then she saw the thing emerging from beneath it.
"Down," Formora hissed, and she dropped to the ground. Enduriel was quick to follow. To her relief she discovered they were upwind - and though the acrid stench of smoke and seared earth wafted up to them and left them yearning for cleaner, fresher air, it was much preferable to the alternative. They were still some distance away, but the creature... looked like a person, hobbling along the scar left behind the not-speck, and they, for lack of a better word, shone in the sunlight. Formora squinted; she could make out the shape of two arms and two legs easily enough, along with a head. The absence of gnarled, recurved ox-like horns disregarded the possibility of Urgal or Kull, and its narrow build disqualified it as a dwarf. It was too large and straight-backed for a werecat and too bright and comfortable in the open light to possibly be Ra'zac. An elf, then. Or a human. It climbed up the side of the deep bank beside it, easily pulling itself up, and Formora guessed it to be the former. It was tall enough and though its movements were stiff there was a degree of defined grace in the way it walked, a grace the mortal races commonly lacked. She'd rarely seen humans dressed in such overabundant finery either - because the creature's garb was nothing but finery. Armoured finery at that.
Its head was crowned with two horizontal wing-like crests, pale and ivory, and below them at its temples hung a pair of golden rings. It was a helmet, Formora noted. Not a head. The vizor glinted in the sunlight, nearly indescribable, but the moment it turned and caught shadows she saw it was carved of a glassy substance like amethyst. The body of the creature was swathed in a fine set of robes, white and gold, and strange horn-growths emerged from its shoulder like runaway armoured plates. Jewels, too numerous to count, hung from the bottom of its robes like so many shiny baubles, more amethysts to dot its rich frame, and its faulds covered the sight of its legs, though Formora spied a pair of dark boots capped at the end in yet more gold. One boot, at least, was outfitted with a sharp golden spur. Of its hands it wore some sort of gloves or gauntlets, each index finger clad in a steely claw ornament, and along its forearms another pair of horn crests cradled a blue gem each, with both precious rocks skewered through with slim needles. Its robes, she saw as it briefly turned back to stare at the massive thing it had left behind, resembled moreso a long jacket than anything else but only if sung from a blend of silver steel and delicate silk. It was open at the front to reveal a darker undershirt. It wore loosely from one shoulder a large dark greatcoat that half hid its lustrous sheen, mantled around the shoulders and neck with what appeared to be a pelt of soft fur.
The last thing Formora noted, past the glimmering sight of the thing, was that it was bleeding. Not heavily, but she spied stray droplets of rich red running down one of the creature's arms and falling to the ground below. She wouldn't have noticed if not for the light catching the liquid sheen of each drop as they fell. She couldn't spy a wound, but the blood was running down its right arm all the same. From somewhere above its elbow, maybe, or its shoulder.
It walked perpendicular to their location, first coming closer and then marching away, towards the sea. It didn't stop to study its surroundings, it didn't so much as attempt to inspect its injury; it just trudged onwards as if in a hurry, rendered clumsy by pain and disorientation. Formora watched it all the while - watched as it shrunk from view, becoming a bright figure in the distance, and grew even more confused when it just... shrugged off its coat, stepped into the waves ahead, and disappeared entirely.
Enduriel stood up.
"What are you doing?" Formora snapped. "Get down!"
"It's gone," he said thoughtfully.
"What if there's another?!"
Enduriel looked back at the not-speck. They watched it for further activity. "I don't think there is," he said. "That one was hurt. None emerged to aid it."
Formora groaned. That was a flawed logic through and through; something only Enduriel could believe. "We have to wait," she said. "Check that it is alone."
Enduriel didn't say another word. He started walking - hiking down the slope towards the giant metal object. He didn't even wait to see if she would follow. Formora saw he still had the bag and muttered a curse before rushing after him. She made to grab his arm, tug him back and scold him, but Enduriel, expecting it, twisted around with a snarl and said, "Don't."
Formora stalled. "This is wrong," she pleaded. "This is unnatural."
"We're languishing. I won't languish any longer." He turned on his heel and kept going.
Formora watched him.
She looked to the ocean.
She looked back.
And followed.
