Chapter 14: Sparks

She had been jumping from rock to rock for hours, always gauging the distance to the next cliff and the depth of the ravines separating the outcrops. If she were to fall, there would be no one around to help her. Still, despite the dangers, it was by far the safest route.

For the first day, she had simply followed the main road south of Palangea, indistinguishable from any other traveler leaving the great city behind. It would take some time before anyone at the academy realized she had gone missing.

Even when she didn’t show up to her lessons, Soria doubted the first conclusion her teachers would jump to would be that she had deserted. After all, there were many other plausible reasons why a young student might miss her first lesson at sunrise, most of them far more likely than that she had left the academy against orders. As the old saying goes, when you hear hooves, you don’t think “unicorns”.

But on the second day, she began looking for smaller back roads instead. By now, she had most likely been declared a traitor to Derimar, and it was quite possible messages had been sent to remote guard posts with her likeness.

The Derimar tribes were a sophisticated people. Using a network of lanterns, which they could shade or light in long or short bursts, they transmitted sequences of “on” and “off” pulses to the next lantern node down the line. Each message always began with an address, which allowed the node to retransmit it further down the network if needed.

The transmission rate was limited, of course, and the system only worked at night and when it didn’t rain too hard, but with enough ons and offs, any message could be sent anywhere within Derimar in a matter of hours.

Any message. Including crude images of her.

It didn’t take long before even the back roads made her feel unsafe. As soon as she neared the Cold Edge, she began traversing its foothills in a southern direction where there were no roads at all. Crossing the tall mountains had never been an option for her—she neither had the experience nor the equipment for mountaineering. That left only one way open for her to get to Terynia. She had to go south into the Nimean Compact until she could round the Cold Edge and travel north again.

Given the urgency of her mission, Soria figured she might just be the most reluctant deserter in Derimar’s history. She had loved the academy and treasured all she had learned there. And in the two weeks she had stayed at the school, she had learned a lot, indeed. With the front lines beckoning for new Flow Walkers, she would have graduated in only a few more weeks, or even earlier than that, if the tribes to the west of Palangea fell first. To facilitate such a rapid deployment, the curriculum had been condensed and the studies were intense.

The lessons had progressed from theory to practice and had quickly become more advanced. It wasn’t enough to simply be able to reach for the Deepwell and bring down magic into the world. Anyone could learn to do that. But then you had to actually do something with that power, and that was where her training truly mattered.

Time and again, her teachers had told her it was all a matter of precision, not strength. When you healed a wound, it was not enough to almost mend the tissues. If you failed to close it fully, the patient could bleed out internally. But if you encouraged too much tissue growth instead, they might develop a tumor. And if you needed to close an abdominal wound, it would do your patient no good if the healing ended up in their leg instead.

Precision, precision, precision. The word had been drummed into her from the start. Take it slowly. Do things right. Any novice could perform the same healing as a Flow Walker with a lifetime of experience, but it would take longer, and the risk of failure would be much higher.

Soria hoped she had learned enough to serve her on her mission to rescue Cairn, but she realized she would be missing large parts of the curriculum. Hopefully she could figure some of it out on her own, or better yet, find other teachers along the way who could help her.

Because now that she had tasted magic, she wanted more.

* * *

The desert had been surprisingly uncomfortable, Larean thought. One could easily have imagined that someone like him, who had spent his entire life living in a city where you could see the Burn in every direction, would find himself perfectly adapted to desert living. But apparently, life out there among the dunes was not quite as comfortable as one would have expected.

Of course, his discomfort might also have had something to do with the fact that he had been forced to cross the Burn with nothing but the shoes on his feet and the clothes on his back. Even worse, it hadn’t even been his best clothes.

Fortunately, not even three hours into his escape, he had run into a trading caravan bound east. By then, he was already tired and hungry, and had more or less given up hope. But the trader had kindly taken him in, fed him, given him wine to drink, and allowed him to ride on his camel while the old man elected to walk beside it.

Though, if Larean was honest with himself, that hospitality might have had just a tad to do with a certain promise of a significant number of scalii he might have made at the beginning of their journey. Money that turned out to be very, very difficult to find once they arrived at the southern tip of the Cold Edge.

Sadly, Larean had to admit to the old trader that he must have dropped his money bag somewhere along the way. If the man wanted to, he was of course more than welcome to look for it on his way back to Jai Karal.

Admittedly, there had been some shouting and a handful of unkind words when they arrived at their destination and the trader demanded his payment for the journey. But after Larean gave the man his father’s address, the situation had calmed down. Hopefully, Larean thought, that would kill two sandflies with one stone—not only would the trader get paid, but his father would also get the message that Larean was alive and well.

