Pillar of Ruin

Elara - The Road to Seda

For two days, Elara rode in a state of vibrating, intellectual bliss. The specimen—she refused to think of him as a 'man', as that implied rights and personhood that would only complicate the paperwork—was a miracle. A living nexus of raw, untamed Etheric power. The energy discharge he had unleashed upon exiting the forest was not a spell; it was a biological function. The theoretical implications alone were enough to guarantee her a full professorship.

She cataloged his every move from the saddle. Subject appears physically robust, mid-30s. Dour, non-communicative, and prone to brooding. He exhibits a profound, almost pathological aversion to direct sunlight, squinting as if in physical pain. A symptom of his "geas of place"? Or simple troglodytic tendency? He perceives the Etheric dampeners as a source of profound distress, far beyond simple confinement. A fascinating psychological dependency.

She almost pitied him. But pity was a messy, inefficient emotion. It was the enemy of progress. Progress required dissection.

Her companion, Faren, was proving to be a reservoir of such messy emotions.

"He said he has a son," Faren had whispered to her on the first night, his face pale in the firelight as he stared at the chained, sleeping form of the specimen.

"Irrelevant," Elara said, not looking up from her notes. "A biological imperative. It changes nothing about his Etheric properties."

"It changes everything, Elara. He's not just a 'specimen'. He's a person. We've abducted him."

"We retrieved a dangerous, unregistered magical asset that unleashed an uncontrolled blast of power," Elara corrected, her voice sharp. "If Gaidan's patrol hadn't been nearby, he could have leveled a village. He is a threat to the state."

That had shut Faren up. He'd spent the last hour walking in a pale, taut mask of guilt, a man so deep inside his own shame that he was deaf to the world.

Trio of Aga, Elara, and Faren - The Approach to Seda

"Another day," Gaidan grunted, breaking the silence. The soldier pointed ahead. "We'll be at the gates by—"

He stopped. His head snapped up, his entire body going rigid in the saddle. "By the Tower’s break, What in the Hells...?"

Aga had observed it a moment before. It was not the familiar, earthy scent of the farmland. It was something acrid, oily, and artificial, in other words, wrong. He looked up, following Gaidan's gaze to the crest of the hill they were approaching.

Faren finally looked up, his expression of self-pity replaced by a sudden, confused dread. "What... what is that?"

They crested the hill. The road stretched out before them, leading towards a vast basin by the sea.

And Seda was gone.

In its place was a wound in the sky. A massive, churning pillar of greasy black and dark grey smoke climbed for miles, a monument of ruin that stained the heavens. It was not the smoke of a simple fire; it was the roiling, angry plume of an entire city district consuming itself.

Aga’s hunter-sense screamed. This was not a natural disaster. This was an act. This was a kill.

"No..." Elara’s voice was a thin, strangled sound. Her scientific detachment evaporated, replaced by a raw, hollow terror. "The Institute... the labs... my research subjects..." Her scryer slipped from her numb fingers, clattering unheeded onto the road.

"My family," Faren whispered. His words reeked of pure agony. He broke into a stumbling run, pulling Aga forward by the chain, his eyes fixed on the smoke. "Anya... the other children... we have to..."

"Halt!" Gaidan's voice was a crack of thunder. He dismounted in one fluid, violent motion, his longsword singing as it left the scabbard. His cynical, weary demeanor was gone, replaced by the terrifying, focused calm of a veteran soldier in a warzone.

He grabbed the chain, yanking both Faren and Aga to a stop.

"Look," Gaidan commanded, his voice flat and hard as stone.

Aga looked. The soldier wasn't pointing at the smoke. He was pointing at the road. A frantic, disorganized river of people was fleeing the city, a tide of terror moving against them. Carts piled high with salvaged junk, screaming children, men and women with the blank, hollow-eyed stares of survivors. The distant, chaotic sound of a thousand people shouting in fear began to reach them on the wind.

"We are not going to the city," Gaidan said, his gaze sweeping the panicked crowd, his hand already on the hilt of his side-dagger. "Mission is scrubbed. We find a defensible position and wait for orders."

"Wait?" Faren shrieked, his face wild with panic. "My family is in there!"

"Your family will be mourning a dead ‘You’ if you run into that," Gaidan snarled. "That is not a mere fire. That is a collapse. The city is not safe."

"You don't understand," Elara said, her voice trembling, but her analytical mind already clicking, desperate for a solution. "The Institute... the High Chancellor... the wards... they would have held. Something... something must have... unmade them."

"I don't care," Gaidan said. "We fall back to the Three Bridges."

"No."

The word was a low growl. Gaidan, Elara, and Faren all turned to stare at Aga.

He was pulling against his restraints. He was not looking at the smoke, or the refugees, or the soldiers.

He was sniffing the air.

"What is it, specimen?" Gaidan snapped.”Someone coming ahead on the path?”

"No," Aga said, his eyes narrowing. Amidst the acrid tang of soot, the smell of burnt metal, and the faint, coppery scent of mass panic, he had caught it.

It was faint, almost perceptible, a single thread in a tapestry of disaster. But it was there. The unmistakable, sickly-sweet smell of decay and ozone. The scent of his abyss. The smell that brought Aga back to his nightmares. The scent he had last hunted in the woods of the Maw..

"Was she here?" Aga whispered, his voice a low thrum of disbelief and dawning, terrible purpose. He looked from the burning city to Faren, his hunter's mind seeing the path.

"You want to find your family," Aga said to Faren, his voice urgent. "Your key is in your pocket."

Faren stared at him, confused.

"The key," Aga repeated, holding up his silver-bound wrists. "My 'prison' is your duty. Your 'duty' is to the Institute. If your family is in Seda, then we are all going to the same place. You get me into that city, and I will get us through whatever waits for us. But you must unleash me."

Gaidan leveled his sword at Aga’s throat. "You will not give an order, prisoner."

"This is not an order," Aga snarled, never taking his eyes off Faren. "It's a trade. Your family for my freedom."

Faren looked from Aga's burning, intense eyes to Gaidan's sword, then back to the pillar of smoke that had just consumed his entire world.