The not-fleck was massive. It was nearly as large as the barn they'd left behind, possibly even larger. It was steel through and through, but the shape it had been forged in was rather... odd. The main body of it was square, though it came with both a sharpened spire for a nose and a shark-like fluke fin on its back. On either side of its body it had massive appendages, outfitted with a pair of fins each. Some of its outer armour had been flayed away by impact and heat, revealing the almost skeletal frame beneath, overlaying another set of plating. It was far beyond the scope and skill of any metalworker she'd encountered before, putting even the grand craftspeople of Doru Araeba to shame, back when the city had lived and thrived.
"No bird," Enduriel murmured.
No, Formora thought, it's not. It had no apparent wings - not like those of bird or bat, insect or Fanghur, Lethrblaka or dragon. Its fins were thick and crafted of yet more steel, and inanimate besides. She couldn't understand how it flew. Magic, maybe, but as she hesitantly reached out with her mind she found it all but devoid of ward and enchantments. Hidden, then. Formora turned to those spells she knew would turn latent magics inside out and bare them to the world, but as she invoked them she found even then they did little more than pick up on mild flickers here and there - mostly from deep inside the hulking object.
"Here," Enduriel called out. He had ducked under the side of the metal craft and stared at something. "There's a cavity."
Formora followed him, saw a heavy flap of metal ajar and laying against the ground, and discovered it led up into the object's belly. A faint, unassuming light pulsed within. Enduriel went down on his stomach and crawled towards it, dragging the bag after him. If not for their proximity to the strange structure, Formora would have criticized him for his recklessness. He reached the cavity, rose up onto his knees and then his feet and looked inside.
"It's..." he started to say, "it's a room."
Formora frowned. "A what?"
"A room. There are seats within. A table. Doors. Come here."
"Enduriel-"
"Formora, come have a look at this."
Formora sighed, slipped under the structure and dragged herself over. She rose up beside him and saw-
Yes. A relatively large room. Illuminated by a lamp built into the ceiling, not unlike an Erisdar enchantment but devoid of any obvious signs of magic. Either there was a remarkably complex spell at work - or it glowed via some other, non-arcane means. The room itself was neat, with a single low table in the middle and a pair of long luxurious couches on either side. There were shelves in the places where the dark wells met the even darker ceiling and Formora spied three doorways - one behind, leading to the structure's nose, and two leading to the rear of the craft. One of them was ajar, bent at an awkward angle.
She clambered up inside. The room was at an incline but it was still relatively level. It looked like a place someone had lived in, someone with a penchant for cleaning after themselves but even so there were marks left behind. Soft scratches in the table from objects being set down and pushed across it. A shallow incline in one of the armchairs; a favoured perch, perhaps? The air was warmer than the outside, but not by any significant degree. It wasn't fresh, but it wasn't stuffy either, despite the lack of open windows. There were cupboards and dressers built into the walls. Formora opened one, found it contained a delicate collection of drinking glasses and closed it after her. Another revealed a collection of strange translucent packets, hard and square-ish and containing what looked like discs of iridescent silver. A third held nothing more than a carved wooden figurine, lacquered and smooth but worn where fingers had brushed over it time and again - in the shape of a man armed with a harpoon.
Formora moved on, despite the urgings of the voice inside her to vacate the area, to leave it alone - but she was hungry to know more. Hungry to learn despite her reservations. Hungry to explore something new, something other than the dreary island she'd patrolled for nigh on four decades. If was a poor idea, she realized, but Enduriel had forced her hand and now she had to make the best of it. She slipped through the open door to the rear of the room and found it fed into a narrow corridor with even more entrances set along its side. She tried the first one on her right, discovered it lacked a handle, but the moment her hand touched it it slid open for her. Inside was... she didn't understand at first. There were glass containers and a pedestal in the back where a number of odd, elaborate relics stood on secured stands. In some of the containers, she saw, were living things. One contained a spider with many more legs than was the norm. Another was home to a slug-like creature that poked an eyeless head out from amidst a clump of moist moss and then disappeared all over again. Within a third nestled a feathered serpent, coiled around a smooth sapphire. A fourth contained a single huge bird skull from which scuttled a pack of tiny red whip scorpions, who gathered the dishevelled detritus on the floor of their container and began repairing the loose fortifications around the orifices of their skull-nest.
