Young Flame

As much as I should be flying away — what with the turbulent weather, rising waves and Nightfall Shroud still looming — I can’t tear my eyes from the whirlpool in the ocean behind us. Its spinning waves siphon down from horizon to horizon around what remains of the Island as Charybdis chews through the steel like a beast does meat.

The green eye remains, glaring hatefully, until the last section of corrupted metal disappears within the Titan’s gullet. Its mouth closes around the island, rising out of the ocean to give me one last look at the many, many thousand teeth as they shear through the relic of an ancient race.

Once it swallows, the Titan descends back beneath the ocean; nothing but a shadow at the bottom of the vast whirlpool.

What previously filled my entire vision is now gone. An open — albeit turbulent — ocean with no sign that this was once the home of a structure large enough to shame any other. Charybdis no longer visible, the stretch between ocean and rotten night sky is empty. It is not what I see that boggles the mind, but the speed at which everything disappeared.

Yalun is no different. Her beak opens and closes repeatedly, as if trying to form words, but unable. The whole situation seems unreal. Despite facing an Anatla… a Monolith Anatla — the beings supposedly destined to cause Armageddon — we came out victorious.

Was it a direct fight? Was it a fight at all? No. But I’m not about to let that bother me. And neither is Yalun.

She tackles me. Her wings and fire wrapping around us and stealing the lift of my wings in much the same way she did when we first met. This time, though, we don’t plunge into sand — or the far more dangerous waters below — because of her loss of awareness. My fire — the rest of me — holds the both of us steady in the air.

“You did it!” she cheers, forcing us into a spin. “I knew you could do it… well, maybe not certain, but I knew it was possible.” Yalun stops her rambling to laugh, letting out a long, hearty one into the now rain-free air. “I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Hey, I left half of me back with you. I was never in danger,” I say, but the look she gives me says just how little she believes that.

Well, I’m not exactly sure what would have happened if I’d lost half of myself, and I’d rather not test it, so I grin and push past the topic.

“So, you think the ocean will recede from the wasteland now that the island is gone?” I ask. “I mean, it has to, right?”

Yalun shrugs, still grinning. “Hard to say, but even should it not, I can’t see anyone complaining. Not with how close we were to losing everything.”

Now that she’s settled her excitement slightly over our success, we retake flight. I don’t boost us away, worried that the energy expenditure might attract the Titan now that it has finished with the island. Considering the whirlpool is below us and extends far in every direction, I really don’t think Charybdis would have any trouble catching us.

Glancing to the moon and the long line of Alps below it, it is clear we’re to the southern edge of west. Opposite where we want to be. Not like we could choose where we wanted to flee when a Titan of all things came after us. As I look over the dark pit at the bottom of the whirlpool, I dismiss any notion of flying over the Titan. We’ll go north and circumvent the Titan, but first, I want to get some distance.

As we make our way around, we will not be fortunate enough to remain rainless for long. Too much water is still in the air, and the thick clouds gradually close in on us again. Without the massive geysers fuelling the storm, it isn’t near as bad as before, but it is still water falling down on us, I don’t think we could ever be happy with it.

After a while, the Nightfall Shroud disperses. Without áed or islands to feed upon, it disappears from the sky as if never there. Even having been in there, I still have no clue what it is.

Yalun catches my gaze. “Y’know, we saw Charybdis take a bite out of the shroud in our last attempt.”

“It… bit it?”

“Yeah,” she says. “Just took a bite out of the sky as if the night was physical. Not sure what to make of it, but I’d say it’s a good guess that it isn’t actually the night sky we see when it spreads.”

I nod, unsure if I believe her, but hopeful that’s the answer. If so, it means those millions of stars that hang over our head every night aren’t all beasts strong enough to terrify Kalma.

The thought of that madwoman irritates me. If only she’d been clear with what she knew, we wouldn’t be floundering so much with the unknown. She knew about the Nightfall Shroud, she knew about the Monolith Anatla, and she knew about Eldest Ember. What else had she known that would make facing these impossible beings that threaten us at least possible?

A roar rips through the air. A powerful noise mixing a low-pitched whistle and the rumble of a thousand crashing waterfalls crashes through us, loud enough the air visibly ripples.

I twist back on the Titan, the source of the bellow. It had been… not silent, but certainly nowhere near as loud as this when it shred the Island into digestible chunks, so why was it roaring? Had it finally swallowed the Anatla enough to declare victory?

I don’t know why, but I have a bad feeling.

