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Sally jerked to attention, instantly puffing out to a meter tall. Something had shifted in the air, in the world itself, like gravity had done a strange number underfoot. She glanced backward toward Mark—
Mark’s black cocoon was fraying apart, darkness radiating from his bubbling black flesh as he jerked in his sleep, something itchy radiating from him, prickling Sally’s skin. He was still sleeping, but—
She needed to move.
Sally turned to a half-giant, 5 meters tall, bursting out of the ground and running away, waving a hand over Mark’s body and splashing the roof of his sleeping hole up and away. She didn’t want anything to fall on him as he thrashed, as he woke up. They’d be vulnerable to spies overhead for just a few minutes, Sally was sure, so she prepared to—
She hadn’t been prepared.
The dark world warped around Mark like a mirror that had become a rippling pond, shockwaves rumbling away from his body, boulders falling down around him. The rockfall did not touch him; not even the smallest pebbles. That was when Sally noticed the sky.
It was dark. The auroras were out, overhead, their muted pinks, greens, blues, and yellows looking particularly bright, or maybe it was the dimness of the moon, a sliver up there framing a shattering of gold, that made everything else stand out. The Moon was directly overhead, though, and all the auroras in the sky twisted in its direction, and that should not have happened.
The Moon had moved.
Sally broke into a full-body sweat, diamond Reflections scattering something painful and disruptive in the air.
The Moon had moved—
Colors shot down from the sky, from way too far, moving way too fast, and hit Mark with a twisting, coruscating blast of light that melted his body and twisted his being as he rose into the sky, just 50 meters up. The wind was incredible. Sally had no idea what the fuck was happening, but she was worried, so she reached out to Mark—
Her fingertips frayed in the wind like she had touched disintegration magic. She jerked back, focusing on healing herself with Retribution— Her flesh rapidly healed, faster than ever before, and she felt fantastic. Whatever she had just touched was one of the most evil things in the worlds, and it was doing something to Mark.
No.
Not while she was here.
“Drakarok help me,” Sally said, steeling herself.
She grew to 300 meters tall and reached forward, toward Mark, floating in the swirl of rainbow light, thinking that she was grasping something like the hilt of a dagger. It was like touching an industrial chainsaw. Sally’s hand flayed to the bone, to her soul, and she screamed, Retribution shining bright, skin diamond with healing and defense and ripping power. Sally pulled back, still screaming in pain beyond pain. She knew pain, though. Why the fuck was this stuff so painful—
And then Mark pulsed with black.
In the way of car crashes, Sally knew she had been blasted back without fully realizing it until she landed on her back, on her ass, away from the pillar of auroras ripping into the sky, her missing hand regrowing in a Retribution-flash—
The Moon was too close. Closer than it had been before.
A sliver of the almost-new Moon had become a bright white/grey radiance, shocked through with too many golden roads, cities, and landscapes. Horizons touched horizons. The broken Demon City of Arakino was right there, right above Daihoon. Auroras linked the moon to the planet like a rainbow gel, or sparks from positive to negative, dancing and shifting in the closeness.
And then the eye opened up overhead.
The Great Eye of Arakino stared down at Mark, at the world below, eyes opening up everywhere, all across the entirety of the golden moon.
Sally ran. She didn’t know when she stopped running, but she did. She looked back and she saw things she had no ability to comprehend. Mark floated between the two worlds, locked in a shaft of rainbows and light, in that thin pillar that got thicker and thicker by the moment. Darkness shocked up and down, and then shocked out of that pillar, and the world broke in that shifting, like chainsaws of disintegration the size of fleeing kaiju.
A ripple of blackness came Sally’s way, so she dodged to the left. Not fast enough. She had no right arm, now. Part of her right leg was flayed down to the bone. It was less painful than before. More normal pain. Sally instantly healed the damage and now she was on her feet.
She ran away again.
The eyes, the eyes, the eyes… the eyes closed on her, one by one, and they focused on Mark.
Mark looked okay, sort of, which was all Sally could do for him right now.
Sally ran backwards, feet caving in hillsides as she escaped the rushing, dark auroras, ripping away from Mark. The noise suddenly shifted, and it did not sound like destruction anymore.
It was a song. Some old song. Wordless, yet full of meaning.
A choir of demons sang from the surface of Arakino, ringing the rainbow pillar up there like they were shadows of people, throats distended in a calling song of joy and rapture.
And then Addavein was there beside Sally, floating in the air beside her. How had he gotten so close. His voice raised over the choir of demons, “You good?”
“Physically? Yes!” Sally said, her voice coming from a throat that was the size of a small house, but sounding like almost a whisper. The demon sound overtook all. She could barely hear herself as she yelled, “What is happening?!”
“Shrink down!”
“Not a good idea!” Sally pointed to a distant aurora of black ripping out of the bottom of Mark’s rainbow pillar. That black shadow cascaded across the ground, toward the right, ripping up the world yet again like the world’s largest dragon’s claw. It moved at super speed, for sure. “You should get out of here! One of those hits you at super speed and you’ll die fast!”
Addavein held up Solar Flare, the Dynamo Staff that Mark had made, and the world burned a little bit as Addavein channeled its power. Sally’s skin prickled, but she was more than up to the challenge of healing that slight fire damage. Whatever the demons were doing was a lot worse than whatever Addavein was doing.
