Arc 1, Chapter 11: Those Who Cannot See the Sky

  The dragon spread its wings.

  Corruption poured from the gaps in its armor and pooled beneath it. The liquid spread across the cracked stone in steaming rivers. The air thickened with the scent of rot and ozone, an ancient stench. Its eyes swept across the clearing. The beast looked at the failing barriers, the scattered knights, and the bodies of creatures and men tangled in the mud.

  It opened its jaws.

  "Shield Wall, hold formation!"

  The voice was pure command. An old man stood at the center of the carnage. His armor was the same black as the others, but it was scratched and dented from decades of battle. His visor was raised to reveal short white hair and a scarred skull. His eyes had witnessed decades of death.

  The Shield Wall knights steadied. Those still standing pulled their barriers tighter. Mana flickered as they closed gaps and reinforced the buckling sections. The wall held.

  The old man turned. His gaze found Isolde. He looked at Ash standing beside her, holding a dagger in a hand that had gone numb. Recognition passed across the commander's weathered face. He crossed the distance in quick strides. He stopped before the shrine maiden and spoke with the quiet tone used for an equal.

  "Shrine Maiden. We cannot hold this."

  Isolde turned her blind eyes toward the dragon and the sky she would never see. "I know."

  "Can you reach them?" the commander asked.

  The sounds of battle pressed in from every side. Steel hit corrupted flesh. The barriers groaned. To their left, a knight screamed before the sound cut off with terrible abruptness.

  "If you give me time," Isolde said.

  The old man nodded. He turned back to the field. "Binding casters, Void Cage! Now!"

  Six knights moved toward the dragon. Their boots slipped in mud churned black by the fighting. They found footing on ground that wanted to pull them down.

  "Dark Gate: Void Cage."

  The six voices were ragged and lacked synchronization. Exhaustion and blood loss had broken their rhythm. Dark mana erupted from their hands. It gathered around the dragon in waves of pressure that should have crushed it flat.

  The synchronization was failing. The mana streams overlapped in places and left gaps in others. The dragon felt the weakness. It pressed against the gaps with methodical force. One knight buckled. His mana flickered and vanished. He collapsed to his knees in the mud as blood ran from beneath his visor. Five casters remained. The cage wavered like a heat shimmer.

  Isolde raised her hands.

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  "Dragon Gate: Falling Star."

  The syllables carried heavy weight. She spoke in a language that predated the common tongue. Her voice rose and fell in patterns that became a fixed signal for what was coming from above. Light gathered around her. It was warmer than the pale glow of her ward. Her white robes caught the radiance. Her frost-colored hair lifted in a wind that touched nothing else. She stood as a pillar of light in the shadow.

  A beast broke through the chaos. It moved with limbs bent at wrong angles, drawn to her glow. It lunged at her unprotected back with open jaws. Steel intercepted the attack. The old commander moved faster than age should allow. His blade took the creature apart with two economical cuts. He positioned himself as a guardian between Isolde and the swarm. His sword traced arcs of light through the dark, leaving trails of blood in the air.

  Another Void Cage caster fell. Four remained. The dragon was lifting itself against the pressure.

  Isolde's chanting grew louder. The air around her shimmered with heat. She was the marker for the distant shrine.

  Miles away, ancient stone rose toward a darkness without end.

  Pillars as thick as oak trunks supported a vaulted ceiling that vanished into shadow. These columns were wrapped in carvings of dragons that seemed to breathe in the flickering light. Braziers burned between the pillars with orange and gold flames. The fire cast no smoke and needed no fuel. The air tasted of ash and incense.

  Three circles marked the floor in lines of silver. The innermost circle held four figures in white robes. Their white hair was unbound and cascaded down their straight backs. Their eyes were clouded and blind. The middle circle held eight more maidens. The outer circle held twelve. They stood with hands joined to form a ring of twenty-four voices. These were women who had never seen the sky they were about to tear open.

  The inner circle raised their hands toward the dark ceiling.

  "Dragon Gate: Falling Star."

  The four voices spoke as one. These were the same words Isolde spoke across the impossible distance. The middle circle joined them. Their voices wove through the foundation of the first four. The patterns of sound layered over each other like threads in a tapestry. The outer twelve added their voices last. They used sustained tones that reached toward the ceiling they could not see.

  Light bloomed beneath their feet. A pale glow spread from the center in ripples. It touched each maiden and grew brighter with each ring it crossed. The silver lines in the floor illuminated. These were channels of light connecting the circles and the maidens. The chanting grew louder. The pillars seemed to lean inward.

  A beam of pure luminescence erupted upward from the heart of the innermost circle. It punched through the stone and the sky. The maidens poured their lives into a spell they would never see.

  Back in the forest, the sky tore open.

  Ash watched reality split above the battlefield like cloth cut by a blade. Darkness peeled back from a radiance that did not belong in Thornwood. Light struck the ground. It was a pillar of pure brilliance that screamed down from the wound in the sky. Shadows fled. The barrier flared. Knights threw up their arms against a light that burned through closed eyelids.

  The dragon looked up. Surprise crossed its corrupted features. The massive head tilted back as the light hit.

  Sound ceased to exist. The world became a blur of force. Ash felt the impact through his boots and his bones. The remaining casters were thrown backward. The Shield Wall flickered and nearly died. Knights dropped to their knees with hands pressed against their helmets. The beam held for five heartbeats.

  The light faded. Darkness rushed back to fill the clearing. Ash's vision was filled with flickering afterimages. Smoke rose from the crater where the dragon had stood. The smoke churned like a living thing and obscured the pit.

  Nothing moved. The old commander stood with his blade raised. The Void Cage casters lay still. The Shield Wall knights stared at the smoking hole with slumped shoulders. Isolde lowered her hands. Her light died. She swayed and steadied herself with a surge of will.

  They waited. The smoke continued to rise. Ash wanted to believe it was over. He wanted to drop his dagger and let his muscles relax.

  The Seed of Life pulsed in his chest. It was not triumph. A sharp warning hit him. Something was still moving in the smoke.