The Ruler of Ruin

The mist-formed feather tickled Claire’s ear for a moment before she shifted her long bow into a proper hold, and then released. She’d ran out of actual arrows ten arrows ago. The mist forged arrows lacked the powerful enchantments that the traditional arrows that filled her quiver possessed. The enchantments on her quiver would replenish her stock over-time, but until that happened she had been reduced to mist arrows.

The arrow shot through the air, traveling thirty feet towards the on-coming swarm of plant-based monsters, and struck one shaped like a jungle cat in what seemed to be its eye. The should-have-been-a-weak-spot blow to the feline only made its forward charge hesitate for a fraction of a moment, less time than it had taken Claire to draw, aim, and unleash. Few were the archers who could manage that at nearly a dead run, including the spin back around to face forward; away from the enemies.

Remy LeeRoy, ostensibly a mage, jogged alongside Claire, no sign of him struggling to breath, or even keep up with her. In fact, he easily murmured the language of magic under his breath, and traced sigils with his index finger while he ran. The auburn haired mage had never shown this kind of physical feat when they had been in the full company of the Dustwalkers, not that Claire could remember anyway. When he finished a final line of the spell, a ball of fire with strange gray highlights appeared in his hand, and he casually tossed it in an arc over his head.

WOOOOOSH.

Flames exploded in a forty foot circle, and dozens of the awful plant monsters were turned to ash, and the larger ones, like the bear and moose, were much depleted and looked blighted. Part of Claire thought that they might have stepped in it too far, if even a fireball couldn’t take down the least of their problems.

“You dare spread blight in my lands!?” The source of their problem screamed at them. The sylvan wyrm stomped behind the oncoming horde of plant animals and monsters, the ringleader of the area. It had taken offense to humans searching its territory, and refused talk of reparations, apology, or anything else, declaring that only the death of the two humans would be adequate recompense for disturbing the wyrm’s slumber.

“I think you made it madder,” Claire coughed out between controlled breaths. In, out, in, out. If she lost control of her breathing, she wouldn’t be able to continue fleeing.

“That’s fine, when they get angry they make mistakes,” Remy answered with a grin. Claire had the distinct feeling that the mage enjoyed running for his life, or maybe just pissing off powerful creatures. He was stupid, insane, and dumb, just like Emery, and it would be his fault if Claire and Remy both died there.

Claire waved her hand behind her, powerful bursts of blue, mist-like energy emanating from her right hand. Behind them a small bank of fog rose from the ground, and spears and spikes shot out of the fog to hinder the on-coming tide of plant monsters.

“Don’t waste your energy, Clairebear, I got this,” Remy assured her with a smile that almost made her stomach flutter. If she hadn’t known his reputation with women, his age, or that he’d made a deal with that Castle destroying bitch Mistlord Amaranthine Sadow, she might even be charmed by him. But she did know, and instead she wanted to punch him in the face.

“Arise, and feast upon their bones!” The Sylvan Wyrm cried out behind them, and trees and earth rumbled as even more botanical monstrosities were born to race ahead of the wyrm and catch them.

“I don’t think so, how about we level the playing field a little?” Remy laughed as he ran backwards. Claire bit her lip when she noticed he could match her full run while jogging backwards. That didn’t match with her idea of how powerful Remy was. He was a mage, she was a scout. She should have been able to outrun him while hopping in a cloth bag. Had the elder Dustwalkers been underplaying how many devotions, or concepts, they had enkindled?

The animals that rose from the Sylvan Wyrm’s spell all had a strange blue-white flame that burned where their eyes should have been. None of them ran after the duo, and instead they charged at the Sylvan Wyrm, whose slow, impeccable gait never faltered.

“You dare turn my own constructs against me!?” The Sylvan Wyrm slowed only a fraction of a step, to swing its head around and breath in deeply, then exhale a horrifying attack of splinters and sap. The splinters pierced and obliterated even the moose constructs on contact, while the sap clung to anything it touched and melted everything with a powerful corrosive.