Of the relics in the back there were five - one was a circular object of red glass with a silver mass behind it; one was a chipped piece of tarnished gold wreathed in soft, pink essence; one was a flake of obsidian inscribed with strange, geometric lines; one was a single green-purple scale; the last was a glowing ember that emitted no smoke.
Formora backed away. She lingered at the doorway for a moment longer, just to take it all in, then moved onto the next room. It turned out to be a little more tame, nothing more than a relatively small kitchenette but outfitted with so many unfamiliar things she couldn't make sense of. There was a basin to pour water into and a board for drying things, a place for cutting food, but she saw no pit for a fire. One of the massive closet-like containers resisted her pull for the briefest moment before opening and a blast of cold air hit her; Formora stared at the contents within and realized it was an appliance for preserving foodstuffs through low temperatures, though half of what she glimpsed inside were foreign ingredients to her. She closed it after herself. Another drawer opened to reveal a selection of silver cutlery and the cupboard beneath it contained bowls and plates in abundance, all of it crafted of fine, smooth porcelain.
The next room opposite the kitchenette and the repository was lined with racks and steel containers upon which hung weapons and many more objects the likes of which Formora had never seen before. She spied three bows, five swords, two knives, a long lance folded in half, much, much more. She checked the place for magical traps and, finding none, ran her fingers down one of the closer bows. The frame of it was built of metal, tarnished silver with faded gold gilding, and it consisted of many, many arches. The bowstring was wire, but not like anything she'd ever felt before - it was metallic as well but more flexible than she would have anticipated. There was still strength there, a resilience, and it looked to require more strength to pull than most mortals could bring to bear - along with some elves. She lifted it from its rack and held it out, imagining herself slotting an arrow along the bowstring and taking aim. She could feel the power in it, the potential for harm, and she did not return it to its prior position - instead tucking it under the crook of one arm.
Formora backed out of the small armoury. The door closed behind her, though she couldn't sense any spell behind the mechanism. Acting on a whim, she threw out the boundaries of her mind in a net around the structure, searching for other consciousnesses. She felt Enduriel, who momentarily radiated surprise at the sensation and withdrew behind his own mental defences, and then the slivers of thoughts that emanated from the primitive creatures in the collection room. Formora expanded further yet, knowing it was a risk but incapable of doing anything else - better aware and exposed than blind and helpless, her instructors had always said.
Then she felt it. Yet another mind, intelligent and bright, and like Enduriel it felt her roving will, cowering behind fearsome psychic barriers. Formora stopped, retreated back into the safety of her own mind and returned to the main chamber, where Enduriel was inspecting a bottle of dark red wine. He looked up at her, then back down to the object at hand.
"Something is in here with us," Formora murmured.
He stiffened, placed the bottle down on the table and looked back at her. "Where?"
Formora slung the bow over her arm and shoulder and drew her sabre. She pointed to the rear of the vessel - to one of the rooms she hadn't yet touched. Enduriel unsheathed his own blade and nodded for her to advance; Formora did so with a scowl. She stalked down the narrow hallway, slowed before the final chamber and pressed the door. Like all the others it opened. Inside was...
Was just another storage room, with a large locker at the end. Nothing jumped out at her. Formora detected still no more wards or spells, but the new consciousness she'd picked up on was at the back of it. She slowly toed her way over it, glancing all around, and found the locker closed tightly shut - no handle in sight. She touched it with a finger, but it didn't budge; it was of different make to the doors, it seemed.
Whatever the entity was, it was on the other side.
"Atra edtha eom sjon all thornessa malmr," Formora whispered under her breath. (Allow me to see through this layer of steel.)
The magic manifested around her eyes and altered her vision, forcing the steel door of the locker to fizzle and begin to blur before dissolving away entirely. Formora almost gave a shout of alarm as the contents within were revealed to; the very first thing she'd noticed was the skull - nearly twice as large as her own head and marred with deep gouging marks. The bone was dark like midnight and it was framed by two long horns the colour of ivory. A glassy screen of green crystal hung over the majority of the thing's macabre face, but she glimpsed long, wicked fangs beneath it. The top of the thing's head between its horns was ornamented with small, bony spikes. It was dead, that much was clear. The thing on the shelf below, however, was decidedly not.