Charybdis rises from waters, its form unmissable, and turns its mouth slightly north of us, toward the moon. The Titan howls again, but the sound hits me so much harder than before. The bellowing rumble slams into me with heavy shockwaves, smashing through my fire one after the other, never giving me the time to recover.

Both our bodies stiffen as the pressure of a Titan crush any thought beside deep instinctual terror. My wings lock, and it is only because the rest of my fire holds us aloft that we don’t tumble to our deaths.

I’d felt the pressure flowing off Tore, off Kalma, but this is different. So much undiluted power flows through the roar that I know without any reason to, that if Charybdis wills it, my flames would extinguish. Poof out of existence with barely a thought. Really, I should be happy it only feels like I’m being crushed by a mountain.

The overwhelming howl cuts off after hours that couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. Even released from the clutches of its pressure, my physical flames refuse to listen. The rest of my fire is faster to recover, allowing me to grasp Yalun and hold her closer.

But the sound isn’t over.

A rumble, like the crack of lightning and thunder shattering through rock, swallows us, but this time it has no pressure, and it does not come from Charybdis. I twist, taking my attention away from Titan. In any other situation, it might be a mistake, but not when what I see is more unbelievable than even the Titan’s pressure.

All along the Titan Alps, fractured earth tumbles down the steep slopes. Entire mountains, now dislodged, crumble as they slide down the Alps, amassing into unimaginable quantities of rubble that flow as if a waterfall of rock. Anywhere I look, it is the same. From the trail of mountains that lead down into the southern ocean, to the northern edge of the Titan Alps that curve out into the pact nations.

My mind first jumps to Kiko, and whether he and the Agglomerate are safe, but then I realise just how much worse this will be elsewhere. The Mermineae took to living on the Steppes and Lower Elevation. If this is as far-spanning as I assume, hundreds of thousands — if not millions — might have just lost their lives.

Not everywhere is affected, of course. Sections of the Alps remain completely untouched. But the vast majority of it has simply crumbled, like some unimaginable force just slammed into it.

My gaze returns to Charybdis, where it remains still, staring up at the moon that hovers over the Alps. Did… did it do that? With that roar? Was its pressure so great as to shatter the mountains of its namesake?

“Solvei,” Yalun says, worming her way out of my grasp, and I realise I have control over my wings again. “We should leave. I… whatever is going on, we can’t be anywhere near the Titan.”

I want to listen to her, but as I return my sight to the Alps, I can’t tear it away from the avalanche of stone as descends toward the horizon. Sure, it seems slow from here, but I’ve been to the Alps; I know just how far and fast those mountains are crumbling.

When I’m sure nothing else could surprise me, the very Alps themselves drop. Others have estimated the height of the Alps at about five hundred kilometres. In only a dozen seconds, I watch that height drop by fifty, the Alps simply sliding into the earth.

I have no idea what’s going on. How could something so large, so impossibly huge that even the crocodile Titan, Cipactlteteo, was dwarfed by it, simply break? And why now? The timing is far too perfect to be a coincidence. No way is this unrelated from Charybdis… or maybe the Anatla it ate.

This… this isn’t the beginning of Armageddon, is it? It can’t be.

Charybdis remains still, and while I’d love to believe this is it and nothing more will come, I can’t settle my terrified thoughts. As the Titan stays above the waters, I know there is more to come.

And, of course, I’m right.

It is the middle of the day, blue sky breaching through grey clouds and all, but the moon… the moon isn’t right. I’m not sure exactly what’s wrong with it, but I just know it is off. Staring into the white orb in the sky alongside the Titan behind us, the oddity of the moon grows until it’s obvious.

It starts with ever so slight strands of red spreading along the pristine white, like veins of a fleshy creature. The longer I watch, the brighter they become. New arteries thread between the space of stronger glowing lines, until eventually the entire moon burns a deep, recognisable red.

The Ember Moon… in the middle of the day.

An instant, non-physical pressure slams through me, almost knocking me out of the air. Soundless and weightless, the blast comes from the Ember Moon, and leaves me with nothing but a headache as it passes. Otherwise, it is harmless. The wave doesn’t even disturb the somewhat calmer ocean below.

“What was that?” I ask, though really, what was anything that has happened in the past few minutes?

Yalun hardly seems like she even noticed the crushing wave. She stares up at the Ember Moon with about as much shock plastered on her face as I feel.

“I don’t know, th-” the sound of rushing water interrupts her voice. We both turn to watch Charybdis diving back beneath the ocean again. “I don’t know.”

Did the Titan do this? Was it the Anatla? Did we only push Armageddon to occur quicker?

What is going on?