Chapter 5
Tor was disoriented when he emerged from the lake. The field was nothing but ash, the Flames nothing but energy trapped inside crystal. As far as the eye could see, Tempia had been leveled. There was no haunted forest, no village, nothing but rubble and ash, and a failing atmosphere. Tor fought for air as he crawled out of the water and neared the Flames, meaning to take them with him when he noticed something out of the corner of his eye.
A streak of blue dust.
He quickened his gait to the other side of the field where moments ago the Valtanyana stood against him. He counted the streaks of dust, brown, beige, white, green, black, red, eleven streaks in total, one for each of them. He stumbled on his feet and fell on the ground in disbelief. Forcing himself up he rounded the lake and pulled out the chest of dust embedded in the rocks. He emerged with a handful of the leather bags he used when he visited the volcano, gathering up the streaks of dust and concealing them inside the bags. He stood, seeing the threatening sun on the horizon and moved across the field as fast as he could, gathering the Flames. He sat in the ash for a moment, trying to understand what had happened.
Aria was angry, he saw her reaching the point of no return and in a moment of desperation he dove into the lake to avoid her wrath. “Aria?” he whispered, wondering where she was. He stood and turned in a circle, but she was nowhere to be found. There was no amethyst crystal, no flower, nothing to say she had ever been there in the first place.
The sun crept over the edge of the field, ash sizzling under the intense heat. Tor didn’t have time to think. Tempia was no longer a peaceful land; it was like all of those unformed lands Across the Stars, all those uninhabitable places the Valtanyana avoided. He glanced at the lake knowing within moments the sun would evaporate it and destroy any chance he had of escape. He hit the water, speaking the incantation under his breath. The maelstrom appeared and with a last look at the desecrated land, he plunged himself through, arriving at the palace in Avrigost.
The place was horribly quiet. The white wash sparkling hallways were bereft of anyone, even servants. Tor pushed open the double doors to the temple, a seamless white marble floor stretching across the oval shaped room from one end to the other. He quickened to the podium in the center, a copy of the Book of Ages on top. He put the small bags on the ground and used his fingertip to send a message to Kemplan.
“The Valtanyana are no more. I am all that remains. I am Tor, High King of the Lands of Peace.” He glanced around the room, vaults like tombs resting against the walls. One by one he pulled them down and sealed the dust inside them. He didn’t want anyone coming to Avrigost anymore, it was no longer the Land of Kings, to him and to all it would soon be the Land of the Dead. He took hold of the Iolite Flame’s staff and called her to attention. Her ethereal form came to being, a severe expression on her face.
“Isadora, can you ensure they don’t escape?”
She smiled a terrible smile, and shifted her hands together, emerging with her staff in hand. “I will change the way this place exists,” she said, tapping the staff on the floor, a sonic boom caroming through the land. Tor felt it as the land stopped spinning, and the gravitational pull shifted, making it a dastardly place to exist.
Tor bowed. “I will make you an advisor on Nazole.”
Isadora tipped her head. “Will I like it there?”
Tor only nodded as he took the other Flames and quickened out of the room, recalling the promise he made to Aria. He moved down the corridors, passing servants who were nothing but ghosts, lost in the cacophony of this forever death. They reminded him of the ghosts in the haunted forest in their treetop prisons. He hit the throne room, the very room Darkesh told him as a boy to stay away from. Throwing the doors open he ascended the golden stairs and disappeared through the mirror on the far wall, emerging on the other side in the Great Hall.
He’d find Aria and fulfill his promise to her.
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