Addavein said, “Divination is saying it’ll get worse. Escape with me, or die here. I came to get you.”
Sally looked at Mark once more—
The ground to the right vanished in a ripping claw from a dark dragon. Kilometers of ground! Gone! Just like that!
Sally shrunk down and then she was on a summoned platform, racing away with Addavein. Soon, they were several kilometers away, a kilometer past where one of the larger claw marks stopped far ahead of them. They landed on Eliot’s hoverspider, on the roof. Eliot was inside, working on stuff.
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
Isoko was up here at the controls, holding on tight and keeping the wind from knocking them away as she yelled, “What the fuck happened out there, Sally?!”
“I don’t fucking know, Isoko!” Sally said, sarcasm dripping like the blood from where she had lost her arm and some of her leg. She had healed herself, but the blood remained. “I guess it’s a good thing you drove him out of the city!”
“I’M SORRY, OKAY!” Isoko yelled to the sky, Calling out to Mark, “I’M SORRY, MARK!”
The moon overhead looked further away, but it was still right there, overhead, dark and cracked with gold, waves of black undulating across the surface, toward the rainbow pillar between worlds, toward Mark. The eyes were gone. Those terrible, terrible eyes were gone. The black was all that remained. The black had to be demons, or maybe Mark? The demons kept singing their wordless song of triumph and creation. Sally doubted Mark could hear Isoko at all. Sally couldn’t even touch him, and she had been right there.
Eliot said, “The demonic chanting is too deep. He can’t hear us at all.”
Sally rounded on Addavein. “You! Answers!”
“How the fuck is the Moon here?” Isoko asked.
Addavein waved a hand into the air, spreading a magic outward. The demonic sounds quieted, allowing Addavein to say, “Arakino isn’t here. It’s a warping. If Arakino were here then the world would be destroyed due to gravity shearing, or maybe the moon would. I don’t know. I did some research in the hour that I had before all this shit and— There is a 100 Trial. Didn’t realize that. Mark was right about that. Very few people ever hear about it and I never had because until I went to Arakino in the Reveal and repaired it, no one reached 100, because it was allbroken. Maybe a few people reached it before, but never like this. Not even the Inheritor of Aluatha 350 years ago Jamasani got this event, and I know he reached 100, if anyone did—”
The air protections shattered, ripping away Addavein’s voice. The demonic chorus sang deeper, warping reality, auroras swirling around the rim of the horizon like a whirlpool. Everyone stared as a bright light gathered at the pillar where Mark hovered, unseen at this distance but his light still reached them through the rainbows.
“Mark said something about aurora creation? In that Dreamer and the Demon story?” Sally yelled, to be heard.
Addavein came back to the moment, looking at Sally and then blinking and saying, “I remember when Jamasani probably reached 100. The sky opened up and a flicker of yellow light cascaded upward. He never told me what had happened, but it was… it was notthis. But it was something likethis.”
“Is this an apocalypse?” Eliot asked.
Perhaps Addavein might have answered, but the demonic chorus reached a fevered pitch and then—
Pitch black shocked out of Mark’s light, drowning the world in shadows darker than night, all sound failing. All breath stopped. The chorus fell silent in the depths of this darkness.
And then there was light. Just a sliver. Just a fraction. Right there on the horizon where Mark hovered in a pillar of that light. Sally’s heart started beating again.
Drakarok put his hand onto Sally’s shoulder and watched the light with her. Sally only saw the golden glow, but she knew it was Drakarok. She did manage to tear her glance away from Mark, just for a moment, to see an older golden woman with Eliot, and a strong younger woman with Isoko.
Addavein stood in the darkness with a shadow of a dragon stretching from his clawed feet.
And Mark was there, that point of light far ahead.
It was so reminiscent of another time and place, and of a story told about dragon kings and Kabberjaw and illuminated bones in the depths of darkness, because bones were all that was left of… of…
“The Light in the Darkness,” Sally softly said, eyes widening.
Drakarok said, “He’s claiming a crown, and you must secure it for him, Sally.”
“This darkness is all demons,” Eliot said, voice worried.
Hearthswell said, “The demons are here for a reason, and you must discover it, Eliot.”
“He’s too far away,” Isoko said, reaching out and not reaching Mark at all.
Freyala said, “You must reach him anyway, Isoko.”
And then the darkness frayed at the edges, and everything was an edge, the demons calling out one last time, a choral ending. The moon was back up to the sky, far, far overhead, looking just like a curve of white with golden cracks in the black.
That pillar of light around Mark began to curve, to undulate, and then that line of light undulated from Mark to the sky, brilliant white, fading to softness, to become like all the other auroras in the sky, to then get lost in the sweeping heavens as normalcy reasserted itself. It was a white aurora. Not many of those in Daihoon. None that Sally had ever seen before.
“Go. Isoko. Hit it,” Addavein said.
Sally held on to the railing as the ship suddenly lurched forward, Isoko holding the wind around them, guiding them forward, the hovership whining. They needed to reach Mark first; that’s why they were moving fast.
Everyone in all of Daihoon probably saw that, if they were looking, and it wasn’t like Sally and Mark had gone very far from Dawncoast; only 100 kilometers. This was well within spying territory.
Everyonehad seen that.