Quain gurgled, and pulled in a wheezing breath; the pinkish-snowy overtone that once brightened his face faded to a solemn gray. His strict low bun undone, and his thin hair spiraled out in a mat, beneath him. Merryn shuffled closer, and patted his blue-tinged hands. "Wake up. I need you!"

Before they started, she stopped the tears and sniffed hard. Not now. He needs help. Later I can feel later. Using a dagger, she cut off strips of the bottom edge of his robe and made crude bandages over his wounds. The blood seeped through.

More long heads poked out of the shade and darkness between the buildings, their skin and scales stretched taunt over the skeletal structures. They stopped short at the edge of the shade, their bodies nearly invisible.

The tremor shook her hands as she shook his shoulders. A teardrop pendant on a fine silver chain bounced out from the folds of his robes. I don't know what else to do. The healers were running around the city instead of in the temple or working in the healing house.

After a faint breath, his eyelids fluttered open.

"If only, I could..." He coughed, and his face turned red and pinched. He unclasped the teardrop pendant off his neck and dropped it into her palm. With a smack, his head hit the ground, his eyes glassy; an empty void.

A breath hitched in her throat, and her right eyelid twitched, and she curled her fingers over the pendent.

Her mind blanked out.

A growl from a hateful, rotten, calcines followed by an ear-numbing rumble of thunder overhead.

There's...

I don't know anymore. I know nothing.

Her hands reached over and closed his eyes.

Everyone is dying, it won't matter if everyone's dead! Will it? She wanted to start screaming at everything and nothing.

Light footsteps from behind, almost too soft to hear.

"You're alive!"

Mother edged around the calcines, staying well away before kneeling beside her. She said a soft prayer, and her voice cracked on the last words.

"Get up."

"He died. He was talking to me and he just died everything is wrong everyone is dying the lighting and the calcines are killing everyone... I'm so glad you-re al-ive!" Warm arms wrapped around her, calming and safe in this madness.

"I feel the same way, but we are Elvin and can't sit here with self indulgence. Get up. Now."

She wiped her continuously snotty nose with a sleeve. It was easier to simply nod as an attack of hiccups started.

"What's that you're holding?"

Merryn opened her hand; the pendent gleamed bright and clear.

"That's Quins pendent. Small blessings it's not destroyed."

Merryn held it up.

"Put it on. He wouldn't have given it to you if you didn't need it."

It slipped easily over her head, the crystal light and warm to the touch.

"Most everyone is in the temple, the priestesses are keeping a barrier over it. I want you to go there." She caressed the side of Merryn's face with her hand.

The hiccups slowed some. "Quain was trying to..."

"It's past noon now and we don't have much time."

"We can't leave him there!"

"I'm not losing you too!" Mother clamped her hand and dragged her through the streets, avoiding anything of shade and shadow.

Mother paused at where the street intersected and stopped, giving way to a broad footpath to the right. Rows of trees alongside it provided ample shade between it and the temple only a few feet to the north.

The path followed the edge of the dome all around the city. The days of people walking along it in peace gone. Often on her days off, she walked there too. And, many couples held hands while children played in between the trees.

The children's laughter and shrieks of joy; replaced with howls of pain and fear.

Mother came to her side, eyeing a calcine that sat on a couple as it ripped body parts free like a child ripping off wrappings, the blood spaying in ark as it munched on a mangled hand.

The hiccups started again, she covered her mouth and turned her head away.

Mother cupped her face her lip wobbling. "Morn later... don't give in to it." Her words came out strangled and broken.

"There might be another way. Do you remember the entrance to the catacombs?"

"But, that'll lead us outside, away from the barrier!"

"I think they don't know about them and can't get past the rune wards. We can travel through them and come out of the cave just behind the temple." Mother rubbed her forehead. "The real problem will be getting back inside." Her lips thinned. "I can force my way back through the barrier; it isn't to keep us out, only them."

The calcine still feeding, tossed bone after bone against a toppled over toy cart next to a bench across the path. The bones clattered and shone brightly as if bleached. One knocked loose a red ball that bounced down the street and became lodged in a crack in the path.

This day stretched out as if it were a week, a week to rival the levels of hell itself, and that's where I'm going to send those things.

"Do you have any lights, mom?"

She backtracked to where the elders placed it and went behind it, and mother went to the edge of the barrier, where a strip of sand followed the edge and ended in a pile. She brushed it away, unearthing a large ring attached to a wooden door.

"Help me with this." Mother tilted back as she wrangled with the ring.

With both hands, she yanked on it the hinges creaked and the stone steps curved down into the gloom. Stories always have evil lurking in places like this.

Mother helped push it fully open.

"Hurry now."

Mother bound down the stairs, the light stones set into the weeping walls curving into the depths. She followed behind her, jumping off two at a time, and almost lost her grip on the slick granite steps as she flailed against the wall, half tumbling down several steps.

"You all right, love?" Her voice was light, like one of those who just suppressed a laugh.

"Ya..." Just my pride.

A musty thinness saturated the air, she breathed through her mouth, and the taste coated her tongue. Meryn started to cast the spell for a light globe.

Mother placed a hand on her wrist. "No, use your night vision; anything else will attract attention."

