Into the Fire

Narial pressed a foot into hardened ground. Frost stuck to the air around him as he gazed towards a desolate, forgotten land. From the peak of a cliff he stood and saw a wide view of the horizon below – still in the fading light. He knew it was time. Breathing cold breaths, he walked towards a castle nestled among dead oaks twisted in their treachery. Their branches etched lightning in the darkening scene around Narial as he crossed their path while his footsteps sounded of hollow logs in the deep quiet. He brandished his hand knocking the strands of long brown hair out of his eyes. Some strands stuck to his beard. He laid his hands upon the hilt of his sword – a stout creation of wootz steel blended from magnetite ore and clay. He felt at ease with his weapon. Though, the lingering darkness and the closing in of trees increased his heart rate. Pound. Step. Pound. Step. A cadence grew as he walked. He let the rhythm guide his footsteps. Pound. Step. Pound. Step. Pound. One step closer to the goal, one step closer to understanding.

Night fully fell by the time Narial stepped in front of the tree line. He recalled a road roughly a half league to the left, so he turned and utilized the tree line as a guide. Pound. Step. Pound. He stepped. The ringing of and pulsing of his heartbeat struck his ears. A corner of the moon poked out of the clouds above streaming a small streak of moonlight across the trees. He looked up. They towered over him – a man of average height and build. He turned towards a tree. With the light, he peered at a dried up soul. The land truly anguished and these trees told the story. He placed a hand on the bark and felt the cold from beneath - not the cold feel of a live tree, but an ice cold not recognized among his people. He pulled away, his heart pounding faster as if he awoken some inner demon within the tree itself.

“Must keep going,” he said to himself, determination driving him forward.

Step. Pound. Step. Pound. He found the entry way to the road. Overgrown and not used in in some time, he pushed through brittle twig and branch. Each snap echoed into the darkness causing his heart to flutter. Narial prided himself on the ability to maintain composure. Fights, duals, sneaking through courtyards – it all came easy to him, but this darkness, this cold, this quiet. It hit different. Each snap of a twig jolted him. Pound. Step. Snap. Pound. Step. Snap.

He pushed through a final set of branches and twigs out into a clearing. He looked back. In truth, he did not walk as far as he thought, but those branches forced him to waste time he did not have. Danger marked the lands he stood, and he did not feel the need to linger. He noted the new pathway though, and if danger came his way, he knew an exit. He turned and faced the courtyard of the castle. The reason for his return to the mainland. From his current vantage point, he had a view of the entire courtyard. In the center, a chiseled marble structure laid bare and open to the world. A doorway long forgotten. From the center arced rows of circular flower beds dead as the night – no color to be seen. A walkway led straight to the center and on to the large stairway of the castle.

Narial pressed one foot forward but paused. The ease of walking forward escaped his capability for one moment. The man who maintained composure. The man picked specifically for this mission now stood frozen in place. The man called the Dragon. It was too easy. But he forced another step, then another. Pound. Step. The openness of the courtyard became apparent to him, the trees drifted further and further away. Even though they embodied the darkness, they still provided cover from the dangers around. Pound. Step.

Finally, he strode up to the marble entrance way. He did not waste time lingering as he walked right into the doorway, longing to be covered once more. Darkness enveloped him, so he felt on the wall for a torch. Once he found one, he lit it with a strike. The warmth of the fire felt amazing on his face – he did not realize how cold his body had gotten.

“Where are you…” he said, under his breath.

He aimed the fire high above his head to peer around and noticed the room being quite small. Broken pots littered the floor. A marble tomb sat at the center of the room. The white of the marble and the haze of the fire created a shimmering dance on the walls around.

“There you are,” he whispered. He placed the torch in its folder. and walked over to the tomb. He ressed his hands against the marble and felt along its sides until he found the line that marked the lid to the tomb. He drew a knife and began etching out the dirt and debris that collected from years of exposure to the elements, and once he made a few iterations around the tomb, he pressed both hands on the marble top and pushed. It took a moment, but it began to slide open.

One push, two pushes, three pushed – the weight of the top finally caught on the opposite end and slid to the floor in a thundering crash. He knew it would happen, but the sound in the quiet jarred his senses. His heartbeat grew faster in that moment. His breath caught in his lungs. He stood, listening. The fire from the torch flickering. Nothingness greeted him, and after a few moments he reached for the torch and brought it over the now exposed tomb.

He looked down and saw the bones of a dead noblemen. He knew it had a name, but it was not his job to know those details – he was looking for…

“Ah!” he said, as he reached in and pulled out a striking blue gem that sat between the hands of the dead inside. He peered at the jewel, so small and sleek. It resembled a tear drop with a wreath of gold etched into its sides.

“So much effort for such a small jewel,” he thought to himself.

Snap.

Narial jumped. It was the first noise he heard that did not come from his being.

Creak.

His neck hair began to stand up. He took two steps back, pocketed the jewel, and patted the torch against the wall to snuff out the fire. He turned towards the door and walked out quickly.

“Overstayed my welcome,” he said out loud, almost too loud.

At that moment, he heard a baby cry in one of the flower beds closest to him on the right. Feeling an urge to go help the child, he crossed over to the flow bed. In the darkness, he made out two arms and legs poking up and wrestling around as infants do, but as he came closer the moonlight peaked out of the clouds and provided much needed light. What Narial saw made him catch his breath. The infants skin leaked a greenish fluid over a scabbed riddled torso, the mouth twisted with teeth gnarled and sick. It looked at Narial with distain and made an ear shattering screech as it sank its white and gray eyes through Narial.

"What the hell happened here..." he whispered underneath his breath.

Snap.