It was much smaller comparatively, a green orb with bony frills clenched tightly around it. The entire creature was wrapped up in steely wire and caught within a ring that lashed its form with sparks of energy, like little arcs of stolen lightning. The string of emotion and conscious thought came from that - though Formora couldn't understand what it was. It had no mouth, no nostrils, no limbs, nothing but an apparent eye. It resembled nothing more than an Eldunarí, so crystalline was its core, but altered significantly.
Formora reached for it with a mental probe and the thing shirked away, lashing back with a weak counterattack that she effortlessly batted aside. It... was afraid. Terribly so. It put up a poor assault when she ventured too close, but its defences, she noted, were formidable. More than she could dismantle. She backed away, saw Enduriel by the doorway and gestured to the locker. "It's inside."
"Can you reach it?"
"No."
Enduriel stared at the locker. "Can we kill it?"
Formora's head snapped to look at him, glaring and aghast. "No!" she exclaimed. "We need to leave."
"And if it informs another that we were here?"
"I'm not discussing this with you." Formora approached him and pushed him out. Enduriel, taken by surprise, staggered back before arraying himself in the middle of the hallway, blocking the way.
"It's safer for us," he argued.
"Nothing about this has been safe," Formora retorted. "We should leave while we have the chance."
"And what do we have to show for it?" He glanced at the bow she'd found. "Where did you get that?"
Formora indicated to the armoury. "There are some blades within."
"We could take them."
"We could."
Enduriel looked at her a moment longer before turning up his nose and rapping his knuckles against the armoury's door. It opened and he slipped inside. Formora waited for him, glancing over her shoulder all the while, back to the creature in the locker. It was trapped. That was glaringly obvious. But she didn't know what it was - and she'd crossed members of every sapient race to walk, fly, or swim in the known world. The same was true of the skull; it was too large for anything but Kull or Lethrblaka and it resembled neither.
Enduriel returned, his arms laden with the lance and a wide sword, designed for chopping. He looked past her with narrowed eyes.
"No," Formora told him. "No."
His lips set in a thin line. Enduriel turned and walked back to the main chamber. Formora spared the trapped creature one more confused look before following after him, waiting until he'd snatched up the wine bottle and dropped down and out of the building-that-wasn't. They hurried out from under it, retraced their way back out of the small valley and took up position on the slope overlooking it. Formora saw... nothing. Nothing alive in any case. The figure from before hadn't returned. It was as if they had never existed; the ocean had removed all trace of them. She didn't know what to make of it. Were they alive? Were they coming back?
Who were they? Had they really resided within the not-speck? What was the nail to them - and where had they gone?
"Come," Enduriel urged.
Formora reluctantly tore her gaze away from the ocean, away from the structure they'd raided, and locked her eyes on Enduriel. "A moment." She swivelled back around and held out a hand. Magic swam under her fingertips, called forth by will and word, manifesting as a desire for awareness. "Atra edtha waíse pekkjro abr annr sharjaví," Formora incanted, flicking her fingers and firing the ward across every corner of the valley. "Atra thornessa galdr eom taune ramr frá du lífa abr thornessa ília." (Allow me to be forewarned of activity in this place. Allow this spell to siphon its strength from the life present here.)
It was a rudimentary spell, but a reliable one. Her only concern was how unsubtle it was to any skilled spellcaster. Any elf or Rider could trace its properties and realize it for what it was the moment it activated. They would understand there were others present, others watching - as if the theft of their belongings wasn't indication enough. A sacrifice worth making, perhaps, but a sacrifice nonetheless - and Formora was not happy that she had to put her anonymity at risk.
"There," she whispered, strained. "I am finished."
"Then let us quit this place," Enduriel urged.
They left, laden down with foreign weapons of unfamiliar make. The heaviest weight Formora bore, though, was the realization that they weren't alone anymore. That there were potentially others on Vroengard - that trapped crystal that unnerved her so, and the robed figure who'd allowed the waves to take them. It was a frightening concept. Frightening because other than Enduriel and Agaravel, and the beast that hunted them nightly, she'd nary glimpsed another soul for nigh on four decades.
And now-
Now the sky itself was seemingly at war.