“Huh,” Remy half-laughed, half-cursed as the stolen constructs were destroyed in a single attack by the large wyrm, who, done breathing, decided to gallop after them, its unflagging slow pace forgotten.

The hair on the back of Claire’s neck stood up, and then all of her hair felt staticy. Remy immediately looked towards the trees, where a shape wreathed in black lightning blasted out of the trees into the Sylvan Wyrm.

“That’s a bad idea!” Remy shouted at whatever engaged the Sylvan Wyrm, but they didn’t appear to pay any heed to the mage.

“Do we run?” Claire asked, hesitating.

“Three against one better odds than two on one,” Remy sanswered while he drew a pentagram with his right index finger, and a second one with his left index finger. With quick motions, the mage filled in runes for elements, and alternated the spell-chant in different octaves.

“Spike!” Remy finished the chant to his left handed spell, and four spikes of red, metallic looking rocks thrust up from the earth, piercing through the back two paws of the wyrm.

“Geyser!” Remy cast the second spell, the higher octave spell, and the ground under the Sylvan Wyrm rumbled and burst, and steaming, scalding water shot into the underbelly of the earth and plant-based wyrm.

Claire knocked another mist arrow, and bided her time until she landed it in one of the wyrm’s two eyes. When it reared its front legs into the air, it showed off the extensive damage from Remy’s geyser spell, and large sections of its under belly had been impossibly cut away. While it roared, a flash of black shot up into the sky from the creature. For a brief moment, Claire caught a good look at their savior.

A black scaled humanoid dragon, with a blush of purple to the scales, a mane of purple hair, and minor gold ornamentation to the horns and scaly bits. The thing even had a large tail. It had a beautiful, bladed spear, with multiple blades, and wore black fey-woven silk that she recalled being extremely expensive, and highly demanded by tailors in Havenstone. Gloomthread? Nightweave? Something along those lines, she thought.

The dragonoid hung in the air, its upward momentum spent, and a huge wall appeared underneath it. The dragon and the wall fell, but their acceleration wasn’t natural. It went from a regular fall to faster than an arrow, and then faster yet, until the huge wall crashed into the Sylvan Wyrm. The one dragon and his rock had fallen from maybe halfway up the giant trees, which Claire estimated at 300ft, so a fall between 100 or 200 feet from a boulder that size down to the ground seemed catastrophic. The earth heaved in all directions, and fragments of stone and wood that had once held the wyrm together fountained everywhere.

“Flame Shield!” Remy activated a wall of fire around us. Debris struck the molten lines of the spell and melted, splinters were incinerated before they could pass through it, and even large hunks of rock were turned to ash. Based on the stream of sweat running down his face, if Remy hadn’t been trying before, he certainly was now. His staff had appeared in his hands, unused the whole fight until now.

“I think it’s dead,” Claire said in a faint hush.

“You think?” Remy asked with a dark sarcasm, as he eyed the obliterated hillside.

The black scaled dragon-man walked slowly out of the crater he’d created, his eyes darting about to take in the miniature apocalypse he had caused, before he walked in the direction of Claire and Remy. As he walked, the spear in his hands vanished.

“A friend of yours?” Claire asked the suspicious mage.

“I could ask you the same,” Remy gestured towards the approaching figure. The black lightning and winds that had surrounded it earlier were gone, but that didn’t lessen the slight terror Claire felt while viewing the dragon. It smiled at them in a terribly familiar, far too friendly way.

“How’d you survive that fall?” Remy asked the dragon when he stopped three yards away.

“Stopped my descent, then put another wall under me, and we floated gently down into the crater as if I had one of your feather fall spells on me,” the dragonoid answered. The voice was gruff, deep, masculine. In fact, the dragon-man was broad shouldered, looked well-muscled, and Claire suspected he was a powerful warrior.

“How—” Remy started to ask, but then stopped. He realized he still 'held' his own staff, in as much as you can say someone with a staff floating next to them is holding something. “Not all mages know featherfall, you know.”

