The gentle sloping of the second layer of corridors was mostly broken by the black roots’ upheavals. And their sudden reaching from the high ceiling, their enormous piling upon the floor hindered and undulated our flight. So numerous were these parasitic overgrowth that most of the stony foundation was obscured. And masked also were faint hints of strange scribings or images etched in the ancient walls, though what we saw of them we could not make sense of. And if these images and text were meant for mortal eyes, I dared not guess. For only Aurora’s aspiring alares ever came here, and never they dwelled long but to complete the ritual post haste. Deeper we went, the density of their obstruction grew troublesome. While the crooks and sharp bends they formed afforded many fitting places for an ambush, and for this Valerian and Litzia, the veterans among us, were most wary. Wisteria flew some distance behind Litzia, vigilant also, now that her temper had been somewhat contained. For my part, I could do little but to exert the fruit of my training to peer through the thickets into the darkness ahead, often to little avail, while ducking as close to Litzia’s spine as could.
As the roots encroached upon us, the air grew from stuffy to foul, ubiquitous things began to move in the growing darkness below and aloft. I did not imagine them, for on occasion, sharp hisses would come from either Litzia or Wisteria, and upon looking over my shoulder I would see Valerian’s runestaff leveled. But these unseen shades seemed content with threatening our sanity only, and no blast of devastating destruction as was wrought before had broken upon us.
But the oppressing atmosphere did whet our circumspection. So that Litzia plunged sharply when at last it came, dodging by a hair the air parting strike. Neither had this opening shot caught Wisteria off guard, but at once goaded her past us, Valerian’s staff already flashing at the source of aggression. The enemy’s attack that had torn a neat path to us now afforded an unobstructed line of sight. Even as my leveled runestaff was set and invoked, I caught a glimpse of the retreating enemy. A glimpse, naught more, of a white glow.
Wheeling away from a vicious attack that shattered and fell a heavy root from aloft, Wisteria cried in flared shrieks. And I knew it was for her vindicated suspicion.
“Not now, Wisteria,” barked her knight, “take me thither! I shall see with my own eyes, and subdue them by my own hands!”
Even so, the treacherous terrains and relentless lightning checked the pair’s advance. In time, Litzia gained on them with her mighty wings. With a dexterity unexpected of her bulk she slithered by a protruding root, and with her hind legs upon which kicked, she squeezed and propelled herself past the pair. “Caution, sisters,” grumbled my black wyvern, “whatever they be, they are strong.”
In a second, Litzia demonstrated what set a veteran apart from the merely talented and spirited. So effortlessly she plunged, rose, and threaded through frighteningly cramped spaces that all I could do was helplessly hug close to her frame and set my head by her neck’s thorns.
At some point, our enemy ceased their retreat and sought to hold their ground behind a dense mass of roots piling on the ground.
“Fire, Aster!” Litzia cried.
Having pinpointed their location, I leveled my runestaff, and an iridescent ray issued, striking near to it, leaving the stone floor blackened.
“Strike true! No unprovoked attacker deserves clemency!”
“No!”
“Argh, by Under, Aster! Only a mighty fool scruples under fire!”
Exasperated as Litzia was, I could not bring myself to shoot someone who might be a friend of mine. And though Valerian fought with greater accuracy and deliberating force, I knew by the way she avoided any direct strike that even the knight was hesitant. Which did not meet with Wisteria’s temper anymore than mine had Litzia. In a surge of reckless abandon, the sable wyvern let out an impatient cry and arrowed ahead at the great, and now much-maimed roots that covered our enemy.
Meanwhile, the cowered pair handed out no empty threats. But shattered stones had begun to fall under the relentless suppressing fire and abandoned aim. The roots that once crowded like dense clouds of darkness aloft had been blown from their latched place, now sundered into charred and smoking pieces. In that flashstorm of fire and brimstone, Wisteria charged almost by instinct. The mild manner I had known of her in her more benign form belied this viciousness. But such were long-years festered hatred and resentment manifested, and she seemed to draw upon it - compelled by. The coiling shape then for an instant disappeared into the blinding flash storm.
“Caution!” Litzia shouted, but it was too late, Wisteria was already over the place. The moment passed, and once the space ahead had appeared again to our vision, we saw that Wisteria had frozen midair. Almost perfectly still, she stared dumbly at some point behind the great root, which we could not yet see, even as Valerian urged her with frantic haste to move.
Litzia cursed. ‘Twas in vain that we bolted forward. For a blinding light rent the wyverness’ chest. In a rain of burned blood and flesh the two fell from the air, their pledge broken in twain.