He jerked back to his senses, heart pounding faster, he turned, and started to walk towards his escape pathway every now and then turning his head left and right, eye balling his surroundings. Something made that snapping noise. He knew it, and it was not that thing laying over there. He did not want to make any erroneous noises. The best option, he knew, was to quietly get out of there. Pound. He felt his heart slam his chest, and walking towards the pathway seemed like ages now. Pound. He twisted left and right while darkness enveloped him as no moonlight lit his path this time. Pound. So close.

As he neared the tree line, he looked to his right and saw two eyes in the distance, two large blue eyes – blue eyes that radiated their own type of fire. He stopped dead in his tracks – this was not about just losing composure; this was about fear - the infant was nothing compared to the stories of this land. He felt that fear creep up to his neck, into his shoulder, and down into his hand sitting on the hilt of his sword. It shooked violently. The blue eyes. They warned him.

“Damn it,” he whispered. He knew he had to run. He only had one hope.

Snap, creak.

The creature stood up and towered over the trees, and infant screams of agony could be heard in the background. In the darkness, it looked like a large black abyss ready to consume the courtyard in front of it. It looked directly at Narial and opened its jaws and shrieked a sound of death and decay. Narial pushed the fear away, he knew what had to be done. He had to move. He had to run. Now.

He took off. The creature shrieked once more as he bolted into the pathway he cleared. The quiet of the place evaporated as the creature lumbered through branches and trees pushing towards his location. Right now, the cover helped. He needed to get to the cliff before it….

Creak, snap, whoosh.

He looked up through the trees and a lump formed in his throat. It was air born. If he broke through the tree line, he had a half mile sprint to the cliff edge. He needed to make it. There were more out there, and he had the jewel – he needed to make it. He pushed forward, keeping his eyes on the pathway in front of him. As he crossed the exit of the trees, he did not look back, but a shriek identified that the creature spotted him right away. He looked up, left, right. His feet pushed forward in a hard run.

“Where are you, you bastard,” he said out loud, not worrying about sound anymore.

Finally, he saw the creature to his right. The blue eyes locked in on his location. It will be here in a matter of seconds. He kept running. Whoosh. Whoosh. He felt the wind pick up as the creature flew by overhead, shrieking its nasty call. This time, being so close, it disoriented Narial to the point of almost falling.

“No! I will not fall” he said, pushing forward. He looked up and saw the creature angling to dive. He knew he had one chance. He was almost to the cliff – if he could get there, he had a chance. The creature dipped and tucked its wings while the clouds on the moon disbursed and provided Narial a glance at the creature coming to end his life – an undead nightmare of greyish, teal skin that sagged over a husk of a body, and blackish liquid leaking from sores just as the infant.

He was almost to the cliff when the dive came. Ferocious and fast, but the moonlight provided Narial the vision needed to pull out his sword, tuck, slice, and roll away. The creature shrieked in anger as a gnarled set of talons disconnected from its body – Narial’s sword easily dissecting through its deadened skin.

“Fly!” he screamed into the air. “Fly! Fly!” he repeated. He got back onto his feet and into another run. He was close. He could feel the wind as the creature prepared for another dive, but before it could strike, he made it to the cliffs edge and dove off.

"Fly! Fly!," he kept repeating. Wind buffeted his face and body as he free fell towards the ocean below. He heard wings, and then felt the push of scales against his body as he collided into Marcellus and his saddle.

“Marc, we have company,” he said through hard breaths, “No time to explain.”

The dragon looked back at him, his eyes glowing in the darkness a fire red. He recognized the intensity of the creatures eyes above - it was a dragon, and it was of Marcellus’s kind, but twisted and defiled.

“What did they do here…” he said under his breath. Marcellus eyed him closely. No time for thoughts. “Friend, we have a fight.” With that, Marcellus turned and drove upward into the sky with a mighty roar as Narial strapped into the saddle. The shriek of the undead dragon met them as they broke through the mist of the sea, and Marcellus roared again as he came upwards towards the creature’s belly. He did not wait, he did not have fear, he struck hard with the horns on his head and pushed the undead away in one fell motion. The size difference made this child’s play for Marcellus, but this enemy came from the abyss. The darkness hid the red of Marcellus's scales, so the creature and him sat suspended in the air as two discolored husks. Marcellus did not waste time. He circled, and before the other creature could react, he blew a fierce stream of flame towards it. The undead dragon let out a shriek and countered with its own blue flame. Even with the heat of Marcellus’s, Narial could feel the cold emanating from its flames – the cold he felt in the trees below.

Marcellus’s advantage and timing proved effective though and his flames pushed through the creature and enveloped it in a torrent of fire. It shrieked loud, gnarled, and in anguish. It felt pain. It felt the impending closure of its ugly existence. And finally, it fell into the crashing waves below.

Narial sat in the saddle, patting Marcellus’s neck.

“That was close my friend,” he said to him. Narial felt Marcellus’s body stiffen below him. “Is everything alright?” They began to turn toward to the mainland. Narial peered out on the horizon, and his mouth dropped. Hundred of blue eyes peered at them. Shrieks from even larger undead dragons began to permeate around them, and through those shrieks, the faint echo of an infant cry.

“Marcellus, fly, fly home,” Narial sputtered with fear. “We have to get out of here… now!”

With that, Marcellus turned and began flying towards the east. Narial looked back and sighed a breath of relief – the undead remained there. It seemed they would not pursue, but all of their eyes lingered upon him. He felt the fear tingle up into his neck once more as he turned towards the east and away from that hell. He pulled out the jewel.

“So much effort for such a small jewel Marcellus,” Narial said, patting him on the neck. The dragon snorted in response. The tingle remained in his neck though, and he could not place that fear – he was away from the danger. Was this worth it?