They returned to the barn, scaled up to the loft above and set their new findings out on the middle of the floor. Enduriel laid down his new sword and the lance, and Formora arrayed the bow she'd taken alongside them. The sword was, again, wide, and though it looked heavy, it was anything but. That said, it was still unwieldy through sheer mass alone, suited for nothing other than swinging. The guard was almost nonexistent for how the edge of the blade hung over it. It was only sharpened on one end, giving it a vaguely crescent shape, and triangular notches had been cut into the other side. The tip of it was pointed, but given the breadth of the blade Formora couldn't imagine it thrusting without some clumsiness. The grip was dark blue but framed in gold and the blade itself was silver, criss-crossed with stylistic lines across each face.
The lance was a separate story. It not only folded in half but came in two pieces, one piece being larger than the other, and there was a locking mechanism with a trigger that allowed them to remain fixed together when pressed so. The blade was near as long as the sword's but slimmer. It too bore only a singular edge, though it lended itself better to thrusting than the other weapon. It was taller than both she and Enduriel when straightened up, but like the other weapon was remarkably lighter than she would have expected - and sharper too, splitting apart a piece of old stone pulled from the wall as easily as any Rider's blade. It was near black in many places and even the blade was of a dimmed silver hue, but there were many places forged with a brassy kind of gold material. The pommel of it was weighted, perhaps to balance out the blade but also to function as a sort of blunt force weapon in any case where the bladed end could not be brought to bear.
The bow she had already inspected, and yet still it transfixed her, it mystified her. Around each weapon was an air of allure, of potential. No wards crafted in the Ancient Language, that much she had deduced, and none of them had been enchanted in the same manner as her sabre or Enduriel's broadsword, but they were no ordinary weapons either. They were decidedly other. Of the sword Formora ascribed a brutal elegance, a weapon of butchery and war but given a more enticing shape. There was a power in its edge and an eagerness in its hilt, as if to instill a bearer with the courage to do battle - and exult in it. The lance was a more dire thing, haunting in the sheer hunger surrounding it; it almost felt conscious and alive when her hand traced over it, exhibiting a subconscious thirst for dark work. The bow, alternatively, was paradoxically cooler and hotter than the others - far more clinical and clearly the weapon of a warrior who took no joy in their craft, but the power humming through its frame was burning, nigh-on cataclysmic. It was strength, trapped, and carried yet the embers of its previous wielder's determination, their dauntless courage in the face of something indomitable.
Formora pulled her hand back and looked each weapon over again, puzzled. There was... emotion and desire around each tool, as if a cloud of wayward thoughts had been shed from thinking minds and fell to coiling around each weapon, assigning to them the concepts and feelings associated with them. The bow was the clearest in that respect, but each of them carried their own individual essences and emitted through raw sensation the values their wielders had once assigned to them. Those thoughts weren't solid like those of a living thing, but as soft as liquid and just as difficult to ward away; they slipped past the mental blocks around her, leaving traces of their passing in her subconscious. If she had been any less keen of mind Formora would have missed them.
It was for that reason she wasn't surprised Enduriel didn't comment overly much on it as he inspected each weapon in turn.
"There's a power to them," he said, eyes glinting with thinly-veiled greed.
"Yes," Formora murmured.
He gathered up the sword and lance. "These are mine."
"And you're welcome to them," Formora tiredly replied. The sword didn't suit her and the lance - the size of it suggested a purpose for slaying creatures larger than the bearer. It wouldn't have looked amiss in the hands of a pre-Blood Oath elf, to bring down against the dragons of old. She didn't like the imagery her wandering mind conjured from that prompt. She didn't like how easily she saw herself wielding it against yet another dragon.
But if Enduriel wanted it, so be it. She was no more responsible for him than he was for her. Theirs was nothing more than a partnership of necessity. If he wanted to relive his days of strength, let him. Formora would gladly walk the path to a brighter future, even if he wallowed in the gruesome past - and she wouldn't give him a second look while doing so. So what did it matter, in any capacity, if he jealously protected a sword fit for nothing more than an executioner's grim handiwork? They had plenty of other blades to choose from, if Formora ever chose to grow beyond the use of her sabre - which had served her well for more than three centuries.
All the same, the bow was hers. Formora pulled it closer to her. It was of such a fine build that she considered replacing her yew-sung bow with it, relenting only because, when she lifted it up to draw, it carried a different feel than that which she was used to. The frame did not bend so easily, though the strength it carried was still immense - perhaps even more so. She doubted any arrow but those of elven make would survive the sheer force of it.