She gave a curt nod and continued with her deeper into the belly of the underground, where many long and deep depressions were carved into the walls, but unlike elsewhere, no bones were piled in them nor adorning the walls. Instead, hundreds of runes hovered in the spaces. Offerings lay about in neat piles under the runes of flowers, trinkets, and carvings, some leaned against the stone wall on the floor. She reached out to touch a rune.

Mom smacked her hand away. "Try not to touch things, unless you want to go where the corpses are; leave it alone." She weaved between the rows of offerings, careful not to step on any.

The long hall went on forever, a wrinkled, flittery crypt fairy exposed its pointy teeth before it squeezed into a crack in the stones.

She came to a cobweb covered stairwell at the end of the hall, Mom eased over to it, kicked the stairs, and came back over. It clanged, but that was about it.

"I don't think it's going to eat us."

She snorted. "And if something was hiding under it or at the top?"

She had a point. I'll have to remember that one. "True." Soon, the crypt and underground were gone. A deep breath, she sighed. All around, the forest... once again peaceful and light, you'd never know what was going on in the city when out here.

"It was stuffy." Clasping her hands Mother took a moment to drop a short prayer for the lives lost. "I know it's easier not to think about what's happening, but I need you to think of everyone we lost in the past few days. I need you to call them to me."

Her mouth almost dropped open. "I thought you couldn't do that anymore!"

"I only stopped so I could be with you more."

"Mom..."

She couldn't mean for me to call them. That's overkill! "How many?"

She placed her hands on the barrier where the opening hand space would have been if the guard was still there. "Call them! There's no time left! We have to get back in!"

Her stomach twinged, sending up a sour mouthful that coated and burned the back of her throat. ...I have to do this, if I start thinking too hard, I won't be able to breathe. "I call on the ancestors of this land; help us! The calcines' attack again!"

Merryn placed a hand on mom's back and shouted the prayer. Focusing on the spirit energy in the air, the trail from the paths they took left a little of their energy behind. She reached out with with her free hand and tugged on a thread.

"I implore you, come to me!"

Little by little, the spirits of the ancestors came out of everything around them. One came forward, his face more defined, more elvin. His ears were but curled puffs of smoke trailing behind with every movement. "State your need."

"Look at our home, your home." She pointed to a pack of calcines a few feet away, they had an old man and child cornered inside a small shop merged from an old tree trunk, their backs pressed against the large glass window.

A wave of spirits came from the forest and sky. "We, hear your call, and know of our people's fate." They gathered around mom and all held their palms out.

Pure spirit energy came out in droplets and condensed into a ball. The old man poked it, and it wobbled over to her, then absorbed itself into Mother's back.

"Take care," he said, as he sank back into the earth.

The others without a word left the way they came.

Merryn's knees wobbled; she stood, unable to do more than that.

"Fight it! A little longer..." A soft light wound around her and spread out into a brilliant glare. The barrier under her palms twisted, whirled, and sprang back into shape. She grunted, clenching her teeth. The light around her flowed down her arms onto her hands condecing there.

Mother shoved her hands into the barrier; it whirled again and split between her hands, tearing apart like birch bark. Snap! A sharp, thick woodiness of charcoal tickled her nose, and the broken barrer burrned away to a ragged edge.

They both slipped through and worked over to the back entrance of the temple; a light breeze thrummed over it. A priest guarding the entrance swipped his hand on the barrier, opening a spot in it. "We thought you lost or dead! Hurry in now." Only a sliver of his eyes and mouth hinted at his emotional state.

It'll too become as skilled as him at the porcelain state, only those who are calm can cast the strongest spells.

Inside, rows of cots and beds filled with the injured spanned to the back. Priests and priestesses tended to them while others walked between the rows. Children clung to their parents while others alone on the cot wrung out ragged sobs. A priestess rocked a walling infant, and sang softly.

Two priests guarded the front and back entrances, their hands held out as they chanted.

Elaheh the head priestess, finished bandaging an injured man and came over.

"I thought for sure both of you..."

Mother and Elaheh clasped hands, and Mother patted her on the back. "It's good you were able to find her. I would've come with but.."

Mother shook her head. "Everyone needs you here."

Elaheh hesatated. "Is Quain...?" her voice soft and low.

Merryn hung her head.

"I see."

"Merryn." Over near the back, Tristan leaned on his elbows. His voice cracked along the edges, dry and brittle.

She rushed over to him and sat beside him, her eyes burning; she blinked rapidly. "I'm so sorry!"

"Don't apologize, that thing it..." He tilted his head back. "I would never, you know."

She fiddled with her fingers. "How did you get here?"

"A priestess saw the beacon and dragged me here."

His arms shook and fell out from under him, he slumped back into the cot.

"You, rest. Strength to you both." A watery smile broke out on his face, and he closed his eyes.

A warm hand on her shoulder.

She turned her head behind her. "Stellan!"

"You did well."

"No, I couldn't do anything." She took a long breath; the burning in her eyes turned into a blurry mess.

"Don't say that. What's out there is enough to make anyone panic."

She stood and worked out from between the cots. "Quain came up with the plan, not me."

The floor underfoot shuttered, sending the children into a panic, their faces red and their eyes squeezing shut. They screamed and howled; some hid under the covers or jumped out of bed and clung to an adult's leg. Some adults weren't taking it well and clung tightly to each other and their children.

Merryn started over to the front entrance, then stopped. Should I stay here or go back out there? This can't go on!