Though, come to think of it, he would also learn about Larean's whereabouts. Which just might—or might not—be such a good idea, if the Count’s men came to pay the elder Onyx a visit.

Never mind that, he thought, dismissing his own concerns. He was here now, and would soon be in Derimar—safe and free, no longer having to fear the Compact’s soldiers coming after him. In fact, if he never saw another soldier again for the rest of his life, he would be just fine. Everything was great, really. Well, except for that weird noise he’d been hearing for the past few minutes, of course, like a scraping sound among the rocks higher up the mountain. That was just a little bit concerning.

It made Larean wish he wasn’t alone out here. If Patter had been with him, the little beggar could have scrambled up there to check it out for them. But the man had been quite vocal about not crossing the Burn without proper preparations, and no matter how much Larean had argued with him, he had not been able to convince him otherwise. Which was a little surprising in itself, of course, but that’s the way it was. Patter could be incredibly stubborn when he wanted to be.

Someone like Marcaro would have been a better travel companion than Patter anyway, Larean thought, idly wondering where the neighbor’s kid was these days. They used to have so much fun together! The last time they had gone out celebrating, they had found a bar where a traveling magician, a beautiful girl visiting the Compact all the way from the faraway Empire, had put on a very entertaining fire magic show. Together, they had laughed at her tricks for hours, until Larean had to go home. His father’s rules about curfew were quite strict, after all. Marcaro, on the other hand, had not lived under such unfair regulations and had stayed to watch more of the entertainment. Lucky him.

Come to think of it, that must have been the last night they went out together. I wonder where he is now? Larean thought. He realized hadn’t seen the kid since then.

Probably living the good life among the noblemen back in Jai Karal, he concluded with the tiniest bit of jealousy, as he continued his climb among the dusty, dry rocks of the southern foothills of the Cold Edge.

* * *

There it was again.

The low, almost imperceptible scraping sound had followed her for the past ten minutes, sometimes from behind, sometimes from the high cliff to her right. And now she heard it from the shadows ahead.

In the dry, sandy conditions here where the Cold Edge met the Burn, it was almost impossible to sneak up on someone unnoticed. No matter how light-footed you were, there would always be a loose rock that shifted under your weight, or a pebble falling down a cliff face after you disturbed its rest.

Fearful that the Derimar guards had finally caught up with her, she hunkered down, hoping they hadn’t spotted her yet. She thought she had crossed into the Compact a couple of hours after sunset, but she wasn’t entirely sure where the border was. In the darkness of the desert night, she might not have seen the demarcation line when she walked across it. But it was equally possible she just hadn’t reached it yet.

And then she saw the source of the sound.

From her position, hidden behind a large boulder and looking up the towering cliff face, she could see its back and its powerful hind legs, gray in the pale starlight.

Soria breathed a sigh of relief. With its head facing the other direction, the cat had not spotted her yet. If she was lucky, it was up there looking for other prey.

She had just begun sneaking around it when the commotion started.

The powerful muscles of the animal’s hind legs contracted, and a moment later, it jumped off the rock it had been standing on to pounce on something on the ground below.

Patera, help me, she prayed.

At that moment, she heard a scream filled with terror. It sounded perhaps just a tiny bit less masculine than she had expected a grown man to sound when attacked by a sabre-toothed cat weighing five times as much as he did. Still, the scream startled the predator just enough to give both Soria and the strange man an extra second.

Or perhaps it was her own shout from behind that had startled the cat. Without thinking, she had rushed the animal the moment she saw it leaping toward its victim, screaming at the top of her lungs.

That’s when the light show began.

The cat was still in the air. To Soria, it felt like everything was happening slower than it should, as if time itself had turned sluggish. She could see the predator descending to the ground, and the man, desperately trying to roll away before it was too late.

But most important of all, she could see flames of fire igniting everywhere around her.

Leaves on the ground, branches in dry trees, the fur on the side of the cat, the man’s left pant leg, and a strand of her own hair. Small flames of fire danced all around them. For a moment, the cliffs looked more like a fireworks show back in Derimar than the hunting ground of a sabre-toothed cat.

The animal was confused and roared in pain. Instead of sinking its canines into the man’s trachea, it swiped at him with its claws in a panicked attempt to protect itself. At the same time, Soria—after swatting at her hair to put out the small flame behind her right ear—ran up to it from behind, adding her own presence to the chaos. Once there, she threw up a shield engulfing both herself and the injured man on the ground, knocking the cat away.