Look, I know, I look different now. The scales, the gruff voice, being taller, powers.. The whole nine yards.

“No, but most nephews know some of their uncles’ spells,” I responded to Remy.

“Emery! Looks like you handled everything. I have decided I dislike forests, and dirt. Especially mud,” Chrys called my name as she came over the last hill. Her sprint turned into a regular walk the moment she saw there was no fighting going on.

“”EMERY!?” Claire and Remy exclaimed at the same time. Each stared at me in disbelief.

“Yep,” I answered with a grin, but based on their sudden blinking, I let my facial expressions rest. Showing teeth seemed to unnerve even experienced adventurers. “Hi.”

“This is Chrysocolla, or Chrys. She’s my ally, and I guess part of my retinue. Chrys, this is my uncle, Remy, and the Mistwalker we came to find, Claire.”

“It must run in the family,” Remy laughed loudly, but he didn’t explain the cryptic comment.

“Emery? That’s… how did you turn into a dragon? Did you learn magic somehow?” Claire asked me, looking as if she’d seen a ghost.

“Well, no, not really. Turns out I can use astral power, though, and that I’m an Enkindler. I’ll give you the run down in a bit, but let’s go back to Monados first. It’ll be faster to find our way to the Plains of Valor from there.” While I spoke, I focused on a small hollow to the side and visualized a doorway of stone there.

“Create Portal,” I commanded, and an EternaStone doorway took shape. I mentally linked it to my portal network, and then activated it, and the control spire showed itself on the other side.

“Monados?” Remy asked in confusion.

“Plains of Valor?” Claire repeated what I’d said.

“Come on. If we want to save Etienne, we don’t have a lot of time.” I urged them to hurry up after me, but I’d made it halfway to the portal and they still hadn’t moved at all.

“You didn’t explain anything, and you’re pushing too fast, Emery,” Chrys said softly to me.

I almost told Chrys off, but she was right. My first instinct was that of course I hadn’t hurried to much, and even if I had, it wasn’t my fault. But I had hurried, and hadn’t explained a damn thing.

“So, when we got separated my Enkindling abilities had kicked in. I was talking with Mithras, Corvusol, and some other concepts. That’s what caused me to get lost from the group, and I ended up getting found by Corvusol and Amaranthine Sadow,” I started to explain.

“That bitch again?” Claire didn’t seem to be a fan of the Fey, for some reason.

“I made a deal with another concept, Arx Maxima, the Ultimate Fortress, and she brought me to her. I enkindled three of my concepts with her, and one to the grand dame of chaos storms, Katrina, fumbled my way to the town of Chrys’s people, explored some ruins, then Amaranthine led us to you, Claire, because we needed a Mistwalker. Oh, and she freed you from your oaths to her so you could hang out with me, uncle Remy.”

Claire stared at me in disbelief, and Remy nodded.

“I could feel it when she released our vow,” Remy said as he rubbed at a spot on the back of his hand. I didn’t see any scars or marks, but that didn’t mean that there hadn’t been invisible ones.

“So, I’ve been looking for you ever since we lost you. I’ve been out here in the wilds, tromping through every damn realm I come across while focused on saving you, missing meals, no comfortable beds, burning up all of my built up stockpile of potions… and you just wander up, don’t even say hi, and its off to save your brat of a brother, without so much as a thank you for being concerned Claire, you’re the best Claire, I wish my own mother and father had the dedication to finding me that you and your uncle had, Claire. None of that?”

Claire put her hands on her hips, and I sighed.

“In my defense, I did say hi, but you might have been staring at me and missed it..” I trailed off, and Claire groaned at me. Then she looked at Chrys and laughed.

“Also, where did you find Chrys? You’re beautiful for a statue,” Claire said.

“I belong to a people called Gneisslings,” Chrys corrected Claire.

“Gneisslings? How deep into the Gossamyr did you go, lad? Emery was right, we need to leave this forest. Another Sylvan Wyrm is approaching.” Remy set a hand on Claire’s shoulder, and gently guided her towards the portal while he talked.