Formora placed it aside, by her own packs, then glanced back in Enduriel's direction. He was distracted tracing his finger down the flat of the sword, running over each stylistic line engraved in the fine steel. She looked past him, to the bags of hers he'd seized earlier. She stood up, stepped over and claimed them - and only when she'd retreated back to her corner of the loft did he realise what she'd done.
"Wait," Enduriel said. She heard him standing up. Heard the slick whisper of steel drawing.
Formora stopped. She didn't turn around. "Careful, fool," she softly warned.
"Don't. Call me that," Enduriel growled.
Formora breathed slowly. "Don't do something you will regret."
"Put those down, Láerdhon."
Formora closed the remaining distance between herself and her quarter and carefully laid the bag down. She checked inside and found, to her relief, both Agaravel and the silver stone whole and undamaged. The former yammered nonsense that Formora blocked off and ignored.
"I don't see why you keep them," Enduriel complained.
"Because I know not to risk them," Formora reminded him. "I know to keep them safe. They are worth more than any stolen weapon."
"Better reason yet to wield them."
"I am not fool enough to throw my future away on a gamble. Are you?"
She turned and saw him bristle.
"What future?" Enduriel hissed. "What future, Láerdhon? What have we achieved in all the time we've spent here?"
"Survival. We are alive. Is that not reward enough?"
"No. It no more satisfies you than I."
"Perhaps not," Formora concurred, "but I will not complain."
Enduriel lowered his new blade. "Therein lies your greatest fault," he whispered. "You don't heed the truth. Not until it has you wrapped in its web." He kicked the lance over towards his own bedroll and trudged after it.
Fool.
Formora moved her bags behind her, laid her scabbard down on the ground at her other side and sat cross-legged on her blankets. Hers was the first watch of the night and though the day's light had yet to pass, it was too close to dusk to attempt another trek somewhere else. Sundown was too dangerous to leave to chance - and the beast was ceaseless. Dusk marked the beginning of its hunt. Only when dawn struck would they find true respite.
For a moment, she wondered if the beast would be as curious towards the new structure as they had been. She wondered if it would sense the eye-Eldunarí inside. She wondered if it would try to kill it.
And she wondered if she'd made the right choice, leaving it trapped.
Rain began to patter against the tiles of the roof at some point. The ocean-borne winds rattled the building, howled around it. It was comforting - comforting in that sense of I am safe from that, I am somewhere warm and dry and the elements cannot reach me here. It was almost disarming; she had to strain to keep focus, to keep listening past the din of the storm outside and search for something else. Something with more weight.
She was not left waiting long.
It manifested first as a shrill grinding sound of metal scraping over cobblestones. The beast had arrived. No later than usual, some hours after sundown, and it was passing over the old weathered path that led between the ruins of the farmhouse and the barn. The noise only grew louder as it closed in, stopping for a moment before the entrance - which they had barred closed. The beast, she heard, had taken to pacing around the structure. She didn't dare move, didn't dare make a sound. It was so close, close enough to call to, to speak with. Formora held her tongue, though; she feared that if it heard even a single word it would frenzy - and she wasn't confident the barn would survive it.
The beast stalked around them, circled them. She could hear the creak of every step it took, the shriek of its monstrous blade being dragged after it. Familiar, haunting sounds. She knew them well - well enough to dread every night, taking solace only in the constant reminder that it hadn't claimed her yet.
Enduriel awoke at some point and straightened up. He grasped for the lance and pulled it close, but Formora gestured for him to remain still. He did so sullenly, stiff with fear and animal panic. It didn't matter how many nights they'd survived, how many years they'd avoided falling prey to the beast - it never ceased to instil them with terror of the unknown. It was other - and other was dangerous.
The beast stopped again. By the front entrance, Formora guessed. The noise of it faded but for the hollow dings of raindrops hitting heavy armour. For a moment she feared it was going to charge in - but... no. No. The beast had stopped for another reason entirely. She heard something else. A howl, separate from that of the wind. Distant. Bloodcurdling. Something was out there, something closing in; she heard the wet slaps of bare flesh hitting stone and then... a deep groan and the singing of a blade moving through the air, followed by an almighty crash.
And everything was silent once more.