With a single leap, the big animal jumped back up the cliff face and disappeared into the night. It left behind the silent, cold desert, two frightened young people, and more than a few smoldering spots on the ground and among the bushes surrounding them.

* * *

His entire world now literally consisted only of pain. Pain and fire.

Well, not exactly literally, Larean thought. That’d be weird.

Still, he was in pain from the deep wound the cat had inflicted on his arm, and there were more than a few fires around him and the strange girl who had seemed to materialize out of thin air just when he had needed help the most.

Maybe he had the power to conjure up more than just fire, Larean thought idly. If he could summon girls…

No. He pushed the thought aside. This wasn’t the time.

“Who are you?” he asked her, trying to hide his confusion. It didn’t go very well. This time, the Larean charm seemed to have gone missing along with the cat.

The girl reflected the question back at him. “Who are you?”

“I’m Soria,” she continued. “Are you all right?”

Duh. No?

“I’m bleeding. Badly,” he explained to her. He was probably in shock, too. Well, at least he would die looking up into the eyes of a beautiful girl. Things could be a lot worse. It could have been Patter there instead.

Soria ripped open his ornamented shirt to get a better look at the wound. A muffled sound of protest escaped from Larean’s mouth, but he didn’t press the issue.

“I wouldn’t exactly say it’s that bad,” she told him after assessing his injury. “But the wound could get infected, so I’ll need to heal it. Try not to move too much.”

She closed her eyes and seemed to listen to something only she could hear. Or see something only she could see. Yes, that made more sense with her eyes closed. Almost like when he himself used his fire magic.

Well, tried to use it.

Nothing happened. The girl just sat there.

She took a deep breath, seemingly trying to concentrate better. No wonder, Larean thought. The excitement of the night wasn’t exactly conducive to staying calm and focused. Who was she, anyway? Did she even know what she was doing?

Please don’t turn me into a rabbit.

Eventually, she opened her eyes. Whatever she had been looking for in her mind, the girl must have found it, because now he could see the wound on his arm slowly beginning to close.

“I’m glad it’s just a superficial gash,” she told him. “I’m… I don’t really know how to do this. If it had been worse…”

Oh, just perfect.

“But it doesn’t have to be flawless,” she explained quickly. “As long as it doesn’t get infected, I’m happy.”

She is happy? It’s my arm.

Then again, he had heard some girls liked scars on a man. Now he’d have a story about how he had gotten them fighting off a sabre-toothed cat. And for the most part, it wouldn’t even be made up.

But at least the bleeding had stopped. Maybe, just maybe, he would actually survive this ordeal.

“You still haven’t told me your name,” she said.

How rude of her to press him on that point. He had almost died, after all.

“Oh,” he said, trying to hide his embarrassment at his failure of decorum. “I’m Larean. Larean Onyx, at your service.”

“Hello,” she said with a laugh.

Ah, the old Larean charm was back and working again. Very good.

She looked at him as if he were something the cat had dragged in. Which, in this case, it kind of had.

Maybe his charm wasn’t quite up to speed yet, after all.

“What are you doing out here?” she inquired. “Sneaking around the Cold Edge in the middle of the night.”

What was he doing here? She was the one sneaking around the Cold Edge in the middle of the night, not him. He was just casually strolling into Derimar to make a new life for himself. He told her so.

Again, the girl laughed at him. She really was quite rude.

“You’re fleeing to Derimar because you want to be safe? Why do you think I’m running away from there? You know Derimar is at war, right? The Empire has crossed the Cold Edge.”

He didn’t know. Maybe he should have, he thought. But a man can’t know everything.

Still, the news threw a rather significant wrench into the wheels of his very solid and quite well-thought-out plan.

After pondering the implication of what the gorgeous girl in front of him had just told him, he could only think of one proper course of action. After all, it wasn’t like his plans had really been set in stone anyway.

“Maybe I could go with you, to wherever it is you’re going?” he asked her. “If there’s a war going on, you might need my help. We’d be better off if we paired up.”

She just looked at him without saying a word.

“Where are you going, by the way?” he inquired, suddenly remembering that that kind of information could be somewhat important to have if he were to go with her.

“Terynia,” she replied with a single word.

Oh, great. I’m going to the capital of the Agerian Empire—in the middle of a war.

Exactly why the girl felt that journey would be safer for her than staying in Derimar, he could not fathom.

Author's Note

Thank you for reading Echoes of Fallen Gods!

This novel is 43 chapters long, with new installments posted twice each week. Perhaps you’d be interested in reading some of my other stories while you wait for the next update?

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