Litzia wheeled and spun. As the world turned upside down, my legs clenched in terror on her torso, and my arms on her neck, abandoning my staff to the sling’s keeping. Stuns like these we had practiced before under Gladiola’s direction, but the fright that comes with them is ever fresh. In that moment, my pledge-sister’s hind legs caught the unconscious wyverness. Then the world righted itself again, and Valerian’s body collided against me, but in a panic I could not seize her. Yet timely did the knight come out of her shock and latched on Litzia’s back with one arm, scraping herself on the sharp horns and scales of her savior. Struggling that way, Litzia bore us all to the ground.
The landing was in no way smooth, to lay Wisteria down gently, the wyverness all but crashed her side on the floor strewn with burned and shattered roots. I found myself rolling some distance with Valerian and Litzia who were now in human form.
Even as I lay dazed, the blonde knight sprang up as though no devastating damage of sorcery or falling had been done to her, and that the deep gashes that marked her body where Litzia’s thorns had cut were but mere inconveniences. In an instant she scrambled like a madwoman over to her pledge-sister, the next she ripped the blood-soaked robe over the limp body open. When I crawled to them, still heedful of further assaults from the direction I was no more aware of, the knight’s healing hand was already glowing over the terrible wound. Most of the length of her front torso had been torn apart, blood gushed in a dark stream on the dirty floor. Even with my most basic knowledge of human anatomy and even less of wyvern, by sight I could tell it was passing severe. Many of her internal organs had been crushed or punctured, her body spasmed and twitched by pain and shock, calling to mind the times I had been on duty to give deathbed patients water in the sick bay. There was little hope. Wisteria was dying. Her ashen face far from the realm of consciousness.
Litzia came up from behind with a cheerless report, “They are gone.” The sole vigilant one of us had surveyed with care our surroundings as Valerian and I was scrambling to the wounded. But her face darkened as she saw the wyverness’ condition. “Will she make it?”
Valerian grimaced. The onset of tears began in her pale eyes. Already she had lost two partners in but a few star cycles. But she held stable her hand. Slowly. Steady.
The effect of the gifted sorcery worked at an agonizing pace. Bit by bit, flesh grew back from its crushed state, yet far outpaced by the rate her life was expiring. The dark pool where she lay spread wide, and Wisteria’s chest heaved in longer, quieter intervals.
It was a desperate race where our loss was inevitable. For all that the knight’s healing hand was a thing blessed by a dragon.
“Litzia!” I cried, “Can you not do aught for her? Your secret, your magic - but anything! She’s dying!”
The wyverness’ face was unreadable, dark and closed it seemed. “It is not my lot to save and preserve, sister. This is beyond me, mayhap beyond aught mortals that live”
Not her lot, for she was not blessed. But even the one who was, she who I called the living saintess, could do naught more than stall the all-consuming death.
I dropped to the ground and despaired. The runestaff bounced uselessly on the floor by my side, whose glowing letters mocked me with the sign of the empty season. I had known emptiness, and soon I would know loss. That I was useless was nothing new. But this time in particular I had set out to accomplish something: to help those I considered friends and now disastrously I had failed.
There came a jerk on my arm as Litzia pulled me to my feet. At once I darted my eyes to the expiring body, hoping, foolishly as it was for a miracle, but it was something else that stirred my pledge-sister.
She was alerted. By what I could not tell, for my senses were dumb and could only perceive danger by way of my trust in Litzia’s keen senses. And yet she was peering in the darkness not wholly with certainty. She knew only that something was coming.
A speckle of white grew as it approached us from the far end of the hallway, floating or flying some way aloft. And when it drew near, no mistake, ‘twas Galanthus and Acis. Somewhat dimmed, they flew unconcerned straight at us.
“Pledge with me Aster!” Litzia cried, “Risk not another life of ours!”
But Valerian reacted even before I could, turning and angling her runestaff at the coming alares. There was no more hesitancy in her, only a hatred grim and ground with pain. Her blast aimed true, or should have connected, killing intent behind it, yet it fizzled into nothingness before it struck home.
Unconcerned then, bizarrely so, Galanthus and Acis flew on, past us, as though noticed us not, as though in an entire other plane of existence.
“What in the Under...” Valerian muttered.
Eventually, the obscurity of distance concealed them behind the complex layers of black roots. The event puzzled us all, for only some minutes ago, they had assaulted us with so great intensity. And it was them Valerian had seen behind the roots, I knew as a surety, seeing how readily she had brought her arm to bear this time.
Litzia held firm my arm, prepared to take off should they return. But they would not. Instead, the blonde knight gasped sharply and started us both.
As my thought turned to Wisteria, there was a lurch in my stomach, knowing as next I looked the thinning life might have gone out of her completely. A pain I could scarce bear. But that was not to be. For no trace of her could be seen under our naked eyes. In the sordid pool of the mortally wounded wyverness’ blood we found only, silver-horned and chestnut-braided, a child no older than ten.
Even as we stared dumbfounded, her lids lifted, and the round, green eyes beheld us with no less awe. And in a rather childish voice to match her appearance she asked, “Who’s there?”