The beast resumed pacing. Formora heard it round the barn twice before stopping a third time, again before the doors. What followed was harder to make out - she heard a cracking, twisting sound like bones resetting, followed by muffled, primal snarls and cries. A sword was swung again, but this time it whistled far - it did not impact anything. There were more snarls, more grunts, and something hit something with a thud - falling against the doors below. The bar she and Enduriel had set against it groaned and cracked and, after a few moments, shattered beneath the immense force pressing against it. The wind surged inside and shapes sprawled beneath them, beneath the loft, glimpsed only as motion amidst the gloom from between tightly-pressed floorboards.
The beast grumbled and rose to a knee, each motion a metallic clang, and from the sounds of it drove its sword into the ground - maybe to support its weight, maybe to finish off whatever had tackled it through the barn. If it was the case of the latter then it missed altogether; something else flexed down there, something near as large and stinking of rot. The stench of it wafted up to them, acrid and foul. The newcomer made an erratic clicking sound, followed by a moist snuffling noise. Formora heard the clack of claws on the stone floor below. It heaved and panted and grunted like some rabid animal, so much louder than even the colossal beast, and though it took her a moment Formora eventually realized the strange, grotesque sounds the thing was making were words.
They were words.
It was speaking.
"Vvvvverkuuuu," it gnashed in some foul, otherworldly tongue. "Pssssser-kkkkisssk... arrrrr."
The steel beast rumbled back, shaking the very barn with its sonorous voice - wordless, absent of language but with meaning nonetheless. A warning. A threat.
And the rotting thing replied with a pained cackle, "Kkkikkkkikkkikkkkillllllllll... ffffforrrr... fffffaaaaatherrrrr."
Formora locked eyes with Enduriel, whose own face was pale and drawn - which she suspected mirrored her own. She slowly reached back for her bags. He saw. He warily did the same, as careful as she was. There was another thud from below as the two monsters collided. They hit one of the walls and the wooden supports groaned. Formora threw caution to the wind after that, shoving everything she had back into her packs and strapping them onto her back. She looped her arm through the frame of her stolen bow, picked up her old one in one hand and grabbed her sabre with the other. The fighting from below drowned out the shuffling her packing kicked up, and as she stood, ready to flee, she saw that Enduriel wasn't far behind. He rose to his feet with his broadsword sheathed at his hip, his new toys in hand, and sent her a questioning look.
What now? he seemed to ask.
Formora listened and waited. Their loft didn't come with windows, and she doubted they had time to cut their way out through the roof before the creatures below heard and climbed to investigate. The only way out was down. Past the monsters flinging each other across the barn's ground floor. She glanced back at Enduriel and motioned with her sword to the alcove leading back down. He looked at the ladder they'd dragged up after them, but she shook her head. They didn't have time. If they were lucky, they could jump down and run right out while the creatures were preoccupied with each other.
She opened her mind and expanded it just far enough to reach Enduriel, incidentally drawing Agaravel in with them. We have to wait, she said, but once we move, it has to be together. Don't let them notice you.
I doubt we can help that, Enduriel retorted.
We have to hope.
HOPE, Agaravel chortled.
Enduriel grimaced. When?
Formora listened. One of the two creatures below had thrown the other across the barn and against the other wall, jostling the entire building, and stomped after their downed opponent. Now! Formora thought. She dropped down through the open hatch and landed on the floor below, bending her knees to soften the impact - unaccustomed to the sheer weight on her back. Enduriel fell after her. Formora saw the open doorway and didn't think twice before sprinting for it. She'd only just made it outside when she heard a familiar roar; the armoured beast had spotted them. Formora couldn't help but glance behind her.
She sorely wished she hadn't.
The metal beast was but a living sculpture of gleaming steel, taller even than a Kull and though it was shaped like a man it had the snarling head of a dragon. It held with both hands a mighty claymore fit for slaying giants. It took one step after them, then to a knee as the other creature tackled it - and that made for a far more terrifying sight. It was not quite as large, but where the metal beast was forged seemingly entirely of unliving materials, the other monster was a thing of pale, broken flesh dotted with faintly blue boils and swollen joints. The thing had four arms and a head capped in a metal mask with no way to see out of it. A strange mist trickled out of the numerous cuts over its flesh and from the cracks in the shell and rough armour that covered random parts of its body.
Enduriel grabbed her arm and tugged her onwards. Formora didn't look back again.
AN: Huge thanks to Nomad Blue for editing!